Balance Considerations

[Zestana]

You talk about "changes on the fly", and then acrobatics as an example of a simple change that "created a new class of fighters".

'Changes on the fly" was from a separate post and relatively different topic than the Acrobatics changes.

'Changes on the fly
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Past example: When white hits was rolled out. There were a lot of subsequent patches made because of how it broke the game. Some guilds suffered more than others.

Current Example: There *seems* to be weekly (if not daily) changes to the Covens presently. And since they are rather high profile it does not go unnoticed.

Acrobatics
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Such a simple thing as the new Acrobatics skill created almost an entirely new class of fighters.

My mistake here was perhaps including simple in this line. But Acrobatics did create an entire new class of fighters.

We wanted Genesis to provide the full fantasy thematic playing styles... so for the rogue guild style we looked at what we could do to provide a unique defensive experience that aligned to their stereotype - where they benefited from fighting with specific weapons, not being overburdened and leveraged a dodging mechanic but whose ability to do so was impacted the more weight they carried or impacted when using weapons lacking finesse.

Umm... I'll bite at this... There was already a guild in the game that has existed since the 90's that checks all these boxes. Except it was/is categorized as a fighter class.

These changes were incorporated into the core combat system and became a key element to making certain guilds - like the monks and fire knives - viable.

The introduction of this new class; subsequent balance issues with it that were discovered... and more changes (some global) made to counter said issues impacted another guild. This resulted in making said guild less viable and markedly weaker even after it had received a recode and been brought into the new balance system.

On other stuff we'll have to agree to disagree. Sometimes less words is more.

But after all ignorance is bliss.

Cheers

[Arman]

Re: acrobatics - ok. Yeah the ‘simple’ reference is what triggered me. As for the fighter guild you are talking about, you mean the Union? We seriously looked at converting them across to be a rogue-type… at the time we thought the guild would be resistant to it. But that is a good point I’d forgotten about… if there was appetite for it they’d be a good guild for transition away from fighter guild style. But while the Union has the facade of a rogue style, they definitely aren’t a template for a rogue guild… they have no capacity within their balance structure for rogue skills (they have none) and are completely reliant on using a fighter style base to have the skills they have.

Re: white hits - White hits was another example that wasn’t a change on the fly. Probably the biggest fix the game has had to rollout. It changed everything, and everything had to be rebalanced. It was one that was put off for years because the job was so daunting. We knew there were things we couldn’t anticipate that we would need to fix post rollout (we are talking decades of content build on a broken system)… that may seem to be changes on the fly, but in reality was a reflection of the seismic changes we had to introduce.

These weren’t changes of whimsy. Without the change the game’s special system would have remained broken and all guilds unbalanceable. It wasn’t a change we wanted to make, but without it the game would always have been skewed towards those guilds with the most powerful offensive specials.