GGG, when you balance, do you actually test or do math?

In most cases KB will outclass PS because it is easier to use and has inbuilt aoe.

True with really good gear PS+GMP+Chain is better but good wander gear is so expensive that it is not really affecting 90% of the players.

"

Mannoth wrote:

In most cases KB will outclass PS because it is easier to use and has inbuilt aoe.

True with really good gear PS+GMP+Chain is better but good wander gear is so expensive that it is not really affecting 90% of the players.

While what you are saying is correct, this comment intrigues me since this is the exact argument used in the reverse case everywhere else in the forums.

IE, well with X bullshit unique you can clear content just fine as X builds, therefor those builds are ok.

Something smells fishy.

Hi

GGG nerf hammer is STRONK! Stronker then RNGesus!

GGG gets a whiff of some build that's popular and the hammer...FALLS. Hence why I will never attempt BOTW which could be renamed N(erfed)BOTW.

I don't think that whomever does the balancing acknowledges that they could be a little paranoid since most of the uber builds are niche players and do not account for even 90% of the player base. It is like the ''balancer'' thinks that, ex: ''Oh perandus shield has 45% chance to block better nerf it and to even ensure even more balance I am also nerfing block nodes in general so that the average player who might've used perandus and never bothered investing in more block nodes now has to invest in more stuff because some higher up characters used block nodes and got max block...SMQART'' does the saying: whats good for goose is also good for gander work here or should even work in this philosophy of balancing? lol.

This block nerf severely makes me go WTF! shields are now on equal par uselessness as 2h, DW or 1h+ board, rarely does my character actually block now because I haven't bothered to waste my points to get a damned shield node meanwhile monsters continue to power creep...great work GGG.

Love the game hate the ''balancing'' (*_*)

Cheers

"

monsters continue to power creep.

Source on that, monsters weren't buffed in 1.3, heck not much was buffed in 1.3

You kinda answered your on question on the base block nerf, now 2 handers look more appealing then they did before. This promotes diversity over players thinking they only have 1 option.

They don't balance.

They imbalance.
It's quite clever, actually. Not that I agree with it.

If they were to balance they'd have x skills, y items, z keystones, all to balance. A nightmare, really, but that's game design.


What GGG do is restart the game every 3-4 months with a few purposely OP skills, items and keystones.
With these waaaaay overpowered elements, everything else 'beneath' them is irrelevant. 99% of the game can be all over the place as far as balance is concerned because it is the 1% only that is in focus.

And no matter how broken the 'balance' is, no matter how imbalanced they made it, no matter how OP the focus elements are, no matter how problematic it could turn out, it need never last for more than 3-4 months at a time before everything is wiped and started afresh.

There are permanent leagues, of course. But fuck them, GGG don't give a damn about them or anyone in them.

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

They don't balance.

They imbalance.
It's quite clever, actually. Not that I agree with it.

If they were to balance they'd have x skills, y items, z keystones, all to balance. A nightmare, really, but that's game design.


What GGG do is restart the game every 3-4 months with a few purposely OP skills, items and keystones.
With these waaaaay overpowered elements, everything else 'beneath' them is irrelevant. 99% of the game can be all over the place as far as balance is concerned because it is the 1% only that is in focus.

And no matter how broken the 'balance' is, no matter how imbalanced they made it, no matter how OP the focus elements are, no matter how problematic it could turn out, it need never last for more than 3-4 months at a time before everything is wiped and started afresh.

There are permanent leagues, of course. But fuck them, GGG don't give a damn about them or anyone in them.

This could not be more true. I just wish I'd known earlier.

Going to quote a post I made about a month ago:

"

Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

My suspicions become more and more firm every time we see balance changes, that GGG don't care as much about balance as they do about forcing shifts in gameplay.

My repeated requests for a Dev Manifesto post on game balance and build diversity have thus far fallen on deaf ears.

"

goetzjam wrote:

(truncated)........, now 2 handers look more appealing then they did before. This promotes diversity over players thinking they only have 1 option.

What the actual fuck? Fixing (Attempting to fix) 2H Melee by breaking 1H and DW Melee is good for the state of the game how? Sure, by comparison 2H Melee became a slightly better option, nonetheless absolutely nothing was done to address its fundamental problems.

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

As for Tornado Shot, I already discussed that skill in another thread in another sub-forum, and to some extent, if you really have excellent gear setup, Tornado Shot can outshine all bow skills. This one needs to be tweaked, so it does not shotgun all the times. As it is, you will shotgun all the time. Maybe half the time, or 1/4 of the time it will shotgun.

Or if you have mediocre gear.
Or if you have crappy gear.

As was made explicit in "that other thread", TS has nothing to do with gear quality. It's better than the other options, gear quality agnostic.

---

KB is technically the best, most OpieOP shit ever, but it competes directly with nothing because wanders had no natural aoe before. I'm a bit torn on it, since even though it is excessively strong, it's only comparable to completely different builds, not comparable to other wander builds.

I would hope GGG first balances "within an archetype" before branching out to balance "between archetypes".

---

@OP: GGG balancing is so crap that I'm starting to agree with Anuhart that they do it on purpose.

Kinda like how they introduced Shav's and everyone said "this is bullshit" and Qarl came in and said, "Among high level mapping characters, Shav's-wearers have the highest deaths in the league." (... implying "it's okay"?)

There's so many problems with that line of thinking that it hurts the brain. At the very least:
1) Dying as punishment is overly HC-centric. If the build helps you clear 3x faster and you die once a week, that's a net gain in SC (and obviously for all leagues farming).
2) It's bad stats. What if the most deaths were due to the people with Shav's being in the hardest areas while no one else was able to even attempt them without a Shav's?
3) It's bad stats. What if the only people able to afford Shav's are those that play 14 hours a day, and of course the more you play, the more deaths you'll have?
4) The link between Shav's and dying is incidental. With such a small sample size, what if the bump in deaths were due to incidental problems (hardware, network, desync)?

If GGG were serious about balancing PvE builds against each other in order to give players that care about efficiency an actual choice, then they should produce numbers that are actually reliable.

At the very least, start logging "player damage dealt/damage taken" against "player skills used".

If everyone using TS is doing 3x as much damage, in aggregate, as people using other bow skills, it might just be time to look into nerfing TS.

If everyone using Shock Nova is doing 1/20th the damage as other skills, in aggregate, and/or taking twice as much player damage, it might just be time to look into buffing Shock Nova.

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

TS will eventually get nerfed

One can dream.

It's much more likely it'll never be changed and then eventually GGG will release the next broken bow skill that strictly supersedes TS -- going from their history.