[Gear] State Stabilization

[Thayli]

All right, we're drifting off again in the direction of implementation details. Focus on the proposal, people.

These are the questions we want answered:

- Is state imbalance something that exists as outlined in the OP?
- Should this be addressed at all? Why (not)?
- Are the suggested solutions acceptable? Why (not)?

[Grunbag]

All right, we're drifting off again in the direction of implementation details. Focus on the proposal, people.

These are the questions we want answered:

1) Is state imbalance something that exists as outlined in the OP?

2) - Are the suggested solutions acceptable? Why (not)?

1)I think we're all agree that we need to balance set gear, limit power creep in T4, and limit min/max extrem stacking

2) We're discussing that the suggested solution are not good because no one wants some hidden buff, and we're trying to explain how we rather balance set instead of the OP .

Instore stats cap , reducing stats gap between set, are most wanted solutions for what I've read .

Or maybe am I misunderstanding what we should discuss here ?

[Bozzax]

1) Not entirely convinced a Sov hitting on a Sov needs to be perfectly balanced with an anni hitting on an anni. Yes you can do it but is the end product is a better game? Perfect mirrors and no gear progression is another way of making balance perfect and easy. Regardless all agree gear progression and gear gap should be managed (unlike WAR where it was not).

2) Maybe not at this point we don't know what the end gear becomes. Already at this point with class changes alone devs have shifted balance end game.

3) No "hidden damage" modifiers are less desirable then designing proper gear progression. I hated the ORVR "damage" modifier where your relative strength varied.

[blaqwar]

I feel like a lot of people are missing the point.

Power creep by itself is not what this proposal is about (although it does tie in somewhat, but not being discussed atm).

The proposal aims to establish a "stable system", a base from which all future balancing will be done. For that to be a possibility the game has to work in completely the same manner in all tiers of gear, no matter the absolute power level.

In simple terms, if a guy in Anni can dish out 300 DPS (or HPS or any other combat performance metric) to another guy in Anni and the abilities and scaling secondary stats (crit, parry, crit damage) are balanced according to that - which is what the community and the devs are doing in the balance forums - then this balance will be broken if a guy in Sov can dish out a 1000 DPS to another guy in Sov. Which means that all the balancing being done right now is pointless since it would have to be redone for every new tier of gear. This is what Azarael means when he says that the fate of the balance forums hinges on solving this issue.

The alternative is to close down the balance forums and wait till Sov comes out to balance the game. Trust in the devs to be able to somewhat internally balance everything until then and trust in their vision of the game.

Now sure, power-creep would be easier to address if this system was to be established and the relative power between tiers of gear could be capped to prevent the system from breaking too much even between different power levels (this idea particularly appeals to me) but that's not the focus of the proposal.

As for the concerns about a "hidden" systems that have been expressed, I believe there's a lot of seemingly hidden systems in the game already. How many people would be able to explain how toughness works? Strikethrough? Offensive stat ability coefficents? There's information out there and some people are aware of it or are trying to learn about it. Others simply shoot greenskins and don't ask intricate questions about the projectile velocity and force of impact.

Besides, such a system could be tied into the ToK/paperdoll functionality with some added tooltip calculations once client control is reached. For example the current wording on the armor tooltip is:
"Reduces Physical damage dealt to you by enemies.
Physical Damage Reduced: 40%"
Physical Damage Reduced against an equally geared player: 25%

I imagine adding something similar to tooltips wouldn't be too difficult.

I don't see hidden systems being an issue at all, not with client control. Hell you could have a page in ToK explaining all of this by tying it into the Ward system Mythic implemented.

[Bozzax]

In simple terms, if a guy in Anni can dish out 300 DPS (or HPS or any other combat performance metric) to another guy in Anni and the abilities and scaling secondary stats (crit, parry, crit damage) are balanced according to that - which is what the community and the devs are doing in the balance forums - then this balance will be broken if a guy in Sov can dish out a 1000 DPS to another guy in Sov. Which means that all the balancing being done right now is pointless since it would have to be redone for every new tier of gear. This is what Azarael means when he says that the fate of the balance forums hinges on solving this issue.

So the problem is the big gap anni-anni (300 dps) vs sov-sov (1000 dps) which "we" actually don't know if it exists? Devs may know ofc.

If a (example 300 vs 1000) disparity exists another way could be enforcing decaying power increase for sets and making starter - top gear less far apart. (As opposed to WARs "exponential gear progression curve" with huge jumps especially in the end gear sets).

Then again does it exist? How big is it and has testing been done with all tier armors? What is the result?

If so is gear more influential then other factors such as over performing abilities /renown spec?

IMO abilitets weigh heavier in the balancing scales then gear (exception Sov, WF, DF that was exp better and had insane procs and op abilities on top of that). I ponder this because even with same tier gear cookie cutter classes within an archetype is preferred over the ones lacking the op abilites.

[blaqwar]

The way WAR works is that a linear power increase will result in an exponential power increase/decrease in some cases. Those are outlined in the first part of Azarael's post.

Examples would be a linear increase in BW/Sorc crit on gear would result in an exponential increase due to their mechanic, it would also result in an exponential increase for some tactics and abilities that work with crit. (Sure the BW/Sorc issue could be remedied by decoupling crit% on gear from their mechanic as has been proposed before on AOR but this is just one of the issues on one of the careers).

New tiers bring an increase in Wounds, which means that morale abilities decrease in value, TTK goes up and who knows what effect this would have on large scale combat for RoR specifically because of already implemented changes from AOR. Another example of non-scaling abilities/tactics being decreased in value as HP increases would be the Swordmaster career. Right now their bubbles, healing tactics and "shock" value on blurring shock which don't scale with gear are somewhat balanced (you're welcome to argue that but the career seems balanced compared to other tanks). Increase the HP and the career needs rebalancing.

That's two examples. You can find all of them in the OP.

I don't think you can solve those issues with simply offering decaying power increases. Not to mention that it somewhat goes against the base draw of an MMORPG, a time investment offering increasing power. People won't want to devote increasingly more time into getting sets that offer a relatively miniscule gain. That issue won't be as exacerbated with Aza's suggestion as the power increase ´could still be considerable compared to lower tiers of gear (although it would be capped). It's just the base system, the situation of equally geared combatants, that would offer no increase.

So a geared, skilled premade of 12 people could still very much take on double the number of less skilled combatants in lower gear as the power disparity would follow the (adjusted and balanced) logic of AOR. When fighting an equally geared opponent their gear advantage would be gone however and the game would play just as it does now.

That "skilled premade fighting an equally skilled premade" axiom from balance forums would turn into a "geared and skilled premade fighting an equally geared and skilled premade". That would be the default situation all balancing would be done based on.

[Tesq]

uhm for me is quite the opposite the TTK will only increase from here on, worst days were in t3 now in t4 is not that bad unless you are a cloth healer with few toughness.

-Sov will bring generally a more oriented proc game for melee due to auto attack haste (but nerfing the proc as alredy happened both with ICD and dmg reduction fix alredy this).
Regardless this would be the same as now due anni = less armor but less frequent proc with sov = more armor but more frequen proc.
Sov rdp will keep stack crit; in case of magus/engi due to multiplers of all dmg it may happen to stack capped primary stat.

-All tank def set bonuses are >>>>>> than dps one that was they key facton in sov balance for rvr due def set only help 1 char while off set for dps due to aoe influencin more characters; healers and dps sets are perfectly mirrored and + allow healers instead use very ineffective solution with a very large increase to their ttk.
All armor and toughness values increase while dps which alredy reached cap for primary stat stop to stack their base value and rely and crit (so ye fix the crit problem will allow to efficently fix the power creep).

-Wounds larger pool allow to soft nerf the morales due requiring to use moral bomb to finish and not as simple ista kill move.

The game is balance more on sov that what ppl think and a lot better than what ppl think. A temp solution "A" could work till sov balance is find out then leave it as it is to reduces the power creep between sov-anni.
But the balance of Sov vs sov is quite good. More than Anni vs Anni

NB. easy way to increase ttk is lower back dps kd to 2 sec as it was pre 1.4.7 less frequently 3sec KD canonly help if ttk is the problem.

[Penril]

Spoiler:

Sot is correct though.

Not doing a deep analysis but it is fairly easy to grasp. Also it is quite likely I overlook some class or tactic please don't focus on that.

So why ...

Archetype and classes
All dps typically have crit increasers but all dps don't have crit damage increasers. Lowering crits means crit damage increasers looses some value and melee dps as a whole becomes a tad weaker compared to dps such as SQUIGG, SW, DPS AM, DPS SH (or RDPS). (I'm not saying it is a bad thing or a good thing)

Realm
Order MDPs all (WH, WL, SLAY) have AA increasers while Dest has (self) crit increasers (Mara, Chp, WE). A cap obviously would hurt Dest harder don't need to be a brain surgeon to see that. I'd also wager dest (2h) tanks rely more on crit (increasers /damage increasers) then order counterparts. Exception would be BG that has AA while IB is more crit dependent. Diff for tanks is less obvious ofc.

Regardless I think ALL % modifiers like inc-dec damage, inc-dec crit damage/heal, strikethrough, avoidance, in-out crit/heal crit, AA-haste-slow, armor-resist mit-reduction. needs more tightly controlled. Doing so would create a more stable state.

Most importantly you can't just do one of them for example crits as this affects archetype blance and realm balance (as Sot said). Well unless those shifts in balance are needed as well.

Regardless of whether it is easy to grasp or not, this is what you guys are expected to post here. "It benefits a side/archetype more than others!" is not a valid argument; "It is like that because XXXX and YYYY", on the other hand, is.

[Bozzax]

Here is a quick overview of how slayer armor sets change damage and defs. Note this is ex procs and Sov abilities and WDPS from RR75 weapons isn't included.

Some observations
1. Sov sets are truly op mostly from "extra" op procs and abilities.
2. A growing health pool is a problem (lowbies hit weaker and each dps is worth less) even if the stuff in op is implemented
3. There damage output increases and so do mid / wounds there is some form of stability at least in early sets
4. WAR likely would have been better of with a decaying curve where later sets improved with a slower pace (imo)

Either you normalise damage/heals incoming/outgoing as op suggests or you redesign those curves.

Spoiler:

I've used average values blah blah and the 1 toughness /strength = 0.1 dps simplification. Well and a few other such as a slayer has 300dps (if anyone has a better suggestion I'll change it). Oh and 200 base ini. ofc. Even though some simplifications may be questionable the same method are applied on all sets (equally wrong so to say)

Lots of stuff is added together etc and most likely I've done some stupid error.

[Azarael]

Spoiler:

I feel like a lot of people are missing the point.

Power creep by itself is not what this proposal is about (although it does tie in somewhat, but not being discussed atm).

The proposal aims to establish a "stable system", a base from which all future balancing will be done. For that to be a possibility the game has to work in completely the same manner in all tiers of gear, no matter the absolute power level.

In simple terms, if a guy in Anni can dish out 300 DPS (or HPS or any other combat performance metric) to another guy in Anni and the abilities and scaling secondary stats (crit, parry, crit damage) are balanced according to that - which is what the community and the devs are doing in the balance forums - then this balance will be broken if a guy in Sov can dish out a 1000 DPS to another guy in Sov. Which means that all the balancing being done right now is pointless since it would have to be redone for every new tier of gear. This is what Azarael means when he says that the fate of the balance forums hinges on solving this issue.

The alternative is to close down the balance forums and wait till Sov comes out to balance the game. Trust in the devs to be able to somewhat internally balance everything until then and trust in their vision of the game.

Now sure, power-creep would be easier to address if this system was to be established and the relative power between tiers of gear could be capped to prevent the system from breaking too much even between different power levels (this idea particularly appeals to me) but that's not the focus of the proposal.

As for the concerns about a "hidden" systems that have been expressed, I believe there's a lot of seemingly hidden systems in the game already. How many people would be able to explain how toughness works? Strikethrough? Offensive stat ability coefficents? There's information out there and some people are aware of it or are trying to learn about it. Others simply shoot greenskins and don't ask intricate questions about the projectile velocity and force of impact.

Besides, such a system could be tied into the ToK/paperdoll functionality with some added tooltip calculations once client control is reached. For example the current wording on the armor tooltip is:
"Reduces Physical damage dealt to you by enemies.
Physical Damage Reduced: 40%"
Physical Damage Reduced against an equally geared player: 25%

I imagine adding something similar to tooltips wouldn't be too difficult.

I don't see hidden systems being an issue at all, not with client control. Hell you could have a page in ToK explaining all of this by tying it into the Ward system Mythic implemented.

Best understanding of it I've seen thus far.

1) Not entirely convinced a Sov hitting on a Sov needs to be perfectly balanced with an anni hitting on an anni. Yes you can do it but is the end product is a better game? Perfect mirrors and no gear progression is another way of making balance perfect and easy. Regardless all agree gear progression and gear gap should be managed (unlike WAR where it was not).

Perfect and easy, huh? You're forgetting that even with state stabilization, stat, ability, tactic, morale and renown customisation still exist. That is already very difficult to balance - bring state shifting because of gear into it and you're screwed. If Warhammer really were brought down in part by its balance issues, I would have thought that people would be determined to make whatever sacrifices necessary to ensure that the next iteration were balanced.

The other point about this is that any system that has progression but does not implement a stabilization mechanism is limited. You will lose the balance as you progress because some variables are changing and others are not, or the interaction between two variables that are changing is not linear. The most obvious examples are constant-damage effects versus HP pool size, constant effects versus scaling effects and armor versus Weapon Skill.

Some have suggested minimizing the difference between armor sets to counteract this, and as I've said before, this is a bad solution. Firstly, it ruins some of the feeling of progression that people get - while you might be able to see a concrete +x bonus to your stats from the new set, the absolute difference is reduced, and thus the "feel" you get from using the set. Secondly, the point at which you screw the game balance royally still exists, and thus there's a limit to how many sets you can make available and how much vertical progression you can offer before having to rebalance. Both of these issues do not exist when using relative tiering.

Finally, I should add that this isn't necessarily about the proposal passing. If you want to push up to Sovereign level, even the old level, and try to balance from that, fine, but you should understand that this would mean a) a balance forum lock for a significant period of time and b) rebalancing all of the factors that were ruined by the state progression that I've mentioned above. I'd be willing to bet that more elements of the game would need to be changed than if we used the present state, and that the result would be rather close to what we're currently dealing with. Think it's worth it? I don't.