Player Character Balance

[Uska]

this is gonna be a very fun thread so my popcorn is popping, that said

for me just make it so bards can splash 2 monk and paladin and there epic
destiny top tier works on bosses and balance will be achieved.

your friend sil

changing alignment restrictions will make me quit although I am sure your not serious

[Arcanoid]

Self Healing is something that changes the balance of character in a very dramatic way, all depending on play style.

Playing the Barbarian/Fighter in a group with a healer (or running a heal bot hireling) is very very different than playing one solo chugging pots by the tankful.

Playing a Warforged Sorcerer is very different than playing a fleshie one. (Wizards can go PM for healing)

There are ways to mitigate the complete lack of healing but they would in general take some of the dedicated combat power away.

This just makes the choices more varied for each player, as we each have our own play style, guild options etc.

[Uska]

Self Healing is something that changes the balance of character in a very dramatic way, all depending on play style.

Playing the Barbarian/Fighter in a group with a healer (or running a heal bot hireling) is very very different than playing one solo chugging pots by the tankful.

Playing a Warforged Sorcerer is very different than playing a fleshie one. (Wizards can go PM for healing)

There are ways to mitigate the complete lack of healing but they would in general take some of the dedicated combat power away.

This just makes the choices more varied for each player, as we each have our own play style, guild options etc.

adding 4E style self-healing for all classes is something I am a trillion percent against.

[Livmo]

No its not the same.

People that don't post on the forum don't want their opinion to be listened to.
Otherwise, they would speak up.
They're silent, so they don't care.

Is this an Alexis de Tocqueville moment?

[silinteresting]

changing alignment restrictions will make me quit although I am sure your not serious

your right im not serious, but my point about 2 monk 2 pali is valid

[Quetzacoala]

No its not the same.

People that don't post on the forum don't want their opinion to be listened to.
Otherwise, they would speak up.
They're silent, so they don't care.

I disagree, there are dozens of perfectly valid reasons why a person would not participate in this forum conversation other than not caring.

Choosing to not provide an opinion is different from not having an opinion.

[oradafu]

The questions in the questionnaire are inherently flawed.

Starting at Question 3, players are given a numerical ranking of a personal feelings or taste without given really any place to explain why. So for Question 3, players rank if they are building for personal taste or power, but players aren't given any space to explain why they build one way or another. That missing information is a major component on why a person builds their characters one way or another. For example, I've seen people build for power just to gain past life feats while others build for personal taste since they delete the characters hitting a certain level; not to mention a whole host of others reasons inbetween.

The same lack of player feedback on what are powerful, weak and mediocre EDs. If the Devs are just balancing these things because they are ranked a certain way without players in the surveys explaining why they feel the stuff ranked the way they did, then the Devs are changing things again more for the sake of change instead of concrete reasoning why the changes are being made. It feels an awful lot like the changes to AC that gave players PRR, that originally seemed to be designed to balance out pajamas vs heavy armor for tanking, but the Devs changed the rules so monks gain the same benefits as heavy armor without any of the penalties that heavy armor gets.

Also it appears that the classes are only looked at as being pure instead of multiclassed. The balance isn't one pure class vs another pure class, it's pure classes vs certain mutliclass builds. This is the reason why the upper core abilities stink and the capstones never got close to being equal to evasion, much less evasion plus 2 class levels and 3 more trees.

[Teh_Troll]

Frontloaded enhancement trees + frontloaded class splashes = cherry pick cookiecutter build ftw.

This.

I mean seriously . . . is ANY pure 20 build close to OP?

[Cardtrick]

If you start making balance changes to classes to please the whiners please count on me canceling my sub renewel and quitting the game we need less changes from pnp not more I am on the border already but that kind of **** will do it.

changing alignment restrictions will make me quit although I am sure your not serious

adding 4E style self-healing for all classes is something I am a trillion percent against.

Saying that any balance change will make you quit and then responding to everything individually to say that you're against it and it would make you quit seems like overkill.

Some changes are necessary. Some people will be annoyed enough to quit. I'm sure they understand and accept that.

[Uska]

Saying that any balance change will make you quit and then responding to everything individually to say that you're against it and it would make you quit seems like overkill.

Some changes are necessary. Some people will be annoyed enough to quit. I'm sure they understand and accept that.

You post your way I will post mine but I don't mind changes to epic destines actually but I am against class changes a trillion percent.

[SirValentine]

What are some examples of things that could be better balanced?

That said, some broad areas that we know perhaps could use some consideration:

• Ranged combat vs. Melee Combat vs. Spellcasting, at all character levels.
• Class & Race Balance
• Epic Destinies

I'd like to add another broad area to that list: pure-class versus multi-class.

I feel that not only should every single class be viable and able to contribute, but that every single class when pure-classed should be viable and able to contribute.

For me, that should be the basic starting point for balancing classes, and multi-class measured against that yard-stick.

I don't mind if someone figures out clever, synergistic combinations that are a bit more powerful overall, but there should be trade-offs. Multi-classing should never be a no-brainer, and pure-class should never be an outright bad choice.

Traditionally in D&D, multi-classes, being less specialized, had less raw power, balanced with more versatility. It seems in some cases in DDO, they get more versatility AND more power, making pure-classes strictly inferior.

The enhancement pass contributed a lot to this. I think a hard look at capstones is in order.

And, though I know some people will hate it, perhaps revisiting the class levels needed for each tier of enhancement. Personally, I think 1/3/6/9/12 would be more appropriate than 1/2/3/4/5.

[silinteresting]

ill say this with a little bit of tongue in cheek but capstone should be worth
evasion + pali saves then job done.

your friend sil

[Sgt_Hart]

We're happy to hear general thoughts on character balance, what you'd like to see, and also why you'd like to see certain changes (or non-changes.) We don't want to change any particular things without good reasons, so convince us!

Step one: For the love of god, Work from the top down.

Get the overpowered, awesome $#&$ in at tier 5/6 destiny, and 20/18/12 class wise first. One does not simply get to Pittsburgh , by picking a direction, turning a GPS on every 2 hours, and taking a heading from it. You get a map, (or let the GPS do it) and you(it) will work from end goal, to where you presently are. Because randomly turning as you go along, only get's you onto the cast of tacky horror movies.

I cannot possibly stress that enough.

Do not nerf past lives. The level of grind (or money) it takes to achieve a past life is incredible, and there's no way to respec them and recoup that time and effort. Unless there's some obvious bug (like the old, old barbarian past life stacking thing), these should not change.

I'd argue the opposite, or at least I'd argue to do a pass on past lives. Or at least on the heroic ones. Several of those are point-blank, no-longer-worth-it. Why is AC not in that list? PRR? Dodge? Threat Reduction? Threat Gen? Look at fighter.. To hit is not nearly as important as it was with the AC pass from.. TWO, expansion packs ago. So unless your using tactical feats, AKA: a fighter on this life, it serves no purpose. Fix it. Give it an AC point per stack, and everyone can benefit from it somewhat.

Wizards in the sister ship, and sinking just as fast. Spell Pen, and wand DC.. so, caster or GTFO? Why? 5/10/15% wand & scroll amp. Doesn't have ot play to every build, but the goal with every single past life should be "This can benefit most of the classes." Given, spell pen, and wand DC may be half, or close enough to not matter. I'm sure I'll miss one but Bard, cleric, druid, favored soul, Sorcerer, Wizard, can all effectively cast at things, still 2 spell pen, and wand DC.

Do you see (many) caster's using wands? I never do, but I may be in the minority, its possible.

Also varg, As a personal plea: Please, make Stand Against The Tide Just decline forced player movement. For an ability that ticks up, requisite to you standing still, It's a Righteous pain in the sensitive bit's how many things can/will knockback, or just out and out ignore the knock down immunity. Heck, give it +200 balance while your at it 'eh?

[waryJerry]

In some games every class has some degree of self-healing ability. This, of course, wouldn't be classic D&D, but how many DDO players would like this to be true of our game as well? Just curious...

[bbqzor]

Just to draw more attention to this:

• Character Balance Survey

We love survey answers. Flood us with information, please!

That survey is terrible. Rate everything in a vacuum? You really think that will amount to useful information?

Look anything can be good in DDO. It depends on how well its built, how well its played, and how demanding the player is on whats an acceptable level of play for them. While anything can make a viable build option (in terms of class/destiny selection, which is what the survey covers), there are some people who have demands which are easier met in some places as opposed to others. Thats impossible to just rate off a list.

Like Grandmaster of Flowers... great for monks, bad for bards. Does that mean it needs nerfs because monks can use it? No. Does that means it needs buffs so bards will find it useful? No. Does that mean I should rate it a 5 because my monk likes it, or a 1 because my bard hates it? Should I rate everything 3 because "It depends on the race/class/destiny combo" means everything is, essentially, even?

You posted, and Im not making this up, literally posted this:

Time and resources matter: We can save a great deal of time by only changing a few overpowered abilities, rather than changing all other characters, monsters, traps, and quests to match those few most overpowered abilities or features. If we can spend a day or a week pulling back on the strongest rather than months increasing everything else, that leaves us far more time to implement new features.

So basically, you want everything "even" and because its faster to nerf the top down rather than bring the bottom up, youre going with that approach. Well, and bold for effect, Thats Wrong.

If youre going to start implementing any kind of balance pass, you need to realize four things:

One - Its going to take time and effort, there is no quick fix, and nerfing 1-2-3 whatever "perceived overpowered" things will not accomplish this goal. It will just result in a new set of "flavor of the month" builds. Reactive balance isnt balance... its just pushing chips around.

Two - You need to define balance. YOU need to do that, not us. Is balance in your mind that everything is playable at all difficulties? That we all do similar damage? That we all take similar damage? We, as players, all have our own opinions of "whats fair", but we arent making the decisions which affect those things, YOU are. Thats why your the devs, and you get paid to do it. If you want everyone to do similar dps, over what time frame? Under what conditions? As one example, against undead mobs rogues have a harder time, and the new content is undead heavy. That was your decision. How do we rate that in terms of balance? You have to tell us what the goal is. If the goal is simply make everything "more or less playable", you have to define what playable means. Able to solo EH? Able to solo EN? Able to survive EE? Each individual player has their own metrics, but that doesnt help. For example, having multiple events that require "tanking" and then adding conditions which make evasion just stupidly amounts of useful... what was the design goal there? You just have to tell us plainly.

Three - You do not spend enough time playing. You just dont. You think "epic counters are fixed to not reset" would honestly make the patch notes if a single dev sat down and played 20 quests in Dreadnought? Nope... because its only fixed in like maybe 5 quests. Maybe. Or perhaps 10 if lucky? Its broken almost everywhere. Whatever your testing process is (and Im not trying to imply you dont have one, Im sure you do, and Im sure it catches a lot of things) it is not robust enough, and does not seem to involve simply logging in and PLAYING. Think like a player, when we want test something we log in, load up the ability, and go use it for dozen quests straight and observe. I get the sense you load it up in some sort of test conditions, check to be sure it works in one case, cut/paste that fix all over, and then assume its all working as intended. I am not trying to be insulting, I literally dont know much about professional coding, but how else can something that is immediately apparent in a single play through with 100% reproduction come as a surprise... its the kind of thing a single test would have found without fail, which implies that first test didnt happen. What else is there to say. You will have to invest a lot of hours playing, or actually listening to us when we play. I probably play 10-20 epic quests a day, most days of the week. The number of bugs I cross is astounding, many of them obvious and repeatable. Im happy to post but when we get told "bug every portal not working" well... I could do that at every door and basically stop playing to type all evening, or I could just say "its broken in over half of them, the fix wasnt a fix". You need to either play significantly more, or hire testers who do. Ill offer.

Four - You need to realize that the way youve taken the game, some things are just harder to play than others. This isnt bad or good, its just a fact. And its present in every game, everywhere. Wizards can be hard to play, because its hard to get a good DC. Tanks can be hard to play, because its hard to get a good AC. Monks seem easy to play, because they get a lot of flexible abilities, which make them good in many situations with a low investment. Barbarians are very hard to play, because they have virtually no defense, and by epic the mobs offense is so much that presents a large gap to cross. None of those things (DC, AC, Monks, Barbs) are unplayable. DC Wizards are tough to do, but very viable. I have one, I group with several others regularly, they work fine but require a lot of work. Same with AC Tanks. Its easy to get a lot of Threat, or 200+ AC, but its hard to do both at once. If you do, it works great, but its just a very high investment. Monks can be good on a first life build with common gear, because they can shift roles with stances and destinies to do many things well. Its not that monk is better, its that monk takes less time to realize. Where as Barbarians, even with infinite time to realize a build, come up short because almost nothing you do makes 80 Str/Con cover 30ac and zero PRR. In this (completely arbitrary) example, nothing needs nerfing. Monks are fine, people like them, theyre good at different difficulties, okay great. Perhaps make DC Wizards a bit easier to obtain by adding more passive DC. Perhaps make Tank AC easier to obtain by adding something like "Boots of Solid Earth, +20 AC, counts as heavy armor for evasion" or whatever thing focuses on just the area you want to focus on. The problem isnt the power level of those two, its how hard they are to make work. Where as barbarian needs some defense! Just add 1 PRR per Barbarian Level as an extension of the "barbarian got hit? barbarian doesnt care!" flavor theyre supposed to bring. Just giving them 20 PRR at 20 helps make up for the fact that mobs now hit for 200+ and the DR 7 they get lacks with the combat changes U14 brought.

Anyhow thats a long enough post. Your survey is pointless, I hope you put almost no value on it. Its terribly subjective, and with how interwoven those choices are even subjective answers wont provide clues to any balance causes or effects. You have to just come out and say what your goal is so we arent bandying about unfocused, then you need to actually put in the effort to do it right. It will take a lot of playing by you guys, or actually listening to us instead of just blowing off reports and patching anyhow. It will mean you dont make deadlines. It will mean you have to pause new content to fix old content. And most of all it will take examining not just what different options do, but how and why. If you just nerf rhyming words, you are missing the point of your own post entirely. Instead, take your time-saving to heart and just do nothing. Because taking one or two things down is only going to disgruntle players and result in a new wave of things to take down. Hopefully helpful, even if it just makes you redo that awful survey. Sigh.

[Uska]

ill say this with a little bit of tongue in cheek but capstone should be worth
evasion + pali saves then job done.

your friend sil

capstones for pure classes could be better

[Uska]

In some games every class has some degree of self-healing ability. This, of course, wouldn't be classic D&D, but how many DDO players would like this to be true of our game as well? Just curious...

I will give you an idea of how I feel about self-healing for all classes in a dnd game after trying it for 2 years myself and all in my old group of 12 burned all of our 4e books and dance around the blaze true it was mainly just phb's but still. NOT ALL CLASSES SHOULD BE ABLE TO REALLY HEAL THEMSLEVES. I think its already to common.

[Kasiddy]

<snip>We're happy to hear general thoughts on character balance, what you'd like to see, and also why you'd like to see certain changes (or non-changes.) We don't want to change any particular things without good reasons, so convince us!</snip>

Your post has me in two frames of mind.
1. Great, you are interested in our perspective.
and
2. You mean balance seriously wasn't being tossed out the window when you introduced bladeforged?

Really, Bladeforged vs. Vanilla Elf.
And there is balance?

Rather than player's perspective on balance, I'd really rather head more of a dev's.
How do you perceive balance working in the current state of the game?
What does balance mean to you?
What should a "balanced character" be able to do?
What is a "balanced character's" role in a party or raid?

[Cardtrick]

Just to draw more attention to this:

• Character Balance Survey

We love survey answers. Flood us with information, please!

I filled this out, but I thought seriously about not doing so once I saw it. It seems to reflect an incredibly incorrect understanding of the balance problems in the game.

It is not classes that need to be balanced. For all intents and purposes, DDO is no longer a class-based game.

The combination of the enhancements pass (front-loaded enhancements, few restrictions on investing in multiple trees), the front-loaded class abilities that DDO has always had, and the epic levels and epic destinies that are not dependent on class has brought us to a point where it just doesn't make much sense to talk about a fighter being more or less powerful than a bard.

It is builds and playstyles that need to be balanced.

You should have us ranking things like "How important to you is evasion", "How important is the ability to add CHA to saves", "How important is spell-based divine self-healing", etc. These are the meaningful components of a DDO character, not its specific class makeup.

Consider two of the current premier melee builds -- Cetus and Zeus. One of these is mostly fighter, and one is mostly rogue. Does that matter? One gets most of its DPS from the Acrobat enhancement, one gets its from Fighter feats and Kensai enhancements. So what? Both get evasion. Both get monk stances. Both get Divine Grace for saves from Paladin. Both get self healing and immunities from Bladeforged race. There are various other differences, and I know I'd much prefer to play the Zeus build than the Cetus one, whereas others might prefer Cetus. But the point is that the relative abilities of these two builds have very little to do with their primary class.

Classes only matter because they give access to some package of features. It's the features you need to be balancing.

[Hutoth]

Balance is a white whale - you will never ever get it.

Spending resources pursuing it (like Cpt Ahab) is a waste of your limited time.

Nerfs always Always ALWAYS suck.

Using Nerfs (which suck) to get balance (which you can never achieve) is utterly the wrong approach for this game.