Why Strictly Adhering to a Costing Formula in Pox will never work

Let me first of all preface this with saying that I like what the revamp has done and I think it is a good start in reversing a lot of the damage done with SOE's reign. However I want to point out that the way DoG is starting to go about the revamp disturbs me. They seem committed to sticking to their costing formulas no matter what and that simply will not work for pox. The initial revamp should have set the standard for global ability pricing, stat pricing etc but now that it is done it is time to tweak INDIVIDUAL champs not continue applying blanket fixes to buff/nerf champions. I think we have seen several examples of this already.

The biggest example of why fixing poxnora in this way will not work is the titans. I understand wanting to make the titans playable as they have spent such a lengthy amount of time shoeboxed but giving out a nora decrease for the titan ability which is a very positive ability in the first place is silly and actually undermines the whole purpose of the revamp in setting baseline prices for abilities. It makes ZERO sense why the titan ability gives a nora discount. In this situation, every titan should have been looked at individually to determine what should have been done to make them playable. The most absurd example of this is the Ancestral Avenger. He was already very much so viable at 104 nora. His ability to go incorpeal in the current pox where ranged damage (the primary source of magic damage) has been gutted is huge. His tanking ability is honestly ridiculous and it takes a huge investment to kill him especially considering that he hits like a truck and has excellent speed as well. Then you factor in the fact that he belongs to a faction that can give him immunity to the one damage type he is vulnerable to (Protection) and plenty of healing and you quickly realize what kind of monstrosity he really is. But the point here is not that Ancestral Avenger is OP, it is the interaction that DoG has failed to take into account. The costing of his abilities might be fine but his interaction with his own abilities and his own faction/split faction is not.

There are two ways to go about fixing him. One they could remove abilities or spike the cost of the abilities on the problem champion (Like they did with Surge: enemy) which is seemingly what DoG is doing in a desperate attempt to maintain the global costing formulas. The problem with this is that you run the risk of gutting what makes the champion unique (ghost bear without ghost would be strange) which would further limit the diversity in pox right now or you end up collaterally nerfing many other runes that were not problematic (Ranger elite was nerfed when surge enemy was nerfed as an example off the top of my head). The other method which could be applied is to simply nerf runes on an individual basis. There is no need to nerf the titan ability when just a few of the titans are runnable. A +20 nora cost on the avenger would still make him viable in today's game and would not have such a harsh ripple effect on other runes or gut his basic kit.

Dealing with champs on an individual basis may sound like a simple obvious fix but I feel like it is worth pointing out considering that DoG has shown post revamp to only be interested in changes that maintain the global formulas they have established or tweaking those formulas in order to make balance changes. I understand that DoG does not want to return to prerevamp days where a champion was randomly costed without much regard to the stats or abilities but in a game with as many runes and interactions as Poxnora some runes will be blatantly better than the rest. This will not lead to runes like the prerevamp days as long as individual changes like this are the exception and not the rule. Only problem champions should be looked at individually to balance them and all newly released champions should adhere to the costing rules set out by the revamp. Unfortunately, the avenger is not a strange outlier, there are plenty of other runes that have been buffed when they did not really need any changes because of these blanket buffs. Runes like Klub, collosal boa, and groble rock eater all come to mind. These runes can easily be tweaked to make them less efficient with nora cost hikes while still leaving them to do their roles effectively.

TL;DR: Now that Pox has established a base for costing every champ they should look at problem runes individually and give them tweaks to bring them in line with other runes.

 

They should expand the formula to take into account synergies. What will *not* end well is just throwing the formula away again and suffocating in powercreep once more.

 

http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/why-make-a-thread-if-everybody-knows-that.5041/

 

TO much to read but I agree on the topic

 

I'm impatient for specific champions to receive attention too, but it makes sense to refine the costing formula as much as possible before digging into the individual cases (which appears to be what DoG is doing). Otherwise all the fine tuning is undone when you go back and make major changes to the formula. I believe that when the formula and ability costs are honed to a satisfactory degree, we will start seeing many more adjustments to individual champs.

 

I am in no way suggesting we throw away the formula. Just manually adjusting certain champions. DoG has already bent the formula to try to keep every ability consistent in making positive conditions like hero and titan provide big discounts. Nerfing things in blanket terms will cause many champions to be collaterally nerfed. I do not think it will welcome powercreep if new champions are created based on the formula in place and the problem champions from that expansion are individually revised later.

EDIT: How can you take into account synergies in the costing formula? You could say well since ghost and corpeal form are OP in KF with protection and IS with RD anything in KF or IS with ghost and corpeal form will receive a +5 nora but then you are basically making a single rune change because no other rune has that combination which would be the same thing as making individual rune changes. It just complicates things for no reason

 

The formula for Cristalis should be -15 or so

 

I can agree with that if that is in fact what the end game for DoG is. The only problem is many players are becoming disgusted with the current game because no individual changes are being done. I think what is taking so long for obvious problem runes and themes is that DoG is trying to come up with a blanket change to nerf the runes that are proving troublesome which I do not believe is the proper way to go about nerfing everything. If an ability is consistently undercosted on every champion (Take root for example) then a nora cost increase for that ability is a good fix. But if Klub is nerfed by increasing the cost of charge or hero then many other runes that are already non problematic take further hits.

 

Maybe they could make grouped abilities that multiply in cost, if a champion has more than 1 ability from that group. For example Deploy Charged and Divine Wellspring or Death Charged and Unleash Memories.

Edit: Maybe those are bad examples, as they would be useless on their own, but I couldn't really come with a better one :3

 

I know what you mean and it could work. The thing is how is that different than individually nerfing a champion? Usually there is only one champion with the combination of those abilities. Just seems to be a more complicated way of doing the same thing to me. Furthermore it would limit design space in a way because any newly released champion with the same ability set would be nerfed because of a previous problem champion.

 

I said before that a cost system doesn't work, this was the case then and is still the case now.

let's say ghost costs 25 nora, and immune magical costs 8 nora.

if we put both of them on tusk right now would he still be balanced for 54 nora? Firk no. that particular ability combination could make a champ cost 150 nora and it would still break the game if anyone ever got it out, and if anyone could stop it, you could put warding on it for 8 more nora, since our costing system makes sure everything is perfectly balanced.

synergy is the largest effect on the power level of a champ, and synergy can't be quantified as easily as this system wants it to be, thus this system will never work

 

Exactly! But what DoG can do is learn from soe's mistakes and only apply cost adjustments to champions that pose an issue instead of doing it for new runes so they will sell because they are so efficient. Basically only adjust the costs of the OP champions and leaving the other champions to play by the rules of the formula.

 

But global ability pricing ISN'T done. http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/underpriced-overpriced-abilities.4815/

There remain many outlier abilities, including Titan (-8 is better than -15 but not where it needs to be). The work isn't done yet.

 

Welcome back Calisk! Just to inform you, there is a delete function on this forum.

 

awesome ^^

 

Thing is, if using a progression of refining Stat Formulas -> Ability Costs -> Individual champions, they wouldn't say "We'll nerf Klub using a cost increase to Hero" because they wouldn't be looking at Klub yet. They'd be looking at the relative power and cost of Charge and Hero versus other abilities. When all that's done is when the anomalies are addressed--stat and ability combinations that are worth way more or way less than the sum of their parts.

To clarify my stance:

I agree that blind adherence to a costing formula won't work.

I disagree with the idea that the developer's plan is to not make manual adjustments where needed.

My opinion is that the formula is being refined before the anomalies are addressed.​

 

I realize the revamp is far from a done process. Either way it is pretty obvious that certain things will synergize better than others be it because of the abilities themselves or the faction the champion belongs to. Those runes will not be fixed with a global bandaid because they will end up nerfing many runes that pose no problem. Removing abilities will make pox even more bland so I do not think that is the proper fix either.

 

I think that says more about how inherently broken Immunity: All But Magical is than anything. That doesn't mean a refined cost system can't work in most cases. Anomalies will always need addressing and certain abilities just shouldn't be combined.

 

Ah I think we have the same line of thinking then. I think we are just iffy on point 2 in that I fear that DoG may not want to make manual adjustments because of the work that went into the revamp and what occurred under the previous owners. What is adding to my concern is the fact that instead of refining the formula DoG decided to release new champions and furthermore decided to make titans and heroes playable before refining their formula. This is stuff that I do not think would be done unless DoG felt the formula was nearly complete. But I think we have the same general belief that only certain anomalies should be addressed when making manual changes to a champion.

 

I didn't think that the devs planned on leaving everything up to just the formula. I thought the plan all alone was to manually tap some champs after the formula was in a good spot.