Class Rebalance Howto

[humblebear]

I have read many posts on this topic. Issues have been told, analyzed and discussed. Solutions have been proposed, many have been neglected but few were implemented with (negligible) success. In my view all these solutions are great but attack problems at wrong points hence create new problems. Fact is, 99% of requests for class rebalance come from PVPers but solutions affect whole game, including PVE. This is totally wrong approach.

Class/ability/skill/gear stats are created for pve. I believe every numbers put in these stats were tested against the maps and refined to be (nearly) perfect. Requests to nerf result in harder to play pve. For example, before got nerfed forgotten/chunker bows made low level pve a lot easier.

Ok, I think everybody agree pvp problems should have pvp solutions. Here is my idea (I am not programmer by the way)

Once PVP/CTF room get created, every character joining room will have attack/defense/buff/debuff modified per "Balancing Table". Small piece of code put at the top of pvp/ctf subprogram will read character stats such as class, level, ability/skill points, gear/ring and look up for modifier values in this "Balancing Table". In-game attack/defense/buff/debuff will be that of pvp value times modifier value from table. We can balance (in fact, nerf) anything based on any stat. This way it will only affect pvp, plus, rebalance can be done zillion times without re-coding.

Well if this idea get implemented, my 2nd most wish will be easily implemented (by stg of course) as well, HANDICAP system! (I apologize to put it here).

With handicap system, PVP/CTF room will be created with handicap point put by host. Host and everyone in his team will have their attack/defense/buff/debuff further modified per handicap point. That is, host and his team will be nerfed, guests will not. This will make PVP/CTF more challenging and, hopefully, end of noob farming.

May I raise my 1st most wish here (I know I should put this in other topic). Fake PVP emote! including fake get killed, fake get revived, fake get stomped and fake stun. Fake get killed must be class specific. I do not know why PL does not have this since day one.

Thanks for everyone spending their time reading down to this line :) Hope my idea helps some way.

[Doodlebeast]

Another rebalance thread? :/

[Somemager]

Another rebalance thread? :/


The feels...

[BroadCastle]

I think thise ideas are pretty new and not that bad guys :) But its true, there was so much discussed on this toppic and mostly developers made their own way how to resolve anyway.

I like the first idea. Making some function to change stats by entering arena, thats really not bad and i agree, global changes either harm PvP to help PvE or vice versa.

About handicap system, this idea isn't that good I think. If I understood well, then once I created game and joined team RED, the RED will be further handicapped? even if I leave, or... I can easily imagine people doing this, then relog into BLUE and let guests to be handicapped. I am also missing the point of challenge in this? Like, "horray!, we won even in disadvance!!" ? And how about loosers? Embarassed, wouldnt they be? :D Or maybe I just got it wrong.

[humblebear]

BroadCastle you make me laugh for a half day lol. I have not thought about host would log out then log in to opposite team to gain advantage :). Anyhow my idea is, this handicap system works only for hosted game. It means host should know everyone, that is, anyone joining game should be his friends. Host has choice to put or not put handicap value. In latter case it will be normal pvp/ctf game. There will be menu showing what team get handicap so guests can correctly choose what team to join. Since they are friends I do not think host will do bad things (or he will, will he?). This is friendly pvp/ctf game. Host's friends who are not so good at pvp/ctf can enjoy fighting with their pro friend. Or in other words, if host is really pro (wow) he should play comfortably giving his friends little upper hand :).

Frankly speaking I get this idea because I am so sick about saving up enough for sets! Morever once I get set some of my friends refused to pvp with me because they did not have sets! Plus I am not pro and I do not want thousand deaths before enjoying pvp/ctf games (if you always lose it is not fun, correct?). With handicap system ones can enjoy and learn fast in pvp/ctf, I believe :).

[BroadCastle]

I really didnt know my reply might have been that funny :) However im glad u laughed its healthy. Now, when you described it more preciously, its having sense. On the other hand, it sounds way more difficult to implement and im not sure there are soo many people wanting to fight with handicap just to ejnoy game more. For sure there are some and I with there were more of those. I still think that idea is not very promissing, but still, the first one is really good. Global stat changes while joining pvp may have solved alot of problems.

[Roberto077]

I think that at endgame the sets need balancing, not the classes. At early game, the classes or the items can be balanced to scale better.

[Fusionstrike]

I am not quite sure I understand the idea fully, but I think it boils down to separating gear stats between PvE and PvP. This has been suggested before, something like having completely separate stats for the two uses. The advantage would be that each aspect of the game could be tuned completely separately from the other, making it simpler to adjust balance on either without breaking the other. I think this is a great way to design the game, and suspect that PL devs wish this is how the game was designed from the beginning given the struggles to balance over the years. I don't think it's really realistic to go back and retrofit PL with this system, but I'd consider it a lesson learned for the future (I'd certainly think hard about this if I were making a new MMO).

The idea of a handicap system is very interesting, although I think it would have to be an automatic one, not player-set, to be successful. But imagine if it worked like a golf handicap, such that better players got some kind of rating that reduced their effectiveness (or increased their opponent's effectiveness) when playing worse players. This would mean that even the greenest newbie could take a shot at the most seasoned PvPer without immediately being wiped off the map. Surely those with more play experience always have that advantage going for them, but at least it wouldn't always be a complete walk-over, potentially souring the new player from PvP just because they got steamrolled their first few matches by super-pros.

Such a system would require serious balancing to get right, but essentially it would be that every win increases a players handicap a bit, which each loss decreases a bit. After enough matches, a player would land at the "right" handicap level based on win percentage. The handicap could be used to set up games as well, such as a "10 handicap" game, similar to levels, so players could choose to compete against only those at about the same skill level as they are. Or they could do an unrestricted game, and potentially take on those much higher or lower on the scale than they are. I think there's a lot of promise in such a system if it's tuned right.

[humblebear]

This idea is a quick fix requiring (I guess) least re-coding. Separate gear stats are correct approach but PL go very far to implement it. We can build balancing table little by little, start from low level, test it in real servers, make correction, then step up to next levels. With minimum resources on STG balancing table may take months to complete up to lvl 76 but it is acceptable I think :)

At endgame, it is not only gear stat that needs rebalance. See lately nerf on bird's skills, evasion and %hit for example (but I agree these two skills make bird super op in pvp, one or two hits kill I mean). I understand that STG made these skills high because BSM mobs hit very hard and have very high dodge. Nerf makes pve much harder for birds there :/

Your automatic handicap system is very good. But as you say, it requires carefully and thoroughly thought from dev (they are busy on other games, we know, no sarcasm by the way). If not well design it will be prone to fall in same route as class balancing, many will scream for rebalancing handicap points :/ That why I only ask for manual handicap system.

STG may implement your idea of automatic handicap system to their next games (it is too late for PL anyway). I can imagine that it will make game more fun, and who knows, that game may make itself be first LEGEND in its category (same as warcraft who knows).