So after spending a little time on the motherboards and staring aghast at all the "nerf this" "nerf that" threads, I felt the need to opine, for a moment, on the actual function of nerfing in a game like this, and why everyone who says certain things should be nerfed is an idiot.

Now, all of what I am saying here is about theory and proper game design, not what companies like blizzard and turbine actually do in practice.

Basically, these games thrive on diversity. Everyone has the same objectives, but there are many paths. The game would be very boring if there was only one possible build/playstyle/gearset and everything else was just peanuts.

So diversity is important. Not "things being OP" in some player's opinions, not even anything being powerful(because everything can be, its just relative numbers).

Something needs to be nerfed when it starts being used too much. E.G. if 90% of players were splashing 2 monk levels for evasion. Not if every build that is, in some opinions "worth a damn" is doing it, if literally everyone is.

If most people were playing one specific build, and I mean most of everyone, not most people playing a specific class, then obviously that build is unbalanced.

Things need to get fixed when there is serious unbalances presenting in the server population, not because a bunch of whiny bitches are mad that they aren't doing it, or because a bunch of power gamers don't feel "challenged" enough(see: whiny bitches).

TL:DR: people crying out for nerfs are idiots.

Severlin:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454514-Are-Fighter-just-Gimp-w-the-sav...

Quote:


LOL.

I disagree that there is build diversity.  There will always be "diversity" in the sense that there will always be bad players.  The only reason terrible builds are even played in EE is because the game is way too easy. 

Nerfs obviously suck because people put a lot of time and energy into their builds.  But if the only way for turbine to achieve a balanced game is to over-buff then nerf, I'd rather have that compared to what we have now, where every class and build is superman. 

Though I think we can agree: the optimal solution would be if turbine could suddenly know WTF they were doing. 

AtomicMew wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 1:40am:


We can definitely agree on that. That's the optimal solution to basically every problem Ever.

But I think you're missing my point: in theory, the goal is diversity. I did not say this was in practice or in any way the case.

Now commenting on DDO specifically, I'd say there is a pretty fair amount of diversity, in-so-far as we can talk about the most powerful build-as in plural. The fact there there are multiple different very powerful and very powerful in different ways builds. Does it mean everything is perfect? No. Does it mean everything is pretty good? Hell yes.

Try to imagine playing a game of DDO in which every single person playing was a pure, halfling, swf bard(because in this thought experiment that is the best build ever). All the serious players players are running nearly identicle gear sets, totally identicle builds, and fighting like rabid dogs over the 6 pieces of gear in the game that make the build perfect.

Got that picture in your head?(thought experiment). Everyone who is really "in" to the game is that build, the only people not playing it are newbs, people who suck, and serious players grinding out past-life fears to power up their bard.

Now picture that bardic build is so much better than the next best build(not the builds other people are playing, literally just the next best). This bard is so much better that he's like a professional NBA player leading a team of 5 year olds in a basketbal game. The other team(the monsters) has zero hope. Meanwhile, his own team, is useless without him. Those kids only get to make a basket when he picks one of them up and holds him to the whoop.

That metaphore may have gotten a bit away from me, but the point is that then bards should be nerfed. This is an "In theory" and "thought experiment" to help explain good design practices, I am not comparing Magic Johnson to a bard.

In DDO the bards were great after the recent improvements, they were brought up to the level of "useful". There wasn't some huge power disperity.

This is all just theory-crafting. I don't get to talk about designing MMOs at my day-job, let me have some lively discussion

Problem is they buff too much.
Epic destinies are such power creep that I never seen that in any other game.

Making more options "viable" is not a bad thing, they are doing it in a way that destroys basic things that this game or other mmos are based on.
Economy, character power versus content balance, rewarding harder difficulty and it perhaps isn't a right word but "teamwork" ?
I think Severlin is the worst producer for basically coming to game, making big changes across the board without any knowledge, I try to think it's not just one silly graph they are basing their longterm plans on.
Shithole DDO forums don't help either. Eye rollingly bad gameplay "feedback" how some thing is unplayable or how some item is hard to get.
Either way, the game's fucked irreparably at this point.
Sure as hell not getting new players and more and more "vets" getting pissed with "what the fuck to do besides etr like moron" thing, content that lasts 2 days and game being total joke in general.

Munkenmo wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 4:25am:



Yes.  Char power would have increased with level.

This type of approach shows the lack of consistent vision/strategy.
The game development should rules/guidelines to keep each new thing in perspective and balance.
Sure they have turnover, but there should be some logical platform upon which they build new content, items and systems.
In recent years, it's been like a series of random incohesive brain farts.

I've heard all the defence arguments; "they need to commercialise it", "they have to balance it", "they have to standardise it", "the players wanted it early".  All convenient excuses for changing or doing things one way when it suits them and another way next time.

Viktor Vaughn wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 5:26am:


I have not thought it out, but I think they need to migrate back to the PnP epic classes - or something along that line, so that levelling means something again.  Get rid of those dead levels where you get nothing but HP and +1 to skills.

Introduce unique epic spells & abilities available only when in that class.  ETR would a have some meaning so you can experience different classes.  Maybe even a epic past life feats.
Power creep in combination with ED's would be a big issue, but they altered other systems, so why not that one too?

My thoughts are that the job would be too big for them, require too much work, hard to commercialise and to be honest, I don't think they have the vision or capability to do it justice.   

Hey I'm just throwing out ideas, here, so just tell me what you think.

Let's say they left the current system of EDs intact along with the current epic levels system. Just put a pin in it and left it working on the side.

Then they added in actual epic classes as an alternate leveling route. At 20, you could decide: generic "Epic" levels and EDs, or one of several actual Epic classes. This choice is permanent until you epic-TR again.

Now, while in an Epic Class, you get the benefit of your active destiny and the use of twists, but you don't earn any karma points and cannot modify or re-spec it any way. Then of course while in generic epic levels, you'd get the benifts of past-life feats from the classes, maybe you'd be able to earn a few more useful ones for your trouble.

Basically it's a fork. If you took the time to max out your EDs on generic epics, they'd be really helpful in epic classes, and so on.

I'm not actually suggesting turbine implement this, I'm just curious what people think of the idea.

The text to boob ratio is WAY out of proportion in this thread.

noamineo wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 11:47am:

Sorry. There are a lot of good things being said in the whole thread, but this just made me lol, because we all effing know epic greensteel will be ML 30 and useless, or ML 30 and the only thing lvl 30 toons can wear.


taco wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 1:12pm:

Shadowdancer represents for me, the dead could-have-been for DDO. It's an ED with an actual learning curve.

Shadowdancer is actually an impressive implementation. Having a learning curve mirrors the rogue class it's nominally supposed to compliment. If you think it will be immediately powerful, like some of the other EDs, you will likely think it's shit, because you are shit at playing it, and there's no obvious reason to think it will get better. It does get much more powerful when you practice with it. Unfortunately, the whole game has moved past the point where you can practice or make use of many Shadowdancer powers while in a group ... Just another example of Turbine's lack of vision.

noamineo wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 6:21pm:

The main, and critical difference, is that they have the grind balanced for shit. Making the TF ML so it doesn't go up with tiers would have been fine only if the grind were balanced so toons would have at least half of their destinies full before they could complete one item.

Revaulting wrote on Jan 15^th, 2015 at 7:56pm:


Well the thing of it is if you HAVE to be 27 or 28 anyway just to run the dungeon to get the materials, then letting it have a lower ML so that it has some twink value should be ok(I'd like to see a first-life level 12 who can run Shroud).

Basically - the MLs mean its not for twinking.

So... what do we get for twinking?