Patch Notes 04/01/2020

[Cornerback]

Just as an FYI, the balance changes to Knight/Chosen are just a test - as with any changes, they may not be permanent and we're keeping an eye on this thread for feedback as well as engaging with community members about the changes.
The WH/WE nerf to morale gain was due to the ability overperforming, and was changed as a result of feedback from the community.

The dyes are also changing again, I would highly not recommend using the items and keeping them safely in your bags until the next patch hits.

Keep the feedback coming and keep it constructive as possible, please

TBH, if I had a priorized backlog of things the game "needs" and that make sense in the current state of the game, the change to chosen/kotbs/WH/WE would not even make it to said backlog...
Really wondering where you are getting your ideas for those tests from. No offense here, I'm really wondering how you do this. You might be generating quite a bit of "waste" (in terms of time wasted) here.

[Secrets]

Just as an FYI, the balance changes to Knight/Chosen are just a test - as with any changes, they may not be permanent and we're keeping an eye on this thread for feedback as well as engaging with community members about the changes.
The WH/WE nerf to morale gain was due to the ability overperforming, and was changed as a result of feedback from the community.

The dyes are also changing again, I would highly not recommend using the items and keeping them safely in your bags until the next patch hits.

Keep the feedback coming and keep it constructive as possible, please

TBH, if I had a priorized backlog of things the game "needs" and that make sense in the current state of the game, the change to chosen/kotbs/WH/WE would not even make it to said backlog...
Really wondering where you are getting your ideas for those tests from. No offense here, I'm really wondering how you do this. You might be generating quite a bit of "waste" (in terms of time wasted) here.

The reason for the change isn't my idea. I made changes based on what the leads decide on.

I defer to Natherul, as it is his change and he should be able to answer as to why he made the changes.

[Skullgrin]

Hmm, my initial thoughts on the Chosen changes for this patch, feel free to take them with a grin of salt as I haven't yet logged in to try them out...

- Daemonclaw changed to proc on parry and not critical hit with great weapon.

Well, I've got around 20% crit rate with oppressing blows, but a 40% parry rate that jumps to 65% with suppression. So, double to triple the chance for Daemonclaw to proc. Add in the 10% or so I'll get from the Weapon Skill bonus that Daemonclaw gives for a total of 75% parry. To me it looks like once this version of Daemonclaw procs, chances are it will be up permanently for the rest of the fight! Bring on the permanent 75% parry chance and +100 to Strength! (really don't think this was thought through, but hey, I'll take advantage of it if they're gonna leave it in game).

The only situation this is bad in is a 1v1 against someone who doesn't do physical damage that you can parry, but anymore I see those types running with either a tank or DPS so it will generally be rare. In a Warband situation this will usually have no effect because as a tank you are the focus of all types of damage.

- Daemonclaw now buffs Strength and Weaponskill.

Removes the +100 to Initiative, which makes you a bit squishier, but you should've been below 0% chance to be crit already (and I am) so, meh.

- Critical Suppression removed and exchanged with Discordant Winds.

Critical suppression was a situational rarely used tactic for me anyway. What's Discordant Winds?

- Discordant Winds change all damage to spirit damage but the chosen receives 20% less incoming healing.

Ah, this is Discordant Winds! Looks completely useless (I already do plenty of Spirit damage) and I can't really imagine a use for it even running solo, where the healing debuff wouldn't matter.

If you ever wonder why we don't touch balance for months at a time, this thread is a great example. It brings out the worst in people posting on the forums. Imagine if we actually started making large changes.

Oh god, please do! Watching people freak out over what happens in a game, (albeit a very fun one) is inordinately entertaining. Look forward to testing this stuff once I have a chance to log in!

[wargrimnir]

True story. Coming from an agile software development background, you ideally want to minimize waste and work as "customer" centric as possible. You ideally do this by creating a vision, sharing this vision, collectting feedback on this vision and then incrementally implementing it using short feedback loops to inspect and adapt as needed. Simply implementing changes without checking if the "customer" actually wants them is quite an anti-pattern. So is not reverting/adapting them if the feedback is negative (see stuff like melee squig).

You're not customers. We're not selling you anything.
This concept that everything needs to be customer-centric ignores the bitter that comes before the sweet.
In a business, yes, you want to sell as much as possible. Jam-pack your product with as much saccharine sugar-crack as possible to ensure you're getting the most value for the time invested. Games have become so emotionally manipulative to ensure the "customer" is HAPPY FUN GOOD feeling they miss the adversity and chaos that brings out other important emotions.

If we stuck solely to "modern" game dev methods, nerfs would not be allowed, only buffs.
Players are never allowed to suffer, or wait, or be put into unfair situations. They will immediately quit and find something else to do you know.
They are always, constantly, and heavily rewarded, with a clear path to the best stuff over the least amount of time. Grinding is anti-consumer! Maybe!
Everything can be accomplished solo, within 30 minutes of time invested, and even that is probably too long for the gnat-like attention-span of "modern" gamers.
If someone shitposts hard enough on social media, CHANGE IT. That's called corporate social responsibility or something. Dye your hair purple.

I could probably go on, but I'm tired and need a nap. Get off my lawn zoomer.

[Cornerback]

True story. Coming from an agile software development background, you ideally want to minimize waste and work as "customer" centric as possible. You ideally do this by creating a vision, sharing this vision, collectting feedback on this vision and then incrementally implementing it using short feedback loops to inspect and adapt as needed. Simply implementing changes without checking if the "customer" actually wants them is quite an anti-pattern. So is not reverting/adapting them if the feedback is negative (see stuff like melee squig).

You're not customers. We're not selling you anything.
This concept that everything needs to be customer-centric ignores the bitter that comes before the sweet.
In a business, yes, you want to sell as much as possible. Jam-pack your product with as much saccharine sugar-crack as possible to ensure you're getting the most value for the time invested. Games have become so emotionally manipulative to ensure the "customer" is HAPPY FUN GOOD feeling they miss the adversity and chaos that brings out other important emotions.

If we stuck solely to "modern" game dev methods, nerfs would not be allowed, only buffs.
Players are never allowed to suffer, or wait, or be put into unfair situations. They will immediately quit and find something else to do you know.
They are always, constantly, and heavily rewarded, with a clear path to the best stuff over the least amount of time. Grinding is anti-consumer! Maybe!
Everything can be accomplished solo, within 30 minutes of time invested, and even that is probably too long for the gnat-like attention-span of "modern" gamers.
If someone shitposts hard enough on social media, CHANGE IT. That's called corporate social responsibility or something. Dye your hair purple.

I could probably go on, but I'm tired and need a nap. Get off my lawn zoomer.

You totally missed the point. Nerf as much as you like. Its not about nerf/buff/making classes stronger. Just work on things that need to be worked on.

Also, we are no customers. Thats why I put it in quotes. Then again, who are you working for? The community? Or a team of 5 devs?

[Cornerback]

Just as an FYI, the balance changes to Knight/Chosen are just a test - as with any changes, they may not be permanent and we're keeping an eye on this thread for feedback as well as engaging with community members about the changes.
The WH/WE nerf to morale gain was due to the ability overperforming, and was changed as a result of feedback from the community.

The dyes are also changing again, I would highly not recommend using the items and keeping them safely in your bags until the next patch hits.

Keep the feedback coming and keep it constructive as possible, please

TBH, if I had a priorized backlog of things the game "needs" and that make sense in the current state of the game, the change to chosen/kotbs/WH/WE would not even make it to said backlog...
Really wondering where you are getting your ideas for those tests from. No offense here, I'm really wondering how you do this. You might be generating quite a bit of "waste" (in terms of time wasted) here.

The reason for the change isn't my idea. I made changes based on what the leads decide on.

I defer to Natherul, as it is his change and he should be able to answer as to why he made the changes.

There must be some kind of ToDo-list, right? Anything?

[wargrimnir]

True story. Coming from an agile software development background, you ideally want to minimize waste and work as "customer" centric as possible. You ideally do this by creating a vision, sharing this vision, collectting feedback on this vision and then incrementally implementing it using short feedback loops to inspect and adapt as needed. Simply implementing changes without checking if the "customer" actually wants them is quite an anti-pattern. So is not reverting/adapting them if the feedback is negative (see stuff like melee squig).

You're not customers. We're not selling you anything.
This concept that everything needs to be customer-centric ignores the bitter that comes before the sweet.
In a business, yes, you want to sell as much as possible. Jam-pack your product with as much saccharine sugar-crack as possible to ensure you're getting the most value for the time invested. Games have become so emotionally manipulative to ensure the "customer" is HAPPY FUN GOOD feeling they miss the adversity and chaos that brings out other important emotions.

If we stuck solely to "modern" game dev methods, nerfs would not be allowed, only buffs.
Players are never allowed to suffer, or wait, or be put into unfair situations. They will immediately quit and find something else to do you know.
They are always, constantly, and heavily rewarded, with a clear path to the best stuff over the least amount of time. Grinding is anti-consumer! Maybe!
Everything can be accomplished solo, within 30 minutes of time invested, and even that is probably too long for the gnat-like attention-span of "modern" gamers.
If someone shitposts hard enough on social media, CHANGE IT. That's called corporate social responsibility or something. Dye your hair purple.

I could probably go on, but I'm tired and need a nap. Get off my lawn zoomer.

You totally missed the point. Nerf as much as you like. Its not about nerf/buff/making classes stronger. Just work on things that need to be worked on.

Also, we are no customers. Thats why I put it in quotes. Then again, who are you working for? The community? Or a team of 5 devs?

We work on what we feel like working on. If things don't work out, we scrap them. Your opinion on what is working or not working or what needs to be worked on next is just your opinion man. You can have it, but unless you're the guy typing in the code and massaging the DB, it's just your opinion. So yeah, we pretty much work for the team over the community, but we respect the community as a whole over what can sometimes be an angry but loud minority.

We're also not always correct or reading things perfectly, and we're okay with that too. The community is here for the ride, good, bad, or weird.

[Cornerback]

You're not customers. We're not selling you anything.
This concept that everything needs to be customer-centric ignores the bitter that comes before the sweet.
In a business, yes, you want to sell as much as possible. Jam-pack your product with as much saccharine sugar-crack as possible to ensure you're getting the most value for the time invested. Games have become so emotionally manipulative to ensure the "customer" is HAPPY FUN GOOD feeling they miss the adversity and chaos that brings out other important emotions.

If we stuck solely to "modern" game dev methods, nerfs would not be allowed, only buffs.
Players are never allowed to suffer, or wait, or be put into unfair situations. They will immediately quit and find something else to do you know.
They are always, constantly, and heavily rewarded, with a clear path to the best stuff over the least amount of time. Grinding is anti-consumer! Maybe!
Everything can be accomplished solo, within 30 minutes of time invested, and even that is probably too long for the gnat-like attention-span of "modern" gamers.
If someone shitposts hard enough on social media, CHANGE IT. That's called corporate social responsibility or something. Dye your hair purple.

I could probably go on, but I'm tired and need a nap. Get off my lawn zoomer.

You totally missed the point. Nerf as much as you like. Its not about nerf/buff/making classes stronger. Just work on things that need to be worked on.

Also, we are no customers. Thats why I put it in quotes. Then again, who are you working for? The community? Or a team of 5 devs?

We work on what we feel like working on. If things don't work out, we scrap them. Your opinion on what is working or not working or what needs to be worked on next is just your opinion man. You can have it, but unless you're the guy typing in the code and massaging the DB, it's just your opinion. So yeah, we pretty much work for the team over the community, but we respect the community as a whole over what can sometimes be an angry but loud minority.

We're also not always correct or reading things perfectly, and we're okay with that too. The community is here for the ride, good, bad, or weird.

I dont really care if you like my opinion. I'm just one person, not the community.
I'm not sure about that respecting community part though...

Suggestion: reactivate the balance forum and use it to discuss your balance proposals. Dont allow community suggestions for now. Then implement changes based on the feedback you get. Take everything with a grain of salt. Discussing changes BEFORE creating potential waste by implementing unwanted stuff might both streamline your work-performance and reduce the amount of crying after each patch.

[Bozzax]

Not really one of you devs had a feel and made BO to their liking ignoring all feedback from ppl that played the class.

Dok / wp changes are equally bad (no noone playes melee heal seriously and even less play them hybrid nowdays)

[wargrimnir]

Suggestion: reactivate the balance forum and use it to discuss your balance proposals. Dont allow community suggestions for now. Then implement changes based on the feedback you get. Take everything with a grain of salt. Discussing changes BEFORE creating potential waste by implementing unwanted stuff might both streamline your work-performance and reduce the amount of crying after each patch.

Hard pass. No one ACTIVELY wants to do that job of moderating the balance forum, it sucks and drives people crazy. Also, players are generally an extremely biased source of feedback, and we need to take that into consideration a LOT. That just ends up with us going back and forth with players who are biased AF giving us **** about changes we're about to do that doesn't fit with their specific fetish. It's easier to simply have internal conversations after collecting targeted feedback from people that are closer to the devs involved. They're at least respectful about their biased feedback.