Balance Section

[Bretin]

I didnt understand a word of what you just said.

it's all about dammaz kron. KDR=kill death ratio

Got cha. It was KDA on your first post (before edit )

yeah noticed that, my bad

[Vigfuss]

I think some general considerations about movement and positioning should also be established. For example DAoC had virtually no cast on the move and very few instant cast abilities, and in most newer games everything can be cast on the Move. WAR was sort of in the middle ground.

Even though WAR was middle ground positioning was still really important. I would like to see some commitment from the devs to maintain that. I think it's quite fundamental to the game. If you ignore WL (Which has other counters) for the sake of discussion you can see the idea.

I think the recent change to allow more healing to be cast on the move was ok, and so far it's not too outrageous. And I think it's not too late to set some general rule about this in stone.

[Azarael]

We do commit to maintaining the spirit of the game's combat. That's why people came back to play WAR.

[Jaycub]

Spoiler:

Unique user assigned ID's per thread in balance forums when? :^)

[Vigfuss]

A question for the Devs:

How frequently do you intend to introduce changes?
How much time will be given for forum posters to discuss the impact of any changes, both before and after a change?
Should we expect to see a lot more changes before release of T4?

[Azarael]

- Depends on the size of the change. Large changes, like the WP detaunt, will require much longer periods of analysis. Small changes, like the recent heals casting on the move, do not require as much, imo.

- This is covered in the balance forum lead post. Look at the end.

- No. T3 changes thus far have focused on fixing underperforming elements of the game. The sole nerf has been to the SW Enchanted Arrows tactic. This is for a reason - T3 isn't the place to look at changing anything that is a solid part of either the current meta on RoR or the old meta on live.

[peterthepan3]

I'm all for a balance section: a good place to discuss any potential changes/nerfs.

Everyone should be able to have a say, provided they post coherently and don't go off on a tangent (as so many people seem to have a tendency to do). However - 'ego/elitism' aside - I do feel that certain players' opinions/voices should have a greater bearing in some situations, i.e. changes that pertain to a class's capabilities in small-scale/general PvP.
Aza has mentioned several times that he wants to try and ensure every class can perform somewhat in small-scale/6v6 (correct me if I'm wrong/hearing things I want to hear lol). Bearing this in mind, and having this goal as our foundation; it is logical that groups/players with experience in this PvP guise contribute and give feedback.

It's a slippery slope, for sure, and egos would have to be left outside the front door: but I'm pretty sure that 99% of us genuinely want a better game overall, with each class being able to contribute or have a spot in a group, and have faith in our ability to act mature and as facilitators to these changes.

[Epo]

I don't know if this has been discussed internally or whatever but I'll mention it anyway. A lot of people don't read the forums, whether it's because of the language barrier or the toxic community in other cases, as well as people being discriminate of other nationalities for the sake of it, even when they have good things to say. We've even seen this recently with the French post on the general boards this kind of alienates a lot of people. Now I understand that it's their choice not to view the forum and as a result their opinion would not be heard, however I'm curious if it's possible to put a pop in game when you log in? If their has been a serious discussion regarding X and Y and it's becoming a proposed changed then people would be able to see it when they log in and vote or come give their opinions? Most of you will probably think this is a stupid idea but I think this new forum is going to favour those in the community who have a big mouth.

This might also help when you want to get people in for balancing itself? You say you want to get people to test things, around 12 if I saw correctly. This means you want to balance around 6v6? I could be way off there, just what I saw when first reading it. Could it also be possible in the future to get a couple of big guilds in their to see the impact on large scale combat? Not trying to start an argument here about X is more important than Y, just an idea to get all angles of a change.

[noisestorm]

@Epo
Having people know whats going on is not a bad idea - an ingame popup may not be possible atm, but the server motd would be. On the other hand the people that play the game (and have guildies from who they know they dont read the forum) can simply also promote it ingame a bit. Like the frenchies that actively participate can surely tell their fellow baguettes whats going on and what they perhaps can expect. Same for russians and what not - It's all a community thing after all, so they can help out at last

[Penril]

This is my personal opinion: The game is in an Alpha state, where basically all of us are (or should be testers). The forum is, obviously, the place where us testers should discuss everything about the game. If people don't care about this and they just treat this as another game where they simply log in, do their thing, and log out without contributing anything to the developers, why should they have a say in the implementation of important changes?

Devs put an insane ammount of their time in this game and they do it for free. If someone wants to get involved in the changes they are making for WAR, can't they spare a few minutes to come, read the balance discussions and make their voices heard?

If they can influence the direction of RoR just by voting when they log in, most will probably vote for whatever benefits themselves. For example, let's say there is a 40+ pages thread where people are discussing a nerf to KotBS (just an example). After 40 pages, everyone agrees that Destroy Confidence needs to be nerfed. A poll is made in game, and several people will vote NO because "KotBS is fine we don't need a nerf!!!!111 Destro biased!!!" without EVEN READING a single page of that thread where several good points were made by both good and bad destro/order players.

This is already happening; just look at the recent WP/AM/Shaman pages, with long threads where people mostly agreed these classes could use some love. Yet when patch notes are released, you find a few people (that have posted maybe once or twice) saying "this is a completely unnecesary change!". And yes, they didn't even read the threads i mentioned.

As for the "toxic community", balance discussions will be heavily moderated. Trust me. No one will be flamed or insulted there.