Some notes about balance changes

[Kinerd]

What the devs are trying to do, is to make it so that EVERYONE's characters have the potential to be viable in high-stress combat, and your complaint is that they're taking your automatic easy button away because you might actually have to learn how to play the game? Yeah, you're not going to get a lot of sympathy out of anyone, sorry. The whole point of a game that involves complex character building is *that it involves complex character building*.

how do you rectify this assessment with ranger getting heavily nerfed?

[Lynnabel]

Removal of QoL, plat purchasable amenities in the cargo hold: ie the bank, auction house, mailbox and XP shrine. This is especially annoying since the hold room equivalents are all shard purchases and you have to the room to put them in. (Yes, Lynn has said that this was a mistake with the bank, auction house and mailbox, but we've heard that same story about being able to pass feathers being in a chest.)

I want to reiterate that the removal of those amenities is a bug that has since been corrected, and furthermore, the feathers/horseshoes passing flag has been corrected for this very update. I again apologize for dropping the ball on making sure that landed into a patch before now.

[Cernunan]

Oh rly?? Is that why my boarding pass has a ridiculous animation attached to it now? Because you don't balance for hardcore play? Where else does it matter if I can teleport out quickly from somewhere no matter the class I play?

Oh yes btw, I paid you extra for that, you gave me something exceptional, for a time....

Now you change it because?

Sorry, I think you are fibbing.

This literally disproves the lie about not changing things for the HC server, as the boarding pass has already has been changed once due to actual player feedback. This arbitrary change is specifically for HC play.
It is a slap in the face for people who payed over a hundred dollars for a small expansion to support the company, only to have now 2 major changes of the perks of the over priced expansion, nerfing 2 of the major reasons I paid that much for the really small and overpriced expansion.

[Cernunan]

I want to reiterate that the removal of those amenities is a bug that has since been corrected, and furthermore, the feathers/horseshoes passing flag has been corrected for this very update. I again apologize for dropping the ball on making sure that landed into a patch before now.

I was there 5 years ago for the original discussion. It was determined at the time it was better not to remove to resist shrines. It was settled by the devs. This is a walk back specifically to balance the game for the HC server. That is really not cool to those of us who spend as much as we do on this game.

Or I should say used to spend as much as I did.

[palladin9479]

I mentioned myself there, where exactly? Reading is hard, because... like, words.

Me hitting one button on my caster is "easy mode". Ranged don't deserve a blanket IPS nerf, INQ just needed a little tweak.

Yeah they seem to want to be "creative" instead of just solving the root cause. Inquisitive was what's known as a First Order Optimal Solution (FOOS), which just means that it's both easy to master and more effective then every other option.

Extra Credits goes into this and how this becomes a game designer trap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

Inquisitive's Dual Shooter is DDO's equivalent of a noobtube with infinite ammo that shoots two grenades per trigger pull. A inquisitive can just put a point in Dual Shooter and not spend a single AP in any tree, wear low level gear, and solo Reaper all the way to 30. This isn't hyperbole, I've seen someone do this on a side toon without many PL's just to prove a point.

[Kaboom2112]

That’s a relief. That means it’s only Dance of Death that is stuck with not moving.

Which is beyond ********.

Seriously, scrap all of this (except the inquisitive nerfs obviously) and start over. These ideas need to die in the womb.

[SerPounce]

You might not realize it, but you’re also hurting melee survivability with the Strikethrough changes as well. Once upon a time, Axer/Shade said “WASD is all the AC I need” and there really is something to that. Movement in combat is DDO’s best feature for me and for a lot of other people, I’m sure. Making the primary benefit of THF not work while moving doesn’t make any more sense than having offhand attacks stop working in TWF while moving.

There are so many changes here that you seem to think are boosts that are actually nerfs. I get that you’re trying to make the game better. This pass is not making that happen, though.

It takes one feat that most melee builds will qualify for on lvl 1 get strikethrough while you move.


I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here, I think people are really underestimating how valuable strikethrough is going to be. It's a big damage multiplier and is going to dramatically increase average DPS over a quest. If anything the situational nature of it is going to be enhanced by player skill rather than limiting. Movement will have to be even more precise in order to maximize strikethrough damage while minimizing incoming damage.

[SirValentine]

I want to reiterate that the removal of those amenities is a bug that has since been corrected

Can we get some kind of definitive of what is or is not being nerfed? I understand why you might want to nerf the Resist shrines, but anything else?

XP shrine has been mentioned. What about Dwarven Battlemaster? Phiarlan Entertainer? Scholar of the Twelve? Et cetera.

For anything that is getting nerfed beyond the Resists (which have already been talked to death for years), can we have an explanation of what that thing needed to be nerfed?

[HungarianRhapsody]

It takes one feat that most melee builds will qualify for on lvl 1 get strikethrough while you move.


I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here, I think people are really underestimating how valuable strikethrough is going to be. It's a big damage multiplier and is going to dramatically increase average DPS over a quest. If anything the situational nature of it is going to be enhanced by player skill rather than limiting. Movement will have to be even more precise in order to maximize strikethrough damage while minimizing incoming damage.

That’s going to be hard to maintain when lag doesn’t let us know where we are in the combat or where our enemies are. Things that require super precise movement don’t belong in a game with DDO’s level of lag.

[math92]

Did I spent 10 years grinding my ass of for PLs to play on HC server where I have none? How is that a thing anyway? Some servers are already dead outside HC league season.

[Dreppo]

It's sad you can't tell the difference between problems that are *exposed* by the high-stress environment of Hardcore or Reaper, and problems that are CAUSED by Hardcore/Reaper.

The game being hugely unbalanced and only a few builds being viable is a UNIVERSAL PROBLEM that affects EVERYONE on EVERY difficulty. The gap may be more apparent in high-stress play, but it still *exists* when you're trolloping around in explore zones one-shotting everything and giggling about how badass you are. You only NOTICE it when you try to join a group to do more-difficult content and you realize that your character is completely outclassed and can't even begin to keep up. Then you effectively demand that the devs give you a new kitchen because your fridge has some three-month-old Chinese takeout in the back, and you complain when what THEY want to do is to get rid of the rotting food instead of spending $15,000 replacing the KITCHEN.

What the devs are trying to do, is to make it so that EVERYONE's characters have the potential to be viable in high-stress combat, and your complaint is that they're taking your automatic easy button away because you might actually have to learn how to play the game? Yeah, you're not going to get a lot of sympathy out of anyone, sorry. The whole point of a game that involves complex character building is *that it involves complex character building*.

Beautifully put.

Hardcore has given SSG a good testing ground for determining survivability. A couple of reasons why:

1) It can be fairly assumed that everyone on the hardcore server is actually trying to stay alive (as opposed to piking and getting killed by a reaper spawn, dying intentionally in Storm Horns to get a "taxi", etc.).
2) Since everyone is starting from scratch, the effects of having multiple past lives, possession of twink gear, etc. are greatly reduced if not eliminated.

Kudos to SSG for using this actionable data to improve the game.

[DRoark]

You're totally correct. Some of these changes, from the ranged nerf, boarding pass ("gee that's not due to HC"), and other
things, have death-knelled alot of oldschool players. One of our regulars took one look at this dumpster-fire of an update, and
went on break again. Some of it's minor, most of it's toss-my ranged-guy-into-a-volcano-and-play-an-instakill-caster buffet.

Unless there's a fix to the ACTUAL issue (insert problem tree here) we're done paying for your mistakes.


Note for Special People:
For you people talking about HC, the average player doesn't care about HC. If you want "balancing" for HC gameplay, go for it.
Make the nerfs HC League only, and feel free to shoot yourself in the foot with an Inquisitor-Friendly Crossbow of Warm Hugs.

[Cernunan]

Beautifully put.

Hardcore has given SSG a good testing ground for determining survivability. A couple of reasons why:

1) It can be fairly assumed that everyone on the hardcore server is actually trying to stay alive (as opposed to piking and getting killed by a reaper spawn, dying intentionally in Storm Horns to get a "taxi", etc.).
2) Since everyone is starting from scratch, the effects of having multiple past lives, possession of twink gear, etc. are greatly reduced if not eliminated.

Kudos to SSG for using this actionable data to improve the game.

None of which actually applies to the non hardcore servers, as the conditions you posted do not actually exist on live, so the game is being balanced not for the real live servers, but the part time HC servers. So the balance is flawed, the data is not real balance, it is just for the HC experience which doesn't take into account all the real playing experience of most servers.

Or did you do all of the raids on elite on the HC server? No, you did not, because you cannot balance for raids which are balanced for current REAL server metas. A pretend permadeath lite server is not ideal for real server balance as it doesn't have a real server power level in the equation.

[Cernunan]

You're totally correct. Some of these changes, from the ranged nerf, boarding pass ("gee that's not due to HC"), and other
things, have death-knelled alot of oldschool players. One of our regulars took one look at this dumpster-fire of an update, and
went on break again. Some of it's minor, most of it's toss-my ranged-guy-into-a-volcano-and-play-an-instakill-caster buffet.

Unless there's a fix to the ACTUAL issue (insert problem tree here) we're done paying for your mistakes.

On Monday I was working midway through my racial R life number 21. I have been playing 4-6 hours a day for literally 13 years. I spend ridiculous amounts of money on the game. When these changes were posted, I have not logged on since. I have no desire to log on, as that is how irritated I am.

[Clemeit]

There has been some concern by players, based on the wording of some of our notes, that the Hardcore server is prompting us to make balance changes that we otherwise wouldn’t consider...We don’t want balance changes to be driven by Hardcore play.

Oh yeah? Well someone should have chosen their words with a little more care. That, or they were just being honest. I'm going with door #2.

Hello, all! Update 45 is expected to contain a large amount of changes to systems balance in DDO. These are being done in preparation for Hardcore Season 2. Going forward we the plan is to pool most major balance changes into updates/patches that arrive before the start of new Hardcore seasons in order to make the new season feel distinct and different from previous seasons.

As we approach each Hardcore season, one of our goals is to make changes that change how you build and play characters - We want to shake up builds and strategies, and it makes sense to align these game-wide changes with the release of new seasons of the Hardcore League. Season 2 is coming very soon, so U45 contains a lot of the balance changes for the season. Some of this process involves identifying underperforming builds and making changes to boost them - KOTC and Two Handed Fighting changes are a big part of this in this Season. However, this process also involves identifying overperforming builds and archetypes and making adjustments as well.

• Guild Airship Officer Dubgar no longer sells guild airship buffs or transport npcs. He still supplies training dummies, crafting stations and guild chests.

As part of the pass of balance changes for Hardcore Season 2 we are giving Melee builds the ability to quickly close the gap with enemies.

[Lencrennis]

That ship has long since sailed. There's a long history of "fixes" that are in fact, made because of Reaper builds, and unbalanced and
badly thought out enhancements. The latest round of hammering to ranged, is a direct result of BOTH reaper and the Inquisitor meta.
They have frequently posted about making things a "challenge for players", which directly addresses hardcore/reaper players, and
bombing normal players into paste is the result... every... single... time.

If regular players can plainly see this, why doesn't the design team even notice before it's cripplingly too late?

Ivory tower game design. Consider, if you look at Lynnabel, she's slowly shifted to blaming us for her own mistakes, until she outright refused to post named items on the forums because we had gone after her for bombing the researcher set, among other bits of work, in the past, and didn't want to deal with the negative feedback from people who were more familiar with gear Tetris than she is. The others are far more entrenched, as they're the ones who taught her the culture, so extrapolate this to the people building your systems.

[Lynnabel]

Ivory tower game design. Consider, if you look at Lynnabel, she's slowly shifted to blaming us for her own mistakes, until she outright refused to post named items on the forums because we had gone after her for bombing the researcher set, among other bits of work, in the past, and didn't want to deal with the negative feedback from people who were more familiar with gear Tetris than she is. The others are far more entrenched, as they're the ones who taught her the culture, so extrapolate this to the people building your systems.

but that's not what happened at all we just wanted to get feedback from people who had tried the items out in game. I don't know where I've ever implied anything that I've done wrong has been the player's fault, and if I have I sincerely apologize.

[Ashlayna]

It's sad you can't tell the difference between problems that are *exposed* by the high-stress environment of Hardcore or Reaper, and problems that are CAUSED by Hardcore/Reaper.

The game being hugely unbalanced and only a few builds being viable is a UNIVERSAL PROBLEM that affects EVERYONE on EVERY difficulty. The gap may be more apparent in high-stress play, but it still *exists* when you're trolloping around in explore zones one-shotting everything and giggling about how badass you are. You only NOTICE it when you try to join a group to do more-difficult content and you realize that your character is completely outclassed and can't even begin to keep up. Then you effectively demand that the devs give you a new kitchen because your fridge has some three-month-old Chinese takeout in the back, and you complain when what THEY want to do is to get rid of the rotting food instead of spending $15,000 replacing the KITCHEN.

What the devs are trying to do, is to make it so that EVERYONE's characters have the potential to be viable in high-stress combat, and your complaint is that they're taking your automatic easy button away because you might actually have to learn how to play the game? Yeah, you're not going to get a lot of sympathy out of anyone, sorry. The whole point of a game that involves complex character building is *that it involves complex character building*.

...and the best way to accomplish that is to nuke underperforming builds from orbit. Check. Yeah, my assassin was totally killing melee playstyles whilst using throwing daggers on perched mobs with Precise Shot... In case you didn't catch that, Archer's Focus drops all stacks when you change targets now, instead of from movement, so in quests like Maraud the Mines, I may as well have not invested in the feat, except it sure helps kill the ranged mob, even if a melee mob gets between me and it...

[mikarddo]

Greetings,

Thank you for the feedback on our current Lamannia deployment. I wanted to clarify some things and respond to some player feedback.

There has been some concern by players, based on the wording of some of our notes, that the Hardcore server is prompting us to make balance changes that we otherwise wouldn’t consider. All of our balance changes are aimed at the game as a whole. We do want players playing on the Hardcore server to have consistent play during the season and to be able to adopt strategies that won’t drastically change, and we did mean to say that we plan to target balance changes so they mostly happen between Hardcore seasons. We don’t want balance changes to be driven by Hardcore play.

For the ranged pass, we have a few additional changes coming. The Archer’s Focus stance will be further reworked to address functionality concerns, and in addition will have a component that further increases its damage. Bows will get an additional exclusive buff to shore up their effectiveness when compared to other ranged options to prevent the style as a whole from experiencing a loss of DPS.

For the two handed pass, it is not our intention to lower single target damage for two handed styles. We will be working to make sure that doesn’t happen.

We are also reviewing changes to Dance of Death, and doing more testing to see how it compares to Cleave based builds.

Thanks for the feedback!

Sev~

Thank you for clearing at least those things up. Now, please be swift in posting those additional modifications. "Later" or "Soon" is not wise at this time.

Kindly also reevaluate the IPS nerf. At the very least make it 100% on first mob hit and 80% on further mobs.

[Komradkillingmachine]

Oh yeah? Well someone should have chosen their words with a little more care. That, or they were just being honest. I'm going with door #2.

Yeah, Severlin showing up to "clarify" stuff for us "plebs" reeks of damage control.