"Character Balance Queue" News Post Wording

Unknown

Is it just me or do you find the wording that Demiurge_Al uses in his news post (http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2079) a bit offputting?

One of the most-requested fixes we receive for the game is to adjust the balance of characters... While I think most dedicated players knew the Ragnarok re-balance was coming...

Doesn't that sound like passing the blame to the players? It sounds more like "I don't know why everyone's upset. We're just doing what YOU players were asking for. YOU should have seen this coming". Making an abrupt change to a character to make him non-competitive and near useless is not considered a rebalancing, it is wiping it off the plane of existence. I feel bad for the non-"dedicated" players, who don't pilfer through these forums every day, and invested money into Ragnarok or any of the listed characters.

...in our efforts to make all characters useful.

This might be a silly and crude analogy, but it's like taking a rare Ferrari car and gutting it into a Dodge Caravan to make the common cars "more useful". Obtaining rare characters should feel like an achievement and they should feel more powerful, even if it's just by the slightest. Otherwise, why even bother have a tiered rarity system? Here's a novel idea, why not IMPROVE the other characters to be more competitive? Improving characters gives players a motivation goal to achieve and makes the game more fun by empowering the player, whereas having every character have similar damage output just makes the game a slog to play through.

...we are constantly finding new and interesting ways to use the characters in the game.

I really can't see how the changes to Ragnarok or the foreseeable changes to the other listed characters are making them more "interesting" to use. Devaluing rare characters to create "balance" makes character usage almost homogenous and therefore uninteresting to use.


I fully agree that Ragnarok was overpowered but I think the changes were too severe. I just don't understand what the developers are trying to do. How is negating all the time and/or money a player has spent on a character rewarding? Why would a player invest any time or money into ANY character anymore, for fear of one day the developers render them useless?

Unknown

I would say we knew a change was needed, but to say we knew one was coming? That's patently ridiculous, given to the best of my knowledge it was never acknowledged that the Dev team felt Ragnarok was stronger than intended (or that the 4* characters are terrible).

This all comes down to a lack of communication. They could have indicated they knew it was a problem weeks (or even months) ago.

Unknown

i believe from the mass amount of dev's that suddenly appeared on the forums, that they understood they made a mistake with keeping us all in the dark about the massive nerf they made on ragnarok without any warning. i think after this incident (and like other incidents, something has to occur before a fix can occur), they'll be more open on their decisions and reasonings behind nerfing/buffing a character.

that said, there still is no reason behind why ragnarok was nerfed as such (with an ability worse than his counterpart thor's).

if one of the dev's see's this, a reasoning would be nice. if you send me a message, i can give you my own reasoning (with mathematical evidence, in an ideal world situation [because apples to apples is the only comparison you can make]) why it was overhanded and why people didn't think the nerf through.

Unknown

Truth is the current state of the game is due to whiners + incompetent devs. Killer combo.

Unknown

The main reason users complained was because of his overuse/success in Lightning Rounds. Where he got a 200 percent buff and was valued because of the speed of his attacks (faster wins = more points = higher ranking).

They could have fixed a lot of the problems by removing those buffs. It's not like Ragnorak was THAT scary when he was unbuffed. Just someone you had to deal with first.


But I imagine their reasoning for the buffs is to motivate people into spending more money. Which doesn't work on me, but might work on others.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

The main reason users complained was because of his overuse/success in Lightning Rounds. Where he got a 200 percent buff and was valued because of the speed of his attacks (faster wins = more points = higher ranking).

They could have fixed a lot of the problems by removing those buffs. It's not like Ragnorak was THAT scary when he was unbuffed. Just someone you had to deal with first.

100% agreed!

Kiamodo

I agree. The buffs were over kill. But he was still attainable. Most people with a maxed rags never shot for the top on those events and diabolical coins were awesome for making sure you got a decent cover. The biggest problem is now pe.... Screw it it's just all a mess.

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

Is it just me or do you find the wording that Demiurge_Al uses in his news post a bit offputting?

Honestly, I don't. I think people who are upset and looking for it will read it how they want.

Knock3r wrote:

Here's a novel idea, why not IMPROVE the other characters to be more competitive? Improving characters gives players a motivation goal to achieve and makes the game more fun by empowering the player, whereas having every character have similar damage output just makes the game a slog to play through.

This is a good idea, however, the problem with it applied to THIS situation was that Ragnarok was game breaking, in the speed of gameplay he allowed, when combined with buffs and certain other characters (mostly GSBW and/or Wolv). There was nothing they could do to make characters compete with that without further breaking the game. In this case, a nerf really was the only option.

Knock3r wrote:

I really can't see how the changes to Ragnarok or the foreseeable changes to the other listed characters are making them more "interesting" to use. Devaluing rare characters to create "balance" makes character usage almost homogenous and therefore uninteresting to use.

I'm not certain on your use of homogeneous here? Do you mean it makes them all play the same? Because, the Rag nerf is shaking up the meta to where new teams will come into play, which is a good thing. I still think there is enough variety in characters to make game play and team choice not feel homogeneous.

In the end, I agree the rag nerf overbalanced. We'll just have to see whether the announced adjustments make things appear more thought out than this single nerf is.

Unknown

forgrim wrote:

that said, there still is no reason behind why ragnarok was nerfed as such (with an ability worse than his counterpart thor's).

I think we can expect Thor to be nerfed under Rags in the future. They should have done both at the same time so we would still use the 3* over the 2* rather than sending Rags out to tea with Bagman. If it made sense to keep playing Rags post nerf then I would be much happier for sure.