Post Ability Rework Balancing Roadmap - Developer Update March 2024.

[Farrul]

Looking forward for the changes. Kudos to the RoR team for still putting in alot of effort regardless of the negative feedback and backlash they get from this community. They really did a lot of great changes to tanks in general.

I can think of 5s immunity as the one positive general buff. Otherwise it is probably great if you play a kotbs/chosen (as in your signature). If you happen to play 2H SM/IB it is particularly a poor implementation of nerfs.

P .S. at least to me this is not about being ungrateful but providing constructive critiscm to these ill-thought-out nerfs.

[Ruin]

Could I also propose to make a separate forum section, where community might point out issues, with the changes, where the “team” could analyse it, in a way that Bug tracker works?
Like add statuses, ex.: under consideration, denied, in progress, or something like that? So that every issue that players post there would have a response? Because in many situations it’s not a bug so the bug tracker is not a place for it, but some changes render some abilities marginal or even useless.

An example for me would be the statistic changes, more directly initiative, with the recent change to haw it works (https://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum ... hp?t=52422, )
For each 100 stat points - Initiative: 3% dodge & 3% reduced chance to be critically hit. And the change to the curve value of chance to be crit.
That means that the current initiative debuffs, even with the updated values up from max 80 to 120 on some abilities, it still is less than 5% increase Crit Chance, so now stacking it over a certain value becomes un(less)important. This change makes the ini debuffs not worth specing for.

[Jajcek12]

Thank Developer team and public relation team for this clarification.

It will help in understanding where game is moving and prevent anxiety among new members of our community. Also we now have declaration who is in balancing team and what competence they have. It will prevent submitting binding declaration from third parties not officially involved in project- but speaking on behalf of the desighn team.That clarification will probably prevent the wrong public relation and unnecessary accusations which was a common result of many patch notes. Good to know that not only design/technic professionalism is focus of Developers team but also how those information are delivered to players. Common sence tells us that profesionalism means nothing if is covered with mean words and its bad for publicity of project when its covered with anomie of “forum worriors” For sure noone can civilize the reasoning capabilities of “forum warriors” but at leas they will less harmful to themselves and Project thanks to this clarification.


Best regards.
Jajcek-
Gimle new players supporter and recruiter.

[Ysaran]

Does it really matter what the balance teams play as main or how much experience they have in each role? Whatever the answer is, three ppl can't possibly know every single aspect of all classes (solo, 6man, wb, whatever,...). The balance team point of view will always be skewed in one direction (not talking about faction wise, but gameplay style). Sure, one can advocate for more ppl in the balance team, but I don't think that having one representative for every class would really be helpfull. That would be a slippery slope. What next? one representative for every class for every gameplay style? Are the selected ppl really competent enough? How many ppl would think "I'm more competent than them"?
Obviously assuming there actually are enough ppl that actually are competent... and speak engliah at a decent level. Becouse yes, language is also a barrier. If the best player for a certain class+gamestyle is some random italian dude that live in the boonies and don't speak a single word of english, how do you exepect him to contribute to the balance effort?


Maybe some kind of middle ground? I don't know. Anyway, I don't think that the balance team is compsed by 3 ppl because it is a lucky number, or something. There's probably a reason if they are only 3 ppl.


Anyway, I'm happy with the current direction of the server. At least they are putting in some effort. The game was stale and any change is a good change, imo. Yes, even though my main classes, Shaman/AM, were nerfed repetedly.

[Scottx125]

Does it really matter what the balance teams play as main or how much experience they have in each role? Whatever the answer is, three ppl can't possibly know every single aspect of all classes (solo, 6man, wb, whatever,...). The balance team point of view will always be skewed in one direction (not talking about faction wise, but gameplay style). Sure, one can advocate for more ppl in the balance team, but I don't think that having one representative for every class would really be helpfull. That would be a slippery slope. What next? one representative for every class for every gameplay style? Are the selected ppl really competent enough? How many ppl would think "I'm more competent than them"?
Obviously assuming there actually are enough ppl that actually are competent... and speak engliah at a decent level. Becouse yes, language is also a barrier. If the best player for a certain class+gamestyle is some random italian dude that live in the boonies and don't speak a single word of english, how do you exepect him to contribute to the balance effort?


Maybe some kind of middle ground? I don't know. Anyway, I don't think that the balance team is compsed by 3 ppl because it is a lucky number, or something. There's probably a reason if they are only 3 ppl.


Anyway, I'm happy with the current direction of the server. At least they are putting in some effort. The game was stale and any change is a good change, imo. Yes, even though my main classes, Shaman/AM, were nerfed repetedly.

That's probably why they're looking to expand the team.

[zulnam]

I would suggest the balance team be a mix of 6-man/ST group leads and warband leads.

Leading groups in this game, when done right, requires massive knowledge of all aspects of each class. Of course every lead can't know everything but they know enough about each class to make an educated decision when forming for endgame content (ie: cities/forts).

Most pro WB leads also play both sides to chase AAO, so they're generally aware of compositions on both parts of the fence.

And the role is underwhelmingly unrewarded. At least this way being a leader and actively working on pushing zones will mean your voice is heard and taken into consideration. itsSomething.jpg

[Lisutaris]

Could I also propose to make a separate forum section, where community might point out issues, with the changes, where the “team” could analyse it, in a way that Bug tracker works?
Like add statuses, ex.: under consideration, denied, in progress, or something like that? So that every issue that players post there would have a response? Because in many situations it’s not a bug so the bug tracker is not a place for it, but some changes render some abilities marginal or even useless.

An example for me would be the statistic changes, more directly initiative, with the recent change to haw it works (https://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum ... hp?t=52422, )
For each 100 stat points - Initiative: 3% dodge & 3% reduced chance to be critically hit. And the change to the curve value of chance to be crit.
That means that the current initiative debuffs, even with the updated values up from max 80 to 120 on some abilities, it still is less than 5% increase Crit Chance, so now stacking it over a certain value becomes un(less)important. This change makes the ini debuffs not worth specing for.

Pretty much this.

Long version:

Spoiler:

Right now , calling the balance team "team" with just 2 people is kinda funny. Lets call it "these 2 dudes" or something like that.
To really have a chance of getting balance done in a proper way its either doing that as a full time job for a game and maybe having a small team like now, which most likely isn't the case because of job/family/real life.
Therefore, more staff (bigger balance team) is most likely needed AND/OR some sort of community feedback so that mistakes can be hotfixed ASAP or not even occur.

My suggestion would also be,maybe let it be the "2 homies balance team" but add some sort of feedback tool. Maybe only unlock it for 80+ players/characters to give feedback as those ppl will have most likely the best experience/knowhow and are in the endgame -> which everything should be balanced about.
If not, maybe just give the opportunity to some selected gamers which you trust. It's not really that they are making any decisions anway but maybe can warn if some changes would be catastrophal for specific classes/builds or something is missing.

-> If you really want to give some feedback on current class/changes/whatever for let's say choppa, you have to have a 78+ choppa. Period.
I know this will have the downside of getting less feedbacks and sorta splits the community but you dont want 100 opinions, maybe 10 good ones. If the ideas of the balance team perfectly align with those feedbacks, cool, good job well done.... IF NOT ... maybe more attention is needed.
Giving an info about changes/patchnotes, let them be on the pts for 1 week before rollout would be best and alot of games are doing it like that. This way some things like .... shaman has not ress o_O? or current riposte tactic or proc errors would have been able to hotfix asap or not even happened at all.

That rework was most likely a big chunk of work and credits where credits are due, damn good work and job done by the ROR staff. Balancing and updates are also way better than before (time wise) but quality wise ... sorry, I am not really happy. It doesn't matter why/how/whatever ... if some builds or classes deal 80%+ dmg because of one specific skill or tactic thats not good. Maybe not overhaul it right away but some hotfix would have been good. That's what I expect from a functional and good balancing team -> good changes and if something is bad, quick reaction to it and not waiting for 1 or even "2 weeks" .
And of course .... communication. This post is fine and nice but it's quite a lot of text for just a little (new?) information with close to 0 details ... could have been written for some political figure. Still, better than nothing I guess.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I support the DPS Zealot Update #1 priority idea. Just because.

Long story short -> My 2 coppers:

• Tell the community more about what you are doing/intending.
  Give the community a chance to give you feedback or test stuff before it goes on the RoR live server. (patchnotes + some time on PTS would be great for this)
  Try to get more statistics. For exampe(especially RR75+) GRP and Solo kills and what's happening right now, specs, gear, % of complete dmg done by abilities.
  This way you can react faster to mistakes in balancing. (which you will make for sure, everyone does)

Even if something sounds snippy and harsh ... I am really appreciating all the work that is done. It is an alpha status fan project with alot of love and a small comunity. But you have asked for feedback and it doesn't need to be sugarcoated. Actually, I think direct facts and comments are more useful for you guys right now. Stick to what you have announced here, improve it further and everything should work out well.....
Best of luck.

[Delirio]

when we replace sorc cone of fire like before ?

thank in advance

P

[Nefarian78]

The team thinks giving BOs a single target punt is somehow going to fix the fact the class has 0 survivability with only a single target WS buff and a rng initiative steal that are consequential to the building of an actually optimized smallscale team. No, I am sorry but you haven't made BOs "a great pick for small scale teams" unless you mean random /5 groups and for that purpose literally anything goes.

Even more clueless is stating BOs have "excellent damage". What excellent damage, exactly? Did the server rollback to Dominator/Conqueror as the bis without me noticing?

The SM I abandoned ages ago deals as much damage as my BO in full offensive BiS gear while wearing random garbage in wounds talis, my BG in Warlord/Bloodlord with wounds talis easily deals over twice as much damage and doesn't have to deal with plans so it can actually kill targets after bursting them. And god help me if I have to compare it to my IB's damage.

Not to mention the complete and total lack of utilities compared to any of the other tanks in the game and the ease of using said utilities.

[Ysaran]

Also, any ETA on next patch?