Patch Notes 20/05/2021

[zulnam]

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? If people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

Very well put. The Realm Champion we need.

[unnakotik98]

I can't figure out a thing. Playing as WE, I see a million bugs that have not been fixed on the bugtracker since 2019 and no one cares. Such as the disappearance of the cooldown on abilities without a global cooldown, such as elixir of shadows or feinted position, I'm already silent about bugged tactics. And all I see in patchnotes is 1 ticket fix and balance changes. How can you balance things that don't work well?

[Hannesnewb]

Great point - I agree w/ you on this. We are evened out on CDR/CDI (cooldown reduce/cooldown increase), but the compositional requirements are more harsh on Destro. What about taking MSH CDI and giving it to blorc? This gives the yin/yang effect that makes this game unique and many of us like. Tank Archtypes counter eachother, DPS archtypes counter eachother. Both sides get 1 of each and its mirrored opposite the archtypes.

BO already has CDI that requires no tactics, albeit st one.

Perfect! So there is already a skill slot to put it on. Remove from SH, make blorc st skill into aoe.

One other thing to think on....shatter limbs on slayer drops rage, chop fasta does not. Both should function the same as it directly correlates to damage output. shatter limbs shouldn’t drop rage or chop fasta should drop rage.

Shatter Limbs does not drop rage

[perche]

another free nerf for engis.

[wargrimnir]

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? It people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

Exposing RC's or the devs who work on balance doesn't bring in outside perspective or constructive feedback in our experience, mostly just unwanted harassment.

One of the key points in the focus items for RC's was to avoid mirroring, the game isn't balanced that way. Many functions are mirrored across roles and can be used to enhance classes that need a bit of help getting into meta roles. There isn't an end-game for balance, it's ongoing. Changes keep things fresh, even if people are a bit apprehensive about them.

We were advised that making less frequent, but larger changes, would be preferable. This schedule fit well with what we had planned for ranked seasons. Big changes before a season starts, and all the planning and testing in-between seasons. Regarding the state of Destro, our data indicates in organized environments they perform well above average, despite RvR populations being lower. It's a trap to look at who has more population and make balance changes based on who is logging in. Outside of RvR, everything is evenly instanced, and that's where balance changes make the most impact.

[Tabelrel]

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? It people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

Exposing RC's or the devs who work on balance doesn't bring in outside perspective or constructive feedback in our experience, mostly just unwanted harassment.

One of the key points in the focus items for RC's was to avoid mirroring, the game isn't balanced that way. Many functions are mirrored across roles and can be used to enhance classes that need a bit of help getting into meta roles. There isn't an end-game for balance, it's ongoing. Changes keep things fresh, even if people are a bit apprehensive about them.

We were advised that making less frequent, but larger changes, would be preferable. This schedule fit well with what we had planned for ranked seasons. Big changes before a season starts, and all the planning and testing in-between seasons. Regarding the state of Destro, our data indicates in organized environments they perform well above average, despite RvR populations being lower. It's a trap to look at who has more population and make balance changes based on who is logging in. Outside of RvR, everything is evenly instanced, and that's where balance changes make the most impact.

Sure, absolutely agree the RC's or Devs shouldn't be harrassed in any way. Anyone who does that I have no time for, positive critiscim based on game improvement yes/ideas, attacks no. Basically, come with a solution not a problem..

I do think better transparency from these discussions is neeeded though just so the community can feedback. Would it be possible for a precis of the current discussions as they stand at any given time , that doesn't include individual RC comments be made avalable?

Personally, I'm not too bothered about the state of destro at the moment as played this game long enough to know that empires rise and fall

[Detangler]

One thing I haven't seen mention about the cooldown reducer changes and how its spread out between the realms:

Tanks - 3 types for each realm. 2 spots needed in a party. Makes it fairly easy to grab one for each party.

DPS - 6 types for reach realm. 2 spots needed in a party. Makes it much more difficult to fit in one for each party.

SM has to burn Perfect Balance every 20 seconds, while Choppa can pop it on demand once every 40 seconds. Uptime seems to be the same unless the career builder is lying to me. On paper it looks even, but when you talk party makeup, it'll be a bit harder for most parties to squeeze in a cooldown reducer on Destro now. Is it the end of the world? No, but something to keep in mind.

[wargrimnir]

Sure, absolutely agree the RC's or Devs shouldn't be harrassed in any way. Anyone who does that I have no time for, positive critiscim based on game improvement yes/ideas, attacks no. Basically, come with a solution not a problem..

I do think better transparency from these discussions is neeeded though just so the community can feedback. Would it be possible for a precis of the current discussions as they stand at any given time , that doesn't include individual RC comments be made avalable?

Personally, I'm not too bothered about the state of destro at the moment as played this game long enough to know that empires rise and fall

RC's are the community part of the feedback, they should be (to our best knowledge they were) reaching out to community members during these discussions to gather information. The whole point of bringing them in was because they were already part of the community and would serve as a better interface than devs, also giving devs time to focus on other areas of the game and not get sucked into endless balance discussions. Whether they want to extend these discussions with the community at large is up to them, but the private forums are an important space to aggregate ideas into a format that is more digestable when the dev review comes up. Just like we're not scouring the suggestion forums for all the wild balance ideas people discuss, we're not going to go digging through a public discourse thread to try and sum up for dev review either. Proper balance proposals need to go into the right forum so it's easy for us to find and disseminate, so do RC discussions.

[Sundowner]

One thing I haven't seen mention about the cooldown reducer changes and how its spread out between the realms:

Tanks - 3 types for each realm. 2 spots needed in a party. Makes it fairly easy to grab one for each party.

DPS - 6 types for reach realm. 2 spots needed in a party. Makes it much more difficult to fit in one for each party.

SM has to burn Perfect Balance every 20 seconds, while Choppa can pop it on demand once every 40 seconds. Uptime seems to be the same unless the career builder is lying to me. On paper it looks even, but when you talk party makeup, it'll be a bit harder for most parties to squeeze in a cooldown reducer on Destro now. Is it the end of the world? No, but something to keep in mind.

Very well said, given change brought to destro the problem order already has- mandating specific set-ups to be effective. i.e. Order needing SM (not very played tank) for SW, only 2 viable aoe dps, where one completely overshadows the other, etc. Maybe instead of taking away tools and limiting set-ups, doing opposite would be good for the balance.

[sighy]

Spoiler:

Just a few of thoughts, not about the individual balance changes themselves but the overall process of getting there.

Firstly, they say that justice shouldn't only be done but be seen to be done and I think here with this specific patch and the various comments from the RC's the process may not have worked as intended. While the discussions between the RC's themselves or RC's and devs shouldn't be a free for all for everyone to chip in on I think its important that those discussions should be visible to the community so they can feed back to their relevant RC's. Perhaps in that respect the discussions should be published on a forum topic, but only the RC's can post to it but allows the community to read and feed back privately to the RC's their views.

Secondly, so all these balance changes can be put in some sort of context what is the strategy that the RC's/Devs are working too. What is your end game idea guys that you are trying to achieve? It people understood a bit better where you are trying to get to I think that would add a bit of context. I personally would be sad to see a strategy where we try to perfectly mirror everything as wasn't that the unique point of AoR/RoR.

Thirdly, is this too much all at once and paraphrasing one of Bomblings comments the time is a bit awkward re the state of Destro. I can understand that constant weekly sprints is alot for a group of volunteer devs, hats off to them for doing it I wouldn't want to do it as you need a life outside RoR for sure. Although we also need to avoid the AoR situation where big changes are made on an infrequent basis and classes or the peoples perception of their class being broken and staying broken for a long period of time just turns them off the game and they never return. That ties back to the first two points of transparency and overall strategy.

Exposing RC's or the devs who work on balance doesn't bring in outside perspective or constructive feedback in our experience, mostly just unwanted harassment.

One of the key points in the focus items for RC's was to avoid mirroring, the game isn't balanced that way. Many functions are mirrored across roles and can be used to enhance classes that need a bit of help getting into meta roles. There isn't an end-game for balance, it's ongoing. Changes keep things fresh, even if people are a bit apprehensive about them.

We were advised that making less frequent, but larger changes, would be preferable. This schedule fit well with what we had planned for ranked seasons. Big changes before a season starts, and all the planning and testing in-between seasons. Regarding the state of Destro, our data indicates in organized environments they perform well above average, despite RvR populations being lower. It's a trap to look at who has more population and make balance changes based on who is logging in. Outside of RvR, everything is evenly instanced, and that's where balance changes make the most impact.

Out of curiosity. Do you have a reliable way of separating serious instances from the instances with mediocre undergeared disorganised dps and literally no tanks or healers on one side? Because when the sample size is cca 10 per city then one or more of instances like that can seriously skew the statistics you work off.

Are you planning to tweak the large sweeping changes in subsequent weeks? Or are you betting on varied comps due to lack of population of certain overtuned careers given that some players are more inflexible than others, in their willingness to reroll?