Why play a melee character at all?

[Chai]

How can you tell Chai is losing an argument? Because he starts telling people how to post.

"You can only respond if.." is another one you threw out recently.

He sure wants to be the emperor. Unfortunately, this wanna-be-emperor has no clothes. "SSG nerfs stuff and I don't like it!" Couched as "I have the grand solution to all that ails DDO!"

/yawn

You could just answer the specific question he asked.

Cant do that, so gloss over it completely while ridiculing his posting style.

P.S. I won this "argument" the first time I posted nerfs wont help this game, in 2008. I have continually observed the erosion of balance since then, over many iterations of nerfs.

If you disagree and somehow believe nerfs helped this game, please outline how they helped, specifically.

[Chai]

Next sock is going to be excusemaster.

Is it taken? Chai?

I dont need any excuses. I'm not the one defending nerfs all the while denying how they contributed to the current state of the game, especially in the context of this thread title.

I also dont need sock accounts.

[KingNite]

Over generalizations that nerfs are always bad --> therefore nothing should be nerfed --> therefore buffing the other 95% makes more sense is pure comedy.

Continually buffing 95% of builds is orders of magnitude more difficult than adjusting the 5% of builds that are well tested and proven to be OP in-game,
They literally just tried to buff all builds with the class passes, and it has a worse history for balance than simply adjusting a few things.


Buffing to the same level implies that more single solutions will be needed,

Nerfs need to be targeted and require thought and discussion, not overly simplistic and incorrect generalizations.

Over generalizations tend to be a bad thing. Over generalizations that buffs are always bad --> therefore nothing should be buffed --> therefore nerfing the other X% makes more sense is pure comedy.

Continually buffing takes more work, no one will negate that I guess, but is also more profitable than doing nothing if you capitalize on it like they do. What would they sell then? cosmetics ? adventure packs with worst rewards than previous? yeah that sound beautifull lets keep the game like it was in 2009... and hope they buy cosmetics to look cooler for 10 straight years lol. But is nothing more than wishfull thinking, like it or not the game has a business part and what you consider to be the worst history of balance is what sells the most.

No one was over generalizing about all nerfs being bad. Nerfs based on claims in the forums end always bad. You can't nerf based on the opinion or though of someone who posts here and who may actually not be even playing the game anymore for example. If you are going to nerf stuff you better do it only when it's really needed/obvious and with own gathered data rather than random forumites often biased claims, opinions or thoughts. That if you are serious about the stuff you sell. If you keep handing nonsensical nerfs only based on forum claims expect nothing good of the future. Peps pay for the classes/gear/PL with money or time that get randomly nerfed on biased forumites opinions, there is only so much times you can do that till peps notice and go away. No one leaves for getting buffed, they willingly pay for it lol. Peps leave arsed of getting their builds screwed by stupid nerfs promoted by a few forumites who have failed to grow the f*** up and to understand it's just a game to have fun, not a childish competition of whos got it longer.

[cryalotmaster]

I dont need any excuses.

This is just an excuse.

[Selvera]

P.S. I won this "argument" the first time I posted nerfs wont help this game, in 2008. I have continually observed the erosion of balance since then, over many iterations of nerfs.

If you disagree and somehow believe nerfs helped this game, please outline how they helped, specifically.

Oh boy, back to this old argument.

Well nerfs have helped me enjoy warlock, because now I don't feel like I'm cheating when I need to get warlock pastlives on my characters.

I believe you brought up League of Legends; a game which has nerfs on a monthly basis (or more often then that); and yet it is still one of the most popular games in the world. It features cherry picked nerfs, big sweeping nerfs, nerfs based on forum complaints and nerfs based on high-level play videos, nerfs based on balance team opinions and and everything in between. They've even been known to revert nerfs with a little "oops sorry, we went too far on this one".
And yes, many players have left it because of the nerfs. And many of those players have come back to it later on when they realized they overreacted to a small nerf and the game was still just as fun.

The game is quite possibly the most balanced now that it has ever been. Each year in professional play a larger pool of "meta" champions seem to appear and more varied play-styles and champion archetypes find success at the highest levels of play.

And yes, people in League of Legends do care what you're doing to succeed. A lot, if you're good. There's people who pay significant amounts of money to learn how to play the game better; professional teams scout out other teams to see what they're doing to succeed and countless people will copy a strategy that's proven to be good in any given patch. Meanwhile the builds and strategy guides for League of Legends span multiple websites.

[cryalotmaster]

Another great thing that died because this Meta bs is the diversity.

95% of the players play just warlocks and arts. The other 5% play wizards.

[KingNite]

There's people who pay significant amounts of money to learn how to play the game better; professional teams scout out other teams to see what they're doing to succeed and countless people will copy a strategy that's proven to be good in any given patch.

If that's true, which I doubt very much, then I'm doubly glad that this game and it's playerbase has never gone that far as to reach such level on the scale of insanity. And if handing arbitrary nerfs every month had something to do with that game reaching such blatant level of insanity , I'm glad DDO is more moderate in that aspect.

Anyway looks like a nice place for the nerf cryers, there they could get the monthly dose of nerfs w/o having to beg constantly for it on the forums, they could hire a profesional scout team LOL to keep track of the evil cheesers and bugs that mercilessly destroy balance, oh no, you said it's balanced too? They would feel like in heaven. May be worth a try.

[Selvera]

I have a feeling that level of insanity is more due to having a structured ladder/leader board, a large playerbase and large sums of cash/fame associated with winning at the highest levels of play.

I said there were a lot of nerfs in LoL, but they're certainly not arbitrary (at least not anymore); there's always a reason, (usually the devs give a half-assed explanation with nerf) and while sometimes that reason is to assuage raging forummites (although they would never SAY this), usually they're based more on balances for professional play or to push people towards playing the less-often played classes.

[McFlay]

If you disagree and somehow believe nerfs helped this game, please outline how they helped, specifically.

I'll give you some examples...

Healing amp and spell power used to multiply for each additional buff you added. The devs changed it to simply add each value instead. If you were on the top end of healing amp or spell power at the time it was a nerf, but in the long run this set us up so we could introduce gear with bigger values and new bonus types to these stats from new sources without a tiny increase in value multiplying into a large increase.

AC nerf. Back in the day AC was an all or nothing stat...you could play a very specific build with ridiculous AC and get hit 5% of the time, or you might as well just forget it as 10 AC was effectively the same in most content as 50 AC...which was useless. When they changed the armor system if you were one of the insane AC builds you got nerfed, but for the majority of builds going forward it gave you more defensive stats that would actually matter.

See how that works? When done properly, nerfs create balance.

Funny though, I also gave an example earlier about how not nerfing mechanics that really need it are bad for balance...

Melee's weren't specifically nerfed in reaper. Self healing was. Other than that all reaper penalties apply to all classes.

The problem with reaper is that they wouldn't nerf where its needed...mainly, ranged.

Ranged toons avoid so much damage by kiting that the devs ridiculously inflated mob damage so ranged toons died when they got caught. Problem is that same ridiculous damage applies to melees who can't kite if they want to do damage.

Had the devs done the right thing and nerfed ranged mechanics...they wouldn't have had to inflate mob damage so much. Nerfing ranged via making them less effective while moving as well as making adjustments to AI, making new mobs, or giving existing mobs new skills to deal with ranged toons instead of just ramping up mob damage would have moved us towards more ranged/melee balance. Instead they tried to avoid a nerf(to ranged) with a buff(to mobs) and things just got even worse as far as game balance goes.

Yet Chai missed that one, and by missed I mean has no way to counter that one with his anti-nerf narrative.

Let's just say they made some changes to reaper...let's say they got rid of the self healing penalty(which wasn't melee specific) and got rid of the player damage nerf(which wasn't melee specific), and instead just buffed mob HP accordingly. Reaper wouldn't nerf anything at that point...but it wouldn't be any better for melees...you'd still die ridiculously fast.

Remember the old AC system I mentioned above...its almost like we still have that. Ranged builds now get the broken "AC", they get to mitigate 95% of incoming damage by being at ranged/kiting. Melees on the other hand, its like they're all stuck in that range where their "AC" will never get out of the useless range.

[Chai]

Oh boy, back to this old argument.

Well nerfs have helped me enjoy warlock, because now I don't feel like I'm cheating when I need to get warlock pastlives on my characters.

I believe you brought up League of Legends; a game which has nerfs on a monthly basis (or more often then that); and yet it is still one of the most popular games in the world. It features cherry picked nerfs, big sweeping nerfs, nerfs based on forum complaints and nerfs based on high-level play videos, nerfs based on balance team opinions and and everything in between. They've even been known to revert nerfs with a little "oops sorry, we went too far on this one".
And yes, many players have left it because of the nerfs. And many of those players have come back to it later on when they realized they overreacted to a small nerf and the game was still just as fun.

The game is quite possibly the most balanced now that it has ever been. Each year in professional play a larger pool of "meta" champions seem to appear and more varied play-styles and champion archetypes find success at the highest levels of play.

And yes, people in League of Legends do care what you're doing to succeed. A lot, if you're good. There's people who pay significant amounts of money to learn how to play the game better; professional teams scout out other teams to see what they're doing to succeed and countless people will copy a strategy that's proven to be good in any given patch. Meanwhile the builds and strategy guides for League of Legends span multiple websites.

The example game i used was not LOL, however even so.....

The numbers arent in yet for that particular game, but last year comparatively more people argued for nerfs based solely on "what others do ruins my fun" than on the LOL boards.

2.8x as much in DDO in fact.

Kind of ironic isnt it. The major PVP games with huge population disparities between them and a niche PVE driven game like DDO, and not only are there more people arguing for nerfs in the niche game, when you figure the per capita as a percentage, the disparity inflates unrealistically.

Also, the claim that LOL (or any other well balanced PVP game) is balanced because of nerfs is a myth. Those games are balanced more due to content (PVE) and adding counter play (PVP) than they ever are due to nerfs. Those games are not balanced by "sameness" where all classes and builds have same/similar capabilities. They are balanced in a rock paper scissors fashion where given XYZ, X has an advantage on Y, Y has an advantage on Z, and Z has an advantage on X for PVP balance. In PVE they balance those games through lateral content creation, where if X is more popular because it is advantageous in a higher percentage of content, then more is created where Y and Z have an advantage to balance out what the META is in specific content.

If someone says "whats META right now" and the reply is "build X for the entire game" thats an unbalanced game. If the reply is "X for A content, Y for B content, and Z for C content, then thats a far more balanced game. DDO is the former. LOL is the latter. This balance method also allows for variety in choices, as well as variety in degree of focus, where all can succeed, and all have situations where they are the META, as well as where they struggle. Furthermore, this encourages playing alts, in order to have a character which is META in the most possible situations. Games which mythically believe nerfs are what balance the game, often times resulting in one thing being the META for the entire game lost revenue due to people no longer wanting to play alts - as there is no objective reason to do so when one thing is the META for the entire game. In other games (like LOL) where the balance method encourages playing alts, a more balanced game generates more revenue.

[Forzah]

Those games are not balanced by "sameness" where all classes and builds have same/similar capabilities.

This is very nice and all, but the people in this thread asking for balance are not asking for "sameness".

[Chai]

AC nerf. Back in the day AC was an all or nothing stat...you could play a very specific build with ridiculous AC and get hit 5% of the time, or you might as well just forget it as 10 AC was effectively the same in most content as 50 AC...which was useless. When they changed the armor system if you were one of the insane AC builds you got nerfed, but for the majority of builds going forward it gave you more defensive stats that would actually matter.

See how that works? When done properly, nerfs create balance.

Do you seriously think AC works better now than it did in the past? Youre seriously saying these generic MMO mechanics HELPED DDO? Thats your claim?

Objective observers understand that the addition of these generic MMO mechanics is what brought much of the power creep nerf advocates complain about regularly. Those advocating nerfs and claiming theres too much power creep while at the same time defending the sliding scale generic MMO mechanics that were added to the game are logically contradicting themselves.

Your post doesnt compare AC to AC. It compares AC in a past era with the layered defenses in this era. Confused at best, disingenuous and obviously intentional at worse. Anyone objective about the AC changes understands AC was far more effective than it ever is nowdays, back in ~2009 or so. Its only when you add in dodge, displace, ghostly, PRR, MRR etc...that builds going forward gain more defense. This makes sense, as anyone objective would agree that having to gear for AC, PRR, MRR, displace, ghostly, and saves, SHOULD have more defensive benefit than just gearing for AC and saves.

Yet Chai missed that one, and by missed I mean has no way to counter that one with his anti-nerf narrative.

Let's just say they made some changes to reaper...let's say they got rid of the self healing penalty(which wasn't melee specific) and got rid of the player damage nerf(which wasn't melee specific), and instead just buffed mob HP accordingly. Reaper wouldn't nerf anything at that point...but it wouldn't be any better for melees...you'd still die ridiculously fast.

Remember the old AC system I mentioned above...its almost like we still have that. Ranged builds now get the broken "AC", they get to mitigate 95% of incoming damage by being at ranged/kiting. Melees on the other hand, its like they're all stuck in that range where their "AC" will never get out of the useless range.

Wrong.

Melee were proxy nerfed in reaper due to higher disparity between mob melee and mob ranged DPS. You specifically quoted this before, and now attempt to claim I missed it.

Filibustering is a better verbal tactic where you might scramble someones thought process with a deluge of words. In a written forum we can just go back and cite references. LOL seriously...

[Chai]

This is very nice and all, but the people in this thread asking for balance are not asking for "sameness".

They are asking for balance through sameness. Nice cherry picking btw. Care to address the rest of the post?

Do you have a premise youd like to state?

[KingNite]

I have a feeling that level of insanity is more due to having a structured ladder/leader board, a large playerbase and large sums of cash/fame associated with winning at the highest levels of play.
.

Probably that's the reason why they are so carefull/obsessive with bugs and balance because it means making money/fame, real money. Can't really compare/demand that or use it as valid example to DDO when there is no other prize for winning DDO ( if such thing exists) than your own satisfaction or the fun you had during the ride. Where in on place, leage of legends, people play to make money here, in DDO, people pay to play. One is somehow professionalized the others is pure entertainment. Quite opposite worlds.

I said there were a lot of nerfs in LoL, but they're certainly not arbitrary ... sometimes that reason is to assuage raging forummites (although they would never SAY this),

That is certainly arbitrary

[Renvar]

Objective observers understand that

Objective observers can see that this verbiage is what as know as the Appeal to the Masses/Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Rather than saying "my opinion is that X is true" you say "Objective observers understand that X is true".

Thereby magnifying your opinion more than one person's and insinuating that anyone who disagrees must be not objective/must be wrong.

[KingNite]

Let's just say they made some changes to reaper...let's say they got rid of the self healing penalty(which wasn't melee specific) and got rid of the player damage nerf(which wasn't melee specific), and instead just buffed mob HP accordingly. Reaper wouldn't nerf anything at that point...but it wouldn't be any better for melees...you'd still die ridiculously fast.
.

You still would not die in 1 shot if they didn't buff mobs damage that much. So yeah, reaper is, at least, partially resposible and that's one of the several reasons why reaper itself was a bad idea that just helped further to expose this flaws. That doesn't make me stay blind to the fact that melees are in really bad spot mainly due to low survivality ( hp prr mrr, name it ) and it would be very easy to solve it without the need to nerf anyone on the prosses if they wanted to. Other builds or playstyles are not responsible for melee bad place. It's an old issue that implies several nerfs like losing +1 crit range ( ironicaly demanded here ) to them combined with general (tons of generic Hp and PRR for everyone via items/PL ) buffs to other clases that got worse with reaper badly rushed and flawed implementation.

[Renvar]

The numbers arent in yet for that particular game, but last year comparatively more people argued for nerfs based solely on "what others do ruins my fun" than on the LOL boards.

2.8x as much in DDO in fact.

Source?

[nokowi]

Over generalizations tend to be a bad thing. Over generalizations that buffs are always bad --> therefore nothing should be buffed --> therefore nerfing the other X% makes more sense is pure comedy.

Continually buffing takes more work, no one will negate that I guess, but is also more profitable than doing nothing if you capitalize on it like they do. What would they sell then? cosmetics ? adventure packs with worst rewards than previous? yeah that sound beautifull lets keep the game like it was in 2009... and hope they buy cosmetics to look cooler for 10 straight years lol. But is nothing more than wishfull thinking, like it or not the game has a business part and what you consider to be the worst history of balance is what sells the most.

I was talking about balance through buffing (over nerfing). The mistaken idea on the forums is that trying to buff 95% of classes up to the best build would provide more balance. The evidence of the effects of buffing are how unbalanced Warlock was on release, and what buffing each individual class has done to overall balance during the last 3 year period. Keep in mind we started with only two unbalanced builds that could have been adjusted in one update.

When someone tells you they saw nerfs nine years ago, and because the game is not perfect that their feelings on nerfs must be correct, you should realize that cause and effect are difficult for this person to grasp.


This is a totally different concept than gear progression and power obtained through playing the game.

No one was over generalizing about all nerfs being bad. Nerfs based on claims in the forums end always bad. You can't nerf based on the opinion or though of someone who posts here and who may actually not be even playing the game anymore for example. If you are going to nerf stuff you better do it only when it's really needed/obvious and with own gathered data rather than random forumites often biased claims, opinions or thoughts. That if you are serious about the stuff you sell. If you keep handing nonsensical nerfs only based on forum claims expect nothing good of the future. Peps pay for the classes/gear/PL with money or time that get randomly nerfed on biased forumites opinions, there is only so much times you can do that till peps notice and go away. No one leaves for getting buffed, they willingly pay for it lol. Peps leave arsed of getting their builds screwed by stupid nerfs promoted by a few forumites who have failed to grow the f*** up and to understand it's just a game to have fun, not a childish competition of whos got it longer.

You can ask the devs why they enacted each nerf instead of blaming someone on the forums that happened to agree with the dev decision. It's called cause and effect. Who do you think actually enacted the nerf?

Blaming forumites is circular logic because someone on the forums always expressed an opinion about something. The fact that one is continually validated by things they disagree with does not make that person correct. You can't logically argue that devs are completely unable to listen to good advice and forced to listen to bad advice.

Forumites would need to make a better argument about a particular nerf instead of "I paid for it so I deserve it" or "buff, don't nerf", or "its not OP it already exists (while complaining about class homogenization)".

Unfortunately the anti-nerf crowd is typically lacking in substance. The argument is literally "look over there" as they point to something else, instead of an intelligent discussion about a particular change. You can witness this by the vague statements they use about "other things" without being willing to use specifics. The fact that they spend more time talking about "other things" than the actual change is your proof of the weakness of their position.

If they cant make the intelligent discussion about that specific change, they really had no argument in the first place, despite the "proof" they think they have through self-validation and circular logic.

[McFlay]

Do you seriously think AC works better now than it did in the past? Youre seriously saying these generic MMO mechanics HELPED DDO? Thats your claim?

Nah...AC doesn't work as good right now, you can't get a 95% dodge rate with AC alone anymore since they nerfed it.

Defenses I think work a lot better though because the all or nothing system the old AC system turned into was terrible. They could have worked it differently if they kept the 1d20 system but tightened up the achievable AC range, but they didn't...either way that or the current system both are/would have been a lot better than what we had.

Objective observers understand that the addition of these generic MMO mechanics is what brought much of the power creep nerf advocates complain about regularly.

I'd hate to burst your bubble but every online RPG type game has power creep over time...it would have came with or without changes to the armor system.

Your post doesnt compare AC to AC. It compares AC in a past era with the layered defenses in this era. Confused at best, disingenuous and obviously intentional at worse. Anyone objective about the AC changes understands AC was far more effective than it ever is nowdays, back in ~2009 or so. Its only when you add in dodge, displace, ghostly, PRR, MRR etc...that builds going forward gain more defense. This makes sense, as anyone objective would agree that having to gear for AC, PRR, MRR, displace, ghostly, and saves, SHOULD have more defensive benefit than just gearing for AC and saves.

Yes it does. AC alone could mitigate 95% of damage back then. It doesn't do that anymore. If that isn't a nerf to AC I don't know what is.

Wrong.

Melee were proxy nerfed in reaper due to higher disparity between mob melee and mob ranged DPS. You specifically quoted this before, and now attempt to claim I missed it.

Filibustering is a better verbal tactic where you might scramble someones thought process with a deluge of words. In a written forum we can just go back and cite references. LOL seriously...

Right, because you have stated multiple times MELEE WERE NERFED, which is not true...all changes in reaper effected all classes equally by the numbers...its just melee felt it harder in practice because ranged mechanics in this game are broken.

Which by the way...do you realize every time you release something more OP or buff something...you proxy nerf everything else? Buffs/nerfs are all just a relative change of power...if they released a class that had a skill with a 1 second cooldown that killed everything on your screen including bosses they wouldn't have to nerf any other classes, but boy did they certainly make them suck.

[nokowi]

I gave specific examples. Please address them.

After addressing the specific examples, please explain how melee, especially assassins (your specific bugbear) are better off due to the nerfs, changes, and meta shifts in DDO all brought on by the community calling the play style "cheesy" and therefore wanting it done away with.

Paragraph 1. I responded to your specific examples by saying that firewall and mass hold were still useful, and that BUFFS were what invalidated many abilities. You failed to respond to specifics while demanding them.

Paragraph 2. Melee Assassin are better off because devs implemented reapers and minimum kill count to challenge stealth as a solo win tactic. There are now more important build and play choices for someone wanting to succeed while using stealth. reaper is the perfect place for melee assassins, as play has slowed down to a level that movement and insta kill can really shine. They are worse off because of a bug in how agro is shared --> one that wont be addressed until after Ravenloft.

I have no issue explaining to you how this is not the case. If melee wasnt nerfed, and the aggro changes didnt occur, those archetypes would be more viable in todays game. None of them would be OP. The nerfs demanded were not brought on by folks who care about balance, they were brought on by folks who are overly concerned with how you succeed, and spent too much time demanding the way you succeed be removed from DDO and not enough time developing their own way to succeed.

Paragraph 3. Melee was "nerfed" by the damage scaling of reaper --> particularly in high reaper levels. Cause and effect are that players were BUFFED to the level that the dungeons needed to provide additional challenge --> resulting in the formation of reaper. When devs over buffed player power, it becomes difficult to change the design to again challenge the players - particular when people like you demand that there can not be nerfs. The vast majority of this power came through epic destiny and class passes, not gear improvements. You, as someone that supported vast power gains in the Bard pass, should be able to connect cause and effect.

So your reply post should be as follows.

paragraph 1. addressing my specific examples.
paragraph 2. explain how nerfs of melee (direct) and assassins (proxy) are better in the current META
paragraph 3. refute my premise that the nerfs of melee and proxy nerf of assassins has made the game worse, not better.

Your response should include your specifics and not refer to circular logic and other people not in the discussion (see below).

Edit: The claim that most of my examples did not decrease the quality of the game is laughable. Ask most people who played then and now what their favorite era was. Most if not all will say then. Very few if any will say now. Nerfs, and the constant need to shift the meta to entice people to pay money to un-park and/or build characters has killed this game. Deny it.

Many more than the things you listed happened in those years. You simply don't understand cause and effect, or what constitutes evidence of a relationship.

Defending the impact of nerfing specifically in the context of DDO is even more hilarious coming from someone who admittedly quit playing due to a proxy nerf ruining their own preferred play style. ~14 months ago?

You have Torc's direct statement that he would like to go back and look at stealth more, and you have Lynnabel's statement that they understand the issues but won't be able to address them until after Ravenloft.

Pretending that the devs intentionally nerfed my character is comical.