The 'Changes for Balance' Thread

[Mikeymoonshine]

I never played the first Pillars on POTD because veteran was hard enough for me, though that was a few years ago and I was relativly new to these kinds of games but still I ain't some kind of amazing gamer who can beat any challenge type person. The game is still not that hardmost of the time even on POTD, maybe you need to rethink your strategy, or change your gear? Or maybe respec a character or two? If you were relying on something OP that is now been nerfed maybe you just haven't learned a decent strategy yet?

[Gromnir]

...

 

*shrug*

 

will comment in depth at a later time. maybe. however, am gonna suggest it is a given obsidian will continue to try and balance deadfire.  am ignoring obsidian motivation or any qualitative judgement for the nonce, but is undeniable the best predictor o' future behavior is past behavior-- obsidian will continue making balance changes. 

 

the thing is, am gonna admit some frustration regarding retrain functionality.  recognizing the often significant changes to classes and abilities obsidian is continuing to make, one would expect getting the retrain feature to work proper would be a high priority.  to foresee dramatic changes to the way in which a deadfire class plays following a major patch is not requiring the wisdom o' a prophet, eh? is similar predictable more than a few people will be frustrated by such changes. as such, we might assume the retrain feature, which helps alleviate a degree o' frustration faced by players who is having their favorite build nerfed by build 1.__ , would be tops o' the list o' things to get right. 

 

note to obsidian: please make retrain fix a priority.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[knownastherat]

 

 

 

 

 

From where I sit, he is certainly hell-bent on the notion that "balance", in single player RPG, is important. 

 

I will reiterate, for those who have not read it from me yet, that while who (vocal) majority and (vocal) minority is, is probably impossible to determine, it's possible to determine whether the majority will get to experience "balance" or not. I would guess, that majority will not, simply because the majority will be done with the game long before "balance" will be achieved. If this assumption is true, Josh Sawyer, does not have a rational argument to try to "balance" after the majority played it already. 

 

I can only extrapolate and hope that he numbers for PoE are going to be replicated by replicated by Deadfire.

If that's the case, though, 80%-90% of the eventual owners have yet to buy Deadfire, probably much later. (PoE has ~1.3m owners on Steam, Deadfire 100-200k. GDPR blurred those numbers quite a bit, hence the range for Deadfire.)

That might be an Obsidian specific effect (usually, games make 80%-90% of there revenue in the first 2-3 weeks), or it might mean that Deadfire is anything but a commercial success.

I'm disinclined to belief the latter is the case, and if I'm right, the numerical majority is going to benefit from a proper balance introduced over time.

 

Just checked Pillars of Eternity owner numbers here, considering that it doesn't show the first four months, there is a more or less straight line starting at less than 200k, going up to 1.3m.

 

 

Thanks for the link.

 

Owners are those who own the game*, not necessarily the same people who play the game and "Players every day" hint at this difference. 

 

It is pretty safe to say that by Jan 16 majority of all owners owned the game. 

 

---

edit: who purchased the license, which is different from ownership. 

Edited June 12, 2018 by knownastherat

[knownastherat]

Good balancing doesn't mean "make the game stupid hard for Triple Crown players only".

 

When you balance the game properly, you allow players on Classic or Veteran to also have a more even challenge, while providing POTD as an option for a minority.

 

Imagine an axe you find early on is stupidly overtuned by mistake and people end up one-shotting everything with it (which is a bit exaggerated, but milder versions of this were happening all over the place in 1.00). Tuning it down doesn't just serve hardcore players, it serves everyone.

 

I don't think anyone ever argued for making Classic harder, either.

 

It does not serve me so it does not serve everyone, but I do admit we are in the realm of semantics now. 

[rjshae]

 

 

As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

I have to disagree, and you prove Josh's point about feeling losses more than gains nicely in a way.

 

In cognitive psychology there's a concept called loss aversion that fits this behavior in a fairly nice way.

[ThacoBell]

There are low difficulty modes, aren't there? Stop the whining.

Yeah okay, but class and balance changes aren't happening ONLY on PotD or Veteren. Changes and nerfs to classes and abilities affects every difficulty level. Changing to a lower difficulty DOES NOTHING if your favorite class no longer works the way it used to. You can no longer that way, EVER AGAIN.

[M4xw0lf]

 

There are low difficulty modes, aren't there? Stop the whining.

Yeah okay, but class and balance changes aren't happening ONLY on PotD or Veteren. Changes and nerfs to classes and abilities affects every difficulty level. Changing to a lower difficulty DOES NOTHING if your favorite class no longer works the way it used to. You can no longer that way, EVER AGAIN.

 

Very specific abilities or builds may no longer give you the same results, but everyone will still be able to beat the game with basically every build they can think of.

[Myrtillo]

Very specific abilities or builds may no longer give you the same results, but everyone will still be able to beat the game with basically every build they can think of.

 

 

 

Exactly.

Also, the initial rant was that Obisidan did the balance changes to please PotD and Veteran players, which is obviously wrong.

PotD and Veteran have been also adjusted.

Tuning on the abilities and items is intended for all difficulty levels, to make it closer to the vision they have for their game, regardless of the difficulty. They just acknowledged that they were too potent in any difficulty setting.

 

Also, unless I miss something, the changes are numbers nerfs rather than reworks: The ability/item does the same thing, but wth a potency more in line with the challenge offered by the game.

The only exceptions that come to my mind would be charge and brilliant inspiration. I recognize that if your build relied solely on charges for damage or procs you have to adapt your playstyle. Same if your build relied on spamming the same tier9 spell over and over thanks to brilliant. But who would deny that these were dramatically overpowered, in any difficulty setting ?

[Balbanes]

As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

 

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking.  I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters."  So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics.

 

What I'm not sold on, and what Josh's post doesn't address, is the idea of tweaking game mechanics mid-campaign.  It's one thing to learn that a cool concept you wanted to try won't work anymore.  It's quite another to learn that a cool concept you spent dozens of hours building won't work anymore.  Using PnP as an example: if a GM were to nerf a particular character into oblivion, through no fault of the player, then the GM damn well better offer the player some recompense.  Otherwise, the player is likely to quit the campaign in disgust.

 

Let's give a concrete example: the Chanter "Set to Their Purpose" nerf.  The pre-1.1 version was clearly an oversight, as 1) it doesn't make sense that a tier VII ability continually regens class resources while a tier IX ability only adds +1 class resources, and 2) upgrading from two Level 1 Inspirations to two Level 1 Inspirations and a Level 3 Inspiration makes no damn sense.  What's more, continuously regening class resources is plainly game-breaking, and any fight that would seriously challenge a party with "Set to Their Purpose" would be near-impossible for a party without it.  So this is an excellent example of a nerf that had to happen.

 

And yet.  I imagine there were players who built their entire party (or solo-run!) around having limitless access to class resources.  Further and as mentioned before, "Set to Their Purpose" is a Tier VII ability, which takes no small amount of effort to reach naturally.  So a player who has spent dozens of hours on a party that no longer functions would be justifiably upset.

 

This is the reason players complain about nerfs but seem to ignore boosts.  Boosts don't ruin anyone's existing campaign; they just make less popular builds more viable.  But nerfs have the potential to render irrelevant dozens of hours of investment.  Players tend to remember that.

 

Not sure how to address this given existing technical limitations.  Ideally, players would have the option to apply the latest set of tweaks to existing campaigns, with new campaigns automatically incorporating those tweaks.  But that would require keeping potentially dozens of patch states alive on a given computer.  Maybe give the player the option to not install the latest set of tweaks until desired, while still installing bug fixes, quality-of-life changes, etc.?

Edited June 12, 2018 by Balbanes

[Myztik]

You address it by not addressing it. You can't make a single change to the game that won't upset somebody. And alienating the player whose build relied on one ability they get in the last 1/3 of the game and who is unwilling to respec is a loss you just have to stomach for the good of the game.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Myztik

[cokane]

 

There are low difficulty modes, aren't there? Stop the whining.

Yeah okay, but class and balance changes aren't happening ONLY on PotD or Veteren. Changes and nerfs to classes and abilities affects every difficulty level. Changing to a lower difficulty DOES NOTHING if your favorite class no longer works the way it used to. You can no longer that way, EVER AGAIN.

 

 

Boo hoo. Your over powered skill is no longer over powered. Why is this a bad thing? One, if you're playing on lower difficulties, it shouldn't matter. You can still use that build and beat the game with little effort. I don't understand why some players insist on having a game where every choice they make has to have immense rewards.

 

As Tigranes wrote very well above, if there was some weapon that was so over-powered it made the rest of the weapons obsolete -- that's a  huge design problem. And one that the designers are right to prioritize fixing, even if it means your character built around that weapon isn't going to be as powerful as they were.

[Gfted1]

If the game was so far out of whack as to need major changes across the board from weapons to mechanics to attributes to abilities to spells, to etc. then how did it even make it out the door? Seems weird to me to "rewrite the game" mere weeks after release. "Whaaaaaa? Nobody noticed during testing!?!?!?" Oh well, Im sure it will get worked out in a few months and then everyone will rejoice!

[cokane]

If the game was so far out of whack as to need major changes across the board from weapons to mechanics to attributes to abilities to spells, to etc. then how did it even make it out the door? Seems weird to me to "rewrite the game" mere weeks after release. "Whaaaaaa? Nobody noticed <this or that> during testing!?!?!?" Oh well, Im sure it will get worked out in a few months and then everyone will rejoice!

 

Well, a big reason for this is that they made seemingly small but rather fundamental changes to combat mechanics. Moving virtually everything to be per encounter and adding the empower feature. It's clear, IMO anyways, that they didn't quite appreciate the depth of changes that would be required to balance a system that had previously relied on abilities having different costs for the player.

 

Couple this with adding subclasses, multiclassing and redesigning the armor/penetration system, and yeah, they set up a ridiculous amount of labor for themselves, because the combat system needed to be redesigned almost from scratch. It's really a great shame that they didn't just maintain the core mechanics of the previous game and iterate on them. I think their labor would have produced a much better, more balanced game that way.

[Balbanes]

You address it by not addressing it. You can't make a single change to the game that won't upset somebody. And alienating the player whose build relied on one ability they get in the last 1/3 of the game and who is unwilling to respec is a loss you just have to stomach for the good of the game.

 

There should be a way to both improve the game and not alienate the player relying on the prior build.  I think it would be fairly straightforward to make the "tweak" portion of the patch optional, for instance.  Pretty much every multi-component mod has that feature.

[Katarack21]

 

As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

 

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking.  I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters."  So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics.

But you never had to. You chose to. People conflate "choosing to build the most optimized murder-machine possible" with "I have no choice but to do it this way!" all the time, and it's really annoying. At no point was a mountain dwarf caster any less viable an option for beating the game, it just wasn't as optimal. Nobody ever *had* to play a Nature Godlike on monks and casters, on any difficulty, at any time. Sure, if you want to *SOLO* the game, or pull off the Ultimate, that's a different story. But if you've got a whole team of five people, then it really doesn't matter what difficulty your playing on, your race just doesn't make that much difference by itself. Yes, need for optimizing goes up as you go up in the difficulty levels, but not to the degree that a specific race/class combo is necessary all the time, every time, just to beat the game. They're all viable, that's literally one of the design goals.

[Balbanes]

 

 

As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

 

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking.  I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters."  So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics.

But you never had to. You chose to. People conflate "choosing to build the most optimized murder-machine possible" with "I have no choice but to do it this way!" all the time, and it's really annoying. At no point was a mountain dwarf caster any less viable an option for beating the game, it just wasn't as optimal. Nobody ever *had* to play a Nature Godlike on monks and casters, on any difficulty, at any time. Sure, if you want to *SOLO* the game, or pull off the Ultimate, that's a different story. But if you've got a whole team of five people, then it really doesn't matter what difficulty your playing on, your race just doesn't make that much difference by itself. Yes, need for optimizing goes up as you go up in the difficulty levels, but not to the degree that a specific race/class combo is necessary all the time, every time, just to beat the game. They're all viable, that's literally one of the design goals.

 

 

I think you may be reading too much into the phrasing of what was literally the first response that entered my head.

[Boeroer]

@op Yeah i agree with you to a certain point. Just keep in mind that you are on an obsidian forum full of hardcore obsidian fans. You will be ganged up on and cut down if they deem any of your comments to controversial, regardless if you are right or wrong. They do this just because you are criticizing obsidian.

That's nonsense. He wrote his criticism in a decent manner and thus will be treated decently and his points will be discussed decently (by most).

 

Only people who present their thoughts like self-entitled snot noses will be "ganged up on".

 

And it's not like the "hardcore fans" don't criticize Obsidian.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Boeroer

[AFA]

The game has been out a month, balance patches are a standard in the industry now. There was a ton of complaining about PoE1 when Ciphers were pulled slightly down from their godly perch, or when Spell Mastery was introduced. I enjoy wizards and ciphers, but I realized they were broken as hell before the patches. People managed to adjust just fine to the changes. And this was months into the release, when people had all kinds of min/max guides up that were invalidated.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

The game has been out a month, balance patches are a standard in the industry now. There was a ton of complaining about PoE1 when Ciphers were pulled slightly down from their godly perch, or when Spell Mastery was introduced. I enjoy wizards and ciphers, but I realized they were broken as hell before the patches. People managed to adjust just fine to the changes. And this was months into the release, when people had all kinds of min/max guides up that were invalidated.

 

 

Yeah I've been holding off writing a guide for this game because I assume most everything is still in flux.

[Gfted1]

Now that you guys mention it, I bought the PoE1 strategy guide (on .pdf natch) and weeks after release it was basically obsolete.

[mychal26]

It's easy enough to just play in offline mode to ensure no changes to your character during a playthrough. It's what I typically do and I've never run into issues. For any game I fully support gameplay balancing since it opens additional options that you may not of considered before.

[AFA]

Speaking of small minority, no matter what save I import, Vela is always part of my crew. I'm guessing this is a bug brought about because people were complaining about her being missing in the previous build. Seems like a nice character, but only a tiny fraction of the playerbase must have kept the baby. It was basically a joking nod to Neverwinter Nights in the first place.

[Verde]

Dude I'm a casual player at this pt (34 with kids, good job) and I suspect I am in the targeted audience...and the game was piss easy. Only died in a few encounters.

 

Now the game is more fun because there is a challenge.

 

Next they need to comb through the dialogue.

[Lokithecat]

If someone has a lottery ticket and they check their numbers while watching a news show, and find out they have all but one of the winning numbers, and are going to win $100,000 they'll be Happy.  Maybe sad for a second that they didn't have that last number, but that will be forgotten quickly.

 

If they watched that show, and due to a mistake on the announcement, believed they had all the numbers, winning $10,000,000  and later find out that there was a mistake, and they only get $100,000 they will be pissed off.  Maybe one day they'll get over it, but they'll be grumpy for quite a while, and have a serious case of hate for new show that 'screwed them'.

 

A few things that would help with the 'bitterness' of things being changed...  

 

1)  Allow changes in difficulty to the game, but downwards only.  If you were on PoTD difficulty, becuase your playthrough of Veteran was too easy, and have 30+ hours invested in a character that suddenly can't handle the content right now you're just screwed.  If you could downgrade that toon to Veteran, to at least finish the playthrough (obviously no achievement credit for PoTD clear) thats something at least.

 

2) Consider playing the game on an earlier version.  If you're using Steam (for example) you could re download the game, with autoupdate turned off, and go back to playing your preferred build.  This might screw with achievemnts, I'm not really sure.

[Tigranes]

Show me a character that was doing swimmingly in POTD, and then suddenly becomes so useless with 1.1 that they have to drop down to Veteran or the game is impossible to complete. I would really like to see an actual example.

 

Certainly some characters will see a big drop in efficiency, but really, will your party be so crippled? Some clever one-trick ponies, like the wizard that would electrocute themselves using the Deitro Helm, would suffer - but if you're doing something like that, then you're usually good enough at the game, you know you're playing with very fine margins, etc.

 

But sure, I think it would be totally OK to allow difficulty downgrades (you can do it easily with the console, BTW).