Balancing Decisions

[weary talon]

Feels the need of making a meta-ish post again. I want to talk about a few problems I found with current item/class balancing practices.

Part I: The Decision Makers
I think its safe to say at this point a good amount of people have complaints about the current balancing team. Not focusing criticism on any specific people here but I do observe some general trends.

1) Balance team is too small
Right now it probably have like three or four players, which is probably too small. Even with the best players that understand the game thoroughly, this team size is way too small to form a good consensus.

2) The balance team have questionable connect to the game.
Not saying the usual "tm needs to play their game" line (even if it might be true). A team size this small will struggle to cover all the classes and playstyle and contents that must be understood to make good decisions. Example: Anyone on balance team that mains alchemist and builds around esoteric enhancements?

3) Lack of transparency on decision making
It happened for a few times: A questionable decision is a made and implemented, and then either fixed after a (likely too long) time, implement a fix that is inadequate, or just do nothing at all and expect people to forget about it (or maybe its the balance team that's forgetting?). I think a lot of these problems could be prevented if there is more transparency about what the team would do. Right now even if the balance team tells us they are doing to act on some issues they are often very cryptic on what the solution exactly is, and this doesn't help with finding out if the said solution is good or not. Even better if the interactions aren't buried in the midst of feedback threads or gameplay discussions.

Part II: The Decisions
I do think a lot of decisions made by the balancing team, and even some player's concept of balance are flawed and I want to point out a few problems that I notice.

1) Over-reliance on balance calculators.
Calculators are good for some general estimates on stats allocation, but the real gameplay is much, much more complicated. A piece's real balance budget should be affected by its niche, the other stats on the item, and even other piece that might synergize with it. Calculators should only ever be a reference and never override real gameplay experiences.

2) Balancing around contents that deviates from normal gameplay.
Considering the majority of content is focuses around a spawner-elite-grunt trinity, it should be balanced around such. Nerfing an AoE class because its too good in contents focused on a neverending swarm or nerfing a DPS class because its too good at killing bosses is not a good practice. (Also read my previous thread about bosses).

3) The "more complicated = better" mindset
This isn't the devs only, but a lot of players seem to think that the more complicated a skill is, it is better. While I do think some skills in the game are too simple and need some spices, a lot of them are just doing fine. Think about luminous infusion, a ton of complexity is added, but it doesn't really improve the skill in any useful ways.

4) The charm design problems
Already wrote a thread about it, but again it seems that making a good charm with a reasonable cost is pretty hard these days, not mentioning our hands are tied because charms stack additive and new charms are gonna make the old one better. I am increasingly convinced that an DRG-like system would be much better than the current star costed based system.

5) Some niches just don't exist
Stop trying to make melee poise real

6) There are too many items
Feels like we are way past of the point where we can offer a solution to the problem, but it feels like there is an absolute bloat of items, which would complicate balance and we are going to run out of interesting ideas pretty soon. There are only a limited amount of stats we can tweak, after all.

7) The nuke buttons
We have too much skills that can just delete a group with a single button press. Going to make a thread about this for more detail since it is a pretty major problem and is doing big harms to mob/skill design.

[haughty badger]

My man I think you make too much feedback posts

Like idk if it's just me but you're averaging like one feedback post per week

[weary talon]

thats uhhh

an reasonable amount

[haughty badger]

you're announcing them like they're marvel sequels too

I just saw that teaser to another feedback post

[weary talon]

why do you find this a problem

also stop derailing the thread

[tacit forge]

Balance has definitely been at the mercy of two persisting problems.
Balance for the last couple years has been suffering a death by a thousand cuts where small balance discrepancies have been adding and adding and now there is a mountain of little things that are fucking with balance big time.
TM Perception and goals with classes appear to be going off the beaten path and it leads to a lot of controversial changes (this one mostly encapsulates the recent Cleric changes more than anything but there are strays like Glorious Battle Pierce or C&D boss nerf)

[haughty badger]

I am talking about the thread itself sir

[tacit forge]

To clarify on the second observed problem, this does not mean that innovating is bad, this means that the approach to changes are trying to accomplish things outside the domain of the class which either fall short or would have to uproot the existing class to function properly

Touching on Cleric again for this elaboration, most Cleric players were content with how Cleric was a few months ago and could understand number nerfs to the class to compensate for its growing power. Instead the class gameplay loop was uprooted entirely which left many long standing Cleric players heavily dissatisfied

moving over to Assassin and its C&D Boss interaction, DPS players could understand the nerf under the context that you gain too much access to Stealth which would be overpowered when playing a glass cannon in a boss scenario. What DPS players could not understand however is the complete lack of a power reallocation back into the class (one that was clearly needed as observed within the early stages of testing post-changes) which lead to Assassin completely falling out as a DPS option in bosses

The overarching question then arises, why?

What beneficial purpose does this serve the game and its players? I don't mean beneficial like handing out free buffs and making everybody overpowered.

To elaborate on the thousand cuts problem, there's always been stray balance changes (or lack thereof) that would cause balance problems over time

stuff like several MW3 items receiving nerfs the moment MW4 came out

(and the accompanying content having buffed values over the existing content where players just recovered from their loss of power)

or something like Alchemist going unchecked and becoming a harbinger of death

[fathom raft]

i agree with 8.5 of these points but i will not tell you which

[keen talon]

me personally I agree with about 7.5

[errant sleet]

6.3 myself

In all seriousness, one of the biggest issues I see currently is your final point - there's so many items that it's becoming hard to add new ones in concept

I struggle to agree with the note about Cleric for example, as a balance member who is a Cleric main was instrumental in that change

I do think the team is super creative on actually creating new items, but they need to be exciting

[weary talon]

kinda weird since the change is more or less an active nerf

unless you are dpsing

[errant sleet]

I'm not a Cleric player so I have no actual insight on it lol

[weary talon]

It is however pretty hard to find a solution to this without making people mad

or maybe it's a price worth paying..

[split stag]

There is only ~2x as many items in current endgame r3 (~half way) as there are in r2 endgame.
(~270 vs ~150)
(R3 I just roughly counted every masterwork item, for r2 it was just endgame content + extra)

[errant sleet]

And that's just after Star Point

When the Masterwork system is supposed to let most items scale to endgame and we have several more wools at least, that will expand

[still olive]

Gonna give it an 8.2 agreement rating

[unkempt copper]

Days

[willow violet]

hi

[fierce ether]

There are really not too many items

There are too many “this item is always good” items

[unkempt copper]

I agree with like 2 of the points

[keen talon]

I mean both these things can be true

[fierce ether]

I don’t think we have too many items. You block like, ~10-15 items and you find that you’re lacking a lot of items again.

[willow violet]

i think r2 items are cool

[fierce ether]

Things like threads of the hungerer are just, always good and really good. These items make it hard to build into the slot they fill

One per major slot and you feel like you’ve run out of items

[willow violet]

i also dont like how it seems like items are literally made to be used in 1 specific build

[haughty badger]

❌

Idk if it's just me but r2 is the worst to build for

I can never get a good build that covers everything I need like r1 and r3

[willow violet]

i think thats the point

[haughty badger]

Never having a "meta build"?

[willow violet]

no its just i have fun trying to make good builds

[haughty badger]

At least on warrior I see there's no clear consensus on what's meta and you can kinda cook

[willow violet]

r3 its also kinda the same

[fierce ether]

This is a good thing

[willow violet]

situs are so cool i wish i could build more around them

[haughty badger]

Idk if it's the same on any other class

[unkempt copper]

There are def not enough items

[willow violet]

defenitely not on rogue

[unkempt copper]

Also melee poise

Is very real

And fun to play

[haughty badger]

There are def not enough good items but like who is using those proj prot quest reward pants

[unkempt copper]

Which ones

[haughty badger]

Exactly

[haughty badger]

He kinda just threw shade at guardians and moved on lol

[unkempt copper]

Those leigt aren’t a problem imo

[willow violet]

i want more items to be viable !

[unkempt copper]

They might not be meta rn but you gotta relies if we get enoguh items it will fit a niche

And eventually be good

[haughty badger]

I mean I do think there are some items less than 1% of people use but it isn't that much of a problem

[midnight saffron]

They're decent in my opinion

[unkempt copper]

Look at the agility set

A lot of those item are kinda mid alone

[haughty badger]

Just threw whatever is on my mind, does anyone actually use sirius shield tho :v

[unkempt copper]

I mean they still have a use

And i think they are fine

Jsut gotta wait for more items

And I don’t think making everything meta at one time is good balance

[haughty badger]

I mean some items get directly outclassed by other stuff it feels

[unkempt copper]

Some things won’t have a fitting place yet

[willow violet]

i use it and the only reason i use it is because someone in hexfall party said it is good for punching away stuff but then that person was remembering the wrong stats but i am too lazy to unuse it

[haughty badger]

Yet?

[haughty badger]

Iridium

[willow violet]

yeah ik

they scammed me

[haughty badger]

Like iridium directly outclasses sirius shield except in like extreme niche situations

[willow violet]

i might use it in vesp

[unkempt copper]

The siruis sheild has uses

Just like godspore one does

[tranquil tendon]

"cleric" and "balance" in the same sentence is going to be a negative association in a lot of people's heads for a while i think

[midnight saffron]

We should make the Sirius shield have Decay X or something lol

[tranquil tendon]

given that luminous infusion rework was practically unfinished on release

gives the look of "basically nobody tests this"

[haughty badger]

I just realized that shield has melee fragility lol

[willow violet]

im not mad at luminous

but it could have been timed better

[haughty badger]

I can only see it being used for like magic prot since afaik iridium doesn't have magic prot

[willow violet]

like if it stayed for like 1 week it wouldnt be this bad

[unkempt copper]

Luminous can be made good

[willow violet]

but it stays for 1 month

[tranquil tendon]

i dont play cleric so i cant really comment on the skill itself

[unkempt copper]

Weekly balance is a bad idea

To expect imo

[haughty badger]

That's actually just a cool usable item, shield wand

[unkempt copper]

I think this post jsut digs into balance without understanding how hard it is to balance

[willow violet]

i mean its just that they released it at literally the worst timing

also no testing ig

[unkempt copper]

There are things I will say

Won’t

[haughty badger]

I do hard agree that balance team is a little small

[willow violet]

like u cant even make a hotfix

[unkempt copper]

It is 1 memebr

[haughty badger]

From the hate I see it's getting I don't think it should have been released at all

[tranquil tendon]

but given that it had to receive a six-part hotfix 24 hours after it was updated, it does look like it was either untested or it was only given a cursory test using the cleric's usual setup (the only cleric on balance team)

[unkempt copper]

That’s Carries

[willow violet]

it defenitely could have just not been released

[haughty badger]

Unless people are just crying

[willow violet]

but releasing it AND no changes to it for a month

[errant sleet]

Plausible tbh

[haughty badger]

That's just bad timing like you said

[unkempt copper]

I’m willing to bet luminous was tested days

[willow violet]

how

[unkempt copper]

It’s just think who tested it

[haughty badger]

Usually it's the complaints you hear more than anything else

[errant sleet]

Exactly

Like do I think it didn't hit the mark? Based on the reaction, yes

[willow violet]

did they test it on a 0pt or smth i really dont get how the testing could be so bad

[errant sleet]

but if it's actually just bad, that's a bigger question

[unkempt copper]

I personally think balance is in a fine spot rn outside luminous

[willow violet]

i dont want to believe it was tested

[unkempt copper]

Which I think will probably get a rework of sorts

Luminous being like half the stacks max would be fine

[willow violet]

most ppl were just outraged on dj

[errant sleet]

We don't tend to balance fully around Delves, to be fair

[viral laurel]

People that are happy or had their fill of the game really don't talk much about the game itself. They're either somewhere else or popping in here randomly like me to see the action

[errant sleet]

I can't speak to how it was tested this time however

[unkempt copper]

Make connections

[willow violet]

i mean u cant rly notice a skill being bad if having and not having the skill both mean u steamroll the poi

[unkempt copper]

I mean I was

[willow violet]

u can literally not have a spec and clear a 0pt

[unkempt copper]

Watching mscr test luminous after update and played with him for a while

[unkempt copper]

I mean a 65pt has been cleared in r2 gear

[haughty badger]

Deathless?

[unkempt copper]

Hell no

[viral laurel]

A standard 65pt delve am I right

[willow violet]

thats good testing as well because it means it should certainly be nerfed sl

[haughty badger]

Yeah then like what's the difference

[unkempt copper]

It was like 3hours of deathloopibg

[haughty badger]

I can do it in shattered r2 gear but I will also die

[willow violet]

ok that doesnt count

[viral laurel]

You can clear a 65pt naked

[haughty badger]

What point are you making then lol

[shy rain]

I can notice a skill being weak if it takes me not using it to succeed

[unkempt copper]

I don’t you have the mental ability to do so

[haughty badger]

Isn't it worse having r2 gear

[viral laurel]

Yes

[unkempt copper]

Lmaooo

This was so funny

When we found out the main sink jsut sucked

[willow violet]

im pretty sure people are mad at
hexfall based balancing
calculator based balancing
no testing
removing a playstyle(hybrid)
rogue cant dps
1 person balancing "team"

thats what i see the most

[tacit forge]

I can say that with the case of Luminous rework specifically that the new skill does not work in Paladin's gameplay loop

most effective usecases I see are just using it like you would the old version

or abusing the passive DJ3 buff

which old Luminous also did

[unkempt copper]

The claculator isn’t inherently a bad thing

It’s just not a god to follow

[tacit forge]

it feels like blind faith in the calculator to solve the problems

wasn't the calculator being tinkered all the time before R3 release?

[willow violet]

yeah it never is a bad thing but certainly needs to be used properly

[spice root]

6. I actually like more items

[tacit forge]

people have different gripes with current balance but the glaring obvious takeaway is that the method in which balance is conducted is flawed

[spice root]

see r2 item diversity:

(it's so nice)

[obtuse hinge]

But like why? R3 is literally all delves

Who even plays 0pts outside newer players

[errant sleet]

Sorry, high end delves

[viral laurel]

As an aside, Isn't it problematic that dungeons will rarely be played "as intended" because many who have played before the release of a dungeon will be overkitted so theyll stomp it then delve it. It's either trivial or it's a hodgepodge of previously trodden out mechanics that make it generically "monumenta"
That's why I'll be using unupgraded gear for any dungeon releases

[errant sleet]

Poor wording on my part

[unkempt copper]

What so considered high end?

Anything above 25?

[tranquil tendon]

clip based balancing although that might be a bit of a myth compared to how people think of it

[errant sleet]

give or take

[bright granite]

How many of those threads going to be posted

Anyways, I agreed with most of the points, after the hexfall part, I couldn’t even get past Ru’Ten and I don’t get why i couldn’t get past that boss.

[mint cobalt]

honestly high is probably anything above 18, with stuff like 25+ your faults should probably be made up for by teamwork

[little sapphire]

the new LI concept was actually a good idea

i can absolutely see where the design was going for the skill, and it had good intentions

unfortunately the implementation was truly catastrophic

i've actually got a feedback post about it in progress that i was planning on dropping after content unfreeze incase it remains untouched but i might just finish it now

[ornate raft]

ranged scout is just evasion/bis proj stack

interim mask/blackflame remains
windborn cape
vehemence
lieutenants storm/nightsky threads
gilded quiver/nutcrackers soul
stormborn+draskball
or embers of thoridal

[midnight saffron]

Me when I go full BiS and use Evening Star 💀

60 melee EHP FTW

[ornate raft]

vs 200+ evasion ehp

[midnight saffron]

But 257% projectile damage and 237.5% attack damage is pretty cool lol

[ornate raft]

this oneshots most mobs with trident+snowball anyways

most poi mobs die just from snowball

[craggy zenith]

delves make the most sence to balance around . apart from like the first clear of content 99% of people just do the content delved.

and it is tough to use luminous . the numbers and radius on the ability are extremely low . the compatibility it lost with projectiles is also a major hit

12 crit luminous being worse and 2 brute force crits is just not right

[ornate raft]

fang later specified high point delves

[ornate raft]

.

[random trail]

yea, in general going with "above monetarily efficient" is a decent measure for the delves balanced up to

so 12/18/21/25 or however that math works for each amount of players

especially 25, beyond that it's going beyond the intended difficulties and is mostly wild west

challenge delves being intentionally set beyond intended levels, and max point play being just player choice

[jovial crater]

I think the problem wth many of these balancing posts is that you are looking at the effects of the issues instead of what caused them.

What is causing balance issues in R3? Well, the fact that we suddenly have 3 new scaling systems that favor dps as a stat than any other stat; making R3 DPS-centric and defence being somewhat of an afterthought with death being literally 0 risk. Well, maybe the fact that R1's base kit is too old for R3 and needs to get updated to fit the new standard.
I do not think that the issues come from "balance team too small" or "questionable connection to the game". I am not saying all of the things here are bad, but what we are looking at is a lot of tiny decisions throughout the entirety of Monumenta showing up in R3 when the devs want to reach for more complicated design but they can't.
To fix R3, you have to fix R1 and R2. Imo, these kinds of posts that you are making are slightly useless; they only look at the result of a tiny portion of the puzzle piece without taking into account all the issues. This is useful when we have a character limit (which we do) but to me this feels like a bigger issue that touched not only balance, but also everything else.

if we fixed the issues you are listing here, they will pop up again and again.

[weary talon]

there is more deeply rooted problem, but its not the one you say

[jovial crater]

Yeah i am probably wrong as well

Doesn't change the fact that r1 needs to be fixed for r3

Also i listed a couple problems

._.^

I also will still think R3 is the most dps centric region

[tacit forge]

I do think that R3 is using the tools wrong compared to R1 and R2

maybe the classes feel jank because R3 demands them to work differently than they have had to

R1 and R2 had an element of restraint baked into nearly every class and that element is either gone or unviable to consider in your gameplay

like for example keeping your Volley and maximizing the value when encounters get rough, instead Scout has weapons and charms that can clear without Volley at all and Volley can just be thrown out whenever

[weary talon]

r1 and 2 are ok-ish

[tacit forge]

alternatively you can build entirely into Volley and utilize 360 Volley's disgustingly high power level to win encounters without much effort at all

[weary talon]

its just r3 deviates too much

[tacit forge]

in R2 Guardian has to be careful not to misuse its abilities or you could very well fall apart in battle

now you just sit in a crowd as an invincible powerhouse and only use abilities for neuron activation

say what you want about R1 and R2 balance but they were way better than R3 at actually providing consequences for a player's actions

most R3 builds nowadays are machines that run until they don't anymore and you just pick up your grave and rerun

[still olive]

I think you still have to address the issues posed than just say "we have to rework r1/r2"

[jovial crater]

Hmmm... not rework. I think r2 is fine. Mostly saying that some of the base kits of classes (r1) do not fit r3.

Which is an issue of r1's age

Not rly the devs fault

Imo the an issue of balancing is what the devs were given with r2.
Death not really being a consequence due to anvil inflation is one of them.

[tacit forge]

death used to have heavy consequences but reasons beyond balance led to its removal

wouldn't it just be better to add consequence to death?

[jovial crater]

I think death has consequences when you just dont have infinite anvils

[tacit forge]

I mean getting anvils is super easy

[jovial crater]

Bcs like when death is just an annoyance; glass cannon is the viable option.

[tacit forge]

1 dungeon and a Lime tesseract could easily get you a couple stacks of anvils

[jovial crater]

At least that is how i see it

But i may be wrong as well

[obtuse hinge]

Death has consequences only first half of r1 and only if you waste all quest anvils

[still olive]

There are still very much real issues with the way things have been conducted that are not just R1 classes being old

[obtuse hinge]

Or if you have 100+ levels on you

[tacit forge]

there's another layer to it being how quickly can glass cannon be killed to make it slower than goign without dying

but R3 drops the ball hard on actually slowing people down

[jovial crater]

Mhm

[tacit forge]

the main problem with glass being so effective in R3 is because it functionally goes faster than not being glass

in R2 for example, there's no real reason to run glass because a real build can kill about as quickly

mob health is low enough to the point where glass cannons overkill super hard so it's not worth it

[jovial crater]

And hp is high bcs otherwise the mobs would literally have no way to attack players

[tacit forge]

R3 does the inverse where mobs are unimaginably healthy

if HP was low, you could easily give the mobs higher damage to work with

which would then lead into a more grounded balance where the mobs can actually have a crack at you

BIS or BIS-1 builds in R3 would fold in half to these new hypothetical mobs

[obtuse hinge]

Well yea if mob health goes down suddenly there are less reason to run glass

[tacit forge]

they could still kill them quickly yea but now less offensive builds can catch up

[obtuse hinge]

Its r2 balance rn

[tacit forge]

and have the benefit of actually living

[jovial crater]

I don't think it would fix the issue

[tacit forge]

there's the problem with BIS-1 sets having too much defense but that's a simple calculator tinker to solve

[obtuse hinge]

There is also the sheer amount of mobs that every spawners just produces

[jovial crater]

Bcs death has no damage, this means that you would just buff glass with more defence

[tacit forge]

true R3 spawner placement forces higher spawnwaves more often and the bunched placement can lead to walls of mobs

[tacit forge]

I mean it would tone down the scaling of classes significantly

in R2 classes only ball out of control if you sacrifice a lot in your build to do it, R3 classes have that currently as a birthright (also mobs demand it of you with their high health and population) so pushing balance closer to R2 would naturally lead to a more controlled balance

takes a handful of steps but R2 before R3 release was in a great place, every class had their strengths and weaknesses but more importantly everyone could pull results

R3 balance finally hit the stride of everyone pulling results but that's because it took the inverse approach of making everybody overpowered through various means

Alchemist getting Lifewood Dew for example

or Berserker getting GB Pierce

doing it this way has the side effect of making the game much more volatile

doing things outside the defined meta for a class will usually mean you lose almost on the spot

(conveniently some class metas are baked into the class like GB Pierce)

what does Alchemist do without Amalgam (U) and some kind of nuclear charm option

play a mean support probably?

what does Guardian do without Will of Ganzir or high BF investment/Vires

[willow violet]

yeah it feels like tm makes the meta for you when designing items

forced into a playstyle

[viral laurel]

wtf they make items with a certain goal in mind?

[drowsy prism]

crazy right
instead of just creating ai generated skills that has no coherence and have the player figure out how to play them

[willow violet]

no i meant

like ok some of it is needed

but i just think its becoming so obnoxious

[ornate raft]

if ya dont like the plastyle dont play it

[willow violet]

instead of saying this is a melee attack speed item with low dr

they go like lets make this item fit inside melee poise guardian and not in anything else in 1 very specific build

[ornate raft]

thats just poise for u

[willow violet]

also greaves of sunken faith is just made to fit in like 1 specific set

also darkstar duskroot forced synergy

[ornate raft]

well its better than none. some items ofc will have a small nich but thats better than none

[ornate raft]

more like lack agility adaptability options

[willow violet]

before nerf it was literally forced synergy

[little sapphire]

the world if irrus' was agility

[ornate raft]

litterally only other options is emblem of wrath which is uhh

mixed

[willow violet]

deepslate xkelaq 💀

[willow violet]

why

theres a total of 2 mismatched situationals on agil

[ornate raft]

but they are both good dmg

and irrus would be perfect for builds which dont need attack speed

it has so much utility

[willow violet]

and when the wristblade erm

[ornate raft]

armor has enough adaptability options

not like anyone needs armor adaptability for melee

[dusk silo]

tbf adaptability has 0 place it can fit on darkstar so you are forced to use it somewhere else