Global layman guild review

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Kvator
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Joined: 02 Sep 2010 21:25

Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Kvator » 02 Aug 2019 17:10

Draugor wrote:
Kvator wrote:
nils wrote:Fix AA first.
Layman AA i pretty decent.
Not what he's asking to get fixed :P
Pls don't tell me that he just wanted to hijack layman guild thread with whines about his OCC.

I won't believe it. People here don't do that.

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Dhez
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Location: Gorlovka

Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Dhez » 02 Aug 2019 19:47

Arman wrote:Hi everyone,

I have recently conducted a review of every layman guild. Some balance concepts - while logical - haven't been applied sensibly. I plan on refining some of these balance concepts that will impact how some guilds operate, but before I do I thought I'd get a general feel from the player base on their perceptions of the layman guild state of affairs (i.e. lay of the land ;) ).

I don't plan on giving any more details than that, however will note any feedback provided here as part of my considerations.

Thanks!
A.K
While I appreciate the gesture of letting us speak our minds, I find it quite difficult to express any opinion on the matter without knowing what the intended changes are. It is extremely difficult to assess the possible impact these unsensibly applied balance concepts would have on the game once 'fixed. It is as if in the software development world I'd tell my QA that we, development, will refactor the codebase to reflect latest standards and remove superfluous logic, and that they, without knowing what these do, should speak their minds on the efforts of writing new test cases to address these changes. The best they could do in such a scenario would be to perform full regression after a build with the changes has been made available and report any issues found. Which is what I suppose we'll do: test once the changes are available and hopefully any performance issues discovered would be addressed then.

Due to the vagueness of the original post, the best feedback I can predict happening in this thread will be the usual cacophony of complaints, wishes, and snarky remarks we, most of the players, are known for. At some point one player's opinion will conflict with another's, they will start derailing the topic arguing amongst themselves, and any reasonable voice will be laughed out or drowned in the eternal ping pong of blame shifting among ourselves.

Sadly we don't know how balance is perceived or measured in Genesis, and not all of us have any tangible data to form any sort of argument that sounds halfway solid to those who know the inner workings of guilds and have a clearer, or at least less subjective, definition of balance.

Nevertheless, I'll try this:

I'd focus on giving underperforming layman guilds more attention than overperforming ones. I'd love to see more layman monks, minstrels, etc. The reality is they don't offer much, so why would one punish oneself going that route? Blatant and extreme power shouldn't be a part of the game. It'd be like a company paying 100k a month for factory work in good conditions where all others have poor conditions and pay 20k. Obviously everyone would try their best to secure a position within the best company. The other companies, however, shouldn't wonder why that's the case. It is obvious. They could appeal to the work in those companies being more 'fun' or 'honourable' (we would maybe use the term 'roleplay' in the game) but... At the end of the day, who eats fun and honor? Balance shouldn't be only diminishing the power of the strong, but also improving the power of the weak. I believe that'd bring far more variety in layman guilds.
You see a mousetrap. I see free cheese and a challenge.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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gold bezie
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by gold bezie » 02 Aug 2019 21:04

About the monks layman guild, yes its pretty useless at the moment. For me it depends on what the plans are for the monks occupational guild. We (players of the order) are hoping for some changes, well known by our wizards. And if this would happen in the near future, then this would mean something for the layman guild as well. If that would be the case then please give priority to the Minstrels. The theme is so lovely and so good for roleplaying, also really neutral.

But im also curious what the players feel like is missing and how they would see a recoded monks layman guild.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.

Kvator
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Kvator » 02 Aug 2019 21:15

Amberlee wrote:Also listening to Kvator is inherently a bad idea.
Templars are fine as they are.
Quite powerful actually.
Fix the rank progression on OotS.. Seriously..
1 - I treat negative opinions from you like the best compliments. Thank you :*
2 - Templars have 3 specials - all weak af. 3 * 0 = 0. Remove this useless impale thing and increase tattack a bit. That should do the trick (if they're so powerfull why all DA members are in Warlocks instead of their 'go-to' layman?)
3 - Progressing in OotS is extremely easy (although the final 'reward' is pretty useless). It's hard to balance players lack of creativity/game-knowledge :(

Kvator
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Kvator » 02 Aug 2019 21:21

gold bezie wrote: But im also curious what the players feel like is missing and how they would see a recoded monks layman guild.
I would like to see them as an offensive 'solo' option - but with restrictions in armour-wearing, teaming etc.
a) you can't wear armour
b) but you have great offensive special
c) plex is kept
d) to make up for lack of armour they should have some defensive dodge-like special that works best when you are solo (and getting worse in bigger and bigger teams - kind of opposite to Calians)

So they should be very good for soloing/ok for dpsing in team and weak as team-tanks).

and ofc - goblins shouldn't be allowed!

but still (imho) - archers should be priority atm

Amberlee
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Amberlee » 02 Aug 2019 22:34

Kvator wrote:
Amberlee wrote:Also listening to Kvator is inherently a bad idea.
Templars are fine as they are.
Quite powerful actually.
Fix the rank progression on OotS.. Seriously..
1 - I treat negative opinions from you like the best compliments. Thank you :*
2 - Templars have 3 specials - all weak af. 3 * 0 = 0. Remove this useless impale thing and increase tattack a bit. That should do the trick (if they're so powerfull why all DA members are in Warlocks instead of their 'go-to' layman?)
3 - Progressing in OotS is extremely easy (although the final 'reward' is pretty useless). It's hard to balance players lack of creativity/game-knowledge :(

No Templars evade is pretty strong.
On par with pirate stagger, which is one of the strongest evades in the game.
Their tattack is ALOT better than the pbash.
As for the tsap, that is circumstancial.

For progressing in OotS, sure it is easy.
I could trigger spellcasting all days and just idle as well and re-trigger it on full mana.
But that would go under full robotics, wouldn't it?
Which demands that you actually do something, and that loops back to.. Progressing is hard unless you cheat your way up.
The views posted by me on this forum is not the views of the character Amberlee in-game.
If you ask for my opinion here, you will get MY opinion, not that of my character.

Zugzug
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Zugzug » 02 Aug 2019 22:59

Kvator wrote:
Amberlee wrote:Also listening to Kvator is inherently a bad idea.
Templars are fine as they are.
Quite powerful actually.
Fix the rank progression on OotS.. Seriously..
1 - I treat negative opinions from you like the best compliments. Thank you :*
2 - Templars have 3 specials - all weak af. 3 * 0 = 0. Remove this useless impale thing and increase tattack a bit. That should do the trick (if they're so powerfull why all DA members are in Warlocks instead of their 'go-to' layman?)
3 - Progressing in OotS is extremely easy (although the final 'reward' is pretty useless). It's hard to balance players lack of creativity/game-knowledge :(
1 - you usually formulate your arguments from the "nerf X" perspective, rather than "let's make guild A, B and C better somehow so that they match in power (somewhat at least) with guild D". If you think that warlocks are so overpowered, where were you in the arguments that we had for at least a few years about elemental warriors being OP (and not having a reputation of an established evil player being an unspoken requirement to get into the guild)?. From where I stand, you have a very twisted notion of what is "fair and balanced" in genesis - hence - I agree, with Amberlee.
2 - Templars are not a bad guild choice for a purely melee character, I was one for quite some time. I would not call all three of their specials 'weak af' - tfocus (evade) is slightly worse than pirates, but can be turned off in return for a much stronger tattack. Having a choice is nice, usually in genesis that's reserved only for good-aligned guilds or guilds out of calia. Tsap is more or less useless.

Also, believe it or not, sometimes it can be good for roleplay to not have a layman guild where you are beholden somehow to people your occupational guild should have no business being beholden to. Imagine if the captain of angmar all of a sudden decided to enforce the "no teaming with goodies" rule for layman angmars? How would that make you as a player, feel?

Syrk
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Syrk » 02 Aug 2019 23:40

a fable

Kvator
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Kvator » 02 Aug 2019 23:53

Zugzug wrote: 1 - you usually formulate your arguments from the "nerf X" perspective, rather than "let's make guild A, B and C better somehow so that they match in power (somewhat at least) with guild D". If you think that warlocks are so overpowered, where were you in the arguments that we had for at least a few years about elemental warriors being OP (and not having a reputation of an established evil player being an unspoken requirement to get into the guild)?. From where I stand, you have a very twisted notion of what is "fair and balanced" in genesis - hence - I agree, with Amberlee.
2 - Templars are not a bad guild choice for a purely melee character, I was one for quite some time. I would not call all three of their specials 'weak af' - tfocus (evade) is slightly worse than pirates, but can be turned off in return for a much stronger tattack. Having a choice is nice, usually in genesis that's reserved only for good-aligned guilds or guilds out of calia. Tsap is more or less useless.

Also, believe it or not, sometimes it can be good for roleplay to not have a layman guild where you are beholden somehow to people your occupational guild should have no business being beholden to. Imagine if the captain of angmar all of a sudden decided to enforce the "no teaming with goodies" rule for layman angmars? How would that make you as a player, feel?
1 - In my very first post in this topic I proposed:
- to boost two guilds
- to nerf two guilds
- I suggested that another two need boost

I also ten to ask for buffs for some occ guilds (kenders, rangers, archers)

Where that's 'usually' came from lol? Seems like some twisted notion to me.

as for Elementals - I like this part 'arguments we had for at least a few years' from a guy that wasn't even playing back then :)
as for me personally - I tried to not allow them in Knights (failed though), pretty heroic isn't it? :)

2 - In Genesis it's better to have one decent special than to have multiple that you can choose from. As a BDA/Pirate I've had much more succes than BDA/Templar. Stagger is actually much better than evade and tattack being better emote than pbash doesn't make up to it. But hey that's just another evil guild, so true - I should stay in character you made for me. Nerf them instead!

3 - It would make me feel good! AA shouldn't team with pure goodies (calians, knights, rangers etc) - no matter the branch. Good job Captain!

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Arman
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Re: Global layman guild review

Post by Arman » 03 Aug 2019 02:42

Dhez wrote:
Arman wrote:Hi everyone,

I have recently conducted a review of every layman guild. Some balance concepts - while logical - haven't been applied sensibly. I plan on refining some of these balance concepts that will impact how some guilds operate, but before I do I thought I'd get a general feel from the player base on their perceptions of the layman guild state of affairs (i.e. lay of the land ;) ).

I don't plan on giving any more details than that, however will note any feedback provided here as part of my considerations.

Thanks!
A.K
While I appreciate the gesture of letting us speak our minds, I find it quite difficult to express any opinion on the matter without knowing what the intended changes are. It is extremely difficult to assess the possible impact these unsensibly applied balance concepts would have on the game once 'fixed. It is as if in the software development world I'd tell my QA that we, development, will refactor the codebase to reflect latest standards and remove superfluous logic, and that they, without knowing what these do, should speak their minds on the efforts of writing new test cases to address these changes. The best they could do in such a scenario would be to perform full regression after a build with the changes has been made available and report any issues found. Which is what I suppose we'll do: test once the changes are available and hopefully any performance issues discovered would be addressed then.

Due to the vagueness of the original post, the best feedback I can predict happening in this thread will be the usual cacophony of complaints, wishes, and snarky remarks we, most of the players, are known for. At some point one player's opinion will conflict with another's, they will start derailing the topic arguing amongst themselves, and any reasonable voice will be laughed out or drowned in the eternal ping pong of blame shifting among ourselves.

Sadly we don't know how balance is perceived or measured in Genesis, and not all of us have any tangible data to form any sort of argument that sounds halfway solid to those who know the inner workings of guilds and have a clearer, or at least less subjective, definition of balance.

Nevertheless, I'll try this:

I'd focus on giving underperforming layman guilds more attention than overperforming ones. I'd love to see more layman monks, minstrels, etc. The reality is they don't offer much, so why would one punish oneself going that route? Blatant and extreme power shouldn't be a part of the game. It'd be like a company paying 100k a month for factory work in good conditions where all others have poor conditions and pay 20k. Obviously everyone would try their best to secure a position within the best company. The other companies, however, shouldn't wonder why that's the case. It is obvious. They could appeal to the work in those companies being more 'fun' or 'honourable' (we would maybe use the term 'roleplay' in the game) but... At the end of the day, who eats fun and honor? Balance shouldn't be only diminishing the power of the strong, but also improving the power of the weak. I believe that'd bring far more variety in layman guilds.
Fair point... I didn't want to provide much context as I want broad insights rather than on a specific focal area that I see as an issue. In my review of all the layman guild code I identified around three distinct global issues varying in degrees of potential balance impact... so I wanted to see if they came out in general player comments. The two main ones have.

The lesser of the balance issues is around those layman guilds that haven't transitioned over to standardised systems - Dragon Order, Minstrels, Tricksters. No surprises there, they are all underwhelming in what they offer outside of their thematics. Ckrik is working on the DO, Minstrels I plan on recoding myself at some point... but Tricksters... jury is out. Possibly close them until someone is prepared to put them time in to a recode for them.

The main issue is in relation to layman magic guilds. The concept around the maximum combat aid they have access to is based on the potential combat aid they lose in 'white damage' in the casting time of spells like harms and heals. This allows for a potential combat aid midway between a non-magical layman guild and a non-magical occupational guild.

Conceptually this is fine, assuming the benefit and disadvantage balances around the aid provided for a 'normal' layman guild. The extra benefit being applicable in those disadvantageous circumstances where white damage is lost. The problem is this concept hasn't been applied properly since the creation of the first layman guild using this system in the Worshippers layman guild, and all layman magical guilds since then have followed the Worshippers model... including my own OotS and recoded Heralds, and Nerull's Warlocks.

And the problem is with maintained spells, where no white damage is really lost. When all the extra combat aid benefit is poured in to maintained spells, it means you end up having a 'super' layman guild with none of the white damage loss disadvantages being applied.

No doubt some of you will say "duh, we've been telling you about the Worshippers being OP for ages!". Which is fair, and one wizards have wrestled with for a while. Like I flagged above, conceptually the set up for layman magic guilds is fine... it is just that we haven't unpacked where the potential issue was until now.

So the guidelines around layman magic guilds need to be tightened up, with the guilds modified to reflect the guidelines and the application of their combat aid benefits in line with the conceptual balance model.

Anyway, that was more than I was intending to share.

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