As some of you are aware, our ability to make balance changes in the game is presently quite restricted, due to client limitations. This, in combination with our current progression being only to T3, means that we will be taking only limited action on balance at the present time. This means that the strategy outlined below does not, as yet, apply.
Our strategy for making changes in T4 is as follows:
1 - Ensure that classes are performing as they did on live. This is the fundamental requirement to begin fine balance changes which affect specs commonly used on live, as opposed to ones that buff underpowered specs. We must ensure that no bugs exist in a class and that its mechanics, abilities, tactics and morales function as they did on live, existing balance changes notwithstanding. Please note that this includes bugs that existed on live. Issues such as Piercing Bite will be fixed in this step.
2 - Make global changes. In this step, we will be considering changes which affect every class and represent the fundamentals of the game (a coarse balance pass). Examples of such fundamentals include the way armor penetration works or the resistance softcaps. We will naturally consider these first because of the great number of elements affected by modifications to these fundamentals.
3 - Make broad changes which affect multiple classes at once. This pass will include any archetype-based and racial modifications. Examples of such elements that could be modified are incorporating weapon DPS to caster ability damage, changing the passive bonuses granted by certain types of weapons, changing racial tactics, or changing the handling of Guard.
4 - Address classes individually. This is where we look at each individual class in depth and in isolation. We will be addressing in this stage both class external balance - how the class competes with others -and class internal balance - how well the class's own abilities and tactics compete against each other for usage, and how many viable specs it has.
Specifically #2 and #3 which are described as "steps" which makes sense, as you would have to do all encompassing changes before trying to fix classes. The balance forums seem to be warming up with the BG/Mara threads for singular abilities which fit in with step 1. But reading through the comments you do get a sense some people are asking to jump to step 4 immediately.
Do the devs plan on having official discussions about changes that fall under steps 2 and 3? It just seems like such a massive undertaking compared to balancing the classes as they are now. Not to mention changes to core game mechanics will likely be met with fierce opposition like we have seen in the past for even smaller changes.
IDK I just think changes like these are really interesting and I don't really see any discussion about them at the moment, forums have been pretty slow/boring lately with RvR being worked on atm. What do you guys think?
If I understand it correct. Global changes will come before class changes.
So yes, I understand that the balance forum was build for that. But the final word is allways on the devs.
As You can see on the currently talked ballance themes.
I imagine there's actually a prestep 1. That is they will change the things that they have the power to easily change/fix atm with their server-side changes.
Changes that fall under steps 2 and 3 will be discussed, and they will be contentious. Those of you who have tried or been involved in efforts such as these before will understand that if you have a wonky base or bad foundations, you WILL run into structural errors higher up in the design as a result of failing to fix the core, and those errors are incapable of being resolved at the high level without imbalancing another part of the design. Thus, you enter a phase in which you cannot fix your game without modifying the core, and your work on the finer balance is hit hard. It is my intention that we address issues with the core first, even if that has knock-on effects on the higher levels of the design.
Global issues for me include power creep and its method of implementation, armor/resist stacking and interactions, critical hit rate stacking / extreme minmaxing, the critical damage / Trivial Blows debate and Morale 4s in general. That is by no means an exhaustive list - these are just the first ones that I can think of.
I expect fierce opposition from some players about anything we may do that comes under "global" scope. That's fine, as long as it's reasoned and within the balance forum's rules.
I don´t like the roadmap.
destro vs. order is balanced, but the balance within each faction is totally broken. So address poor performing classes first would be a good idea. But if I understand correctly, global changes will have a varying impact on different classes. So maybe we will get within-faction-balance with this. we will see
