May 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[mjmxiii]

Look through the thread again. Seems that the players debating for nerfs are actually in the minority now. AFAIK, it seems that only slauki and I feel that the GCR isn't a balanced toon. BTW, that's the only toon I feel isn't balanced in the current state of the game (Sentinel Harpy, as stated by even Sparton himself, is bugged currently and doing more damage than intended).

Don't confuse us players arguing for the changing of one toon to be in favor of nerfing overall ─ I far prefer buffs to nerfs, and am glad that this appears to be the current direction the game is heading in (one needs only look at the new update notes to see this). Also, I'm pretty certain that most people are okay with the GCR's current state because of the many counters that only just became available with the most recent update. There were a lot more people who were ambivalent towards that specific toon a couple months ago. Counters to something, however, do not make that thing intrinsically balanced ─ they merely provide new ways of dealing with it. Read slauki's example of this in the last page to understand what I mean.

Dude, I read the thread lol... tweaking one toon is where it all started lol... again, PvP opened up a pandoras box of tweaking... everyone was quick to voice opinions on the chars they thought were too strong after that... you gotta believe it's the major reason everything else is taking forever to be released... at least let's hope that's why!

Buffing toons is great but it's time to move on brotha... GCR is fine... I have one... I know how to beat her. Sometimes the AI plays it right and she's hard to beat.. Often she's the first to die. I know NF is really into trying to fix PvP up real nice n all. Working on the point's system and diddling chars... but it's time to move on to some new content... not trying to say anything else, just saying... let's move on already.

[Nicko]

Hey Nicko!

This would probably hurt my style of play, but I think defenses should matter more actually (yeah, better AI needed)

Look what HomemLivre was able to accomplish... He was up there Saturday morning because of his defense and smart play during the week. Every new patch that guy just know what is going to work.

We all just copy each other defenses, this is what's wrong. His out of the box thinking and quick adaptation to the new rules were key to his results. And lot of hard work, you would not believe the amount of time and dedication he puts to figure out the best defense possible. It blows my mind. Glad it got rewarded. (Still he had to play a lot Saturday to get his results and probably with some ironite investment)

Attack theoretical weaker players and revenge holds is nothing new, I personally don't like it. Like to clear my list and move on. But had to adapt somehow, at least during the week.

And new players have arrived in this new system, perhaps they are encouraged now to try Eternal too... this is good to the game, I think. (Kamuz is an awesome player, just an example)

Hope devs can balance it a bit, yes... but this is a tough one.

Don't know... Devs? Anybody?

Hey GMAC!

Maybe you know his Hold rate - I don't. And I don't expect him to tell us and show his cards. But I can almost promise you it's dropped this week. And probably did as the week went on last week. Perhaps his strategy was similar to Holds - attacking weaker players - so hard to assess defensive success. Or perhaps it really did bamboozle a lot of players - certainly don't want to discount that possibility. Whatever the rate - it was achieved using two toons hitting harder than they were intended to. Smart - yes. Sustainable - no.

I don't think there is a defense out there that is routinely holding top 25 players with any success - meaning 30% - including HomemLivres.

Has yours fared better recently? If your're like most players I've talked to - the answer is no, it has not. So my point wasn't that it SHOULDN'T matter - it's that it DOESN'T matter as much - because in general they've fallen. Defense has an AI - and will almost always be at a Class disadvantage. Now there are Strike Talismans that can play on that Class advantage. Certainly they are used successfully on defense as well and offer some creative possibilities - but the more creative attacker will always hold the upper hand, and that shift seems to be increasing in the attackers favor.

Keep in mind this is all opinion. It would be pretty cool if a bunch of people piped in saying their defensive Hold rates are improving or consistently around 30% like they potentially were a few months ago.

[Zapathusara]

First things first:

But my real point is this, can we have BNW already?!?

I really, really hope for BNW in next major update. I thought at least we could already got little events, like pvp 300 or something like Halloween mini boss. Shaman could be done that way. They demand little coding (have been done before) and can made the waiting less frustrating. Now I just want BNW asap.

About point system, kind of in the fences here, I hate I have to cherry pick players above me and revenge holds to try and get people tilted (feels dirty). Not able to use SoW sucks too.
But I like seeing new names at the top. Current system makes us think lot more on our defenses too... Of course I'm biased to Saturday's madness... but yeah... hope with changes some of that stays. A lot of that actually!

My 5 cents in this subject:

I would do an adjustment which rewards holds.
Something like +20 points for every hold, and the loser gets the normal loss of points.


About the patch notes: can't wait for them. In fact for me the update can go live now.

[Zapathusara]

I don't think there is a defense out there that is routinely holding top 25 players with any success - meaning 30%

Keep in mind this is all opinion. It would be pretty cool if a bunch of people piped in saying their defensive Hold rates are improving or consistently around 30% like they potentially were a few months ago.

I'm not HomemLivre, but I got my cards. 25%+ is possible without been chasing low ranked dudes. Hell, I kept 30% last week after 34 losses at one night (I dismantled my defense cuz was on matchmaking bug, and felt unfair ro be at top). I lost 500 points (was 8th at the time the bug wear off) and ended top 100. No tricks. Just reading and thinking the game 10 hours per weekday.

If I am stranger to some, my name doesnt shows up in tops cuz I dont play weekends. And I happy with the finishes I get.

[Sparton_LOTB]

What would be considered a "massive war chest of iron coins"?

We don't have any specific amounts to release for that yet.

I feel bad for newer players who have to go up against GCRs without nearly as many of the counters that only veteran players have been able to amass. I imagine she would be quite the hurdle for them.

Well yeah, but that's why we want players to feel value from getting more and higher rarity characters. Some characters are better counters than others, or are able to counter more things than others. Some characters are an absolute terror when you're starting out than becomes relatively benign to answer as you get a large stable of characters, and other characters that are largely neglected and unused become important considerations in specific scenarios for even high-level play.

I do have a new question.. about the shield/passive ordering. As is now, what is casted first counts. Before I've got used to it I have been using (and lost to it quite some of the battles) combinations like troll/green bot + AoS. What happens is that AoS block passive prevails over shields and takes the full dmg. Lets say green harpy hits my low hp team where prior to it my green bot casted force shields on all and my AoS is still alive. Force shielding is ignored, 3 bars remain but AoS is dead for sucking up the dmg. Was surprised. Same happens with red troll passive shields (and I can't say if it goes for shell talis respectively since I haven't tested). So this ordering is easier to notice with force shields on.

Imo the logic would be that dmg is reduced/calculated per creature respectively to shields before it moves to AoS due to block.

Well I've learned the hard way not to pair those things for now.
So the question is will this order remain or it will be adressed sometime soon and the logic will prevail.

We as the designers on the team agree with what you think is most logical, that's for sure. In fact, fixes to that are fairly central to some of the stuff we're doing for the Brave New World, so various tasks and bug tickets are prioritized to be sorted out in the update where we release that feature.

Hi Sparton, could you further elaborate on the new matchmaking system and incentives do use Iron Coins? (how much coins is needed to fill a massive war chest btw?)

About point system, kind of in the fences here, I hate I have to cherry pick players above me and revenge holds to try and get people tilted (feels dirty). Not able to use SoW sucks too.
But I like seeing new names at the top. Current system makes us think lot more on our defenses too... Of course I'm biased to Saturday's madness... but yeah... hope with changes some of that stays. A lot of that actually!

The matchmaking itself isn't actually changing that much; I just noticed a possible edge case (reported by a forumer, but also something that caused me to not be attacked much last week...) and ensure that there was no possible scenario that could allow someone to not be attacked about as much as they're attacking except at the absolute start of the week. The main thing to solve the problem Nicko has noted (top players encouraged to engage less because realistic win rates means their participation is often a net loss on point climbing) is planned to be solved by reducing point losses for defense losses as a first step measure.

Regarding the coins, as I noted above, I don't want to go into too much details for that right now, but needless to say, if you have so many Iron Coins you don't think you could possibly spend them all... we'll have a one time deal for you to lighten your purse a bit.

But my real point is this, can we have BNW already?!?
What's up with changing talismans that no longer drop? How on earth people who did not gather them way back, or are new to the game gonna get them? Also, Shell and Immunity are no longer available, for instance people that have come back to the game can't access them too. (probably some newer players also)

Not to mention not everybody is PvP maniac, I'd even say most people just like collecting Eddies and enjoy playing PvE, so, new content, PLEASE?!

Sorry about the little rant! Really admire you guys talking, and listening, to us!

Trust me, most of the team agrees and wants to get it out now, and we still have people working on it in parallel with the update we're releasing mid this month, but I can't report anything more specific for the feature release window.

I've been testing some damage over time effects to find out about the skill effects, and I was wondering how they work in concert with accuracy buffs.
Take the Flame skill for instance (Warrior & Sentinel Pyro): The attack has an 65% chance (without Skill Shards) to inflict the Flame status, which has a 35% chance to Remove Beneficial Effects.
Would an accuracy increase here increase the probability of both the Flame status and buff removal happening, or just the Flame status? Does the same thing happen with Skill Shard application?

Accuracy Up increases the chance of something happening when a skill is doing a random chance check. As such, the chance to apply the Flame status effect is affected by Accuracy Up/Down (the skill is directly doing that), but the "on-tick" effect to remove beneficiel effects from the Flame status is not (the Flame status effect isn't a skill, it's a status effect doing something when it ticks down).

Basically, if it's a chance-based effect and it happens immediately when the skill is used, Accuracy Up or Down will affect it. If there's some effect that happens later (such as by a status effect), it's not.

One important note: talisman augments are not affected by accuracy. Talisman augments are their own thing that happen in conjunction with (but are separate from) using a skill, and Accuracy Up and Accuracy Down affect the chance-based effects of skills, specifically.

I was also testing Bleed, and there's a slight contradiction in the skill description: it say it deals magic damage but deals true damage. Or at least, it dealt true damage by my Rocket Dog.

Bah, that blasted Bleed status effect. I think it changed a lot during development, so it looks like we missed a case that still needs to be corrected that we missed when we tried to do our last consistency pass on that.

Intention is that it's true damage, so I've fixed that for the status effect description in the combat info popup. Should be good for the next release.

And new players have arrived in this new system, perhaps they are encouraged now to try Eternal too... this is good to the game, I think. (Kamuz is an awesome player, just an example)

Hope devs can balance it a bit, yes... but this is a tough one.

Don't know... Devs? Anybody?

I've been thinking about the new players as well. At this point, I'd imagine they're highly disadvantaged compared to the veteran players. They don't have any shell or immunity talismans to rely on, they lack skill shards, and they lack iron coins to obtain the new talismans and other resources they need to compete. I foresee a problem here: they lack iron coins needed to be competitive, but they likely can't win many fights to even accumulate any large amount of iron coins. They'd probably be more inclined to quit rather than slog it through the tough times of being new to the game...That's not a good situation for the future of the game! :S

It'll always be the case that people who've been around longer and have built up a powerful set of tuned-up characters will have an advantage, but you need look no further than Jofer to see that not having everything fully sharded is something you can work around with smart, fast play (seriously, everyone keeps overestimating how sharded his characters were initially, and even now I think he's still pretty economical about it). Talismans are a similar deal; having access to all of the limited time ones (including Vampiric; I've seen some funny defenses with people using those) will give you more of an edge, but missing some of the important ones can be worked around if you can excel in other areas relative to your opponents. I don't expect someone who started last week to be making a run for Eternal, but someone who started a month or so ago? It'll be an uphill battle, but there's precedence.

Even when Brave New World comes out and getting all these talismans are more equally available for people to farm... people with stronger teams that can more consistently take out the hardest floors of the Brave New World bosses are still going to have an edge in getting the talismans quicker compared to people whose teams are not strong enough to do that yet (as a function of actual investment into their characters or as a function of not having the team synergies to cleanly handle those bosses).

[gmac]

Hey GMAC!

Maybe you know his Hold rate - I don't. And I don't expect him to tell us and show his cards. But I can almost promise you it's dropped this week. And probably did as the week went on last week. Perhaps his strategy was similar to Holds - attacking weaker players - so hard to assess defensive success. Or perhaps it really did bamboozle a lot of players - certainly don't want to discount that possibility. Whatever the rate - it was achieved using two toons hitting harder than they were intended to. Smart - yes. Sustainable - no.

I don't think there is a defense out there that is routinely holding top 25 players with any success - meaning 30% - including HomemLivres.

Has yours fared better recently? If your're like most players I've talked to - the answer is no, it has not. So my point wasn't that it SHOULDN'T matter - it's that it DOESN'T matter as much - because in general they've fallen. Defense has an AI - and will almost always be at a Class disadvantage. Now there are Strike Talismans that can play on that Class advantage. Certainly they are used successfully on defense as well and offer some creative possibilities - but the more creative attacker will always hold the upper hand, and that shift seems to be increasing in the attackers favor.

Keep in mind this is all opinion. It would be pretty cool if a bunch of people piped in saying their defensive Hold rates are improving or consistently around 30% like they potentially were a few months ago.

Yes, attackers will always have the upper hand, and hence why excellent defense should always be rewarded.

Who else saw and took the courage to shard two harpies? (I think I was the first to go with 2 AoS against Prioners back in the day, so I can relate to that lol)

All defenses are always going down, his too certainly. Does not matter, that guy will figure another great one. (btw wish Sag was here, current environment would be perfect for him).

I don't expect people to share defense %, too much, but mine is at 26%, going down of course, don't really care about it.

I hate testing my defense, AI so dumb makes me mad, just like to clear my lists as fast as I can. But I think it's good for the game to reward those who care about it. Maybe too also having a point system that does not allow people to get away too soon... maybe.

Anyways, whatever they throw at us I'll try to adapt and be there on Saturdays, at least one's I'm able to play.

Hope to hear from devs side, and other fellow forum members.

Cheers
gmac

[R1ck]

IMO attack win rates are increasing, which means defense hold rates are going down, that is the future for AI defenses, 0% holds. I don't play much on mobile but I think there are games where you can play online against another person, that should be the future of this game.

About talismans, new people deserve the possibility to get immunity and shell talismans, it would be good if they are available for the moment in LoL.

[Zapathusara]

About talismans, new people deserve the possibility to get immunity and shell talismans, it would be good if they are available for the moment in LoL.

Where I sign to get this?
Current loot of LoL is awful.

[HomemLivre]

Hey GMAC!

Maybe you know his Hold rate - I don't. And I don't expect him to tell us and show his cards. But I can almost promise you it's dropped this week. And probably did as the week went on last week. Perhaps his strategy was similar to Holds - attacking weaker players - so hard to assess defensive success. Or perhaps it really did bamboozle a lot of players - certainly don't want to discount that possibility. Whatever the rate - it was achieved using two toons hitting harder than they were intended to. Smart - yes. Sustainable - no.

I don't think there is a defense out there that is routinely holding top 25 players with any success - meaning 30% - including HomemLivres.

Has yours fared better recently? If your're like most players I've talked to - the answer is no, it has not. So my point wasn't that it SHOULDN'T matter - it's that it DOESN'T matter as much - because in general they've fallen. Defense has an AI - and will almost always be at a Class disadvantage. Now there are Strike Talismans that can play on that Class advantage. Certainly they are used successfully on defense as well and offer some creative possibilities - but the more creative attacker will always hold the upper hand, and that shift seems to be increasing in the attackers favor.

Keep in mind this is all opinion. It would be pretty cool if a bunch of people piped in saying their defensive Hold rates are improving or consistently around 30% like they potentially were a few months ago.

Well, need to tell you that my holds are 3% worst than the last week and to be honest I don't even care about it couse this point system sucks.
I upgraded the harpies long before devs confirm that the scaling was not normal and I really don't mind if his damage will go down, the main reason about this upgrade was becouse his passive and becouse shes not dumb as the SSD in the arena, simple as that.

I don't remmember when devs confirm about the scale damage was wrong but was really close to weekend or after it. Most of my points was earned in the attack and just to be clear, I didn't use any of the harpies in the attack! Oh!
That said I didn't get your point in here, are you saying that despite my effort, strategy and toons of testing hours I only achieve the eternal becouse I used a toon thats doing more damage that intended (Only on defense)?

Well, I can't say for other people, but my hold was always around 30% since the beta (just some weeks that I can't do it) and you know, as you said, this is not sustainable to my actual team and Im pretty confident about it. As it not was to all of the other teams that I used, just becouse the meta change and you need to change with it and thats exactly what Im always doing. So I hope that I will figure out how to maintain my holds around the 30% even after this and the other future patchs.

[Nicko]

I'm not HomemLivre, but I got my cards. 25%+ is possible without been chasing low ranked dudes. Hell, I kept 30% last week after 34 losses at one night (I dismantled my defense cuz was on matchmaking bug, and felt unfair ro be at top). I lost 500 points (was 8th at the time the bug wear off) and ended top 100. No tricks. Just reading and thinking the game 10 hours per weekday.

If I am stranger to some, my name doesnt shows up in tops cuz I dont play weekends. And I happy with the finishes I get.

We're you cherry picking only players above you while attacking?

If so kudos - that's a great percentage. Because assuming most of those players win 90%+ of their battles that's quite a feat.

If you were clearing lists it makes more sense because you'll appear on a much wider cross section of attack and revenge lists. And also have a greater percentage of attacks from lower ranked players.

Traditionally I've also been around 30%. That was clearing lists and getting attacked 100s of times. With my Cherry picking approach? Hovered around 25% and finished at 20%. I used the same defense GMAC is using now. The one where the damn Harpy always seemed to cast immunity when going second (idiot!)

She's been benched

Again - it's always cool to see a "Think outside the box defense". And I think we're seeing more variety now in defenses which is extremely cool. But as tools like Strike Talismans and Newborns that remove buffs come along - they ultimately will give the edge more to the attacker than the defender. Because there's a brain behind those buttons. And this can only hurt defenses.