Suggestion [Party's] Party sizes & balances

[Beau_Nearh]

Suggestion;

+Increase party sizes from a max of 10 players to 20 players
+Change a few mechanics of how skills function within parties, something like the following; http://herocraftonline.com/main/threads/aoe-buffs-scaling.56398/

Thoughts;

Recently, I've been hitting the limit of 10 players within a single party quite fast. As a town owner, this is really starting to become a hindrance as at times I'll have 12+ town mems online. Because of this, I'm being left with a major problem (in my opinion). The problem being;

+I'm really struggling to justify introducing newer players to the PVP side of this server when I can easily hit the party limit with experienced players.

Changing the party sizes to double what it is now would actually Encourage people like myself to actually bring newer players along to a raid or to PVP. Changing how the skills works within parties would then help balance out the problem of stacking support or healing classes within a party.

 

[boxter123g]

So just because you have too many townies means we need to change it right?

 

[Glacial_Reign]

I forgot the server evolves around @Beau_Nearh

No just no. The party size needs to stay at 10. It's currently balanced for 10 party. 20 members would be a cluster fuck of aoe and aoe heals.

 

[LordZelkova]

Suggestion;

+Increase party sizes from a max of 10 players to 20 players
+Change a few mechanics of how skills function within parties, something like the following; http://herocraftonline.com/main/threads/aoe-buffs-scaling.56398/

Thoughts;

Recently, I've been hitting the limit of 10 players within a single party quite fast. As a town owner, this is really starting to become a hindrance as at times I'll have 12+ town mems online. Because of this, I'm being left with a major problem (in my opinion). The problem being;

+I'm really struggling to justify introducing newer players to the PVP side of this server when I can easily hit the party limit with experienced players.

Changing the party sizes to double what it is now would actually Encourage people like myself to actually bring newer players along to a raid or to PVP. Changing how the skills works within parties would then help balance out the problem of stacking support or healing classes within a party.

Only way I see a party increase working is if the AoE scaling was added, but that would just fuck over classes like Bard who rely on AoE buffs to keep their whole party supported. Restoring 4 mana per party member is next to worthless in a battle.

AoE Buffs and Heals are tricky to balance, no scaling allows for stacking and infinite mana (Grab a few BM's, a Bard, and a tank and you're set) but scaling then will screw the buffs over (4 mana per person, 3 hp per person, etc).

 

[Trazil]

Only way I see a party increase working is if the AoE scaling was added, but that would just fuck over classes like Bard who rely on AoE buffs to keep their whole party supported. Restoring 4 mana per party member is next to worthless in a battle.

AoE Buffs and Heals are tricky to balance, no scaling allows for stacking and infinite mana (Grab a few BM's, a Bard, and a tank and you're set) but scaling then will screw the buffs over (4 mana per person, 3 hp per person, etc).

You could get multiple bards, or multiple healers. It really would only add rare events of an army of PVE scrubs coming over maybe finding a group of 10 people, and getting slaughtered because they would be so unorganized and ineffective.

 

[CoolBeans279]

I forgot the server evolves around @Beau_Nearh

No just no. The party size needs to stay at 10. It's currently balanced for 10 party. 20 members would be a cluster fuck of aoe and aoe heals.

server cant handle 20v20's either lol, theres a reason the party limit of 10 has worked for so long.

 

[Beau_Nearh]

So just because you have too many townies means we need to change it right?

No, it's not just because of this. As stated, when a party leader has to make a choice between players, it will mostly be based on level and experience. It's not the most ideal situation, but I really think most players don't try PVP as they can't get into the big parties for it.

 

[Beau_Nearh]

I forgot the server evolves around @Beau_Nearh

No just no. The party size needs to stay at 10. It's currently balanced for 10 party. 20 members would be a cluster fuck of aoe and aoe heals.

Just post feedback on the suggestion, nothing else. If you would of actually followed the link, I only would have the max party size increased to 20 if and only if the scaling of AOE heals/buffs were subject to a scaling system.

 

[Beau_Nearh]

Only way I see a party increase working is if the AoE scaling was added, but that would just fuck over classes like Bard who rely on AoE buffs to keep their whole party supported. Restoring 4 mana per party member is next to worthless in a battle.

AoE Buffs and Heals are tricky to balance, no scaling allows for stacking and infinite mana (Grab a few BM's, a Bard, and a tank and you're set) but scaling then will screw the buffs over (4 mana per person, 3 hp per person, etc).

I do agree with you that it would screw over a single support/ healing class but when you're having parties of this size, there will always be more than one support/ healing class. It's one of the only solutions I can see that would help reduce the effectiveness of stacked support/ healing classes within parties. The scaling for each skills though would have to be subject to balance.

The other solution that could work would be just to limit the amount of players each AOE skill can affect?

 

[Glacial_Reign]

That causes even more balance and testing. I don't think you understand how hard that would be. Just bc you have 10+ players online doesn't mean the level cap needs to be increased. The balance is for 10v10s or smaller groups. It needs to stay that way.

Don't break something that's not broken.

 

[LordZelkova]

I do agree with you that it would screw over a single support/ healing class but when you're having parties of this size, there will always be more than one support/ healing class. It's one of the only solutions I can see that would help reduce the effectiveness of stacked support/ healing classes within parties. The scaling for each skills though would have to be subject to balance.

The other solution that could work would be just to limit the amount of players each AOE skill can affect?

I believe some AoE were changed to a max of X players, however only the damage ones.

 

[Beau_Nearh]

That causes even more balance and testing. I don't think you understand how hard that would be. Just bc you have 10+ players online doesn't mean the level cap needs to be increased. The balance is for 10v10s or smaller groups. It needs to stay that way.

Don't break something that's not broken.

It won't be that hard to balance at all. All what would be needed to do is;

+For every player past x amount, y amount of extra mana is used

Or

+for every player past x amount, y% of buff would be decreased.

Please read the post other post, I've went into more detail there.

 

[Glacial_Reign]

Hey @Beau_Nearh it won't happen, there is nothing to discuss so why discuss it? Go on and just fight with 10 ppl like we have been for 4 maps now (minus the time there were a limit on 5 ppl)

There is no player base for a 20 man party. If we had 300-400 people on all the time then maybe sure it'll be a discussion. But not with 70 ppl on at max.

 

[Beau_Nearh]

Hey @Beau_Nearh it won't happen, there is nothing to discuss so why discuss it? Go on and just fight with 10 ppl like we have been for 4 maps now (minus the time there were a limit on 5 ppl)

There is no player base for a 20 man party. If we had 300-400 people on all the time then maybe sure it'll be a discussion. But not with 70 ppl on at max.

It's a suggestion, give valid feedback or just don't post a reply on the thread. Now, for the playerbase. I'm not saying there will be many big parties consisting of 10+, I'm saying there will be a few of these huge parties lurking about which would only lead to huge PVP battles between them. For me personally, I do believe I'd be able to fill a party with 20 players considering we had 17 last night with a good portion of other frequent players not being on.

However, if you still don't think we have the playerbase to get any parties of this size. What harm would it be to actually increase them?

 

[Delfofthebla]

I was always oh so conflicted on this issue.

For as long as I can remember, AoE's have dominated teamfights. It mattered not if they were heals or nukes, the point is, it was ALWAYS better to pick a team that stacked these. I have not really played in over a year, probably longer, and I can safely state this as a fact:
Any tournament won since the dawn of time, was won by excessive stacking of supportive and offensive AoE based classes.

You can't avoid it. It's the nature of the beast. And unfortunately, the more people participating in a fight, the more this becomes true.
In a 5 man, you can argue that clever play and tactics can outperform AoE's. You'd be wrong, but at least you can attempt to argue it here. Once it gets up to 10, it's just flat out laughable how broken they are. Increase it any further and you're just asking for absolute shitstorms in any fight. Aoe's just aren't very fair, despite how fun they feel to use.

That aside, the party limit is also a decent balance mechanism to prevent zerging. There is nothing fun about having a 5-7 man party run into a 11-20 man party. This kind of shit is not cool. Now, the party limit barely helps solve this issue, as people have always found ways to still do it, but it definitely makes it a tad less convenient for them. Mostly due to their inability to benefit from AoE's. (It can even hurt them with enough offensive AoE Nukes going off) Is it truly fair to force another group of 10 to face your group of 20 just because more people were on in your town?

Now, I completely understand how lame it is to have 11+ people ready to fight, but only being able to take 10 for the run. It's undoubtedly a shame that not everyone can participate. But when you have that kind of situation, you're too much of a fighting force. 10+ people is just way too much power in Herocraft. How are you supposed to be opposed? How is there supposed to be any notion of balance when just one extra person brings enough combat strength to take down multiple people?

Even if you scaled down AoE's using some gimicky formula or player cap, (Which I think Kainzo already put in a while ago...), the classes with AoE's will still be the most beneficial source of power for a team, and these AoE's will still dominate the fight. They just scale too damn well, and if you nerf them into obscurity, people would find ways to abuse the system to get around the 'nerfs'. You honestly can't win that battle against balance.

Now don't get me wrong, much of what I have been saying can just as easily be said about the current party size limit of 10. Regardless of what your team comp looks like, in a 5 vs 10, 10 vs 15, 15 vs 20, or whatever comp you wish to think up, the higher player count will almost always win. Obviously skill comes in to play here, but the higher the numbers are, the less relevant skill becomes. The ideal for the server is to find a middle ground limit that is not unreasonable for the server to acquire, without putting too many others out of the loop.

There are plenty of small skirmishes than can occur at the 3-7 player range, but when big fights go down, 10 is not an unreasonable number to acquire. It's also the easiest to maintain balance for at this time. I have been in plenty of situations where we had 8-10 people, but the number of situations I can say we had 12-15 is incredibly rare. The server is also much smaller and more split up since the time I played, so I can see that 11+ number being all that much harder to obtain. For this reason, I believe that 10 is the ideal number.

But hey, what do I know?

 

[LordZelkova]

But hey, what do I know?

Psh, nothing. Duh.

 

[zecaseo]

What I'm hearing here is, "Let us be destroyed by 20 man expirienced pvp teams rather than 10 man teams.

1. AoE... Nuff said
2. Stacking Classes 20 necros = instant kill 3+ people on the first volley
3. Lacking numbers in the playerbase (Check above)
4. Extremely unfair ganks (20v1-10 op op) I'd rather not have the server dominated by one unstoppable team xD This relates to playerbase


I'm not even a pvper and I can clearly see that this would break the game.

 

[LordZelkova]

What I'm hearing here is, "Let us be destroyed by 20 man expirienced pvp teams rather than 10 man teams.

1. AoE... Nuff said
2. Stacking Classes 20 necros = instant kill 3+ people on the first volley
3. Lacking numbers in the playerbase (Check above)
4. Extremely unfair ganks (20v1-10 op op) I'd rather not have the server dominated by one unstoppable team xD This relates to playerbase


I'm not even a pvper and I can clearly see that this would break the game.

Examples of why this is a bad idea with the current setup, and a very shaky one even with AoE nerf:

20 Necros x 109.25 Damage Per Bone Spear = 2,185 Armor Piercing Damage, Paladin has 1,102 hp @ 60. With 11% Magic Resist (Highest of all the classes) A Max paladin would take 1,944.65 damage if they all burst at once. They overkill by over 800 damage.
A Paladin With Courage would take 1,780.775 Damage, still being killed. Short of stacking Courages (Not even sure if you can) nothing would live except Sammy (Parry Magic would extend the living), Zerker (UndyingWill) or a class using Invuln.

20 Shamans x 27 Damage per Fire Totem x 5 Fireballs launched = 2,700 Armor Piercing damage. More than the 20 Necros though over time.

19 Bards + 1 Melee class (For math purposes I will be using Ninja since it has the highest base Melee) x 19 Warsongs.

67 x 1.3 (30% boost from warsong) = 87.1
Do this 18 more times due to warsong stacking and you get: 7,534 Damage

Now, I don't know exactly how warsong works so let's say it just adds 30% of the base on for each warsong, you get instead: (20.1 x 19) + 67 = 448.9 Damage (Not as much, but still a fuck ton of damage considering it's for the left click).

20 Clerics (The big one), ignoring 20 Full Heals, let's use one of the less used skills; Holy Aura.
19 x (19.375 x 8) = 2,945 AoE HoT HP for your party (Only 19 times cause you ignore your own)
Next Smite: 20 x 70 = 1,400 Armor Piercing Damage all on a 7 sec CD. You could kill almost any class instantly with just lvl 1 Clerics.

I'll leave it at that.

 

[Domainoft]

What if we added a way to set another party as "Allied" with your party. Then you could form 2 parties of 10 or 5 or however many, Each party would only be able to aid/buff itself. But dmg would be disabled between the two parties. So they could neither help, nor hurt each other.

This could be useful for future events that require several PvE groups to work together against server events. Enabling PvE players to even risk venturing into PvP territories for Mob encounter events. "With a little risk of a pvp group invading in." Fun for everyone.

 

[Air_Restraint]

No, it's not just because of this. As stated, when a party leader has to make a choice between players, it will mostly be based on level and experience. It's not the most ideal situation, but I really think most players don't try PVP as they can't get into the big parties for it.

Most of the pvp groups only have a party of 2 to 3 usually. If you can't 3v10... sorry lol.