nocturnalguest wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 3:25 pm
Flowson wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 12:58 pm
Before making any changes, we ask ourselves the following question:
if I want to win fairly - Without exploiting the system: "Does this way of playing / Skill / Ability / Tactic grant me an advantage that I shouldn't have? If this is ture - its need to be adressed. if not: we need to ask further: what side effects does this cause? and how does this one-sidedly influence the outcome of battles. if we assume that it will have a nevgativ input we will do everything we can to find a stable foundation for everyone based on common sense , Lore and Community. - and honeytly not, becuase to want people to suffer without a reason.
Flowson
So in regards to SM, i dont personally know or have solid opinion about it, is nerf justfied enough for wods or not and i do believe it wasnt previously gamebreaking nor i think its useless and broken now, to me the change is not that major and doesnt lead to big meta shifts in grand scheme of things. Also you cant discuss SM alone as for balance you have to consider everything else, at least need to consider all other tank performances, how they interact with group, how synergies or not, what they bring overally etc etc etc. But i can bet nobody in team did ever discuss any kind of options to provide more counterplays to wods (or wods+ww option) to balance it out. Somehow it was ultimatively judged to be nerfed and boom, here we are. Hence the reaction of people.
From my point of view WAR/RoR is already quite meta heavy, streamlining only further increases the push to play meta.
For some careers the meta is so strong that some tactics or masteries are almost required to play or are required by the
community for you to use (social pressure).
The player uses them as if they are baseline and looses the ability to diverse.
Cookie cutter builds are the meta from point of view much more than in other games.
I'm playing KotBS and SM. I would have preferred that SM and/or BO gets something unique, either separately
similar to the speed buff that BO got but SM not or something that both share in the same functionality.
To me, balancing is more about action - response and their parameters. If there is something to do, then there should be something to counter it and efforts put into both of those actions should be somewhat equal. Thats the balance. We somehow have had somewhat balanced state here but now we are in a state of meta shifts. But we never had proper approaches to balance things in RoR imo. I see it as random buff/nerf hammer swings. Many players i know share such pov too.
So tl;dr i strongly disagree that one needs to ask themselves some questions about "expoilting", "advantages" etc. There needs to be a group of people within team with very deep game knowledge, ideally big enough, which should understand clearly "action" -> "response" and their parameters. And there has to be some lead balance dev that would thinktank meta shifts designs so after few years this "balance" wouldnt lead to a total boredomness for players.
Part of the issue here is that in such a small team there are only a few that work on balancing and those
that approve the balancing changes by person or persons that work on them.
Because the small base of those which research, suggest and approve changes the ability to verify the reasons for suggested changes is impacted.
I think it's very important to separate gameplay knowledge, theory crafting and personal experience.
Why are certain abilities strong, why does career XYZ does so bad against career XY or situation Z? Why
does is the career so strong in situation X and against career YZ? What makes the career unique in their weaknesses, strengths and mechanics?
Did my situation I experienced with career XZ really happened because of the career I played, because of the
situation I was in or because of me?
Some players have difficulty with certain situations and careers while some have not.
I think it is very important to leverage the manpower of the community to receive input for observations, theory crafting,
suggestions and verifications of changes.
Communications is important.
In the end the decision is of course with the RoR team but the workload on the developers can reduce by taking the community into account and provide knowledge that the developers of the project don't have.