So, I've debated making an account here for awhile, but nothing I had to say was important enough to really bother. Feedback, however, is something I'm big on, so I finally made an account to comment on the balance changes that this update brought. I'll note that my post will be critical for the most part, but it's meant to help balance changes, not just bash. So, my apologies if I come off as harsh.

First off, thanks for the update in general, but especially thanks for giving us the heads up back in the other thread, as well as a summary. The heads up, along with the large amount of staff responses is greatly appreciated.

Overall, this update is mostly a mechanics change for me. For your notes, this feedback comes from a wizard wearing Delver gear save the hat, a Succubus speed ring, and an uncommon speed ring. I run the "standard" 10 healthy, 10 int, 9 fireball, 1 flame laser build, run as many brotherhood tasks a day as I can (usually limited by not getting donates/MP tasks after my stamina is gone), and use most of my MPs each day. Just so you get an idea, but my character in game is Gaidin as well if you want to look at my data to see why I'm fussing about what.

First off, the positive. I like the drop rates of uncommons going up. That will help immensely with reforging, which is much appreciated. I haven't noticed much with the rares, but the uncommons help regardless. The item comparisons are great too, in that they are more detailed. While I didn't use them much before because I have specific stats I care about even to the point where I get a "detriment" in some others, it's still nice to see more info. Finally, the companions getting normal equipment is awesome. Thank you so, so much there.

Now, while I like those things added, my negatives come with the way these new things were balanced.

Level effectiveness is an interesting concept, and potentially useful. Tsukasa mentioned here ( http://forum.codenameentertainment.com/?thread_id=10207#52743 ) their concerns about the very issue that I'm seeing might arise based on my play since the update. That is, as a player put it in chat, how much we get the "nerf bat" for being lower level than our opponents. I've seen Mr. Whittaker speak of the delta difference and how it affects the player when they are higher level, but I've not yet seen anything address when the player is the one who is lower. If the numbers swing the same both ways for the player (and from what I see, they do to an extent), this is pretty bad. With a mere 4 level difference in heroics, I lost something like 45% of my damage against standard enemies. Sure, going from ~9.4k to ~4k doesn't really matter when you are 1 hitting your opponents, but it feels bad to the player. More importantly, the enemies hit my companions and I harder. This isn't a huge deal now, because the only thing that I've had issues with due to this is Huglurg (I'll get to him later). The real problem is when the Jungle comes out and we start to make our way through it, eventually hitting enemies that are higher level than we are. This will only be compounded by equipment level effectiveness as well, which I'll also get into later.

To elaborate, level effectiveness seems largely useless to me as a player. My personal issue with magical barriers that ignore my stats as a player for some artificial difficulty adding aside, this mostly just stifles players as opposed to improving gameplay. It could have it's place, running on the assumption that you want to keep the same stat scaling but would rather not have the power creep make us able to decimate level 55 enemies at level 30, but as it stands, I feel that the power both gained and lost by the delta difference is too much. Between the numbers already presented and my own obeservations, anything over a two level delta starts to hamper the player beyond reasonable measures.

In the Hall of Trials, Eliza is now level 29. After that, everything is at or above your level. The levels after her were already hell, but now the player is getting damage penalties and taking more damage just for being unable to gain more levels. After level 28 when you get to Spiders, you're pretty much screwed because at 29, you're looking at a minimum delta of 4. With a delta of ~7 against Huglurg, I was doing ~22% of my typical damage, still taking almost the same amount of damage as before (even though his level dropped by 8), while getting hit by criticals literally about 3x as often. I got hit with 3 crits in a row about 20 minutes ago fighting him.

I realize that the level cap increase will make my specific examples above moot, because at the new cap we'll have a delta of 8 in our favor even against Huglurg, but that's not the point. The point is that in trying to progress, if we have to face enemies above our level, we're taking too heavy of penalties to be realistically fair currently. I know that we "benefit" from this by getting these increases against lower level enemies, but at this point in the game, we don't need that kind of boost. If we're level 30, we are already squishing everything at 30 and below, and have been for some time. All this really does is give us more crits for kicks and giggles, and higher campaign scores.

Likewise, feeding equipment level into Effectiveness to drag down our base Effectiveness further hampers us, and our companions. The fact that the game thinks that pants 3 levels higher, but having some 50 less endurance on them is better just because of the Effectiveness rating makes me question the entire system. If I remember correctly, 1 Endurance is equal to 20 HP. So the game currently means to tell me that having gear 3 levels higher is better than having 1k more HP. Doesn't seem right.

Finally, to finish off my crying, related to the Effectiveness, how is it planned to balance/ugrade Epic gear? Currently, Effectiveness seems to be an average of your level and Equipment Average Level. If we get to 40, but our epics are 30, we're looking at an Effectiveness of 35. But, if we're facing level 39 enemies in the Jungle at that point, we're hit with a delta of 4. Currently, that would be cutting our damage by almost half and increasing the damage we take. I realize that we as players don't know how the Epic upgrading system will work, but unless it allows us to affordably upgrade the level of our equipment as quickly as we level up, we're going to be stuck in a "nerf cycle" that currently hits us pretty hard.

To sum it up in just a few sentences: Currently the Effectiveness stat and delta pentalties/bonuses are too heavy-handed. The player gets the short end of the stick for reasons elaborated above, and gains no worthwhile benefit from the system. I'd personally like to see this system have a much smaller effect, and ideally not have Equipment Level Average even be a factor. Stats should always matter more than what level you are, in my opinion. Otherwise, there's little point to getting "good gear" until you're at the level cap.


As a side note, I'm jealous of the awesome stacking up to 999 on your test server in the pictures.

Thanks much for the reply. I know that balance is always a pain, especially when you have such a power differential amongst "max level" players like this. I figured that the system was indeed intended to address those of us who have floated at 30 and walk around in Epics auto-attacking everything to death outside of the Hall of Trials. The main thing I find right now is that the penalties from a delta difference seem too severe for those who aren't at that point.

I'm definitely on board with having a system that gives challenge, and know that the best way to balance something long term is to start out "too hard" and tweak it down to more reasonable levels (e.g. Valentines Heroic). I figured that would be the intent here, which is why I put together the novel above. I enjoy mechanics and balance in these kinds of games, and I know that developers need our help if they want to find the best balance. The number of times that I've seen a dev go "well this is totally possible and even statistically reasonable based on the game code" while the players have been unable to achieve whatever it was for over a month because of variables only presented in actual game play are more than I can count on my fingers. At the same time, we don't know what you guys have all in store for us, and need to remember that you are likely doing X or Y with Z in mind.

I think that this system has potential, I just personally wanted to state where I feel it currently sits, and hopefully spark comments from other players. One player fussing about how they are stifled too much doesn't really matter as a whole if no one else really feels that way, after all. Personally I think a combination of enemy level tweaking along with delta weight could create some really nice scaling. I just also think that this will take time and communication. You guys will need our voices, or at least our playing data, and we'll need to be patient while you gather data to analyze, be it game data or feedback.

Anyway, thanks again for the reply, and I look forward to seeing where this goes. While I do feel the current delta values are a bit steep, I'm sure you're looking for a sweet spot.

As a slight aside with the current heroics being considered working as intended, they largely seem fine to me. I just worry about those fresh hitting 30 and doing missions like "The Destroyed Camp" and "Journey to the River" where there are multiple waves of spiders. Those ones were crazy hard when I first unlocked Heroics, and there was no delta penalty back then. Then again, I'm a squishy Wizard, and we still lack pew pew to an extent, so take that as you will xD.

My personal perspective on all of the balancing stuff is that if the game had more content that was playable for a longer period of time, then players wouldn't all get stacked up at the content max, working on post-content stuff, and then walk into the new content when it is released more than ready to beat the new content. Technically, most of us alpha players would be at level 45 or 50, had that been available to us when we hit end of content. I think game balancing has to look at both maximum level available in the content as well as difficulty in the content. Artificially setting a boundary seems to create as many balancing problems as it is theoretically designed to address.

I think very serious consideration needs to be given to the amount of content you anticipate for the next several releases and long-term future of the game, and not just the next jungle release. I am quite sure you realize -- based on game experience to date -- that all of us alpha folks are going to be racing through jungle -- because that happens in every CNE game I have ever played. And then we sit in the BH, or battle trolls in HOT, (or spend time in the Flux), for the next few months, building capability to dash through the next content release.

In short, we need more, and better answers than "well, we're going to take a look at it and figure it out." Go talk to other game developers if you have to and find out how they manage to get sufficient content into play in reasonable intervals! And how they balance their game play! IF you realized you bit off more than you could chew in releasing this game when you did, admit it and ask for help! There are good people who want to see you succeed, but non-answers get old really fast. And, I'm sorry, but waiting four to six months between content updates isn't adequate, even with wonderful people to chat with.

In the meanwhile, having the game rules change every couple months to compensate for the level stacking that happens because of a lack of content isn't pretty either. I've quit games for less than that. And, this game is not titled "Fluxx" where you expect the rules to change at every turn. Eventually you may drive off all your alpha players and only have people who started in the last month left playing. I have about been ready to post a "Gone Missing" thread in forum because so many *good* players have got fed up and left, just to keep in touch with them. I *miss* them. I hate the fact they got fed up with the game and left.
Is that what you really want?

Hey David, just curious, is the PvP system going to get a rework or additions in the new endgame content that you are developing? Because I feel that if the PvP became a bit more competitive it would give more reason for the players to keep grinding the endgame content. Especially if there were some nice rewards.

Hey David,

I don't want to make a bunch of extra work since you guys are busy, but is it possible to maybe draw or link to some type of graph of what battle effectiveness looks like? It's not the most difficult math in the world, but I think maybe having a visualization of it may help people's understanding and minimize some of the complaints. I know it would help me at least. I'm terrible with numerical math, but better when it's a more visualized. Obviously it's not a high priority and maybe one of the players that understands it could do it.

Here's a picture of a pony:

http://gyazo.com/c5ee951932a5171334bc5ad263d7c058

Can I have a slotting rod drop now, please?

Ok, I definitely get it now. Trying to picture it in my head I just couldn't put it together right. Is that the actual curve you guys will be using, because if it is, that actually doesn't seem that bad, I think it sounded more dramatic then it actually is, but then again I'm terrible with math and don't really watch the numbers well in battle.

So in the above example, if I was level 20, and an enemy was 25, their attacks would be multipled by 1.3? If they were level 30 it would be multipled by 1.5?

I guess then my followup question, and I'm not sure if I'm going to word this right, is this only affecting the higher level combatant or both. For example.

Example A - Only the Higher Level

I'm level 20, Enemy is level 25. I receive no multiplier, the enemy receives a 1.3 multiplier for being 5 levels higher.

or

Example B - Both Get it.

I'm level 20, enemy is level 25. I receive a .4 multiplier for being 5 levels lower and the enemy receives a 1.3 multiplier for being 5 levels higher.

So, I think I get what you're saying, but like I said I'm terrible with math so I might have this wrong. I guess the question is, outside of HoT, how often are you going to be fighting enemies more then 1 or 2 levels above you? I'll be completely honest, I've never really paid attention to enemy levels since I can beat most enemies just fine as is.

I guess, for the sake of visualizing it, lets take your example of 9000 damage.

Equal - 9000
1 level - 7380
2 levels - 6300
3 levels - 5400
4 levels - 4050
5 levels - 3600

I mean, that on one hand is a fairly big drop. On the other hand, I think the important number we're still missing here is enemy hp values, or rather how many extra attacks is each level adding. If an enemy has 10000 HP, you need 2 attacks to kill it regardless until you hit 4+ levels under, so yeah, each hit is smaller but you're still killing it in the same number of hits.

I think the 2 curve function would be better because then the log curve would be effective in both directions. At present, it is only effective in one, and players are not the beneficiaries.