Balance is NOT possible - PROVE ME WRONG

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Innuendos#5095 wrote:

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

not as naive as thinking this game has thousands of builds.

it doesnt. 56% of the playerbase is 1 of three ascendency, and the vast majority of those, are like, 1-2 builds each.... that info isnt hard to find my dude.

once you set the baseline with what i said, you will see what outliners there are once you put the passives into effect(which is its own shitstorm), and can again, -/+ from there.

not rocket science.

People come up with new builds every week. And the reason why we don't see more is, that there are some realls trong and quite cheap builds. Why go for something that is expensive and mediocre if you can just play a meta-build? So yes, there are thousands of different builds possible, but many of them don't make sense because of the current meta builds that outshine them.

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Innuendos#5095 wrote:

you can achieve balance by making every build viable.

they dont have to be equal. that would be equality, not balance. but they all have to be passible in terms of being able to do roughly the same in terms of performance.

right now, they dont have balance at all, in these terms. and realistically, it would be fairly easy to do. they have the data.... it is ea... so they have the time to do it.

hell.. with dev commands, they could do it with 1-2 testers, within a day or two just by themselves.

just pump up those numbers to make it so every skill or combo of skills can actually complete all content in roughly the same ammount of time with roughly equivilant gear/stats/etc.

would be even easier, and faster, to let the same set of monsters hit you, with a variance of defenses @ set numbers. like say... for example, 6k ES / 1.5k life. (obviously dif numbers for the other defenses and mixes of them. but i really only play es.)

all it would take, is the data from a set baseline number of +skill level, since they are hell bent on that stat being the end all be all for damage numbers... say, lv +28 as the baseline, as it would be pretty easy for every single build, to be able to get +7 w/ a corrupted gem, or +8 flat skill level in total on gear/passives/etc. that would give them a pretty nice starting point to do it, as if you cant complete t15's at +8, that would be a pretty serious problem.

then you take the numbers of that, and -/+ nerf/buff to keep the dps numbers relatively close. (by say... 250k.... 500k... +/- or w/e number they want it to be close by)

they know this.

they just wont do it.

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

People come up with new builds every week. And the reason why we don't see more is, that there are some realls trong and quite cheap builds. Why go for something that is expensive and mediocre if you can just play a meta-build? So yes, there are thousands of different builds possible, but many of them don't make sense because of the current meta builds that outshine them.

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zepberonha#9748 wrote:

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Innuendos#5095 wrote:

you can achieve balance by making every build viable.

they dont have to be equal. that would be equality, not balance. but they all have to be passible in terms of being able to do roughly the same in terms of performance.

right now, they dont have balance at all, in these terms. and realistically, it would be fairly easy to do. they have the data.... it is ea... so they have the time to do it.

hell.. with dev commands, they could do it with 1-2 testers, within a day or two just by themselves.

just pump up those numbers to make it so every skill or combo of skills can actually complete all content in roughly the same ammount of time with roughly equivilant gear/stats/etc.

would be even easier, and faster, to let the same set of monsters hit you, with a variance of defenses @ set numbers. like say... for example, 6k ES / 1.5k life. (obviously dif numbers for the other defenses and mixes of them. but i really only play es.)

all it would take, is the data from a set baseline number of +skill level, since they are hell bent on that stat being the end all be all for damage numbers... say, lv +28 as the baseline, as it would be pretty easy for every single build, to be able to get +7 w/ a corrupted gem, or +8 flat skill level in total on gear/passives/etc. that would give them a pretty nice starting point to do it, as if you cant complete t15's at +8, that would be a pretty serious problem.

then you take the numbers of that, and -/+ nerf/buff to keep the dps numbers relatively close. (by say... 250k.... 500k... +/- or w/e number they want it to be close by)

they know this.

they just wont do it.

Make every build/combination viable? How is this fun? This would turn poe into Last epoch, a mobile game where it does not matter what you do at all, you just rampage the game. Studying the game every season to Discover what builds are strong is in the core of this game.

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Innuendos#5095 wrote:

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

People come up with new builds every week. And the reason why we don't see more is, that there are some realls trong and quite cheap builds. Why go for something that is expensive and mediocre if you can just play a meta-build? So yes, there are thousands of different builds possible, but many of them don't make sense because of the current meta builds that outshine them.

just because you want to count every different variant of a build, as its own, build... doesnt make it true.

spark is spark.... regardless if you have a spark build with coc comet... or a spark build with coe arc, or a spark by itself build.

its one build. spark. its the button you press.

just because someone runs a lich minion build with ants... and one has blasphemy despair... and one has self cast despair... and one has temp chains... all with ants. doesnt mean its 7 different builds. its still a lich ant build.

when someone asks a bloodmage what build they run. they say spark.

not

spark with coc comet, coe frost darts, crit based, es...

like seriously.

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

I see tons of threads here about balance.

- Nerf build X, buff build Y
- Nerf gem X, buff gem Y
- Nerf passive node X, buff passoive node Y
- Nerf ES, increase life
- Buff uniques
- Remove IIR, keep IIR, change IIR
- Make bosses harder or make bosses weaker
- tons of threads about mapping and how to balance it
...

And this list is by far not complete. We, the community, ask for TONS of changes all the time, sometimes even in complete opposite directions. Some builds one-shot every content in the game, other can clear whole maps within 10 seconds and then there are non-meta builds who struggle with the content, have low clear or kill speed. Are these builds bad? Most of the time I don't think they art particulary bad, but ofc they are not optimized and no math has been done.

For me, the question arises: Is balance in a complex game like PoE1 and 2 possible at all? There are SO many variables in this game that influence the power of your character:

- Rare equipments with tons of modifiers
- Unique items with special abilities
- Weapon choice
- Runes
- Flasks and charms with different effects
- Passive tree
- Character choice that influence start on passive tree
- Ascendency tree
- Atlas Tree
- Active gems
- Passive gems
- Maps with tons of modifiers
- Precursor with modifiers
- Bosses with different abilities, movement patterns and resistances
- Monsters with different abilities, movement patterns and resistances
- Vaal orb that can do alot of unpredictable things to many of the above listet things

ALL these things interact with and influence each other If you touch one aspect, you automatically touch any other aspect as well.

Example: When people say nerf Lightning Spear, how would you nerf it? Just scale the damage down? Yeah, sure, that would definitely help against the overpowered builds. But what about people who don't "abuse" Lightning spear in that way and take a different route where Lightning spear is just mediocre? If you nerf that skill now, you will not just scale down the OP builds, you will definitely destroy Lightning Spear builds where it would've just been mediocre. Because now it becomes weak for these people. That means, GGG kinda has to carefully consider on how those overpowered builds work and carefully change some values on multiple variables to nerf something, without making it useless for 90% of all possible builds.

I would argue that GGG will never reach a point where builds that can one-shot content are not possible. We will also always have some zoomers that clear maps within 20 seconds. There are too many variables and players will always get creative to find something new. That's the price GGG has to pay for creating a game that offer so much build freedom. Especially when the game offers things like "increased damage" and "more damage". This allows exponentiell growth and damage goes through the roof.

Ofc, some say: Just "cap damage". Yeah... no. That's not how you create an interesting game. This way, 80% of the builds will cap their damage and focus the rest of their skillpoints and equipment modifiers into defensive stuff. End result would be: Everything feels similiar/identical. It would make the game boring. Everyone loves to see their dps increase when they put on a new weapon or level up their gem. Capping that would remove enjoyment for many people and would take away lots of freedom/build diversity.

That's why I say: balance is never possible. We can adjust certain things, but you will find overpowered stuff in every season and GGG can only react to the meta that develops there.

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stkmro#2432 wrote:

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AceNightfire#0980 wrote:

I see tons of threads here about balance.

- Nerf build X, buff build Y
- Nerf gem X, buff gem Y
- Nerf passive node X, buff passoive node Y
- Nerf ES, increase life
- Buff uniques
- Remove IIR, keep IIR, change IIR
- Make bosses harder or make bosses weaker
- tons of threads about mapping and how to balance it
...

And this list is by far not complete. We, the community, ask for TONS of changes all the time, sometimes even in complete opposite directions. Some builds one-shot every content in the game, other can clear whole maps within 10 seconds and then there are non-meta builds who struggle with the content, have low clear or kill speed. Are these builds bad? Most of the time I don't think they art particulary bad, but ofc they are not optimized and no math has been done.

For me, the question arises: Is balance in a complex game like PoE1 and 2 possible at all? There are SO many variables in this game that influence the power of your character:

- Rare equipments with tons of modifiers
- Unique items with special abilities
- Weapon choice
- Runes
- Flasks and charms with different effects
- Passive tree
- Character choice that influence start on passive tree
- Ascendency tree
- Atlas Tree
- Active gems
- Passive gems
- Maps with tons of modifiers
- Precursor with modifiers
- Bosses with different abilities, movement patterns and resistances
- Monsters with different abilities, movement patterns and resistances
- Vaal orb that can do alot of unpredictable things to many of the above listet things

ALL these things interact with and influence each other If you touch one aspect, you automatically touch any other aspect as well.

Example: When people say nerf Lightning Spear, how would you nerf it? Just scale the damage down? Yeah, sure, that would definitely help against the overpowered builds. But what about people who don't "abuse" Lightning spear in that way and take a different route where Lightning spear is just mediocre? If you nerf that skill now, you will not just scale down the OP builds, you will definitely destroy Lightning Spear builds where it would've just been mediocre. Because now it becomes weak for these people. That means, GGG kinda has to carefully consider on how those overpowered builds work and carefully change some values on multiple variables to nerf something, without making it useless for 90% of all possible builds.

I would argue that GGG will never reach a point where builds that can one-shot content are not possible. We will also always have some zoomers that clear maps within 20 seconds. There are too many variables and players will always get creative to find something new. That's the price GGG has to pay for creating a game that offer so much build freedom. Especially when the game offers things like "increased damage" and "more damage". This allows exponentiell growth and damage goes through the roof.

Ofc, some say: Just "cap damage". Yeah... no. That's not how you create an interesting game. This way, 80% of the builds will cap their damage and focus the rest of their skillpoints and equipment modifiers into defensive stuff. End result would be: Everything feels similiar/identical. It would make the game boring. Everyone loves to see their dps increase when they put on a new weapon or level up their gem. Capping that would remove enjoyment for many people and would take away lots of freedom/build diversity.

That's why I say: balance is never possible. We can adjust certain things, but you will find overpowered stuff in every season and GGG can only react to the meta that develops there.

I am not a build expert, but I believe balance can be achieved much better if:

1) ggg remove all the "more" and "less" modifiers and make them to be "increased" and "reduced" modifiers.

2) there should not be generations of high amounts of stacks and charges and that should be limited to a small number for example 5 or 10.