[2024] Balance Concerns

Originally posted by Tee_61

It's possible that the majority of skills not at that 80% mark are scheduled for/need a more significant rework, but there ARE skills that aren't even to 80%.

Multistrike, acid flask (problematic because of explosive trap), gathering storm (not storm bolts procced by other things), rune bolt and more are a lot more than 20% behind even other "weak" skills like ele nova, rive or swipe. 

I don't think it's reasonable to attempt to achieve balance with 4 patches a year, much less 1.3. It's just not enough iteration.

Though I suppose that's what the test environment is for. I generally forget it exists, and I'm not sure how many people are in it or how often. 

Originally posted by Tee_61

And I appreciate that. Minor patches with balance changes sort of count. The issue is mostly time. If it's just a few days before a major patch, there's not really time between them to get a feel for the changes, meaning the minor patches + major patch are really just one balance pass.

I also don't think balance needs to be perfect, and the breakpoints are arbitrary, but 80%-200% is probably too much of a range (if there's more than a couple on both ends, one outlier is probably unavoidable), but more importantly, that's the best skill being 2.5x better than the worst.

I don't think things are currently in a state where the best skill is only 2.5x than the worst, or even particularly close to that. Ultimately, my primary concern is that it's almost impossible to achieve anything close to balance when every patch that brings balance changes also has a ton of changes that have a large impact globally.

I've never seen a team manage to do balance well with just one or two balance passes, and that includes teams that have a lot more people, a lot more players, and a lot more experience. Essentially, I think LE is currently attempting to balance on Hard Mode. Which perhaps you already agree with. Personally, I would love to see large buffs AND nerfs about half way through a cycle. Even at a month and a half in, I think most people still around would appreciate the meta shift.

Originally posted by tadrinth

Y'all should just halve the cycle lengths and alternate between major content patches and balance passes.

That way we get a cycle with crazy new stuff, and then a cycle with some semblance of balance, repeat forever.

Then at least there are some periods where the meta is some semblance of the intended balance.  Right now the new stuff is always broken and there's never not new stuff, so there's always something that's just wildly out of whack.

That, in turn, means that we the player base have a hard time telling what the balance target is, which makes it hard to provide feedback.  Like, is my current build bad, or am I bad, or was I just playing something wildly OP before?  I genuinely do not know.

Really the ideal would be to pick a target cycle length, and stick to it, and do pure numbers balance passes for any cycle that doesn't get a big patch.  

As long as the purely numeric balance patches are aggressive enough, I think a lot of players will happily return just to experiment with the new meta, or to try out builds that got buffed.  Even if it's just numeric changes!  

PoE also did some very short but very wild cycles over the holidays, like a cycle with a shuffled passive tree.  I don't think y'all have the capacity for that level of stuff, but you could do cycles explicitly intended as balance experiments.  Take the non stacking ailments, crank them up to twice what you think they should be for balance, and turn the player base loose for two weeks, see how far we can take them, and then use that data to balance them properly.

Heck, y'all should start doing concurrent cycles.  Run a cycle from content patch to content patch. Halfway through that cycle, do a balance patch and add a concurrent cycle for that.  Do some crazy balance experiment two week cycles in the middle.

Originally posted by tadrinth

Y'all just alternated between a season with both content and balance changes (1.1) and a season with only content changes and no balance changes (imperial uprising).

I'm arguing you should have nerfed static orb rather than add loot lizards.

Which, man, when I say it like that, I might be wrong!  

Originally posted by Pandarandr1st

I'll just chime in to say it is SO HARD to do community involvement correctly, because people complain SO MUCH LOUDER than they praise. And, also importantly, people will always complain, because there's just every opinion under the sun. And, on top of that, players are often individually unaware that they are advocating for something that they actually won't like.

Mid-season balance patches are one of those things where I think you make a choice and stick to your guns. It's so hard, though. Nerfs WILL make the community go berserk, as you know, no matter what people are saying in this thread.

Originally posted by Pandarandr1st

I do think, to a certain extent, you've painted yourself into a corner with that poll. Now, if mid-season balance patches are implemented in any fashion, it is going against the community's expressed wishes. People will definitely say things like, "Do poll, reject results, do what you want anyway" or some such. Do you ignore those voices? Do another poll and hope for the desired result?

Anyway, glad I don't have to deal with this stuff

Originally posted by Skyqula

So every ARPG can be reduced to 3 major stats: Offense, Defense, Recovery. LE is no exception. Talents can give bonuses to each, gear (doubled with chosen exalt), idols, blessing all can give bonuses to these categories.

How is your opinion on someone stacking everything across everything to 1 category? His offense might be "200" while his defense and recovery are "80". Is this fine? On Aberroth this would be one of those "10s" videos, on arena the build would not rank.

Do the sources need to be more restricted to which category they can boost? Should a player be able to be a class cannon? IE is double life idols fine? Is double offense idols fine? Is choosing between offense and defense on the same blessing slot fine? Are exalted items in a good spot? (T7 doubles chosen affix, someone focusing all prefix will would be 200 offense, someone focusing all suffix would be 200 defense) Are legendaries in a good spot? (2lp double preffix vs double suffix)