[Gear] State Stabilization

[altharion1]

You're showing same stats for each sets .
It means you want that annihilator to sovereign set gives the same stats, and just increase the value of the set stats ?

Yes. They are worthwhile stats for a MDPS. This type a very slow vertical progression would counter many of issues raised by the OP regarding future gear sets.

Example 1: Critical Hit Rate - The increases on the sets would not increase the exponentially advantageous stats.

Example 2: Armor Stacking - Limited armour increase between sets. If you remove armour pots people will just have a WP/DoK run their prayer anyway. So its not really an issue. If you mess with armour, you are messing with global TTK.

Example 3: Constant Value Effects - By having insignificant vertical progression you maintain a constant state/power level. Abilities and skills can then be balanced permanently around this state.

Example 4: Bottom-End Creep - Would not exist as the difference between anni and sov would be be marginal. But people would still want the better sets to give them the illusion of more power. + new appearances

Example 5: Broad Design Change - Would not be necessary to balance the corruption of base concepts and design. As the game would be balanced around a constant state.

Example 6: Customization Killing Balance Killing Customization - People will always find the most suitable builds and specs to suit their needs. those will become the meta builds. Nothing you can do about that

[sonorous]

I can only argue from my perspective however i feel that a certain draw of the game will be lost if one were to have a state stabilisation system which is hidden from the players. I am inclined to disagree with the premise that players only care about " hitting harder , healing more etc". Can't provide evidence as it is down to individual player sentiments. To sum it up im just concerned about how progression will feel with the new system from a player retention pov. So NO I dont think a hidden system in any form is justified. Especially in a game where one of the fundamental pillars is gear. Although i do think it imperative to have a system in place to maintain balance between the gear sets.

A counter proposal would be to have a softcap/hardcap system for each tier of gear as opposed to a global softcap/hardcap system with exponentially increasing diminishing returns.

Example
Annihilator -- softcap the crit rate with diminishing returns starting at 25% of (40% + 2%[for each additional %]) Hardcap 35%
Invader -- softcap the crit rate with diminishing returns starting at 30% of (40% + 5%[for each additional %]) Hardcap 40%
Soverign -- softcap the crit rate with diminishing returns starting at 35% of (40% + 10%[for each additional %]) Hardcap 45%

[vouzou]

There is one question that needs to be answered. If armor sets above Annih become almost identical then why should i get them? If you intend to release the armour sets then give some meaning for people to get them.

[Azarael]

I guess my first question would be why not just address the creep by crunching the stats on the sets and weapons themselves? I think most of us would rather have the hard numbers, than having an invisible system handle how hard we hit/get hit etc...

Doing so makes progression less attractive, as the increase in power between sets is reduced. Despite my aforementioned distaste for gear advantage, power differences must exist and they must be noticeable. They just mustn't be allowed to be taken to extremes. The simple solution of compacting gear alone has two flaws:

• It maintains a limit on the highest power set that can exist without reintroducing the original flaw of excessive power advantage
• It fails to maintain a large enough power difference between two nearby sets.

Secondly and most importantly imo, How deep will customization be allowed to go? Because I believe if it is done correctly, this could totally negate a lot of the problems brought up in your examples. Will customization come from just gear? Or will we be seeing a lot of new tactics as well?

Don't know about new tactics, but properly balancing existing tactics should result in more customisation.

edit (sorry it took me a bit too long to write the 1st post):

To make it perfectly clear:

Ignore the details of implementation for now.

The focus, for the moment, should be: Is my analysis correct? Does inconsistent state cause balance issues? If not, what part of my post is wrong?

There is no way anyone can debunk the statement "Does inconsistent state cause balance issues? ". It might as well be presented as a fact.

I should refine that to a more concrete example: Does the game play differently at Sovereign level than it did at Annihilator, as a result of the power increases and min/maxing? If that were to be the case, it would justify locking the balance forum unless a solution were proposed. Volgograd addressed this.

There is far to much overthinking about this, and I honestly cannot see the the main point.
Are you trying to say certain classes/skills/mechanics perform much better if certain stats are stacked to high (end-game sets) which will in return cause balance issues?

If that is the case then it is probably much easier to look at those skills/mechanics themselves no? And quite honestly I don't see that much of a big deal with these "stat-wise power-creeps" as long as everyone have the same availability to it when picking people within the same gear level.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Any significant change to game state, in terms of damage/heal balance, damage/wounds balance or anything else, shifts the underlying balance of the game. We know that's true from live, which had a different meta than RoR does despite being the same game. My point is that we should absolutely not direct balance efforts at the Annihilator/Mercenary state of the game if the underlying variables will change later on, as the balancing we are doing now will be rendered irrelevant. That remains the same regardless of whether everyone has access to the same degree of minmaxing.

That is why this topic is here - to decide whether the state shift to Sovereign level will significantly affect the balance, and if it will, whether something should be done about that upcoming state shift. If not, then balance efforts should stop until wide availability of Sovereign.

There is also perhaps a simpler solution, although more work in the long run. Simply put, nerf the crap out of the sets. Keep the differences in stats between the sets extremely low. Cut the stat increase from T4 - T5 in half. Make T6 into T5. Make Invader into conq stat levels, and do the same moving up. Having Sov, be at where invader is now. Drastically reduce the armor, offensive stats, mitigation stats, and crit going forward. Make the difference between the sets much smaller and then differentiate with set bonuses. To avoid having one must use set, balance with bonuses and procs. Give one set crit bonuses, but the other a juicy proc, make it so each set has something unique to offer over another set. There are enough unique bonuses and procs to be able to do this in a meaningful way. There were a lot of unique set bonuses that got cut by Mythic in set redesigns that really made sets special. Range increase, key ability cooldown reducers, cast speed / auto attack procs. There are enough that a meaningful amount of sets could be produced and players would have to make some hard choices when it came to what set. High crit set or autoattack speed proc set? Redeploy cooldown reducing set, or weak heal debuff set?

Then drastically increase the renown cost on the higher ranks of all stats. If someone wants to go full crit, make it hurt more renown wise. If they want RD / CW make them pay through the teeth. Scale back the renown advantage via stats. But return some of the unique abilities, like door repair, and siege disable.

This alone would go along way into addressing the stat creep issues, while maintaining a small but manageable gear gap to motivate people to play better, and push for higher level sets.

This is not a bad idea.

Why people who play it years 24/7 cant have huge advantages agains players who just come to T4?
its same like lowbie scenarios if you are in T1 and you are lvl1 you get asskicked but when you are lvl 10 (or what is max lvl now) you just kick ass, same with end gear.

And party can fight with zerg if that party overgear the zerg. then that party can :| that zerg and that is good

Because this is a balancing act. We are balancing the undesirable state of having time invested play the game for you by giving you a massive intrinsic advantage (gear in place of skill, which is horrible) with the necessity of having a power difference because the game is based around a progression model and cannot stand using only its gameplay, as is the case for the majority of MMOs. 6-tier differences represent the worst the genre has to offer, in which the appeal of progression is crushed, because you are repeatedly trashed by nolifer noskills and lose the will to play long before you reach the top.

There is nothing admirable about crushing people with gear. That advantage does not represent some skill or talent of your own, it represents time spent. Being able to beat someone because you've played the game longer per se - rather than because you have developed some skill, talent and/or understanding of the game which exceeds that of your opponent - is not worthy of respect, and that situation should be minimized as much as it can be.

[Morf]

Az is right that the power gap between sets is an issue however its the nature of mmo's in general, if every item had the same power there would be no need to ever progress from the 1st set in each tier making ppl less inclined to play and work towards the next set of gear.

There should not be a huge difference between sets but a minor difference, a difference that means a skilled player in for example anni will be able to compete against a player in sov.

Can we have an example of the difference in stats between current anni and sov ?

Just make the stat increases for future sets insignificant/marginal. Do not increase stats that have an exponential affect on offensive/defensive power. WL sets for example:

This would be my choice, its far safer an option and requires far less work. If there was a complete overhaul of how stats,bolster etc etc work to bring down the difference in power between sets it could cause more problems than it would fix, nobody knows how it will work out, there is an unknown aspect to it.
A change like Altharion mentioned we all know the impact it will have, being a slight power difference, slight power increase is fine imo, the same way for example slotting +17 talis in gear doesnt ruin your chance of beating someone who is slotting +23 talis.

[Grunbag]

Spoiler:

I guess my first question would be why not just address the creep by crunching the stats on the sets and weapons themselves? I think most of us would rather have the hard numbers, than having an invisible system handle how hard we hit/get hit etc...

Doing so makes progression less attractive, as the increase in power between sets is reduced. Despite my aforementioned distaste for gear advantage, power differences must exist and they must be noticeable. They just mustn't be allowed to be taken to extremes. The simple solution of compacting gear alone has two flaws:

• It maintains a limit on the highest power set that can exist without reintroducing the original flaw of excessive power advantage
• It fails to maintain a large enough power difference between two nearby sets.

Secondly and most importantly imo, How deep will customization be allowed to go? Because I believe if it is done correctly, this could totally negate a lot of the problems brought up in your examples. Will customization come from just gear? Or will we be seeing a lot of new tactics as well?

Don't know about new tactics, but properly balancing existing tactics should result in more customisation.

edit (sorry it took me a bit too long to write the 1st post):

To make it perfectly clear:

Ignore the details of implementation for now.

The focus, for the moment, should be: Is my analysis correct? Does inconsistent state cause balance issues? If not, what part of my post is wrong?

There is no way anyone can debunk the statement "Does inconsistent state cause balance issues? ". It might as well be presented as a fact.

I should refine that to a more concrete example: Does the game play differently at Sovereign level than it did at Annihilator, as a result of the power increases and min/maxing? If that were to be the case, it would justify locking the balance forum unless a solution were proposed. Volgograd addressed this.

There is far to much overthinking about this, and I honestly cannot see the the main point.
Are you trying to say certain classes/skills/mechanics perform much better if certain stats are stacked to high (end-game sets) which will in return cause balance issues?

If that is the case then it is probably much easier to look at those skills/mechanics themselves no? And quite honestly I don't see that much of a big deal with these "stat-wise power-creeps" as long as everyone have the same availability to it when picking people within the same gear level.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Any significant change to game state, in terms of damage/heal balance, damage/wounds balance or anything else, shifts the underlying balance of the game. We know that's true from live, which had a different meta than RoR does despite being the same game. My point is that we should absolutely not direct balance efforts at the Annihilator/Mercenary state of the game if the underlying variables will change later on, as the balancing we are doing now will be rendered irrelevant. That remains the same regardless of whether everyone has access to the same degree of minmaxing.

That is why this topic is here - to decide whether the state shift to Sovereign level will significantly affect the balance, and if it will, whether something should be done about that upcoming state shift. If not, then balance efforts should stop until wide availability of Sovereign.

There is also perhaps a simpler solution, although more work in the long run. Simply put, nerf the crap out of the sets. Keep the differences in stats between the sets extremely low. Cut the stat increase from T4 - T5 in half. Make T6 into T5. Make Invader into conq stat levels, and do the same moving up. Having Sov, be at where invader is now. Drastically reduce the armor, offensive stats, mitigation stats, and crit going forward. Make the difference between the sets much smaller and then differentiate with set bonuses. To avoid having one must use set, balance with bonuses and procs. Give one set crit bonuses, but the other a juicy proc, make it so each set has something unique to offer over another set. There are enough unique bonuses and procs to be able to do this in a meaningful way. There were a lot of unique set bonuses that got cut by Mythic in set redesigns that really made sets special. Range increase, key ability cooldown reducers, cast speed / auto attack procs. There are enough that a meaningful amount of sets could be produced and players would have to make some hard choices when it came to what set. High crit set or autoattack speed proc set? Redeploy cooldown reducing set, or weak heal debuff set?

Then drastically increase the renown cost on the higher ranks of all stats. If someone wants to go full crit, make it hurt more renown wise. If they want RD / CW make them pay through the teeth. Scale back the renown advantage via stats. But return some of the unique abilities, like door repair, and siege disable.

This alone would go along way into addressing the stat creep issues, while maintaining a small but manageable gear gap to motivate people to play better, and push for higher level sets.

This is not a bad idea.

Why people who play it years 24/7 cant have huge advantages agains players who just come to T4?
its same like lowbie scenarios if you are in T1 and you are lvl1 you get asskicked but when you are lvl 10 (or what is max lvl now) you just kick ass, same with end gear.

And party can fight with zerg if that party overgear the zerg. then that party can :| that zerg and that is good

Because this is a balancing act. We are balancing the undesirable state of having time invested play the game for you by giving you a massive intrinsic advantage (gear in place of skill, which is horrible) with the necessity of having a power difference because the game is based around a progression model and cannot stand using only its gameplay, as is the case for the majority of MMOs. 6-tier differences represent the worst the genre has to offer, in which the appeal of progression is crushed, because you are repeatedly trashed by nolifer noskills and lose the will to play long before you reach the top.

There is nothing admirable about crushing people with gear. That advantage does not represent some skill or talent of your own, it represents time spent. Being able to beat someone because you've played the game longer per se - rather than because you have developed some skill, talent and/or understanding of the game which exceeds that of your opponent - is not worthy of respect, and that situation should be minimized as much as it can be.

The gap between annihilator and sovereign is indeed too big.
But that's (IMHO) because there is too much set at T4 zones.
Annihilator, mercenary, conqueror, sentinel, invader, darkpromise, warlord, tyrant, sovereign.

but the gap is lower between invader and sovereign.

Changes the set tiers to rebalance t4 without drastic set changes:

t1 : lvl 1/15 : - Decimator lvl 7/8 , obliterator lvl 13/15
t2 : lvl 15/30 : - Devastator lvl 18/20 , annihilator lvl 25/30
t3 : lvl 30/39 : - Conqueror lvl 34/39
t4 : rr45/50 : - invader, rr55/60 : warlord, rr65/70 : WF (with appropriate stats), rr75/80 :Sovereign

PLayers will enter t4 with a good lvl (39) and a good stuff (ruins or conqueror), then will have access to invader.
Up sentinel to be equal as invader stats, and darkpromised to be equal as warlord, and make DF (drop from TI with appropriate stats) equal as WF, and still have tyrant equal to sovereign.

Less differences between set would solve the problems

About min/max stats to extrem, just add a cap to all stats (armor , crit chance etc) to prevent extrem stacking.

that's something could work ?

[Morf]

The gap between annihilator and sovereign is indeed too big.
But that's (IMHO) because there is too much set at T4 zones.
Annihilator, mercenary, conqueror, sentinel, invader, darkpromise, warlord, tyrant, sovereign.

but the gap is lower between invader and sovereign.

Changes the set tiers to rebalance t4 without drastic set changes:

t1 : lvl 1/15 : - Decimator lvl 7/8 , obliterator lvl 13/15
t2 : lvl 15/30 : - Devastator lvl 18/20 , annihilator lvl 25/30
t3 : lvl 30/39 : - Conqueror lvl 34/39
t4 : rr45/50 : - invader, rr55/60 : warlord, rr65/70 : WF (with appropriate stats), rr75/80 :Sovereign

PLayers will enter t4 with a good lvl (39) and a good stuff (ruins or conqueror), then will have access to invader.
Up sentinel to be equal as invader stats, and darkpromised to be equal as warlord, and make DF (drop from TI with appropriate stats) equal as WF, and still have tyrant equal to sovereign.

Less differences between set would solve the problems

About min/max stats to extrem, just add a cap to all stats (armor , crit chance etc) to prevent extrem stacking.

that's something could work ?

This only brings power creep to lower tiers, lvl 15 v lvl 30 is a huge difference, not so much in the armor sets but mastery points, tactic slots and skills.
Learn from the mistakes that mythic made with tier level requirements, which is why i strongly believe the current state of power with the t2/t3 merge is way out of sorts, for not only t2 and t3 but also t1.

[dur3al]

There is far to much overthinking about this, and I honestly cannot see the the main point.
Are you trying to say certain classes/skills/mechanics perform much better if certain stats are stacked to high (end-game sets) which will in return cause balance issues?

If that is the case then it is probably much easier to look at those skills/mechanics themselves no? And quite honestly I don't see that much of a big deal with these "stat-wise power-creeps" as long as everyone have the same availability to it when picking people within the same gear level.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Any significant change to game state, in terms of damage/heal balance, damage/wounds balance or anything else, shifts the underlying balance of the game. We know that's true from live, which had a different meta than RoR does despite being the same game. My point is that we should absolutely not direct balance efforts at the Annihilator/Mercenary state of the game if the underlying variables will change later on, as the balancing we are doing now will be rendered irrelevant. That remains the same regardless of whether everyone has access to the same degree of minmaxing.

That is why this topic is here - to decide whether the state shift to Sovereign level will significantly affect the balance, and if it will, whether something should be done about that upcoming state shift. If not, then balance efforts should stop until wide availability of Sovereign.

As Volgo explained, it wasn't really the stats that created the unbalanced state we had on live, but the procs from some sets and the additional skills such as anti-cc, anti-crit etc.

Tweaking a bit the numbers and reducing some massive crit-stacking would probably be the best solution instead of having an internal system which players cannot see doing work.

Forward with this though, I wouldn't like to see the anti-cc, anti-crit and procs from gear erased from the game, or heavily nerfed, since they were a big reason on how small groups could compete with large blobs... and in the end even you acknowledge that big blobs are an issue, correct? So perhaps why don't you just make these types of gear (Sovereign for example) to be very hard to achieve? And by 'hard', I don't mean time spent or farming, I mean 'hard' as in a realm effort to achieve.

Unfortunately this cannot be achieved unless you tie together scenarios and PvE with oRvR, because if you add something like the Domination Seal you know very well where this will end (zerg...). So perhaps a system like the old one in which takes into account Victory Points from all parts of the game, PvE (doing all of the region PQs), PvP (winning scenarios), oRvR (holding the objectives) would be suitable for this kind of 'unbalanced reward', where only if you work together with your realm (building realm pride) in all sections of the game (making all of the content worthwhile) you will have a chance to gain such gear. That way everyone can contribute to the realm and feel they're doing something towards an objective without zerg-balling into oRvR to leech some contribution as we currently have...

Besides you need those kind of very hard-to-get rewards, if you simply just make all the sets give some 20+ 40+ extra stats as a progression I'm sure a lot of people will lose interest (rotten carrot on a stick) in the game after a while. But if you tie those rewards to a system in which everyone can contribute (and not just zerg-ball in oRvR), people will still be interested, and not only the people who roam in oRvR, but people who enjoy doing scenarios as well as PvE. In other words, it would be a sort-of Genesis item, except everyone needs to work hard for it and not only zerg keeps and oRvR.

Az is right that the power gap between sets is an issue however its the nature of mmo's in general, if every item had the same power there would be no need to ever progress from the 1st set in each tier making ppl less inclined to play and work towards the next set of gear.

That's why the 'competitive' scene in GW2 was at the Heart of the Mists, where there were no gear per say, everyone would compete at the same gear level.

[7rere7]

Replace armor pots ,convert them into critical damage reduction pots.

Eliminate armor debuff abilities against all classes except for tanks.

Highest armor buff takes priority effect on target, applies to all classes.

This is less power creep and the right bolster for lower gear should be competitively fair.

Higher gear should have its nice advantages

[Grunbag]

The gap between annihilator and sovereign is indeed too big.
But that's (IMHO) because there is too much set at T4 zones.
Annihilator, mercenary, conqueror, sentinel, invader, darkpromise, warlord, tyrant, sovereign.

but the gap is lower between invader and sovereign.

Changes the set tiers to rebalance t4 without drastic set changes:

t1 : lvl 1/15 : - Decimator lvl 7/8 , obliterator lvl 13/15
t2 : lvl 15/30 : - Devastator lvl 18/20 , annihilator lvl 25/30
t3 : lvl 30/39 : - Conqueror lvl 34/39
t4 : rr45/50 : - invader, rr55/60 : warlord, rr65/70 : WF (with appropriate stats), rr75/80 :Sovereign

PLayers will enter t4 with a good lvl (39) and a good stuff (ruins or conqueror), then will have access to invader.
Up sentinel to be equal as invader stats, and darkpromised to be equal as warlord, and make DF (drop from TI with appropriate stats) equal as WF, and still have tyrant equal to sovereign.

Less differences between set would solve the problems

About min/max stats to extrem, just add a cap to all stats (armor , crit chance etc) to prevent extrem stacking.

that's something could work ?

This only brings power creep to lower tiers, lvl 15 v lvl 30 is a huge difference, not so much in the armor sets but mastery points, tactic slots and skills.
Learn from the mistakes that mythic made with tier level requirements, which is why i strongly believe the current state of power with the t2/t3 merge is way out of sorts, for not only t2 and t3 but also t1.

Indeed but it's faster to grind to 30 from lvl 15 , than have a power creep between rr40/80 .

I was just an idea maybe someone would adjust lvl on lower tier better than me .