Phase II: Buff Overhaul

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  • TarkentonTarkenton Traitor Bear
    Honestly, I think until Estarra and co have fleshed it out more/actually gotten down to coding some of the nitty gritty, the lot of us will remain confused.  Though having answers to some of these examples would be nice.

    I do know I'm going to miss my 41% fire damage reduction though.
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  • If it'll work as @Ieptix described it, then personally, I'd want it changed to make the second stat a global maximum for that def type. Otherwise lower buffs would, as Lerad pointed out, risk becoming entirely useless, and players would be endlessly wondering why their buff didn't give them enough levels, and people would have to look for that extra buff that not only has the correct increase, but the correct maximum to it. Messy all around.
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  • TurnusTurnus The Big Bad Wolf
    Ssaliss said:

    If it'll work as @Ieptix described it, then personally, I'd want it changed to make the second stat a global maximum for that def type. Otherwise lower buffs would, as Lerad pointed out, risk becoming entirely useless, and players would be endlessly wondering why their buff didn't give them enough levels, and people would have to look for that extra buff that not only has the correct increase, but the correct maximum to it. Messy all around.

    Seconded.

    ~--------------**--------------~

    The original picture of Turnus is still viewable here, again by Feyrll.
  • MaligornMaligorn Windborne
    edited February 2015
    Yeah, I have to say, I looked at the first post regarding this buff system and my eyes completely glazed over. I thought the Overhaul was supposed to be simplifying things.

    Ieptix's first reveal of the buff system somewhere in another thread seemed a million times more palatable.

    EDIT: Like, I mean, I'm sure I could come back to this and think it through comprehensively and understand it, but would a prospective newbie really want to do that?

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  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    edited February 2015
    As I remember it, this is the same as the first time once it was explained in detail in envoys, complete with ordering issues. It's worth noting that though order of buff application is important, it would be automatic, not based on the order they're raised. Also, anysystem with reasonable hard caps will necessarily make some buffs effectively do nothing.
  • Maligorn said:

    Yeah, I have to say, I looked at the first post regarding this buff system and my eyes completely glazed over. I thought the Overhaul was supposed to be simplifying things.


    No. The buff overhaul is meant to balance the crazy outliers in the current system.

    Take great care of yourselves and each other.
  • Enyalida said:

    As I remember it, this is the same as the first time once it was explained in detail in envoys, complete with ordering issues. It's worth noting that though order of buff application is important, it would be automatic, not based on the order they're raised. Also, anysystem with reasonable hard caps will necessarily make some buffs effectively do nothing.

    Not necessarily, no. For instance, let's say we have the following buffs:

    1/1
    1/2
    2/2
    2/4
    1/5

    In the proposed system, the 1/1 and 1/2 defs would be useless. After all, you'd need to reach 2/2 in order to reach 5/5. They wouldn't be useless in the suggested change though, since you'd be able to use 1/5, 1/1, 1/2 and 2/2 to reach 5/5.
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  • Maligorn said:

    Yeah, I have to say, I looked at the first post regarding this buff system and my eyes completely glazed over. I thought the Overhaul was supposed to be simplifying things.

    Ieptix's first reveal of the buff system somewhere in another thread seemed a million times more palatable.

    EDIT: Like, I mean, I'm sure I could come back to this and think it through comprehensively and understand it, but would a prospective newbie really want to do that?

    Personally, I think it's really simple. Or at least it would be with the suggested change. You'd have a max level and a number of levels towards that max. How is that complicated?
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  • As I remember it, this is the same as the first time once it was explained in detail in envoys, complete with ordering issues. It's worth noting that though order of buff application is important, it would be automatic, not based on the order they're raised. Also, anysystem with reasonable hard caps will necessarily make some buffs effectively do nothing.
    Yes, in a buff system with hard caps, there will be abilities that will cease to have effect once you reach the cap. However, the system as proposed and explained by Ieptix has the potential to render abilities useless before you reach the caps. And for no reason other than the arbitrary decision of whatever that ability's buff numbers are.

    Let's say, I decide stoneskin will give a 1/2 buff to physical defense. Then, I decide that psychicarmour should give a 2/2 buff to physical defense. Lastly, I decide that twirl staff should give 1/5 buff to physical defense. My buffs are now 3/5, with psychicarmour and twirl staff contributing to it. I can cast stoneskin... and nothing will happen. I can leave stoneskin uncast... and nothing will happen. It is effectively deleted from my list of "effective" skills... even though I have not met my cap, even though I have not bought any artifacts, and am not an outlier... for no other reason than my previous three arbitrary reasons. Why is there a need for such a functionality in the buff system? If twirl staff will raise my cap to 5, why can't I use stoneskin to contribute to it, even when my cap isn't reached, and am sitting on 3? Is there something inherently unbalancing about these two skills?

    Naturally, psychicarmour will be unlikely to give 2/2 buffs. But the fact remains, that the moment a 2/2 buff becomes available, for any reason, say, eating a candy from the candy box curio. Or completing the soulless side of Lirangsha to get the 24-hour defense buff to a random damage type. Once that happens, stoneskin is as good as deleted for as long as I have access to the buff. Why?

    Giving stoneskin (or any low level ability) a low max is reasonable. After all, it is... a low level ability. Why should a newbie who invested only 100 lessons into Elementalism, and not even specialized into their mage spec, get a defense that raises their cap to 5? They shouldn't. But an omni-trans character, who has invested time and skill and effort, and who has legitimately unlocked his cap to 5, why should he be prevented from using stoneskin (or any low level ability) to contribute to the cap when he hasn't reached it yet?

  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    I understand and agree that it [the current plan] is not the best or most clear way to handle things, and said as much back when it was first suggested/plotted, and recently rehashed when @Saesh took over. I just thought, from a few comments, that there might be a little bit of confusion on some fine points

  • @Lerad: On the other hand if stoneskin were a 1/1 and psychic armor were a 2/3, then boom, they're done. The skills satisfy their needs and they won't have to go chasing after every tattoo, candy, potion, brew, quest, etc. to max out. Surely this scenario is less confusing to new players?

    The candies, quests, etc will continue to serve the people who don't max out from skills - or, perhaps the more rare of these items will fall in the 1/4 bracket, and count on top of guildskills, like Estarra said. In which case, you still only need one of these boosts, instead of all of them to keep pace.

    Even if these items did keep lower caps, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that guild skills become useless - it's that people with these guild skills don't need those particular extras, and can thus spend their time pursuing other things that they do need.

    It seems like the concerns are more about where things will be capped than objections to the system itself, which, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding something, seems fairly simple. I think we should be willing to assume that the goal here is not to make any guild skills outmoded. Guildskills, rather, will be the primary means of getting buffs, and it's the candies, et al. that will be the fluff -- as it should be.
    #NoWireHangersEver

    Vive l'apostrophe!
  • SynkarinSynkarin Nothing to see here
    edited February 2015
    I kind of see the concerns, but I think we really need to see how this cookie crumbles before really fighting against it. 

    It could be that the system will be cleverly set up so that no guildskill will become useless, just having the associated tattoo or candy for that will be unnecessary for that guild, but still useful for other guilds.


    Edit: I'm more concerned about artifacts. My level 3 magic enhancement rune will give a 10% from lvl 5 to lvl 7, but only a 6% boost in the earlier tiers. That seems a bit off. (not that my main damage typing wouldn't be maxed anyway, but still)

    Everiine said:
    "'Cause the fighting don't stop till I walk in."
    -Synkarin's Lament.
  • Talan said:

    @Lerad: On the other hand if stoneskin were a 1/1 and psychic armor were a 2/3, then boom, they're done. The skills satisfy their needs and they won't have to go chasing after every tattoo, candy, potion, brew, quest, etc. to max out. Surely this scenario is less confusing to new players?

    Except in the proposed system (unless I'm misunderstanding something), they wouldn't be done. The 1/1 can't buff a 2/3 skill to 3/3.
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  • edited February 2015
    No, it would be able to push it to 3/3. The math works like this:

    1/1 is applied first, so your character now has 1 level of buff.
    2/3 is now applied, your max is now 3, and you get +2 to what you have. New buff level is 3 out of 3.

    The problem is when you have a buff that provides a buff level that it also caps. So 2/2, 3/3, 4/4 and 5/5 buffs would render everything before them useless just by virtue of being existing. So a 2/2 would render abilities that give 1/1 or 1/2 useless, even if you raised the cap much higher later on. So even if you had ten 1/1s and a single 2/2, the 2/2 basically makes it pointless to cast any of the 1/1 spells, even if you raised your cap to 7 with a subsequent ability.

    1/1 will get applied first, so your character has 1 level of buff.
    2/2 is now applied, but because it's capped at 2, only 1 level of your buff is applied to a total of 2.
    Even if you add a 1/7 now, you'll just add +1 to your current 2, with a max of 7, so your character will now be at 3/7. The 1/1 spell is effectively discarded, even though the cap is not reached, and not for a balance concern (the balance concern being outliers)

    And yes, all these numbers I've been putting up have all been arbitrary, to illustrate my concerns. Of course, if all the buffs that were given to a guild were all carefully calibrated and calculated to fit each other into each other's brackets, my fuss would be no fuss at all. But still, we could head off problems and make it less confusing at the same time too, so, why not?

    Sidd's post also highlights a good point. Instead of having the lower levels of buffs give +3%, and the highest levels (artifact only) give +5%, it would be better to swap it around. We want diminishing returns, not increasing ones, or the artifact buyers will become outliers and defeat the entire point of trying to rein them in. A better scale might be something like:

    Level 1: 5%
    Level 2: 10%
    Level 3: 13%
    Level 4: 16%
    Level 5: 19%
    Level 6: 22%
    Level 7: 25%

  • In Estarra's example:

    If you have Buffs 2/5 and 3/3, the total buff would be 5

    So why wouldn't a 2/3 and 1/1 be a 3?
    #NoWireHangersEver

    Vive l'apostrophe!
  • Oh. Right. Yeah, I'm tired and on serious cough medicine. Ignore me!
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  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Honestly, it makes the most sense for the artifact levels to be the same as the rest, for simplicity's sake, but they have to be stronger than normal levels (in addition to having a higher cap), per @Estarra, according to anomalies when buffs came up weeks ago in envoys. There was a certain amount of argument both times this system came our, recently and the first time.
  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    Maybe I'm mistaken, but I could have sworn all this work was supposed to make it easier :(
    Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
  • I am pretty surprised that there is so much concern over 1/1 buffs being immediately obsolete when Estarra's post suggested almost all skill buffs are going to start at 1/3.
  • Concerning low level skills becoming obsolete: That has never not been how it happened. Significant portions of skillsets become irrelevant once you're trans. This just means that that fact applies to buffs as well instead of just active skills.

    Echoing the curiosity regarding debuffs. Will it be an identical, mirrored system as buffs? Conjunct volcano sphere then hitting with a 4/4 malus? Or would it counter fire bonus in some other way?
  • edited February 2015
    FYI, we actually don't have any 1/1 skills at this time (may change in the future). Almost every common buff is 1/3 so getting to 3/3 will be quite common.

    What I think we'll do is change the arena overhaul so you can duel people with the overhaul changes before we go live with them so you can see how it works and comment on it. We're not there yet so be patient and give us a few weeks.
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  • Just please don't release this until after Ascension. We really don't need complaints about people losing just because of the overhaul :(
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  • The plan was to release it about 10 minutes before Ascension, actually.

    (I kid, I kid. We'll be nice and give you an hour.)

    (It won't be released until after Ascension.)
    7c95dbc25a4a9ae292cccb899a49a79b18529207e135ebccd89c0877d386ebea
    ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY GLOW CLOUD.
  • I don't even pretend to understand this but it looks like artifacts are getting an even bigger impact? :(
  • I think the common wisdom is to default to diminishing returns because that is what we are used to and the most common type of scaling system in regard to this type of mechanic. I don't agree that it's the best solution when considering our goals, I don't see an inherent issue in artifacts retaining their value by reserving a (slightly)higher percentage increase just for them. Artifacts will not become outliers because there is a hard cap for everyone, and we can balance around this hard cap. An advantage is not the same as being an outlier. The current issue is that artifacts (specifically damage tunes) exist outside the dmp system and that creates the outliers.
  • My goal with this, for the record, was to establish a universal system across damage buffs and resistances that can also hopefully be applied to h/m/e so that the entire game is on the same page thus making balance discussions exponentially easier. Then I wanted a specific hard cap at a reasonable number so that outliers are more easily addressed (or outright removed). The third is to remove the requirement to collect every little buff available to get that extra 1 or 2% out of dmp that players so frequently complain about. Fourth, I want artifacts to retain their value and advantage, without being the bar of entry. Finally I wanted the players on the same tier to be able to negate one another's buffs so that combat is centralized more around skill than min/maxing.
  • For the record (I know I've complained a bit in this thread), I absolutely love the concepts of the change. Removing the 90% damage reduction from some min-max setups (dwarf brewmeisters, anyone?) is an immense step in the right direction. Granted, there'll be a lot of rebalancing needed after this to tune down the damage that was previously balanced around a higher damage reduction (both in PvP and PvE, unless the goal is to have some areas be party only), but that's frankly better than having people without the correct max buffs die in a couple of staffcasts and being told "just get more DMP".

    That said, I still don't quite agree with the implementation. At this point, it doesn't really seem to add anything, but rather seems to add complexity for the sake of adding complexity. It's certainly something that can be adjusted at a later point though, of course.
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  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    With the numbers listed, you are either:
    1) Creating a huge amount of extra work for yourself, or
    2) Breaking a great deal of the game's content.

    Right now, getting 15-25% damage resistance is actually pretty easy, for most resistances.  Guild skills provide better bonuses to certain damage types (or, in rare cases, to all).  Everyone has access to Attune, which is 10 to all, certain enchantments / potions / tattoos, etc.

    End game content does considerable amounts of damage.  It is, currently, balanced around finding out what the damage type is and shoring that up (not to mention the PvP damage, though I suspect that's already on the block for rebalancing during the overhaul anyways).

    I just threw up Nightkiss with regular defenses (no attune, no kirigami, no enchantments), and I am already at 28% minimum to all types.  Magic is at 41%, Poison at 43% (shadowdance garb), etc.  Your modifications suggested here will nerf all of that to 19%... more than a 50% nerf to some damage types using basic defenses added to one guild skill.

    I understand the need for a cap, but I think you need to split this up somewhat.  To me, damage resistance and damage buff need to be split up.  Cap damage resistance at 40%, instead of 25%, with full artifacts (yes, this will still be a noticeably significant nerf to the outliers and lessens the impact / usefulness of the Big Skills, but it's a much more balanced cap as far as survival and not completely changing the entire PvE landscape).

    Then keep the cap of damage buff at 25%-- this way you're still limiting how damage resistances and buffs will skew things, but you're doing so in a more controlled way.  The reason for the lower percent for damage buff would be because there are (under the current structure) fewer damage buffs than damage resistance skills.  It's quite a bit harder to reach the same levels, and putting the cap at 40% would be pretty close to not having a cap at all as far as buffs go

    Note that there is one notable exception to that: right now, the Great Rune of Esoteric Authority gives +20% damage.  That current 1600 credit purchase (under the current system) would get you to within 5% of the new cap all by itself, meaning that anyone using that would see their damage go down significantly as well when converted to this new system if the cap is 25%.  Since this artifact was specifically sold as providing a +20% damage bonus, it might need a refund vs. seeing its effectiveness cut down by 60% or more.
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  • edited February 2015
    Thanks, Xenthos, we can certainly play with the numbers after we get some feedback through the arena duels. BTW, the plan is that all artifacts that are affected by these changes will be retired with a full refund. New artifacts that use the new system will then be created and thereafter could be purchased (or not).
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  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    edited February 2015
    That's good to hear!  The refund thing is definitely going to make people feel better about this. :)

    I do need to point out that arena duels won't help with pointing out issues with PvE however (which is honestly the part of this that concerns me the most), so I would definitely suggest thinking about playing with numbers without just using the arena duel feedback.

    PvP can be balanced via arena since I'm sure you're going to be updating the damage calculations to make sure it's working correctly under the new numbers, I'm just thinking it'll be a whole heck of a lot harder to go out and re-examine the high-level NPCs already in the game to make sure they're still okay.
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