Class Balance / Bugs & Performance

Almanegras

Stop fixing class balance and other crap that means nothing to most of us and start working on bugs and preformance so we get the most out of these awesome game.

[Title editted by Mod]

nynniva

Yes, please.

airhead

LMAO.... I just hit refresh and VANTURD appears at the top?



This is more entertaining than any game. Think about it. The freedom, the role-playing capabilities.... these forums are generally hillarious and I'm having a blast just browse reading them.

nynniva

I haven't seen much 'freedom' personally. You can choose 'some' of your stat distribution and which class you want to play, of course then you have a bunch of restrictions regarding race, with some continents completely NOT having a class available - beyond that everything else seems to be dictated to you. I think the game is fun, don't get me wrong, and prior to the ridiculous nerfage was really enjoying it, but I never would have used the word "Freedom" to describe it.

Rollotamasi

Originally posted by Almanegras

Stop fixing class balance and other crap that means nothing to most of us and start working on bugs and preformance so we get the most out of these awesome game.

I hate to break it to you but class balance is probably important to alot of people.

nynniva

Oh I'm sure it is important.
But I don't think its more important than you know, thousands of people unable to log in.
Or the long, long list of other issues that are very severe.
Class balance doesn't matter a bit if you can't play the game.

Rollotamasi

Originally posted by nynniva


Oh I'm sure it is important.

But I don't think its more important than you know, thousands of people unable to log in.

Or the long, long list of other issues that are very severe.

Class balance doesn't matter a bit if you can't play the game.

I would venture a guess that Sigil development is setup al ot like most game companies IE the people responsible for things like class balance and the people responsible for "bugs and performance:" are more then likely two different groups of designers working on two different segments of code.  You cant just take the class balance people and say "Here, fix these performance issues!"

nynniva

Yes, though the problem is that Perception = Reality.

It is quite likely that there are different teams working on different issues, however when we have an "Emergency" patch during primetime and then log back on two hours later to find that all the same problems are still there, except now we can experience them on our now gimp characters, the PERCEPTION is that Sigil chose to start messing w/ classes before making the game fully functional.

And that perception is frustrating and driving away subscribers.

The idea of a BETA is to get things like this worked out before launch.

In the customer's mind, we draw a line at Launch, ie : This is when we start paying for the product. Before this point, things are allowed to be wonky. We will say "Its just beta."

But once we cross this line into "Release" our expectations change, and we're entitled to make that change. We're paying for this. What have you paid for?

For me, I've struggled with many of the issues that people have been having. Some days the game was barely playable, other days it crashed, other days it ran perfectly. I've encountered and reported easily hundreds of bugs in the week or so I've been playing, doing my part to help make the game succeed, despite the fact that BETA IS OVER. And I also get to pay 50$ up front and a monthly fee for the privledge of helping Sigil fix its game. But I didn't mind this, you know? Cause I love the game. I really do.

As I said before, it is FAR BETTER to never give, than to give and take away. This causes outrage, as it clearly has in this situation. I've looked at a few other fansites and the disciples are, well, pissed off. And I don't blame them. All of you people who are on here saying that wahhhh, disciples had godddmoddeee wahhhhh ...just wait until the nerf bat is pointed at you and see how you like it. Disciples didn't have it any better than some of the other overpowered classes, if they were so powerful, why are they the least played class? Why wont people take a disc as their healer in teams a lot of the time? A characters ability to solo is one aspect, and their functionality in a team is another aspect, their functionality in pvp is yet another. All of this should have been worked out during development, NOT inserted as a quick and dirty fix in the midst of thousands of bugs and post release issues.

SUMB44

Originally posted by nynniva


Yes, though the problem is that Perception = Reality.
It is quite likely that there are different teams working on different issues, however when we have an "Emergency" patch during primetime and then log back on two hours later to find that all the same problems are still there, except now we can experience them on our now gimp characters, the PERCEPTION is that Sigil chose to start messing w/ classes before making the game fully functional.
And that perception is frustrating and driving away subscribers.
The idea of a BETA is to get things like this worked out before launch.
In the customer's mind, we draw a line at Launch, ie : This is when we start paying for the product. Before this point, things are allowed to be wonky. We will say "Its just beta."
But once we cross this line into "Release" our expectations change, and we're entitled to make that change. We're paying for this. What have you paid for?
For me, I've struggled with many of the issues that people have been having. Some days the game was barely playable, other days it crashed, other days it ran perfectly. I've encountered and reported easily hundreds of bugs in the week or so I've been playing, doing my part to help make the game succeed, despite the fact that BETA IS OVER. And I also get to pay 50$ up front and a monthly fee for the privledge of helping Sigil fix its game. But I didn't mind this, you know? Cause I love the game. I really do.
As I said before, it is FAR BETTER to never give, than to give and take away. This causes outrage, as it clearly has in this situation. I've looked at a few other fansites and the disciples are, well, pissed off. And I don't blame them. All of you people who are on here saying that wahhhh, disciples had godddmoddeee wahhhhh ...just wait until the nerf bat is pointed at you and see how you like it. Disciples didn't have it any better than some of the other overpowered classes, if they were so powerful, why are they the least played class? Why wont people take a disc as their healer in teams a lot of the time? A characters ability to solo is one aspect, and their functionality in a team is another aspect, their functionality in pvp is yet another. All of this should have been worked out during development, NOT inserted as a quick and dirty fix in the midst of thousands of bugs and post release issues.

In the end he may have good cause to be upbeat. “In some ways this is just the beginning of a long journey,” Mr. McQuaid said. “People ask me, ‘Are you launching a finished game?’ And the answer is no, we’re launching a game that is good enough to launch, but it’s not finished. And that’s why I love these games: because they should never be finished.”



That's from the NYT article on Vanguard.



It's an unfinished product.  You are essentially still beta testing the game and finding bugs and technical problems.  You are playing what Brad describes as "Good enough for launch".  Expect more changes in the months to come, but take pride in being part of the solution, being part of the evolutionary process. 

GodOGames

Reality = Bugs in the code take time to locate and fix. There are millions  if not billions of lines of code in games.

I hope Sigil takes their time and fixes the problems properly.

nynniva

Thats a very optimistic way to look at the situation.
And the reality is, prior to the class nerfs, thats exactly how I felt.

Now I'm not so sure, standing in town LFG is not fun, and someday MMO developers will figure out that standing in town LFG is not fun. I'd just hate to see a game like this be ruined by forcing grouping to that extent. Make grouping 100 times more rewarding - thats fine. But make solo possible.

Orca

---

Originally posted by nynniva
I haven't seen much 'freedom' personally. You can choose 'some' of your stat distribution and which class you want to play, of course then you have a bunch of restrictions regarding race, with some continents completely NOT having a class available - beyond that everything else seems to be dictated to you. I think the game is fun, don't get me wrong, and prior to the ridiculous nerfage was really enjoying it, but I never would have used the word "Freedom" to describe it.

---

My shaman, is very restricted by attributes.

If i choose strenght, my melee dmg increases alot, if i choose Vitality, my healing and regen really changes.

I can choose to grind, or do quest.

Solo or group.

Fight, craft or do some diplomacy.

And im still only lvl 13...

ThalosVipav

Least played class or not, Disciples were over powered.

A guild mate of mine plays a disciple, we are on a PVP server. This is my view of why I would say they are overpowered. He was attacked by a level 17 Ranger, he was a level 9 Disc. Easy win for the Ranger right? Wrong. The fight lasted a good long time and the Ranger finally did win, however, The Ranger was over half dead as well. My guild mates best weapon? A heal that would heal him completely every other round. Now, this could be huge props to the Disc for knowing his class and how to PVP or it could be a big HAHA! to the ranger for having no clue. But, no clue or not, the fight should have went alot faster, been alot more one sided.

Now, don't get me wrong, our entire guild had a good laugh at this poor rangers expense. But certain things do need to get taken care of when they are realized. Can you imagine if this was put on the back burner, as the OP suggested, and then 2 months down the road they nerfed Disc? The outrage then would have been 4x what it is now. The gaem is just starting, they (the devs) are realizing more and more whats working and what isnt. Obviously someone thought this class was very unbalanced.

I play a dread knight and I am positive that sooner or later I will get hit with that Bat also. But come as it may, I still enjoy the game and will learn to live with it. Not rush right to a forum to complain about it. There has only ever been one nerf that I ran to a forum about and it was named NGE. Over the years I have come to accept that everything will get nerfed sooner or later. Those that cry on the forum will get their way, only not quite how they imagined. And no matter what the game, launch is always buggy.

I respect your views on fixing the bugs. I agree with you 100% on that. But like someone pointed out, 2 different teams working on 2 different areas. And one was ready to fix stuff when the other wasnt. I dont like that they pulled the servers down in prime time to do it however. But, who knows, maybe there was something behind the scenes that we didnt know about or could see that also needed to be fixed ASAP.

Hope you continue to like the game and stay with it. Buggy as it is, it's gotten alot better in a short time and hopefully they keep up this pace

 

CylusSigil

Originally posted by nynniva


Yes, though the problem is that Perception = Reality.
It is quite likely that there are different teams working on different issues

Correct

nynniva

ANY healer is going to have staying power in PvP in ANY game.

I almost always play a healing class, and in 99.9% of all MMOs I have played, I have been able to keep myself alive a good long while in PvP even against higher lvled opponents.

The skill level of the relative players is a factor here, yes.

And the level disparity DOES seem to indicate that perhaps disciples need some tweaking, but I think what people are misunderstanding here is that the changes made to the disc class were not just minor tweaks.

The Crit Nerf :
- Less crits = no falling petal = no healing + buff = 50% dps decrease (falling petal being one of the ONLY decent attacks a disc has at lower lvls )
So our damage has already been halved, if not worse. Moving on.

The Heal Nerf :
Our HoT now heals for half what it did. Blessed Wind II, for example, now heals 24 hp a tick. Mobs 6-7 levels lower than I am can hit me for 50-60 points at a time. These mobs don't even give me XP anymore, and yet my HoT can't negate their damage. Compare this to the HoT a cleric has at the same level.

The Cost Increase :
This now nerfed HoT, instead of costing half as much endurance since it SUCKS now, costs now 46 endurance per use. Considering that a disc needs to be able to use attacks to build up jin, and that this attack is part of a combo that is needed to heal, this nerf frustrates chain attacking as well. "Dodge" which allows you to evade the next incoming attack, previously cost 5 endurance. It now costs 10. This alone wouldn't have been a big deal, but after you do Blessed Wind Twice you don't even have 10 endurance LEFT. The cost is too high, its absurd, and many other skills costs have been scaled up as well meaning a disc can now do 1 or two actions per endurance bar, then struggle to cast a heal on themselves while being beat on.

Lack of Re-Stat :
Because Discs previously were able to keep themselves alive using endurance and Jin as well as energy, many of them do not have a high WIS in their build. However with this nerf we are now just as mana dependent as any other healer class, except many of us, especially those at higher lvls, find that we just don't have the energy pool that we probably would have, had this been the way the class was from the start. In other games, when changes of this magnitude are introduced, a 'respec' of stats is usually given as compensation.

So lets summarize. My disciple's stats are all wrong for how my abilities are today, which frustrates gameplay. My attacks cost twice as much and do half as much, I've gone from decent soloist to a low dps crappy healer half of whose abilities aren't worth dragging to the bar. Lets also throw in that this was done during prime time and as a stealth nerf since the patch notes said nothing about the cost increases and also smoothly PR-ified how drastic these changes were.

And the worst part is? We have no guarantee that a month down the road they're going to decide that we're still too powerful and hit us with the nerfbat again. Cause you know, we can still heal ourselves. Maybe they should just add a universal rule in that "You can't be your own defensive target" and be done with it. Since the way this game looks to be heading, it wont really make any difference.

ThalosVipav

Rangers have a heal also. Or so I've heard.

Not to argue, that's not my intent. I will agree, a well played healer will outlast everyone PVP unless they get ganged up on or are out played.