Cactuar Crate - Visions of Amareth Edition

But I wont leave you hanging. Here:
1) at first, the "council" was just Corpse friends group (basically, the old Merc guild). And even though it might seem unfair to others, at least it was made out of a group of extreme good players (Ryv, Gav, Krebmart, Algelon, and others). He invited me in after I took lonx to top 10, it was quite a feature at that time. Either way, was a bad idea because Ryv was the main guy there and he liked to powercreep stuff out of proportion. However, Corpse was a very good player and would probably beat a lot of you guys easily. After he left, people lost motivation and left as well.
2) After Sok picked up, the "council" was already there, he didnt create or made a vote for it. Since people were already there, he thought "well, I might make good use out of this". And you know what, he did because, amongst others, there was I, BurnPyro, Dmr, Baskitkase and a few others who had very good knowledge of the game, and we very active both online and ingame. Then Sok decided it was a good idea to invite Xirone to the party, and that was a terrible idea. The best move would be for Sok to actually be good at the game, but his thing was never balancing for the top but "interesting" mechanics and that jazz. Then again, though, bad idea keeping the council. BUT we did help a lot, and nothing was really wasted because the guys there were actually good (except Xirone) and took the time to help. Dont pull this "ST wasnt balanced" crap on me, there were a lot of good players there keeping things in check. What made ST out of line was +1 from Arctic.
3) Then we had this terrible idea of having an "election" for a 1 representative from faction. This was the worst one by far. And then some people left and Sok decided to replace them with the current people with no sense of balance whatsoever.

Basically, what I mean is this: yes, having a "player council" is a bad idea no matter how you look at it. In an ideal world you have a paid guy to do it. However, there are ways to mitigate this "bad idea". How:

1) The designer is so good at the game that he can pinpoint all the bs that comes out of the "council" players. They would be there just to voice opinions on something that needs to be on watch. Never giving suggestions on how to nerf or how to design. Basically, the designer just doesnt balance alone due to time restraints (aka Corpse).
2) The council group is made of the best players on the game that are also very active. If they are missing one of these qualities, they dont qualify to help. Sok's council under SoE was like this.

Aside from this, you shouldnt have a council at all. Again, though, it doesnt matter at this point because this game is already on a downward spiral, but I wont shut up about the things that bother me. If you have a problem with that, deal with it.

 

Lol bro how many times have you quit the forums?

 

I'm not sure why I'm bothering, because you've shown yourself well resistant to reason here - maybe for the benifit of others who are reading, but let's put this into relevant context:

1. When DoG took over it was basically Gedden and that's it (well, him and senshu i guess).

2. Gedden hadn't played the game of pox in 10 years and was working round the clock programming it. He didn't even anything like the time to learn all 8 factions to the kind of level he'd need to properly balance it.

3. Because he just took over, and because he was changing everything anyway, there is no relevant data he could have used to help him.

4. He obviously didn't have spare cash to hire someone, since cash-flow was the reason the steam release was premature.

Given this situation, bringing in a group of experienced players for advice seems like an extremely good option. Obviously it wasn't perfect, and some mistakes were made (you, for example, spent most of the time *****ing about how it wasn't like the good old days, which was of no use to anyone), but it was the only viable option, and we got through it.

 

I was agreeing with you 100% up until this point, where you started to spill bs. Here's how he went:

1) He didnt bring a group of experienced players for advice. He made an open vote about it. A freaking popularity contest. Heck, Markoth was away from the game for a whole year and got in there, and again there was Xirone. That was his first mistake. The other one being on revamping the whole things after 10 years. A smart guy would have chosen to do this after he got familiar with the game.
2) I spent most of the time *****ing about how it wasnt like the good old days because guys like you, who had ZERO experience on the design process of a game (even Xirone had more at the point) were responsible for REVAMPING a whole faction. WTF was up with that. However, I did my share nevertheless, and I only started complaining and eventually quit because I wasnt agreeing on the direction he was taking with the whole thing. That would be all.

So yeah, I dont agree that it was the only viable option at all, but if it makes you feel good, keep deluding yourself.

 

Badger has been constantly posting stuff in the rune design section and had a lot of his ideas implemented. Where exactly does this "ZERO" experience come from?

 

So he's supposed to reopen the game, play it for a few months (during which time he is still unlikely to learn enough in each faction). Then change everything.

I'm pretty sure this would both cost money he didn't have, be no better balance wise, and be a massive waste of time.

 

Please guys, stay civil and on topic for the crate. Expressing concerns is part of why the forums exist, but try to do so in a constructive or at least socially bearable way, and in the proper venue.

 

I think salamans should get looked at,they are insanely efficient and have strong combos,good relics and equipment and amazing spell block.

 

I've been playing a FS/SP Electricity bg lately and it's been more fun for me than most of the stuff I tried (enough to keep me playing from time to time). And I've been wondering if the spell Flood could be looked at. It would be nice if it was cheaper and/or dealt more damage.
Since it has competition from (and loses to) Monsoon in that price range, I think cheaper is the way to go. (More damage is always awesome tho.)

 

Here we go with the elitist posts claiming only people who are top X in the game know how to balance things.

Pretty much the equivalent of a car salesman telling you hes the only one qualified to tell you what the best car is.

Unbalanced runes are relative and change with every update. Same goes with ability pricing. Runes can also be overefficient or OP for a long time but never get used...or they can NOT be OP but see a ton of use(due to lack of options).

There is no such thing as 'balanced' because the scale will continually move...this is a good thing.

 

Perhaps this has been mentioned before about faction bonuses, but why is the SL bonus a % decrease in damage taken? I don't mind that they have damage reduction, but it makes it really hard to calculate the damage I'm going to do when there's that weird percentage thing going on on top of whatever defensive abilities they have and their defense stat. With the turn timer being so limited, how do you tell how much damage you're going to do without a bunch of math? I also feel like this is really unintuitive for new players; I know it sure frustrated me a lot when I started playing, and still does. Is there any reason this has to be their bonus? Perhaps changing it to modify the attack of all the enemies rather than the damage you take? I know it's less thematic (maybe blame a sandstorm?), but it makes the ability way easier to play against without that artificial complexity.

 

I agree. The SL faction bonus would be much easier to calculate and understand if it was just +2 defense.... But that would probably make it too OP.

 

Still, it could give a permanent Sandblasted type effect to all enemies so you can see its effect before attacking. There would be little difference in the math, so I doubt it would be unbalanced.

 

Lol what? How would that be more OP when the current SL bonus reduces non-attack dmg?

 

Oh dang, you're right. Guess I'm starting to see the problem with fixing the bonus now

 

even without that, for most themes it's fairly easy to get 15+DMG, and that's equivelant to 3DEF.

 

Bonus balancing? What what?

 

ATK and DEF (and there was still a DMG stat) modded final damage in increments of 1-2% per point of difference. The SL bonus did just change DEF back then, but it was an even more hellish calculation.

Changing the SL bonus to +2/1 DEF would buff the FF bonus against any attacks made at 9 DMG or less, nerf it against any attacks made at 15 DMG or more, nerf it against some effects that reduce DEF (e.g. Shred Defense), and nerf it against attack-abilities which currently ignore DEF. Overall, such a change to the SL bonus would slightly increase the current preference for effects which ignore DEF, and create a slightly higher negative preference for champions with low and un-modifiable DMG.

 

+1/+2 def faction bonus with font bonus being +1 def for 3 turns?

SP to just the spell resistance for 3 turns?

(To be re-applied at the start of the turn of course like KF mobility-non stacking)