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Raybarg

What does Balanced mean?

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Remember how I was recently (half) joking about the Keepers of the Twelve Doctrines of Wurm? (Of course you remember, I'm famous).

 

 

Of course devs will mostly stick to nerfs.  Imagine the horror if they make something non-tedious and actually amusing, the Keepers would go absolutely insane.  After all, filthy casuals don't deserve to mooch off the hard work and effort of the Ancients (top tier of the Keepers), and much less be able to not suffer a bad mechanic from ten years ago.

 

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I think it is worth trying for a while before leaping to conclusions.  I have played a bit of every priest and while i do not like changes that break my rhythm i have to say this really does not sound that bad.  I used my Nahjo to fill gems for my other priests.  I could spend a few weeks farming and put back 10k+ veggies for sac and my Nahjo was more useful for utility than all my other priests mainly due to the easily attainable sac. And the few spells i used on my other priests, such as my Fo for rifts when that started i simply used gems which my Nahjo priest also could produce because she could mine.

 

I can make good locks, cloth, and yoyos, and I could make decent rope, but time required to get equivalent sac as veggies was not remotely balanced.  Not in favor of nerfs for balance; and nerfs for balance are rarely a good thing, but maybe, just maybe, this will not be so bad.

 

I had already planned to combine all my skills into my main when i came back to wurm and keep one or two priests going forward.  I had already planned to convert my main Nahjo (yes i had two as they were so much easier to level channeling on before converting due almost entirely to the sac) to something else, this change actually makes my other priest sound like less work and not so much a waste of money for what i get out of them.

 

Edit, and if it totally sucks i hope Retro/devs are good for their word to tweak to the positive/QoL

 

Edited by ClericGunem
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You know what? I'm done caring.

Edited by Dairuka
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8 minutes ago, Dairuka said:

Rather than leaping to conclusions, I just crunched the numbers instead.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IVhhE_g0hU06j7Cctmu49vdkYxS-_9DJZ6HatUcJzvw/edit

 

The only variable I couldn't include was "Timers", because I have no accurate way of logging timers due to a lack of perfectly 90 skill/90 tool skill characters, with 90ql tools without WoA.

 

Instead I had to factor in "timers" as just "actions", with the general cost of 10i being attributed to each action.

 

The results are:

 

  Cloth Squares Door Locks Yoyos Chopped Vegetables
Favor per iron, NGA - Mat Costs Only 2.028 favor per iron 0.9652 favor per iron 1.1439 favor per iron 0.5 favor per iron
Favor per iron, w/GA - Mat Costs Only 4.056 favor per iron 1.9304 favor per iron 1.6149 favor per iron 0.625 favor per iron
Favor per iron, NGA - Total Cost 0.2645 favor per iron 0.3619 favor per iron 0.1492 favor per iron 0.25 favor per iron
Favor per iron, w/GA - Total Cost 0.5290 favor per iron 0.7239 favor per iron 0.2984 favor per iron 0.3125 favor per iron
StF Favor per iron, NGA - Total Cost 0.2524 favor per iron 0.3619 favor per iron 0.1436 favor per iron 0.25 favor per iron
StF Favor per iron, w/GA - Total Cost 0.5048 favor per iron 0.7239 favor per iron 0.2872 favor per iron 0.3125 favor per iron
NGA = No God Affinity.        
w/GA = With God Affinity.        
StF = From Start To Finish        

 

good stuff, but what about cordage and alchemy items.  Chopped being the new common i would expect it to be lower

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32 minutes ago, ClericGunem said:

 

good stuff, but what about cordage and alchemy items.  Chopped being the new common i would expect it to be lower

 

I'm only including items with affinity bonuses for their gods. This was meant to give chopped vegetables an honest comparison to their counterparts. This is essentially my way of reminding the Devs, even with their recent boost - they still overnerfed. I'm not going to count Butchering or Alchemy items at all. They are not reliable for mass production. They will never be used beyond the occasional bonus for a priest who is grinding.

 

My suggestion to correct this issue isn't to increase the favor amount of chopped vegetables - but to instead, allow us to "chop" 1 crop, 2 times, for 2 chopped vegetables per 1 crop. This meaning the number of actions remains the same - but the materials used is effectively halved, putting it on par with Cloth Squares. (It'd also make them marginally more useful than Door Locks for Nahjo/Libila) -- The only other way would be to marginally increase the favor gain of chopped vegetables even more. (Which should also be considered in small increments to make door locks less appealing than Chopped Vegetables.)

 

Yoyos are another, more complicated story that also needs serious addressing. (I'd start by lowering their difficulty to 1... Might want to add another cheap "toymaking" item at 15 - 20 difficulty, for priests to grind on with creation to avoid the Coordage Rope lowered difficulty backlash.) I'm firmly rooted in my belief that there needs to be an option for 'all' forms of common favor items to have a method of storage that makes them convenient for priests. The advantage Cloth Squares and Chopped Vegetables have in this regard is unfair to Door Locks and Yoyo users.

 

I'll add Coordage Rope to the list, without affinities tomorrow. I really don't want to add butchering/alchemy items, because it'd be a misnomer. They simply can not be reliably mass produced.

 

Edited by Dairuka

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16 hours ago, Raybarg said:

It is possible there is only choice existing; you choose to balance it or you choose to keep it unbalanced and maintain a ratio of choices where development changes simply fluctuate the FOTMs.

 

Your OP points out what I see a big negative in the way Wurm Online ideal is followed in a give and take manner. Give some benefits in one area and then negate them in another area to pursue a state of "balance" in the total gameplay concept.

 

I think the game would be much more enjoyable to play if unbalanced concepts were pursued. By this I mean certain aspects of it could have advantages that other aspects of it do not. I guess the main way this is exhibited now is between regular characters and priest characters in that each has abilities that the other class doesn't. Yet this should be embraced more within skillsets where higher skill levels would grant much more benefits than lower levels. This should then be applied to timers, success rates and qualities of items produced.

 

Of course the more progressive WU servers are actually setup on this basis where the timers, skill gains and other perks are way beyond what WO offers. Fortunately now this option is open for all who find the give and take nullifications of WO too much to bear, as well as other overdone tedium's which are thought to make WO play more worthwhile.

 

Perhaps the unbalanced are merely able to perceive things that the balanced are not, which then leads to a wider range of vision for seemingly endless possibilities. Who knows...

 

=Ayes=

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1 hour ago, Ayes said:

 

Your OP points out what I see a big negative in the way Wurm Online ideal is followed in a give and take manner. Give some benefits in one area and then negate them in another area to pursue a state of "balance" in the total gameplay concept.

 

I think the game would be much more enjoyable to play if unbalanced concepts were pursued. By this I mean certain aspects of it could have advantages that other aspects of it do not. I guess the main way this is exhibited now is between regular characters and priest characters in that each has abilities that the other class doesn't. Yet this should be embraced more within skillsets where higher skill levels would grant much more benefits than lower levels. This should then be applied to timers, success rates and qualities of items produced.

 

Of course the more progressive WU servers are actually setup on this basis where the timers, skill gains and other perks are way beyond what WO offers. Fortunately now this option is open for all who find the give and take nullifications of WO too much to bear, as well as other overdone tedium's which are thought to make WO play more worthwhile.

 

Perhaps the unbalanced are merely able to perceive things that the balanced are not, which then leads to a wider range of vision for seemingly endless possibilities. Who knows...

 

=Ayes=

 

We had an unbalanced concept before with cropsaccing as it was. Material costs were higher per favor, in return for lower action costs. People love to cry about how cropsaccing was overpowered, but nobody is talking about 'how' they were overpowered.

 

By adopting a "eh, things are just better off unbalanced" approach now, just indicates laziness in design. They could've just as easily left well enough alone before.

 

Now, they've opened pandora's box with these Nahjo changes. It's time to get all favor buffed in return.

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Less Pandora, more Sheogorath.

 

Tbh, I see us as approaching a deciding point, where the scope of the big picture is going to need to be realigned in a big way. Roadmaps are nice and well, but what we have are ten years of adjustments and tweaks and changes outright which have left a slight mess.

So, to reiterate a point, this is a good move, but not a total fix.

What needs to be done is still the same, a rebalancing of faith, favour, magic/sorcery, and even the new runes should they come up as imbalanced with changes.

The reason I say this, is that there still isn't any real give/take. We've painted the armor, but its still the same shortlist of skills to make the cookie cutters of WO. The fact that it revolves means nothing.

"I keep cutting, but it's still too short!"

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When considering cropsac and its existence for Libila for so long, constrained within Chaos (but products not constrained). Libila has quite a set of nice spells. But they cant farm their own crops.

 

But...

 

Then came cropsac-Nahjo with its almost perfect set of spells. Nahjo compacted most of what is being wanted from Mag and Fo into single priest type with the best favor source. Anyone asking "how to make high channeling priest?" and answer would been Nahjo. Then thinking about having Aosp/Woa/Courier/Mend/Genesis/Strongwall/LT/MS/FB... not to mention combat spells/buffs etc... and give such a collection favor source such as cropsac which Nahjo priest can farm all by themselves.

 

Before new flavors of priest it all made sort of sense with pinch of "Balance" in it.

- Vyn best set of enchants, worst kind of doublefavor. Can produce their own sacs.

- Fo combat healer with some useful spells with good doublefavor. Can produce their own sacs

- Mag combat priest with some useful spells with good doublefavor. Can produce their own sacs

- Libila combat priest with good set of useful spells with best doublefavor. Cannot produce their own sacs.

 

Add Nacho in the list:

- Nahjo combathealer priest with best set of useful spells with best doublefavor. Can produce their own sacs.

 

I am personally happy that cropsac is gone, but in all sense it wasn't the issue while it was a "Libila thing". This thread was started in order to talk about "What does balance mean?" when my personal standpoint is that nothing ever is just single variable but many. Community diverted the focus point of "talking about balance" into "talking about balance of priests favor sacs" which should have been expected given how hot the topic of favor sacs currently is so I am not complaining. Also my view to priests balances and favor sacs balances interconnected is simple scraping the surface. Just wanted to show how my talk about the "FOTMism" applies to Wurm priests and their doublesacs.

Edited by Raybarg
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I've said it a million times, Balance is a function of business requirements and value.  It seems a daft argument to this crowd.

 

A lot of decisions are based on this micro-level understanding of 'gameplay' and how it relates to balance without having any real strategic thought. The whack-a-mole sums it up, but would work if someone actually had the audacity and strength to think beyond band-aid fixes that come to the attention of dev's from self-interested gamers.

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3 hours ago, Raybarg said:

Community diverted the focus point of "talking about balance" into "talking about balance of priests favor sacs" which should have been expected given how hot the topic of favor sacs currently is so I am not complaining.

Because balancing combat is hard work and balancing favor is a piece of cake compared to it.

Edited by zigozag

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On 11/23/2016 at 2:12 AM, Shazaam said:

I've said it a million times, Balance is a function of business requirements and value.  It seems a daft argument to this crowd.

 

 

Business requirement: Keep enough players amused and playing, and SPECIALLY... SPECIALLY.. paying.
-  Good idea:  Keep them happy with new stuff, nothing too OP to avoid cookie cutter syndrome.
-  Bad idea:  Let OP stuff happen, give people time to invest needlessly waste cash on it and get used to it, then nerf it along with older stuff that was working fine.

 

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Balance varies based on context:

 

PvP (or any heavily "competitive" area) - Even playing field between two factions, no one side should have more mechanical advantages/disadvantages than any other.  Example: Chess

PvE (or any non "competitive" area) - Avoiding making the game too easy via exploits and/or broken mechanics.  Example: Solitair

 

Wurm has had trouble doing both of these since both of these goals don't mesh too well.

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8 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

Balance varies based on context:

 

PvP (or any heavily "competitive" area) - Even playing field between two factions, no one side should have more mechanical advantages/disadvantages than any other.  Example: Chess

PvE (or any non "competitive" area) - Avoiding making the game too easy via exploits and/or broken mechanics.  Example: Solitair

 

Wurm has had trouble doing both of these since both of these goals don't mesh too well.

Chess is bad example tbh. It is a good example about controlled environment, where each side is copy of each other in the beginning. That doesn't work in games in open world PvP. You can never have two exactly the same encounters. There is always something different. Considering this we can't talk about balancing. What do you want to balance? 1vs1? Balance that, but next fight there will be 2vs1.. 10vs4.. etc.. etc, is it balanced then? Add different skillsets, environment to the mix and you see that it is impossible to talk about balance in Wurm.

 

Also the population on PvP is sorta broken. That is is one part, where trading of toons hurts the game. The character's power would be more evenly spread out, if there would be no influx from "external sources". That would mean, that there would be less high level characters, which would make it possible for lesser skilled players easier to "blend in".

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The notion here is that for a balanced game, if both sides play just as long and just as "efficiently" and have the same number of players neither should be able to win.

 

Chess is a poor example (no perfectly balanced PvP game sprang to mind) however the point is that the outcome of the game is based soley on player skill, not a mechanic that offers advantage.  A very important point in balance is that no player should end up "immortal", that is in an engagement there is always a risk, even for those players who have sunk years into the game, this is where the chess example really fails to capture the notion of PvP balance.  A better notion would be comparing it to LoL, though of course LoL has its own balance issues.

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If something is flavor of the month, it is the best in every situation. Thats unbalanced. Everything has to have weaknesses that can be exploited by other things. Combat triangle ftw.

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