In which Pooh Bear argues about Necromancers

[Ergorion]

0-2? I think necros are a little underpowered.

[curisq]

thank gosh they only have one spell type! lol

[Davairus]

I don't really want to say a whole lot on this subject again, because its been said a hundred times, and I have other stuff I should be working on, but since there are a few new faces around and I don't really approve of a 0-2 delete, here you go. I will give you some info on competitive balance.

You cannot realistically expect the game to ever be 100% balanced for 1v1 pk'ing, for levelling, and certainly not all at the same time. As a matter of fact you can't expect it for ANY game that has PK and levelling in it. In order for that to be a true statement, we would have to basically remove all of the differences between classes, so that any advantages would be very marginal at best, and we'd all be playing basically the same class.

Here's a very simple illustration. Take for instance, a healer. He's excellent at taking damage due to heals, but poor at dealing it. Now look at a thief. He is excellent at dealing damage but poor at taking it. The classes are kinda like polar opposites (except we have warrior and mage too so we're talking about having 4 poles here). If you put those guys together in a group, they complement each other very well, because they fix each others problems. Grouping is a co-operative affair so it works well. The problems start when you start trying to fit them both for soloing mobs and also 1v1'ing each other. How does a healer fight back against the rogue? Either:

A) The healer is kept the only one of these guys able to level. This gives us a shot at keeping the PK difference marginal, though the thief now sucks to level.
B) The thief damage is buffed by so much that he can kill mobs quickly, so low survivability is not a concern. This means that the thief will shit on the healer because he overwhelms him with way, way bigger damage than the mobs he is used to fighting.

There is no middle ground other than making them identical characters.

On top of that, we do also obviously have what you could call "simple classes" which means skills are easy to use and thus a little less potent (a warrior is an easy class to level due to its 4 defences and good hp, with simple skills), and we have what you could call "hard classes" which is what mages are due to their weakness, where you're supposed to be stronger because you have a much harder time levelling and playing it due to more demanding spell and mana management on top of weaker defs. On top of THAT, there is gear. The rare items deliberately upset the game balance by making that character more powerful than others can be. On top of that, then there is group PK, which actually, is more balanced than 1v1 PK because the skills are fair (you do still run into the problem of human players being smart enough to always focus the mage first instead of them being able to hide behind their tanks "in the rear with the gear" so to speak, but it being more even goes without saying). Then there's the low level power spikes caused by the class progressions, like how a necromancer does not get third zombie until level 50, whereas a ninja probably peaks around level 17 with red dragon eq on. That level 17 ninja vs necro fight is a very different affair than how it goes at level 50, and its not accidental one bit. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

So the question is how can you solve this, and balance a game. If you try to have skills that are good vs mobs, weak vs players, people aren't going to be fond of it. If you try to have skills that are good vs players, they can either turn out useless vs mobs (e.g. curse, trip) or they can be mortifyingly OP vs mobs (e.g. blindness, weaken). Point being, things don't translate well between environments as a rule. If you try to have skills that behave differently vs mobs and players, people are going to have a harder time learning the game (e.g. dirt, some combat styles shit). There will always be problems in this area, and its only the way that players actually play that dictates when they complain and about what. For instance, this delete. This is probably a guy deleting because he found levelling a necromancer much too difficult, while on the logboard we currently have people saying a necromancer is doing too well against a paladin. This is an impossible problem to solve. We could definitely remove the issue by wising up as a playerbase and not being so heavily anti-gangbang. Group vs group fighting cabal warfare is actually where the most balanced PK in the game is. Frankly its baffling to me why anyone would ever cherry pick one class and say that it is "overpowered" with zero context though.

What I hope to teach you with saying all this is that this solo "imbalance" inherent to the system isn't necessarily bad. That's not the case at all. It is in fact, a part of the game to take joy from. If you take the time to study the game, its areas, take advantage of any loopholes you find, choose your battles, your knowledge will help you beat other players. Nothing is really deliberately ultra powerful, nothing is really deliberately underwhelming to the point the character is a joke (take note that both gnomes and giants used to be and we fixed it), but you can certainly find these angles and take advantage of them. If you cause a game change to happen, I will (and everyone else should) applaud you.

If you've played any other MMO, D&D, whatever, you know the genre struggles with it. Its every game like it. LoL and DOTA have this problem and tweak the characters every month without fixing it. Street fighter, which does not have mobs involved in the game and is entirely 1v1 only, definitely does not have the problem. I kept saying the word problem here but I don't think it is one. I think the problem is lacking in understanding of what the true nature of competition is on this game.

[Arunore]

Now, roll for initiatives!

[Nycticora]

Split because this argument already hit at least one graveyard post and I don't want to mangle yet another with it.

For the record, I think about balance changes for weeks and sometimes months before I even discuss them with Davairus, and I have a much deeper understanding of them than you do. It took me 6 months of rumination and a lot of math to balance Rend Life, and I am confident it is currently as balanced as it can possibly be. I literally have charts and graphs to back me up.

[Ozaru]

eh verdel was my necro, no need to make such a fuss

[Arunore]

For the record. Rolling initiative is what you do before encounters in d & d. I should have been more clear, now lets roll for initiatives and use the wisdom we've gained from Davairus. You showed me the graph, I seen the paper, but I can read the function of the outcome of the code from nearly two decades of playing. Your players understand balance, and your players are your strongest source of feedback. Necromancers are currently constructed beautifully, and it's one class that is well polished and doesn't really need anything else done to them. Years ago half-elf rogues were shot down, and you still shoot down drow rangers, but have drow bards for some reason.. a race that naturally has a -1 charisma that rooted to '74's Tactical Studies Rule, Inc. (TSR). Some of us have thought about balance changes just as much as you have. With that, I'm going on vacation.

[Mikoos]

Chun Li is OP as shit in street fighter.

this 'problem' sort of reminds me of flee/murder. no matter how you cut it..someone's gotta hit first. I think AR has done the best with that 'problem' and this.

[Davairus]

I posted this because I've been seeing this same complaint being recycled for years, and I wanted to write a post I can link to instead of us rehashing it. There is only so much that we can do, and we're doing as much as possible.

Rend life wasn't "overpowered". It was a game breaker that threatened to make people leave the game in disgust. There is a difference between that, and something overpowered. A necro with full zombies is purposely overpowered, and that's justified for the time investment and all sorts of frustration to get to that point. Paladin wrath spell is also purposely overpowered to give all players who chose evil (and its freedom to PK anybody and act like an asshole) something to be concerned about - again, notice the pattern of an OPness with a justification. One is tied to the other in both these cases. It is the way the game is deliberately designed and we should already be long beyond thinking its a clever comment for the forum boards anymore to say either one or the other (full zombies vs necro hardship) is OP or UP. It drives me mad to keep reading this stuff which we should all already know and "get it". On the other hand, if you cannot see the difference between that and rend life, whether you were here 10 years or 1 year, please read my post, then think about it again a little more. That's not arguable but because it was bad design and fixed, its totally ok to not get that.

I dont plan writing anything about bards as I just dont want to put my focus there right now, but I will say I dont feel they are 100%. They have a very odd progression and weapons they dont use.

[Ergorion]

I don't know why my post was the one chosen to start this thread but it's an honor to be nominated. Also it was clearly facetious. Happy new year. And rend life.

[Nycticora]

Here is some advice from the distant past:

If a stacked necromancer were after me with full zombies I would quit out. Then, I would post a log or come on the forums and call people who quit out bitches to shame the behaviour so that the next time I have a stacked necromancer you'll all just stand there and let me kill you.

[Ergorion]

I second ranix' post.

[Ranix]

I third it

[Blashyrkh]

Who the fuck is Ranix?

[Ranix]

fuck you blashkyrath

[Blashyrkh]

Really? Okay.

[Blashyrkh]

Good luck with your success.

[Ranix]

I had won this game before you knew it began

[Dogran]

Lolz, Ranix=... nevermind I give up.

[Ergorion]

Happy new year. Ima roll a necro now and rape face like resatimm.