April 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[Silentknight]

i’ve always been taught that you play the cards you’ve been dealt. Not the ones you wish you had, but the ones you’ve been dealt…and you play them to the best of your ability!

We’ve all been dealt certain characters as a result of our game play, our investment of time or even money. And once we’ve been dealt these characters, we’ve made decisions on selling them or further investing into them.

In my humble opinion, it’s incredibly demotivating that after the cards have been dealt and decisions around investments made, that someone can actually come and change the cards in my hand, ala nerfing. I do not care if they believe its justified via some “fairness” objective, the nerfing just makes me no longer want to play and invest in character development. That’s sad too since i’ve been essentially an everyday player since ~august of last year.

I believe the proper solution to the balance the dev’s seek still lies in creation, not removal. Create new characters and talisman that require further investment. Introduce a character like st. Michael the archangel who’s passive would remove the prisoner’s passive. Don’t want to use an angel, call it the prisoner’s mother for all i care.

Sure, you tried a bit of this with the introduction of two new talismans. It may not have completely levelled the playing field, but the immunity talis can help mitigate tauntfest. Now don’t just give up and swing the nerf bat, keep going and expand the meta further. If you want suggestions, we are a creative bunch, just solicit ideas from us. You’ll have more ideas than you’ll know what to do with if you ask.

Regressing all characters to a mean in order to achieve some sense of fairness is not a fruitful direction of the game. That is a road to nowhere. I recommend a different path…

p.s. I do not have a prisoner, w. Troll, aof or many other great characters. I hope to one day…but that hope will be lost if the nerf bat continues to swing.

ditto!!!!!

[Silentknight]

great post.

ditto!!!!!

[EnricoPalazzo]

I’ve always been taught that you play the cards you’ve been dealt. Not the ones you wish you had, but the ones you’ve been dealt…and you play them to the best of your ability!

We’ve all been dealt certain characters as a result of our game play, our investment of time or even money. And once we’ve been dealt these characters, we’ve made decisions on selling them or further investing into them.

In my humble opinion, it’s incredibly demotivating that after the cards have been dealt and decisions around investments made, that someone can actually come and change the cards in my hand, ala nerfing. I do not care if they believe its justified via some “fairness” objective, the nerfing just makes me no longer want to play and invest in character development. That’s sad too since I’ve been essentially an everyday player since ~August of last year.

I believe the proper solution to the balance the Dev’s seek still lies in creation, not removal. Create new characters and talisman that require further investment. Introduce a character like St. Michael the Archangel who’s passive would remove the Prisoner’s passive. Don’t want to use an angel, call it the Prisoner’s Mother for all I care.

Sure, you tried a bit of this with the introduction of two new talismans. It may not have completely levelled the playing field, but the Immunity talis can help mitigate tauntfest. Now don’t just give up and swing the nerf bat, keep going and expand the meta further. If you want suggestions, we are a creative bunch, just solicit ideas from us. You’ll have more ideas than you’ll know what to do with if you ask.

Regressing all characters to a mean in order to achieve some sense of fairness is not a fruitful direction of the game. That is a road to nowhere. I recommend a different path…

P.S. I do not have a Prisoner, W. Troll, AoF or many other great characters. I hope to one day…but that hope will be lost if the nerf bat continues to swing.

Seconded, 100%. Great post!

I don't have a prisoner and don't use the heavy taunters on my defense, and in the beginning, I lost badly 90% of the time to prisoner teams.
I learned to cope and stack my attackers in a way that now brings me roughly to a 2/3 win rate against prisoners.
Figuring out how to do this for me is all the fun this game has to offer, and nerfing the hard characters is taking that away by solving this problem for me.
Please before nerfing a char, consider the evolution of battle results against teams that feature this character.
People adapt, either by changing tactics or evolving their own characters. Those who don't deserve to lose.
If anything, please improve the AI, which still does make some very obvious mistakes.

[scott-5496]

ditto!!!!!

100% agree on these points too.

Nerf only if it make something better or where a toon is set up wrong for talisman or how it is scaling etc - don't nerf it because it is OP or whatever. Or if you do that then make shard moveable as that would lessen the pain....and a lot of us still do PVE too and why should we lose skills for that when what they are doing is for PVP (which not everyone wants to play)?

As they say, it truly is easier to destroy than create.......

[PerthEddie]

Some great points in here and it seems more and more players are unhappy about the nerfs. I don't have a Prisoner and probably never will (no way am I wasting Trooper points on G/A Souls any more) but I disagree with nerfing him. As others have said be creative not destructive. The way things are going we will all be using the floating rifles. Don't get me started on the AoP either. I fully sharded that bastard about a month ago and he is now going to be as good as useless in the Arena

[R1ck]

Also don't agree on nerfs, devs should create new characters to counter the ones we already have.
Nerfing characters and increasing power in some will make PVE really hard. Fortunately most of us already finished the game, but new players will be frustrated for it.

[scott-5496]

Some great points in here and it seems more and more players are unhappy about the nerfs. I don't have a Prisoner and probably never will (no way am I wasting Trooper points on G/A Souls any more) but I disagree with nerfing him. As others have said be creative not destructive. The way things are going we will all be using the floating rifles. Don't get me started on the AoP either. I fully sharded that bastard about a month ago and he is now going to be as good as useless in the Arena

Yeah, that is the key thing - the devs are annoying folk by nerfing toons they have invested in and/or been lucky in getting from the souls - not the best way to go I don't think. Nerfs should only be used on toons that are not working as intended or are broken in some way....that sort of nerf makes sense and is logical and should not annoy anyone. If they want to keep nerfing then they need to make shards moveable in my opinion as that lessens the pain a little/lot depending on how many shard are on it....what people feel if the GRE was nerfed and they had wasted all those shards on one? Not pretty at all.

A lot of folk complain about taunt/freeze fest and I see that too but it can be countered, as can the Prisoner....but surely the freeze/taunt fests are OP compared to anything else if you have not got the toons to counter it? Do they not also proc more than stuff like energy talisman/paralysis/invisibility/thieve etc etc? Surely they should be similar too...or maybe not! Who really knows?

[hold]

I am sittin on 32 skillshards and the original plan was to max the Reaper with 28. But since I read he is being watched for OPnes I just don't want to spend them at all - on anything.

I don't have a Prisoner and are kind of OK that he gets a nerf (because of the massive advantage on the offense) but now he will be simply destroyed. There were so many good suggestions (i.e. Prisoner disables all passives - friend and foe) and so on. I would be so pissed off if I had one and out shards on him.

Also: why a 2nd nerf to the AoF? I don't have one as well but never had a problem with him (a few odd times tbh - but that's part of the game).

With all this nerfs of "no touching" first round and so on - I can only see the defense rates dropping and with the silly point system it gets even more frustrating loosing points because the AI does not deserve that name.

Thing is that now I play PvP only with my free SoW to get coins for shards (that I don't want to waste) and souls. As long as this AI destroys all the points I win again I am not really into a competition.

[calizario]

It's a shame, to see so many members dissatisfied with what they are going to do in this next tunning and to know that we will not be heard.
I imagine the frustration of those who have achieved some of these characters after the sacrifice and have invented a lot in Skill Shards or even invested in old characters like Mummy Eddie.
Since the CG nerf, now AoP, AoF and Prisioner. The funniest of all was the Death Dog, with the same passive AoP, will change the name but it will not have the same effect of AoP, because? Because he is not an ordinary character.
Each tunning an unpleasant surprise, instead of creating, they remove .. this pathetic that.

[Nicko]

I'm copying a post I put in the PvP thread - but I know the developers read this one and am reposting it here.

I DO think the Prisoner needs a nerf and I have one. And I think some of the criticisms about him not helping win percentage are unfounded - ex Slauki has a 94% win percentage - because he carefully cherry picks teams. Others like Silent Knight don't - he's tenacious and will attack me multiple times until he wins - so assuming he does this with others, naturally his win percentage will be lower even with a Prisoner if he doesn't shy away from problem teams. Apples to Oranges here.

But the proposed change isn't a nerf - Silent Knight said it best - it's a castration

Anyway - after playing this since beta - I think the biggest impediment to a fun experience for most at this point is the point system. It would likely be dirt simple to change in the code and have a huge impact on everyone's experience. Why not simply reward defensive Holds but not penalize the losses? Or a light penalty of 2 points? A carrot instead of a stick.

Sparton - I know you said there are no plans to change the point system because you want to emphasize the importance of defense. But honestly, changes in defensive percentages don't offer proportionate rewards. And the effect of losses are really frustrating a lot of players.

Anyway - here's the repost...

A few of us like Rcarter and I have seen dramatically decreased attacks - and many haven't. And I agree with what RCarter said - what a huge difference it makes as you go through the week.

As some have pointed out, there seems to be a fairly despondent untertone in this weeks thread. It's unfortunate. And honestly - a Prisoner nerf won't help. It's not the real issue.

While I've focused on it in the last few threads, I don't even think # of times attacked is the real issue. It's the most pertinent defense metric to determine ones success in the current environment (as evidenced in previous weeks by players with mediocre stats making top twenty five) but not the underlying issue.

It really needs to be addressed at the root - the point system.

People will work if they believe they'll make progress. If they perceive their return on their investment of resources - time, Ironite - is fair. But if it's "two steps forward/three steps back"? Ultimately frustration will prevail. And we're starting to see more and more of it.

There are those uber-competitive among us who will suck it up - curse - and then still play a lot in the current environment. But my sense is the more typical player will simply get frustrated - say PvP is not fun anymore - and quietly walk away. And even the Uber-competitive have their limits...

I think ultimately this will need to be addressed. Personally, I think eliminating or greatly reducing the repercussions from having ones defense broken would have increased overall satisfaction significantly more than a massive Prisoner nerf.

A light Prisoner nerf and a restructuring of the point system ( as opposed to a massive Prisoner nerf in the current unfair point system) would - in my opinion - really improve the morale of the player base and help a lot of these negative undertones resolve (some will remain as there will always be complainers).

No update has happened yet. I hope the developers consider the above before any changes are made.