Player perception of balance and actual numbers

RavenSworn

https://www.heroesneverdie.com/2017/6/27/15880516/is-tracer-overpowered-hero-balance-jeff-kaplan

A really thought provoking topic and something I think that really relates to the player population here in eso. How does the player perception affect the balancing of classes? Given that this game is group oriented as well be it in PvP or pve, how is this affecting the game play of all?

Riejael

I'd say it affects it in a tremendous way. Back when I played Planetside 2, a weapon called the Raven was introduced on the New Conglomerate MAX suit. The damage per missile was average, and many saw the reticle guidance system as too cumbersome and exposed the player to return fire from vehicles as detrimental.

SOE (now Daybreak) saw no reason to make buffs to the weapon and hence made no changes to it for well over a year.

About 6-8 months later, is when the nerf calls were made. Due to the missiles firerate and reload rates, as well as the ability to hit from highpoints without receiving return fire, NC players started using the system enmass.

A weapon system that previously was discarded by players as being low tier suddenly became vastly OP. Enough that Daybreak decided to limit the range of the weapon by cutting the lifetime of the missile to a few seconds (gave it about a 300m range).

No buff to the weapon made, just some clever players found a use for the weapon and it spread like wildfire.

Things like this have caused Daybreak to buff or nerf things in a perceived slow manner. They have no idea if a weapon is underperforming simply because it isn't used very much, or because its actually underpowered. Same thing for weapons that are overused. Some weapons are used by 'everyone' just because of ease of use and the meta hasn't quite changed.

I've seen this same phenomenon happen in MechWarrior Online as well many other games. Balance can shift as players gravitate towards one playstyle or another based on what other players are using.

In PVE its usually simple, whatever clears the content the fastest at the time. Sometimes new content pushes other builds to come to the front. In fact I believe this part is healthy. ZOS should create content that encourages players to think outside the box and change up the meta with tanks, DPS, and healers.

Players shouldn't be allowed to get complacent. When they do, they fall into a rut and have a harder time accepting change. For example, if content was released that made Non-Templar healing favorable, and a switch up to what DPS builds were useful, players will complain. Why wouldn't they? Imagine the shock of a player who's healer's build has been in use for 2 years suddenly is being beaten out by healers created a month ago? They are going to take offense to that.

But I'd argue that switching builds and coming up with new ones is half if not more of the game itself. That's just my opinion. But my argument is that there isn't a true linear progression. We do not have tiers of gear to obtain. In many cases some BiS are obtained from 'newbie' zones.

Anyway in a PVP sense its more dynamic. Players will go for the builds that give them the most advantage for the situations they wish to engage in. Then other players will come up with counter builds to survive that. And then another build and another happen.

Causes really interesting results when someone who's playing a counter build to something and another player is playing a build which the previous was meant to counter and they seem to be on equal terms but then later find something that counters them. The perception is the counter should be nerfed. They don't realize there is a cycle of counters. Something like rock paper scissors but with 8-10 builds and roles intermixed.

So when a dev decides to look into something that seems imbalanced, they need to see if its merely a counter to a widely played spec. Then see if there is a spec that actually overpowers it. If those things are true, leave it be. ESO-PVP isn't a democracy. If everyone is playing a spec that's counterable, and get countered. They don't get to decide by ignorance and stubbornness that it gets nerfed. They simply need to change specs to accommodate. They must adapt.

Again I'd argue that's half or more of ESO. Figuring out counters and strategies to deal with evolving metas. The difference in PVP is the players change the metas. In PVE the devs have to and should force the issue everytime new content is introduced.

And every so often maybe once a year or so, change up how some abilities work just to throw every player out of their comfort zones. Sure it sucks when you gold out a set or two and have to change. But if you've gotten complacent and comfortable, haven't you already 'won'? Sometimes when player Super Mario Bros 3, its fun not to skip Worlds 5-7 and actually play through them. Same thing applies here. If you get comfortable, can run veteran trials with little issue. You have little actual reason to keep playing said character. But when meta's forced to change once in a while, you can dust it off, try a new spec and experience the game again in a fresh manner.

I'm sure many disagree, and I get it, it doesn't feel comfortable. But understand what ESO actually is. The content is rather static, progression isn't linear. The most challenging part of the game isn't in the execution of content, but in the preparation.

That's all my 2 cents of course.

Huyen

Most "balancing" is done because people in pvp complain about a class or ability overperforming.
If you look at PvE in ESO there is little balancing needed. Maybe a few tweaks here and there with new trials / dungeons, but thats it. Balancing for the sake of balancing like they want in PvP is the worst for a MMO.

RavenSworn

This is definitely true @Riejael. There was a period of time when nightblades were so called 'kings' of PvP simply because they could cloak and 'reset' the fight or just to finish it off. But in all honesty, cloak is not at all used in pve and it was truly under performing. In fact even when cloak was high on the PvP list of nerfs, there were so many counters to it.

Players just refuse to use it because it didn't 'fit' their build. Thus is what frustrates me. Players want a level playing field for both PvE and PvP but what is a level playing field? We can't have all the classes be the same concept... It defeats the very nature of having classes yes? Take a look at dota2 for instance. We have so many chars but each char can be played differently by the player with the right builds and combos.

And not to mention there are many other instances of player perceived op-ness of a certain class that it was brought down unfairly. This I think is very unhealthy for the game in the long run.

Riejael

RavenSworn wrote: »

There was a period of time when nightblades were so called 'kings' of PvP simply because they could cloak and 'reset' the fight or just to finish it off. But in all honesty, cloak is not at all used in pve and it was truly under performing. In fact even when cloak was high on the PvP list of nerfs, there were so many counters to it.

I've had an ongoing argument about that very issue with Nightblades with a friend of mine. When we initially played the game he'd complain about how OP 'snipers' were in PVP. I was playing a light armor sorcerer back then and couldn't for the life of me figure what the hell he was talking about.

Delving into the issue a bit. It was a nasty build that could take one down fast. But that particular spec was hosed in keep/mass fights where it wasn't close to being a 1v1. This is why I hadn't seen it, I stuck primarily to playing the objectives while he was seeking 1v1s.

That's one thing Devs need to keep in mind when balancing as well. WHERE is the spec being used? If its good at something, and that something doesn't have a major impact on the rest of PVP, sometimes its best to leave it be. Reason I say this is I hate balancing around 1v1s. We're playing a MMO, we're meant to be in groups. If you're getting hosed and the fix is to type LFG in zone chat, no change is needed.

Your ability to get into or form a group is just as important as your spec or skill in the game. May even argue its more important. That's not something people like to hear. But its the truth in multiplayer competitive environments.

GrigorijMalahevich

Wow, so progressive...

You shouldn't take in to account what Blizzard use for deciding balance. Statistics is cool and stuff, but remember, this one thing, Blizzard had a very popular RTS back in the day - Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne - there was a race - Undead - and it had a very diverse unit called the Destroyer. In short, Destroyer could devour magic (like remove buffs or remove debuffs and dispel any summons) - and when magic was devoured - Destroyer had big damage boost with _SMALL_ splash. Everyone was saying that this unit is too imbalanced (at that time we used the word IMBA not OP ) and it took Blizzard... about 2 years, to release that there is a bug with splash damage and it delivers 150% EXTRA damage of the intended splash of 50% of initial damage, example, base damage 100 and real splash damage 250 instead of 50...

Statistics? easy! Easiest balance monitoring tool in the world - they have most played game mode 1x1 and battle.net statistics covering every game. Average statistics of Undead vs Humans was around 65% vs 35% winrate. And still, it took them 2 years to realize this... Other matchups were around 5% of deviance...

Statistics is cool, but someone has to actually do something with it. Time played on a character is a very limited perspective of balancing...


P.S. #BalancePvPandPvEseparately

Turelus

Huyen wrote: »

Most "balancing" is done because people in pvp complain about a class or ability overperforming.
If you look at PvE in ESO there is little balancing needed. Maybe a few tweaks here and there with new trials / dungeons, but thats it. Balancing for the sake of balancing like they want in PvP is the worst for a MMO.

I think PvE balance happens more on the side of ZOS changing what they feel is over performing. Players in PvE are not going to complain when they get massive DPS out of a skill, but ZOS may not like that and want other skills to be competitive or viable.

RavenSworn

Turelus wrote: »

Huyen wrote: »

Most "balancing" is done because people in pvp complain about a class or ability overperforming.
If you look at PvE in ESO there is little balancing needed. Maybe a few tweaks here and there with new trials / dungeons, but thats it. Balancing for the sake of balancing like they want in PvP is the worst for a MMO.

I think PvE balance happens more on the side of ZOS changing what they feel is over performing. Players in PvE are not going to complain when they get massive DPS out of a skill, but ZOS may not like that and want other skills to be competitive or viable.

Which is why i thought that it would be hard to balance so called over performing skills without changing the player's perception as a result. "Why do you have to touch my builds? it was doing just fine!" or "wtf! this skill is so op, pls nerf this"

The worse part is that, how do you even justify it in the first place without statistics? We all can quote anecdotal evidence but in the end of the day, numbers do play a part.

Valera Progib wrote: »

Wow, so progressive...

You shouldn't take in to account what Blizzard use for deciding balance. Statistics is cool and stuff, but remember, this one thing, Blizzard had a very popular RTS back in the day - Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne - there was a race - Undead - and it had a very diverse unit called the Destroyer. In short, Destroyer could devour magic (like remove buffs or remove debuffs and dispel any summons) - and when magic was devoured - Destroyer had big damage boost with _SMALL_ splash. Everyone was saying that this unit is too imbalanced (at that time we used the word IMBA not OP ) and it took Blizzard... about 2 years, to release that there is a bug with splash damage and it delivers 150% EXTRA damage of the intended splash of 50% of initial damage, example, base damage 100 and real splash damage 250 instead of 50...

Statistics? easy! Easiest balance monitoring tool in the world - they have most played game mode 1x1 and battle.net statistics covering every game. Average statistics of Undead vs Humans was around 65% vs 35% winrate. And still, it took them 2 years to realize this... Other matchups were around 5% of deviance...

Statistics is cool, but someone has to actually do something with it. Time played on a character is a very limited perspective of balancing...


P.S. #BalancePvPandPvEseparately

Thats right but then again, the Blizzard of 2004 and the Blizzard of 2014 are two different animals. They might have the same name, but the team is different, with different directions and people working on the issue. Thats why i found it provocative when a well known developer states that the players perspective is important as well.

The problem comes with which player's perspective should they take? The casual? the hardcore?

Its much like in Overwatch, some changes done to certain characters were because of the professional scene... yet the bulk of the players are in the casual range and were not privy or didnt even realise what a difference it would make to the char they are playing.

zaria

Riejael wrote: »

RavenSworn wrote: »

There was a period of time when nightblades were so called 'kings' of PvP simply because they could cloak and 'reset' the fight or just to finish it off. But in all honesty, cloak is not at all used in pve and it was truly under performing. In fact even when cloak was high on the PvP list of nerfs, there were so many counters to it.

I've had an ongoing argument about that very issue with Nightblades with a friend of mine. When we initially played the game he'd complain about how OP 'snipers' were in PVP. I was playing a light armor sorcerer back then and couldn't for the life of me figure what the hell he was talking about.

Delving into the issue a bit. It was a nasty build that could take one down fast. But that particular spec was hosed in keep/mass fights where it wasn't close to being a 1v1. This is why I hadn't seen it, I stuck primarily to playing the objectives while he was seeking 1v1s.

That's one thing Devs need to keep in mind when balancing as well. WHERE is the spec being used? If its good at something, and that something doesn't have a major impact on the rest of PVP, sometimes its best to leave it be. Reason I say this is I hate balancing around 1v1s. We're playing a MMO, we're meant to be in groups. If you're getting hosed and the fix is to type LFG in zone chat, no change is needed.

Your ability to get into or form a group is just as important as your spec or skill in the game. May even argue its more important. That's not something people like to hear. But its the truth in multiplayer competitive environments.

Good point, also ganking is an lifestyle, NB as looks pretty much designed for it, had we not had NB some other class would be the ganking class.

eso_nya

No facts, just some random opinions based on feelings:

The loudest nerf-calls come from players who dont stand a chance against <spec-x>. <spec-x> is a class/build they havent played, dont understand and cant counter, yet they assume anyone who can beat them is a weaker player who cheats/exploits and plays an easymode class which is completely op.

In eso, the most important factors for being strong r knowledge and skill. Cp is helpfull, gear is nice to have.
When it comes to 1v1, theoretically, if u would know your oponents playstyle and build and could pick among all classes, gears and loadouts, u can beat anyone, given u r at the same skill-level (in terms of reactiontimes, precise execution, enviromental awareness and so on). If u dont know what u r facing, lack understanding of advanced or even basic combat mechanics, u r dead.

In traditional mmos, balancing revolves around geartiers. Gearsets r mostly tied to specific classes and skill doesnt matter much. Cooldowns tell you which rota to use. Thats far easier to balance, than a game where u r not very limited in your choice of gear and skills. A huge amount of choices also comes with a huge amount of "wrong" choices and the gap between fail and win is large.

U cannot really balance knowledge and skill. Looking at one of the future changes "no more shuffle and heavy": ppl who used it in their selfmade builds have adapted their build accordingly ~two weeks ago. (Wild guess: 90% of the things shuffle was blamed for, was actually meridias fault.) Chances r, the strong ppl r even stronger now and the ppl who thought the nerf would help them didnt gain anything.

Balancing somewhere between average, expected and maximum possible result seems to be the way to go. Moving onto the slippery ice of myth and legend, I would say, from just staring at the numbers, set balance in pts-hotr.0 revolved around no-cp, while balance when it went live was tuned to max-cp.

I do understand and agree to the goal of not balancing pvp and pve seperately to give new players a similar experience. I think that will always cause problems tho:
Endgame premade pve is usually raw dmg over utility, in pvp its the other way round. Nerfing solocababilities in an attempt to make 1vX impossible (or impossibly hard) is not good for capabilities in solo pve content (like vma). Tuning down sustain in order to tune down pve-dps, okay i would say "was bad for pvp", tho usually "change #5" make half the population rage "that was uncalled for" and the other half happy "now u got what u deserve". Cant really judge how much changes should be tied to or undone by battlespirit.

I would say generally changes happen for the long term goal to have the highest possible amount of happy players in the game. And those numbers r easily read out of statistics like "amount of unique accounts entering cyrodiil one time and never returned" for over all, after hotr, after homestead and so on; "amounf of accounts created after <patchlevel> who joined a dungeon via gf and never went into one again". Those things tho, they take time to analyse and also circumstances r important (like unrelated outside interferences). e.g. "never went into a 2nd dungeon because: wasnt fun? was to hard? got kicked by jerks? ppl made fun of the chars name? was to easy? max cp jerk killed everything before finishing loadingscreen?

FloppyTouch

So mdk back when the game first started did not need any nerfs and are just fine? Pls

Bladerunner1

The players in this game who embrace whatever meta is presented on Youtube tend to build up reservations for anything they don't have in their build.

Take this forum question,
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/374862/stamblades-shrouded-daggers-or-power-extraction-for-pve#latest

A lot of stamblades have a big aversion to their own AOE skill, Power Extraction, because it isn't meta. However, someone in that thread pointed out they're getting a lot of use out of it in their two hand PVE build.

But even in the one dual wield scenario where it makes a lot of sense to use Power Extraction a majority claim they'd rather use Shrouded Daggers. Enough of them have claimed PE is a useless skill, so now Wrobel says he's looking at changing it.

Apache_Kid

In my opinion. PvE does not need 'balance' unless it comes in the form of buffing under-performing sets and skills. Attempts to 'balance' PvE in the form of nerfs of damage dealt by certain items and skills do nothing in terms of adding difficulty to the content but it makes that content take longer to complete. It is for this reason that PvP and PvE need to be balanced separately. This will never happen in this game however.

DMuehlhausen

Huyen wrote: »

Most "balancing" is done because people in pvp complain about a class or ability overperforming.
If you look at PvE in ESO there is little balancing needed. Maybe a few tweaks here and there with new trials / dungeons, but thats it. Balancing for the sake of balancing like they want in PvP is the worst for a MMO.

To bad this will never change.

Until they make stand alone skills and give you skill points from PvP that can only purchase those skills. Same with the weapons. There should be weapons that can only be used in PvP.

PvE skills and weapons are designed to kill mobs with millions of HP in a trial. In PvP the enemies have tens of thousands. You'll never be able to balance it all out.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

Anyone else remember a story from one of the devs that was about them talking of nerfing a way over used mundus. Statics showed a huge portion of the population using one specific mundus. Then someone pointed out that it was probably just because it was the first mundus stone you ran across.

Im pretty sure I didn’t dream that whole story, but for the life of me I can’t remember who it was.

NewBlacksmurf

You can’t balance PvP and PvE simultaneously.

You can subscribe to a method of constant changes but those ideas result in upsetting one to please another and if done out of sequence, the communities tend to express discontent which has negative impacts long term.

For this game, in my experience, there are a lot of changes that should’ve happened as well as a lot that shouldn’t. The big change that should’ve happened is to keep both seperate waaay back when the faction account lock was removed just before launch during closed beta.

Today, there’s a reality that both gear, skills, cp allotment and skill point allotment should have two seperate instances. This would be cumbersome but meaningful and the best major change long term.

The excuse that, ZOS doesn’t want players to need to relearn two different ways to play is odd because two is far less than 4-8 /year. Maybe it’s just me who sees this as obvious

Thogard

It’s very possible to balance balance PvE and PvP simultaneously in most situations.

But it’s not possible to balance single target PvE DPS in raid setting including group debuffs with 1v1 top PvPer win/loss ratios...

Sadly those seem to be the two aspects of the game that get the most balance focus.

As long as classes have different survivability and self healing levels between the classes, it’ll be impossible to balance. PvE DPS with a healer in tow will not factor that in, won’t even slot it... but self heals are extremely important in PvP. The fact that bosses don’t heal themselves while players do also leads to the fact that DOTs are relatively useless in PvP but extremely useful in PvE...

This disparity is how you get oddities like the warden.. a class with terrible PvE DPS and mediocre PvE healing. But it’s burst dmg is the best in the game at the moment and it’s burst healing is right up there with resto ult, and having both the Burst DPS and burst healing on the same class leads to an extremely overpowered PvP capability... but it gets left behind on any serious raid where a 2 second dmg burst that burns through someone before a healing ward goes off means nothing compared to a 120 second DPS parse.

ZOS will need to equalize the self healing capabilities of all of the classes in PvP if it wants to be able to balance both PvP and PvE DPS simultaneously

generalmyrick

Great read!

RavenSworn

Thogard wrote: »

It’s very possible to balance balance PvE and PvP simultaneously in most situations.

But it’s not possible to balance single target PvE DPS in raid setting including group debuffs with 1v1 top PvPer win/loss ratios...

Sadly those seem to be the two aspects of the game that get the most balance focus.

As long as classes have different survivability and self healing levels between the classes, it’ll be impossible to balance. PvE DPS with a healer in tow will not factor that in, won’t even slot it... but self heals are extremely important in PvP. The fact that bosses don’t heal themselves while players do also leads to the fact that DOTs are relatively useless in PvP but extremely useful in PvE...

This disparity is how you get oddities like the warden.. a class with terrible PvE DPS and mediocre PvE healing. But it’s burst dmg is the best in the game at the moment and it’s burst healing is right up there with resto ult, and having both the Burst DPS and burst healing on the same class leads to an extremely overpowered PvP capability... but it gets left behind on any serious raid where a 2 second dmg burst that burns through someone before a healing ward goes off means nothing compared to a 120 second DPS parse.

ZOS will need to equalize the self healing capabilities of all of the classes in PvP if it wants to be able to balance both PvP and PvE DPS simultaneously

I think you hit it right on the head. It is possible but it's very... Frustrating for both player and developer. Simply because of the dynamics of PvP and the stately progression of pve.

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

You can’t balance PvP and PvE simultaneously.

You can subscribe to a method of constant changes but those ideas result in upsetting one to please another and if done out of sequence, the communities tend to express discontent which has negative impacts long term.

For this game, in my experience, there are a lot of changes that should’ve happened as well as a lot that shouldn’t. The big change that should’ve happened is to keep both seperate waaay back when the faction account lock was removed just before launch during closed beta.

Today, there’s a reality that both gear, skills, cp allotment and skill point allotment should have two seperate instances. This would be cumbersome but meaningful and the best major change long term.

The excuse that, ZOS doesn’t want players to need to relearn two different ways to play is odd because two is far less than 4-8 /year. Maybe it’s just me who sees this as obvious

The best suggestion in my mind is to have two sets of gear, exclusive to each other, one being PvP the other being pve. That can at least curb a bit of the difficulty of balancing. At the least you can control gear wise, which seems to be a bane for players in PvP.

Drakkdjinn

From the man who gave us OW launch McCree. /disregard

RavenSworn

Drakkdjinn wrote: »

From the man who gave us OW launch McCree. /disregard

Well, eso launched with light armor users being kings of survivability, damage and sustain, given how the soft caps were being implemented.

It wasn't known as elder staffs online for nothing.

Again, it's about how the player changes the game system to suit their needs. McCree might have not been powerful in theory but in practice, with hundreds if not thousands of players seeking the best out of a winning team comp, McCree just happened to be the best for their specific role.

It's the same with eso too, builds come and go with the player driven meta.