Upcoming Item Rebalancing

[bittrio]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

So, you want to turn mechanical changes into a coin, basically. Utterly hillarious.

There's a problem with this system in that it leans way too much into the other extreme. You're familiar with the concept of entropy, I'm sure? Well, it applies by proxy to any system, in fact including social systems or governments. Which is why each good system of this nature needs to have a mechanism for resetting itself once it has become too chaotic, corrupt and etc. Which means power should not be centralized in one place, true, but what you fail to account for here is that when we say "place", it refers to such things in the abstract. It means that in order for a system to function properly and self-repair, it needs to have multiple stakeholders present, that exert pressure on each other and keep each other honest.

In this case, what stakeholders do we have? The players, basically. What do players want, statistically, in a pvp game like this? They want to win. Because of this, 99% of the community falls into a mental trap of their own making, which can be accurately summarized as such: "If I lose, it's because they did something broken, dishonourable or unbalanced. If I win, it's because I'm just a better player, and deserve to win."

You can be the most reasonable, logical and level-headed person on the planet, but as long as you have any amount of ego, you will be tempted to believe this to be true. And boy, let me tell you, many players on this server don't just have "any amount of ego", they often have extremely overinflated egoes. They create a false reality in which they themselves choose to live, because it is safer and more gratifying to believe your own bullshit, rather than face the truth. And not only that, if they end up being a guild leader or a warband leader, they will then actively enforce this warped prism on their players, who, by the way, also would rather believe that the enemy cheated in some fashion that admit they lost because of their own mistakes or because the other side just outplayed them. It turns into a boiling soup, in which the longer you simmer, the more your own ego inflates, and which then circles back around to forcing the leaders to maintain the illusion, because if at any point in time the idea that these leaders are the best in the server shows cracks or weakness, suddenly a lot of players who have grown addicted to thinking themselves "elite" will question them and leave for other guilds.

That's the reality of the server. But this is just warbands and guilds we're talking about; random guildless pugs that constitute the majority of the playerbase are EVEN MORE susceptible to falling for this trap. "Guards is too powerful", "Healers are OP". "DPS don't do anything in this game", "I should be able to enjoy the game without needing to be in an organized voice chat 6 man for SC's and 24 man for warbands", "Don't even talk to me about my tank needing to punt away their tank, what bullshit game design" - all these you will see on this forum with a frightening degree of regularity, and all of them are an excuse players tell themselves so that they don't have to live with the reality that another player might be better at this video game than them, and that they might still have something to learn.

Would you trust the entire game balance into a decentralized decentralized system where every single actor remains pretty much anonymous in their "suggestions", and is actively incentivized to be injust and rule the game balance such that it is favorable to them, as opposed to their opposition, which then creates a negative feedback loop, where they begin to win more often, thus accumulate currency more often, thus have some of the more weaker-willed players join their faction and speed up this currency generation, and cause the balance to tilt even further?

I wouldn't. Having game devs be in control, but more or less be beholden to the public opinion is a better system, that will cause the balance to be closer to a truly balanced gamestate, because community backlash will create a voice that will have to be heard, and then considered. Even if nothing is done, if the problem the community is pointing out is real, and not just imagined, or borne of fear of change, or just hurt the nostalgia of 50 year old dadgamers who used to play this game back in the day and thought it was way better (even if it wasn't); then that voice will not go away and will continue to be persistent and coming from multiple people. The team will eventually get fed up and fix it.

Anyway, this was obviously a troll post. But the idea of turning MMO game balance into a rocksprinkler rocks is a hillariously fun mental exercise to tackle. Thanks for that.

Decentralized balance isn't turning mechanics into a coin,(we could use the same gold in game) it's removing the devs ability to play favorites while pretending they don't. Devs play the same game we do. They have guilds, mains, alts, and egos too. The difference? When a devs class or playstyle gets nerfed, they can just... not nerf it. Or buff their favorite class. Players can't separate their egos from balance opinions, I'll buy that, but devs magically can? That's the real joke.

In a decentralized system, everyone’s bias is out in the open and priced in, we're all voting in our best interest. Which would make ROR awesome, it would be a true players game. No hidden bias. Power is distributed and self correcting through skin in the game amongst a wide group of players.

Centralized oversight just concentrates the exact ego problem you described, at the top, where it’s the hardest to challenge. Decentralizing games is not a troll, I understand it's hard to grasp, but the real illusion is thinking devs are neutral gods without egos. They're humans as well.

Even if devs make some, or even the majority of decisions based on their egos, that will still cause community backlash when enough disbalance is introduced into the system. Let's say devs are destro players, and buff destro; even if they do this in a very subtle way, it will over time cause the faction to grow stronger, as it begins to win more often, and accumulate more players and so on and so on. Eventually order players will begin to complain. Then they will keep complaining and complaining and complaining until something is done about it, and this has worked in the past this exact way. There's resistance whenever the system is tilted too much in another direction, ensuring it doesn't topple over. It's a pendulum that, when put into motion by such intent, will eventually swing back to the middle. There have been massive server dramas in the past that caused the retirement of unpopular game devs because their balancing has generated enough resentment in the community that it was either that, or the server collapses. Rest assured, if a game devs ego gets to that same point, it will begin to generate the same resentment.

What you're suggesting is essentially that the side which has more players that are more active get to decide the game balance. So they decide it, then the balance tips in their favor, because they are obviously going to make biased votes; in fact they won't even be called out for doing so, since that's the whole point of such a system. So now it topples in favor of those players preferred faction, which initiates a death spiral, where those players win more, vote more, tilt the balance more, until the entire thing topples and you have to hit a hard reset for it to be functional. Which means someone will need access to a hard reset button, which centralizes veto powers somewhere, and at which point this whole cycle was pointless in the first place.

Both systems face the same core issue: human ego and bias in game balance decisions. Both systems have strengths, weaknesses and risks of failure. We could go round and round on this.

Decentralization doesn't eliminate bias, it makes it transparent and distributed. Instead of concentrating power (and ego) in a small dev team that claims neutrality while playing the game (which your post clearly explains why humans cannot, it is in fact impossible), it spreads accountability across participants with skin in the game. The pendulum of imbalance exists in both approaches.

Decentralized systems simply remove the illusion of impartial central authority and replaces hidden influence with visible, incentive driven corrections. No secret arbiters required, just honest acknowledgment that everyone, devs included, brings their own bias to the table. Ultimately, true balance emerges better from open incentives than from trusting a few to rise above the very dynamics they manage (again, impossible for humans). Human history is proof of this. Things get bad until we blow everything up and start over, only to recreate the same problems with new rulers.

Gaming is a great place to implement something like this and ROR would be a really good fit for a player based system. A lot of passionate players here, a lot of adults, long time players and a history of devs making changes that the community has not been in favor of.

Maybe the devs will see this and implement more voting mechanics in the game. We won't go fully decentralized, but will give the players more of a meaningful voice.

[Gaave]

Can we get Regen Items squashed to them no longer existing?

[nocturnalguest]

... but will give the players more of a meaningful voice.

For what exactly? It will not "balance" itself out, it will lead to what Giladar already mentioned - chaos and hard reset. Most of what people say here on forums, on RoR discord comes from lack of knowledge and experience (millions of solo threads, WE OP, mara is crap, buff my BG and other current things), majority just dont understand game mechanics at all (not their fault tho, almost no public info on anything, the need to manually check and test alot of things etc). Even this thread is getting flooded with "regen fighters" while it has been already decomposed to atoms what exactly will happen in this case for their solo yolo adventures. But folks still dont know.

Its somewhat working because at least current balance team is experienced players with knowledge. They do actually know better then most. Valid target may be their design vision and is a matter of debates. Many previous teams have been arguable experienced and knowledgable as well, but with different design vision, different definitions of "fun" gameplay etc. Some "outliners" who touched balance has left or been stopped as Giladar rightfully mentioned. Current system already has some selfcleanse by default.

Anonymous (or not) voice of the very people will just create havoc in a different way then whats currently happening and lead to another random revamp of something. I cant see it being anyhow better (or even somewhat working) on practice for RoR balance, while i generally agree with philosophy you described here (which is pretty revolutional). My life experience tells me world havent seen such happening.

[bittrio]

... but will give the players more of a meaningful voice.

For what exactly? It will not "balance" itself out, it will lead to what Giladar already mentioned - chaos and hard reset. Most of what people say here on forums, on RoR discord comes from lack of knowledge and experience (millions of solo threads, WE OP, mara is crap, buff my BG and other current things), majority just dont understand game mechanics at all (not their fault tho, almost no public info on anything, the need to manually check and test alot of things etc). Even this thread is getting flooded with "regen fighters" while it has been already decomposed to atoms what exactly will happen in this case for their solo yolo adventures. But folks still dont know.

Its somewhat working because at least current balance team is experienced players with knowledge. They do actually know better then most. Valid target may be their design vision and is a matter of debates. Many previous teams have been arguable experienced and knowledgable as well, but with different design vision, different definitions of "fun" gameplay etc. Some "outliners" who touched balance has left or been stopped as Giladar rightfully mentioned. Current system already has some selfcleanse by default.

Anonymous (or not) voice of the very people will just create havoc in a different way then whats currently happening and lead to another random revamp of something. I cant see it being anyhow better (or even somewhat working) on practice for RoR balance, while i generally agree with philosophy you described here (which is pretty revolutional). My life experience tells me world havent seen such happening.

I'll explain my logic.

Decentralized balance may appear chaotic on the surface. It's scary - Who's in control!? Ahh!!! Flooded suggestions, biased votes, unexperienced players... but that surface noise is exactly how self correction works. The system either finds equilibrium through transparent incentives and distributed accountability, or it fails and dies. A new game or fork of the game, ROR2 emerges, carrying forward the lessons of the previous attempt. This is not disorder, it's error correction, aka intelligence.

Each iteration refines the rules, raises the quality floor, and weeds out designs that concentrate power in ways that invite hidden bias or collapse. Centralized systems, by contrast, suppress that natural feedback loop. They mask ego driven decisions behind “expert” authority, we know best - trust me bro, until the imbalance grows large enough to trigger the very server shattering drama and hard resets we all want to avoid. One team’s blind spot becomes everyone’s crisis. It just makes everyone feel safe because there's a dev team to pick up the pieces and keep everything together and they do keep it together, that's one of the strengths of a centralized system. Even if it's the same flawed system with minor tweaks, it stays together. Even if there's a declining player base, the centralized authority can keep it up and running.

Decentralization embraces the reality that devs are players too. It replaces fragile top down control with a living, adaptive process: try, test, evolve or perish.

Over time, the survivors are the systems that best align incentives with genuine balance, because only those survive the market test of player retention. That is not havoc. That is how robust, antifragile systems improve in the real world.

It may not work for ROR, even though I think it's a near perfect fit, but it certainly will be the future of gaming and all tech believe it or not.

[Aluviya]

As one of the minute-one veterans, I would like to offer a few points of reflection:

• What is the rationale behind rebalancing items while the broader class rebalance remains ongoing, particularly when that process has yet to yield a state that could meaningfully be described as more balanced than the project’s original baseline?

• This is a private project — I understand that. However, why does the current situation create the impression of fragmented efforts rather than coordinated development?

• This invites the question of whether another balance-focused team (again working asynchronously) is being established, and whether this might once again follow recruitment approaches that have previously proven contentious.

A brief underlying reflection: while new ideas are always welcome, this once again reflects a recurring pattern in which the project appears to prioritize the introduction of new initiatives over consolidating and coherently integrating existing ones into the overall system.

[nocturnalguest]

Decentralization embraces the reality that devs are players too. It replaces fragile top down control with a living, adaptive process: try, test, evolve or perish.

Over time, the survivors are the systems that best align incentives with genuine balance, because only those survive the market test of player retention. That is not havoc. That is how robust, antifragile systems improve in the real world.

It may not work for ROR, even though I think it's a near perfect fit, but it certainly will be the future of gaming and all tech believe it or not.

Thanks for taking your time to post. Logic is clear.

I wish to see a day then "try, test, evolve or perish" becomes true and launched. And yes, i believe it will happen in future, thats the only logical way of evolution. But i just dont believe we are at the point then such changes may start to happen.