Temporary Ability Test

[Shima]

oh man, I prayed for never have to test this "patch of the death".

[Hugatsaga]

Good thing (if you are ability rework fan that is) is that theres so many headline-grabbing bugs that many people are not even noticing how around 50% of the classes in the game are now considerably less fun to play. Also good thing (if you are not ability rework fan) is that this is gone by tomrrow and can go back to business as usual at least for a while still. Positive vibes all around.

[oaliaen]

Theres no ability rework in here..just a big nerf. Weak classes being more weak like choppa and op classes like SL perpetuating even whit the nerfs.

[Hazmy]

I think it has been badly communicated - but you all have to understand.

These are NOT balance changes, nor is this a balance patch. This is a "side-effect" of switching in the new Ability System that they could not 100% copy the current game for, for various reasons.

It's a NEW fresh template that will get balances changes afterwards - imagine a wound with dozens of stiches on it, now all those stiches are torn away and the wound will be properly treated, easier and better!

[Hugatsaga]

I think it has been badly communicated - but you all have to understand.

These are NOT balance changes, nor is this a balance patch. This is a "side-effect" of switching in the new Ability System that they could not 100% copy the current game for, for various reasons.

It's a NEW fresh template that will get balances changes afterwards - imagine a wound with dozens of stiches on it, now all those stiches are torn away and the wound will be properly treated, easier and better!

Unless they bring it back to 100% similar what it was before, this is a balance patch no matter how its being marketed. Even tiniest changes to classes have some effect on game balance and are therefore balance changes. If for instance SW can't do undefendable festers after the rework with vengeance up and could do them before it does affect game balance and is therefore a balance change right or wrong if you cut through the BS. Calling it anything else is pretty much fraudulent marketing. But then again it is just way easier to sell SW Engy etc nerfs to people when you tell those are somehow mandatory in order to take this game forward or selectively use "we are taking this back towards live" argument if applicable (and have half of the people fantasizing about resolute defences and vulture lords and whatnot when it's really just used as argument to justify nerf to x class). Honest way of presenting this would be saying that this is big balance patch #1 but big balance patch #2 is being planned and may or may not happen sometime in future.

[Hazmy]

Unless they bring it back to 100% similar what it was before, this is a balance patch no matter how its being marketed. Even tiniest changes to classes have some effect on game balance and are therefore balance changes. If for instance SW can't do undefendable festers after the rework with vengeance up and could do them before it does affect a game balance and is therefore a balance change right or wrong if you cut through the BS. Calling it anything else is pretty much fraudulent marketing. But then again it is just way easier to sell SW Engy etc nerfs to people when you tell those are somehow mandatory in order to take this game forward or selectively use "we are taking this back towards live" argument if applicable. Honest way of presenting this would be saying that this is big balance patch #1 but big balance patch #2 is being planned and may or may not happen sometime in future.

In the perfect World, bringing it back 100% to what it was before would be possible - but this is a dead game that has been offline for 10 years and information on it and resources are very scarce - not to mention that all of this and the server is run by a small volunteer crew. Proper perspective and realistic outlook is necessary here.

The server also didn't start with the thought they will ever make an Ability Rework like this and so they don't have all the changes logged - which I would say is a blunder - but regardless, this is still NOT a Balance Patch.

Just like you wouldn't call a Rollback of your character "balancing" as there is proper context behind it. This is a kind of Rollback of the server's Ability System to a state they have proper information about, that has side-effects of abilities changing and will have to be re-balanced.

In the end you can simplify and cut out all the context that is necessary to fully understand what is happening currently - but in that case it's not the marketing that is fraudulent or dishonest - but it's a refusal to accept the realities of programming this new system, that they have been pretty deep and honest about.

[Hugatsaga]

Patch notes: "Fester getting nerfed" - people here: "not a balance change"
Patch notes: "Engi range getting nerfed" - people here: "not a balance change"
Patch notes: "WE & WH left tree getting hella nerfs" - people here: "not a balance change"

Either you guys are way too smart or this is straight from Animal Farm with 2 animals running the show and lot of you doing what the sheeps do.

[Hazmy]

Patch notes: "Fester getting nerfed" - people here: "not a balance change"
Patch notes: "Engi range getting nerfed" - people here: "not a balance change"
Patch notes: "WE & WH left tree getting hella nerfs" - people here: "not a balance change"

Either you guys are way too smart or this is straight from Animal Farm with 2 animals running the show and lot of you doing what the sheeps do.

Quotation only works when you use it correctly - in this case you are misquoting the patch-notes and you yourelf are misinterpreting it as a balance-patch with "nerfs/buffs" - despite the update clearly saying these are temporary side-effects that will be urgently changed thereafter, they never called them nerfs or buffs, nor are they any of those. A Nerf or a Buff in patch would normally have to be intended - which these are clearly not and they don't wish to keep this state of the game any longer than necessary.

That's the part a lot of people don't read / understand or just staight up refuse to accept.

If a crack appears on the highway, that isn't the new standard quality of the road - that's a temporary hickup that is set to be fixed on the earliest time. The initial state of the game after the Ability Rework - is a crack that will be worked on asap.

[iraoul]

Quotation only works when you use it correctly - in this case you are misquoting the patch-notes and you yourelf are misinterpreting it as a balance-patch with "nerfs/buffs" - despite the update clearly saying these are temporary side-effects that will be urgently changed thereafter, they never called them nerfs or buffs, nor are they any of those. A Nerf or a Buff in patch would normally have to be intended - which these are clearly not and they don't wish to keep this state of the game any longer than necessary.

That's the part a lot of people don't read / understand or just staight up refuse to accept.

If a crack appears on the highway, that isn't the new standard quality of the road - that's a temporary hickup that is set to be fixed on the earliest time. The initial state of the game after the Ability Rework - is a crack that will be worked on asap.

[Hazmy]

Yes, a massive ability rework will result in Balance Changes for a temporary time - still the CHANGE itself is not an intended buff or nerf they wish to keep - it's the side-effect of the new blank template.

The goal according to their blog is reset certain abilities to a stable point they could get - from which they can reliably fix and balance it MUCH EASIER AND FASTER with the new system.

READ their blog about it : viewtopic.php?t=51417

Yes it is long - but if you don't read it, then the discussions are pointless.

Most important part:

Once we had an ability engine that worked with 1.4.8 data in game passing all of our tests there was something else we needed to consider. Over the years we have made lots of changes to balance and these changes were obviously not in the 1.4.8 data. We had to then see what amendments could be made to add back in the Return of Reckoning changes. However, it was not really clear what the straight changes would be, so we had to build a tool to compare all of the data we could, along with the incremental patch notes over the years to build a complete “1.4.8 to Return of Reckoning” patch notes. Then we had to see what was possible to implement, what changes were added due to limitations in the existing ability system, which changes would we do differently and how long it would take to implement these changes.

According to this some changes are simply not possible, or should not be added into this new system - since they were "bandaid" fixes to an already broken ability - system. The new Ability System will require to re-visit these balance changes and re-apply them with the new structure and method, with a probability of making it much better than before.

Also most importantly - the new system allows them to do LIVE changes without any client patching, which makes this one of the biggest and best updates in the history of RoR. They will be able to fix / balance / add abilities without having to train new personal to code the game.

The outrage over this shows most people here have absolutely no clue what's really going on and have not read the news.