Sometime around when Valg became an IMP (if I'm remembering correctly, which may not be the case) a conscious decision was made to add new things to the game at a level that was more toward the low-end of what made sense rather than the high-end.

Previous to this decision, for example when conjurers were introduced, things came into the game and generally wrecked shop for a short while and then were scaled back to a balanced level. Conjies IIRC came in with evils able to use archons just as effectively as goods and generally were the best PVP and PVE class in the game... for a short time. This wasn't a conscious effort, just Imms estimating high and people not knowing how to deal with the new class (or whatever) yet.

Since then, CF has seen quite a few new things. Neo-thieves, Neo-rangers, Legacies, Edges, etc. etc. etc.

For the most part, the stuff that comes in new is either correctly balanced, or pre-nerfed. Rarely, is it OP upon arrival. So from a certain standpoint the decision was "successful".

I vaguely recall getting steamrolled by neo-conjies. I probably complained. I was not alone. They were eventually fixed. In the meantime, conjie players got to wreck the game for others, and people lost con to an OP class. Total time conjie were OP: pretty short in the long run.

Why? Because it is A LOT, and I mean A LOT, easier to spot something that is OP strong, versus pre-nerfed weak and make the appropriate tweak.

On the other hand, let's look at Mercy of the Typhoon. This is a legacy that essentially sucked from the second it entered the game until fairly recently. I'm fairly certain it had more than one up-tweak over years. People that chose it felt cheated, but no one else suffered really. Then, recently, one of the up-tweaks made was ab usable in a way that benefited the taker of Mercy (not me, I haven't had a real character in a while). How long did that last? Not very long.

What is my point? It is much better for the game overall if you abandon the idea of pre-nerf, because you won't make the changes necessary to balance them right, or at least not for a very long time. Better that it is OP from the start, because then the impetus for fixing it is so much greater.... Otherwise you end up with orcs, (who could still use some help IMHO) that are broken for 10 years before they become truly playable, or say hunter rangers, which are pretty much pointless and are languishing there for who knows how long until they are made truly competitive.

Thoughts?

What is the general procedure you follow when designing, implementing, and reviewing code changes?

At the risk of offending the staff here, I think game balance is the single thing that got lost along the way to adding all the cool new #### we have now.

TMNS posted a good example earlier with komodo rake which did two DEMOLISHES and lagged on a form that to this day kicks ass without it!
People were posting it as a OP and Daevryn was telling everyone "by design" and Zulg had to come along and say "Actually, it was my design and that wasnt my intent".

Another good example is cranial which was broken.

Or the ridiculous nightgaunts evil conjurers had earlier that OP mentioned. Stuff like Sebeok running through hell feeding the mobs pwk potions with Yanacek or people abusing stuff like the opium pipe. This is extra frustrating when in the Yanacek example you had a coder who worked on the project going out and abusing it to some degree. Those of us who were dying and having to regear or just get raped back then knew it was ridiculous so of course we would complain about it.

I can't say I blame most of you guys but it seems like you are very unwilling to critique/QA the balance aspects of code others put in. Like I said though I can't blame you guys its not like you are made out of time and in between RL/mortals/Followers I dont have any clue how you find time to code at all.

Please don't take this post as a criticism merely pointing out that those of us who actually have to take it in the ass about OP/underpowered stuff are gonna have a different perspective then those of you in immland who may not be dealing with it every login.

It's way more on the heavy side than even a bedouin hunter is on the light. It's also been around much, much longer.

And for all the talk about hunters, at least they're damn good explore characters and nearly impossible to actually kill. I agree some of their skills could use tweaking, and even then they'll probably still remain unable to land many kills, but they do fill a niche.

Play a serious villager and show me how bad DB is.

And hunters are good solo explorers for easy content but most veterans have done that enough to realize you'd rather have a group - and there are a lot of better "tanks" out there don't require being in the wilds, crappy health, low damage redux, little damage, etc. Even dexterous rangers tank just as well usually, considering they get healing staffs which counters direct damage which the hunter can't do anything about. I'd take a defensive form, a paladin, an archon conjurer, etc any day over a hunter.

Sorry, hunters just are just "bleh". The most recent hunter was even a villager with deathblow and he didn't last long at all.

Villagers were originally designed to fight 2k hp masters players, entropy liches, and various other op builds with access to sanctuary and haste potions. When everything else got nerfed, changed, discouraged, or removed, the core villager concept has remained pretty much the same.

The numbers on resist/deathblow/bloodthirst have been tweaked back a little, but now its much more difficult to match the overwhelming power of those previous builds that old villagers had to fight.

That's why deathblow is so ####ing annoying.

Hunters weren't designed to fight the op builds that existed 15 years ago, which is why they're so terrible relative to deathblow.

You never have to fight a rager ever if you don't want to. They are far and away the easiest cabal to hide/run away from and far and away the easiest cabal to kill.



Edit meant to be under Torak's post

If you had you surely would not be saying DB is overpowered.

The game needs to be somewhat accessible to new/weak players.
Otherwise, new people won't stay in, and neither will weaker players.
This will limit your fun because you have no one to kill.

New/weak PK players are sold on the idea that the basic classes (warrior, etc) are finely and well balanced and that it's possible to be sucessful with any of them. If they play a water terrain dwarf ranger and complain, well, that's their problem. If they play a human warrior and the new flavor of the month does a wrecking ball on them with no hope until a code change goes in, good luck keeping them.

These players are more committed to characters than stronger players, because a strong player levels up quickly and makes entire characters like weaker players make role chapters.

Plus, the conspiracy theory/player hate that happens against really successful character with style, especially the ones played by IMPS, is going to go ballistic if there's a new release and an IMP plays it. That doesn't seem so good.

>New/weak PK players are sold on the idea that the basic
>classes (warrior, etc) are finely and well balanced and that
>it's possible to be sucessful with any of them. If they play
>a water terrain dwarf ranger and complain, well, that's their
>problem. If they play a human warrior and the new flavor of
>the month does a wrecking ball on them with no hope until a
>code change goes in, good luck keeping them.

How much time will they waste on a water terrain dwarf ranger? How much time will they waste if they get wrecking balled by the new flavor of the month? How able is a new player to determine if what just rocked them is a broken wrecking ball and not just arial assassin lowbie pker #85495634?

Getting killed over and over in this game is something that pretty much any newbie can expect. Playing a long lived character only to find out that they are underpowered and you couldn't be successful with them if you had 10 RL years under your belt is more likely to send a newbie away than getting pked for the millionth time.

But neither of us can accurately speak for a "new" player, so lets not pretend we can.

>These players are more committed to characters than stronger
>players, because a strong player levels up quickly and makes
>entire characters like weaker players make role chapters.

More committed to their dwarf water terrain ranger than can never work out?

>Plus, the conspiracy theory/player hate that happens against
>really successful character with style, especially the ones
>played by IMPS, is going to go ballistic if there's a new
>release and an IMP plays it. That doesn't seem so good.

Happens. Has happened. Will continue to happen. Have we all forgotten about Yanaceck? How many of the interesting things (suggest trustall, suggest quaff pwk, etc. etc.) he did are still actually doable? If something really is OP, and IMP is actually *less* likely to abuse it in a way that hurts the game then your average player. I'd rather see Scarab behind the wheels of completely OP chronomancer than funnyone any day of the week.

> If something really is OP, and IMP is actually *less* likely to abuse >it in a way that hurts the game then your average player. I'd rather >see Scarab behind the wheels of completely OP chronomancer than >funnyone any day of the week.

It's bad for the game, and therefore we don't really want to see a griefer behind an OP character. If you make them average and tweak them up, that won't happen. Otherwise, it's open season on weak players, new or old, as every griefer will roll the OP character and enjoy early Christmas. No one but the guys who take the fun out of the game will have fun with that.

Why the heck is an experienced player playing an unusual underpowered combo and then complaining about it?

Griefer behind an OP character gets fixed. Usually quickly. Usually in a way that makes that griefer go away.

"Why the heck is an experienced player playing an unusual underpowered combo and then complaining about it?"

Because we assume that the issue is that people just don't know *how* to play poisoner/trapper thief in battle (as an example... I am not good enough to play Flaaayin), and not that the combo sucks, but that it takes some getting used to. When that expectation (that the class can be good) isn't met, it is a serious let down to any player.

For instance I really enjoy the RP angle of orcs for some reason. I find their skill set interesting, but before adaptations and then follow-up boosts to said adaptations and edges that helped in certain areas and even more new skills.... they sucked beyond a certain level.

They were like that for years, and people complained, but nothing was done. If they had been OP (like level 32 savage feeding was at the start) that would have been fixed immediately.

It is better for the game for things to be fixed quicker than slower. Bugs which "break" the game get prioritized over bugs which amount to an unfinished feature, or feature that isn't very useful.

>Sometime around when Valg became an IMP (if I'm remembering
>correctly, which may not be the case) a conscious decision was
>made to add new things to the game at a level that was more
>toward the low-end of what made sense rather than the
>high-end.

Actually I think this is more an effect of who is writing the code and reviewing the functionality than a conscious decision by the staff.

>What is my point? It is much better for the game overall if
>you abandon the idea of pre-nerf, because you won't make the
>changes necessary to balance them right, or at least not for a
>very long time. Better that it is OP from the start, because
>then the impetus for fixing it is so much greater....

Or it ends up being a powerhouse that doesn't get changed and everyone continues to bitch about how broken it is.

>Otherwise you end up with orcs, (who could still use some help
>IMHO) that are broken for 10 years before they become truly
>playable, or say hunter rangers, which are pretty much
>pointless and are languishing there for who knows how long
>until they are made truly competitive.
>
>Thoughts?

I don't think it changes anything if something comes in over or underpowered. We still have a finite amount of time to fix things, and that always seems to be getting smaller and smaller. If it's overpowered and doesn't get addressed you'll feel griefed (or go play it yourself to grief others). If it's underpowerd and doesn't get addressed you don't have to play it.

Hunters are under powered ;)

In a more productive way, something that comes in "under the radar" usually never gets improved until some Immortal plays a character (i.e. an IMP) and realizes how bad it is. If ANYONE plays an OP ability, the whole world bitches and people look into it.

You know how many *years* I bitched about trapper thieves until they got buffed? I think it took a few weeks before I said how "bleh" they were but it's usually chalked up as whining until a coder tries them. I've lost count of how many things come in now pretty bad and we just all wait for Daevryn/Twist/etc to try it out, abuse it, and then it gets "tweaked" afterwards. Not saying that's a bad philosophy, it just means a lot of things are bad until they get played by an IMP.

I'd rather have a hunter ability not suck (stalker of the wilds? really?) and a little OP rather than no desire to play. Not saying they need insta-PWK headshots but....

>Actually I think this is more an effect of who is writing the
>code and reviewing the functionality than a conscious decision
>by the staff.


I'm pretty certain there was never a staff decision (or discussion) that looked like, 'hey, instead of making things too good, let's make them too sucky!'

Especially given your examples, I definetly agree with Zulg that it's just a matter of who worked on it (and sometimes the number of imms that worked on it).

Never forgive you for that one.

Or the 01291283u7891749871249712974 players who rolled shifters around that time and it seemed like half of them were getting komodo.

Dying 7 times in 3 logins to a buggy class makes Sam sad :(

You still da man though Z.

nt

>
>Actually I think this is more an effect of who is writing the
>code and reviewing the functionality than a conscious decision
>by the staff.
>

I remember there being a post essentially saying this was the new direction, but I'm not going to look it up. There was also a post that said if you RP it, it can be made to happen, which I would say has been negated in more recent times, so obviously stances don't stay the same over time necessarily.

>
>Or it ends up being a powerhouse that doesn't get changed and
>everyone continues to bitch about how broken it is.
>

This gets fixed much much faster is my point. I can't think of a single example of something that has been seriously broken OP wise for half as long as hunter rangers (or whatever) have been broken weak wise.

>
>I don't think it changes anything if something comes in over
>or underpowered. We still have a finite amount of time to fix
>things, and that always seems to be getting smaller and
>smaller. If it's overpowered and doesn't get addressed you'll
>feel griefed (or go play it yourself to grief others). If
>it's underpowerd and doesn't get addressed you don't have to
>play it.

If you only have a finite amount of time to fix things and that amount of time gets smaller and smaller, perhaps you should try to get some more coders to help.

If it is overpowered and doesn't get fixed, yes I might feel griefed, but the amount of time I personally have wasted is not nearly as large as if it is underpowered and doesn't get addressed. Sure, I can not play hunter rangers. Now. That I know they are broken. Across several attempts.

Learning that a class can't compete takes at least one and most likely more than one hero level character to properly determine that it is underpowered and that it isn't a failing in how you are trying to play it. That is hundreds of hours of wasted time for any individual who tries. I'd much rather be killed by an OP legacy that disarms 6 times a round (but gets down-tweaked within months) than to pour time and effort into a character only to realise my awesome Bow-using hunter role and character are totally wasted by the fact that their skills aren't good enough to compete.

I'm generally against it as well as, it's much, much worse to roll up a character - find out they are nerfed after devoting much time and energy - than it is to get steamrolled a couple times by an OP character.

From the player experience, the former is a lot of 'wasted' time and energy while the latter is a temporary annoyance that usually gets fixed. The latter hurts things from a stats perspective but as a player experience, it's much worse to take the path less traveled and get smacked in the face with hard-coded inadequacy and wait around hoping for fixes. And given the fixes do eventually come, I don't think it's a perception issue on my part (as apparently you guys eventually agree with me), but you're talking years and years later.

Finally, someone who will back my design for Chronomancers...

If there is an actual design that will never see the light of day, you should post it.