Suggestion Balance Team Head

[Egorh]

Historically, there is one vision for Herocraft that has stayed constant - that is my vision. I am the creative director for this server and the reason I do this isn't for money or glory, it's because I like to see things I dream up / create placed into a game.

That being said, balancing isn't creating fresh and new ideas, balancing is reusing, mixing and adapting the current ideas. There has to be a filter. Otherwise we'd have 100+ classes and 1000+ skills by now.

What we need are code updates, bug fixes and all that. It's hard to continually update 300+ skills and if its mismanaged you can really mess the server up.

As for balance, we need to take it in stages and have a consistent system spread across all classes, no matter their particular role.

1. Uniformity in the amount of skills.
2. Uniformity in cool-down tiers
3. "Level" of skills, such as ultimate, bread&butter etc.

With the back to the basics patch - a lot of things are still up in the air because Attribute gear is right around the corner. This means we will need to re-balance on top of the attribute (100) system.

I understand this, and overall I believe it will make balancing and comparing classes easier. But until we have this setup we still need to push changes. Either way, we still need a balance team head (preferably two people - one who knows java) to lead balance team (edit configs, push changes, keep organized, etc.).

The things you listed are things we should aim for, but since we do not have it in place yet we need to deal with what we have.

Uniformity in the amount of skills - I agree with this

Uniformity in cool-down tiers (I made semi-random numbers for intervals)- Although this could work a lot of changes would need to go along with it. I am guessing the tiers would be 5 second intervals up to 30s. 15s intervals up 120s and then 60s intervals (and finally up to 5 min interval). This may be hard because a cooldown is a variable we change by a few seconds to deal with problems of a class but we can deal with this by changing the numbers in other areas.

Ultimate Skills - Right now only two classes have ultimate skills (Paladin-layhands, Dreadknight-harmtouch) and they allow the classes to pretty much win any fight they want (1v1) every 15 minutes. Until every class has an ultimate skill I believe that these skills should be either removed or become very toned down.

 

[JupiterRome]

I think @TrueCorruptor and @PewPewPewLasers would both make really good balance heads.
I think maybe 2 Balance heads and 2 Head Coders would be a good Idea? (Just in case one is on Vacation things can still be Implemented and Balance can still be a thing)
I don't know many of the coders so I wouldn't know who to say for that off a Skill standpoint rather then saying that "I like unkownloner give him head coder"

 

[NuclearCouch]

Historically, there is one vision for Herocraft that has stayed constant - that is my vision. I am the creative director for this server and the reason I do this isn't for money or glory, it's because I like to see things I dream up / create placed into a game.

That being said, balancing isn't creating fresh and new ideas, balancing is reusing, mixing and adapting the current ideas. There has to be a filter. Otherwise we'd have 100+ classes and 1000+ skills by now.

What we need are code updates, bug fixes and all that. It's hard to continually update 300+ skills and if its mismanaged you can really mess the server up.

As for balance, we need to take it in stages and have a consistent system spread across all classes, no matter their particular role.

1. Uniformity in the amount of skills.
2. Uniformity in cool-down tiers
3. "Level" of skills, such as ultimate, bread&butter etc.

With the back to the basics patch - a lot of things are still up in the air because Attribute gear is right around the corner. This means we will need to re-balance on top of the attribute (100) system.

That sounds like a great plan, but for the future obviously since that would require a re-do of most of the classes. How are we going to fix the problems we have currently?

 

[macura]

Balance is the most important part of an RPG server which has a large amount of player vs player action and a class system. If the classes are unbalanced, then all player vs player action is out of sync and ridden with overpowered classes which ruin the experience completely. This will cause players to not want to play, and then once again we will have half the players we do currently. We need another head of the balance team, someone who is devoted to testing the classes, finding bugs/unbalanced areas and fixing them. Someone who can make live changes when he wants under the discretion of Kainzo, so that when a problem is afoot it can be fixed as fast as possible.

Our current balance team makes ton's of great suggestions, but most of them ever get put out because they have no head to report to other than Kainzo, and Kainzo has millons of other things to get done on the server at once, so it's not always easy for him to listen to a ton of suggestions/fixes. We need a dedicated balance lead. With all the upcoming features coming to Herocraft, I would hate to have it all put to waste over a loss of player vs player combat. For the Balance Team lead we need someone who can create/fix Heroes skills. This person needs to know the mechanics of all the classes, put some time into testing them, and have some flexibility with working with kainzo's directions.

I think this is a really important matter that needs some attention now.

@Kainzo [USERGROUP=38]@Balance Team[/USERGROUP] @TrueCorruptor @NuclearCouch @PewPewPewLasers @whiteninja1970

#NEW C12!!!!!

 

[Glacial_Reign]

#betterthanc12

 

[Delfofthebla]

Our current balance team makes ton's of great suggestions, but most of them ever get put out because they have no head to report to other than Kainzo, and Kainzo has millons of other things to get done on the server at once, so it's not always easy for him to listen to a ton of suggestions/fixes.

Welcome to Herocraft.

That being said, balancing isn't creating fresh and new ideas, balancing is reusing, mixing and adapting the current ideas. There has to be a filter. Otherwise we'd have 100+ classes and 1000+ skills by now.

Just poking my head in here, but that's not entirely true. Sure, all it takes is a few number tweaks to put something that was previously too powerful or too weak into the category of "just strong enough", but it is very easy to destroy the "concept" or even just outright enjoyability of a class by sticking solely to this mindset. And "fixing" certain skills that were previously not very useful can often push classes way over the edge in terms of strength. (We saw this with Paladin at least a few times I think...)

Sticking to a pure number based solution to all skill or class "balance issues" was a mistake I ran into a couple of times when trying to do things, and it ended up forcing my hand towards a few reworks that otherwise wouldn't have "needed" to take place.

With that said, you've always mentioned that if things don't change, people will grow bored. I personally found that approaching balance with reworks, new abilities and drastic number changes was a way to keep things fresh. Whether or not that was always the best decision for complete and total "balance" is debatable, but I'd like to think that these were not wrong to consider.

As a rule of thumb, tweaking numbers should be the first approach to balance, but I just think it's important to keep an open mind to new or reworked skills.

 

[Dwarfers]

For a while now I have been one who mostly watches the game from the sidelines instead of playing the game. What I have seen repeatedly is new, fresh, great ideas being implemented, however, these ideas all get put on a calendar and end up being pushed back. Often it feels we receive a product that isn't complete, then move on the next idea, and end up changing the first idea in ways that could have been done the first time around. I have used this metaphor before, but it's like we keep stacking up homework assignments instead of finishing one and then going to the next, leaving us to work on many things at one time.

 

[anevia]

@anevia
She knows the most about pvp here.

I vote devotedworker, if he doesnt have the answer to something he gets it! He is very dedicated and gets things done.

 

[anevia]

<<< busy with college and knows NOTHING about Java,coding,plugins ect.

 

[JupiterRome]

I vote devotedworker, if he doesnt have the answer to something he gets it! He is very dedicated and gets things done.

I wes totes 100 present serius

 

[malikdanab]

I vote for myself. I promise I'll piss off everyone equally.