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Originally Posted by Wolfen2
This is not a MMO or some competitive game, so what gives?


What gives is games designers taking pride in their work.

Balancing a game, be it a solitaire, a co-op, a competitive, be it physical or digital, is right there at the very core of what game design is all about.

The "this isn't an MMO or eSport" argument is ludicrous when looking to fault any balance adjustments.

There's a specific reason that the Cyseal area / first ten levels of this games were so good upon release.

Last edited by Noaloha; 23/08/14 09:20 PM.

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Originally Posted by Noaloha
Originally Posted by Wolfen2
This is not a MMO or some competitive game, so what gives?


What gives is games designers taking pride in their work.

Balancing a game, be it a solitaire, a co-op, a competitive, be it physical or digital, is right there at the very core of what game design is all about.

The "this isn't an MMO or eSport" argument is ludicrous when looking to fault any balance adjustments.

There's a specific reason that the Cyseal area / first ten levels of this games were so good upon release.


And why exactly does a single player game have to be balanced? What is there to balance against? If all choices are equal, then you are not playing a game, you are playing an eBook.

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Originally Posted by Wolfen2
I hate it when devs (for whatever reason they may have) starts to impose artificial barriers on players in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME...


In other words, you hate games?
Because games are all about overcoming (guess what, artificial) barriers. If you don't care about challenge (whatever type), you can as well just play that:
http://progressquest.com

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Originally Posted by strider24seven
And why exactly does a single player game have to be balanced? What is there to balance against?


In games design? Several things! Lots. Loads.
Let's look at "interesting choices".

You make a game that has a list of abilities to choose from, let's say there's ten, and lets call them perks since that seems to be the current nomencalture for this kind thing nowadays.

So, as the game's designer, you have a list of ten perks. The player will be able to select three during the course of their playthrough. As it so happens, in playtesting, you realised that two of those perks are super goddam awesome sweet, and the rest offer varied other moderate benefits.

The games released. Within two days, people are talking about the game and it becomes obvious that you always pick the Super Awesome perk first, then the Goddam Awesome perk, then whatever.

You ever play XCOM, the recent one from 2K? Two words: sniper, Squadsight.


Now, there's a quote from a podcast I listen to, 3 Moves Ahead. It's a podcast that focuses on strategy games and the hosts of the show had a conversation about what defines a strategy game. The shortest version of the answer that they could arrive at was, paraphrasing here: "A sequence of interesting choices."

Their point being, the intrinsic part of what engages the player is the act of considering options, selecting one, then dealing with the results. To have a choice be interesting, there needs to be balance. If one is obviously more powerful than the second, that's not an interesting choice. That's deciding whether to apply a handicap to yourself for no good reason.

And while D:OS isn't 100% a strategy game, it certainly has (for example, character build) strategy elements, just as sitting around a Dungeons & Dragons table has (for example, improvisational) strategy elements, just as Spelunky has (for example, split-second reaction) strategy elements, just as any number of other videogames, single-player or otherwise, do. The 'interesting choice' observation is one of the (many) things at the forefront of the mind of any games designer worth their salt. And, to reiterate, you can't have interesting choices without first having a certain amount of balance across the options available to you.

EDIT: Gosh, I typed a lot. Oops.

Short version, smartly applied and considered balance makes games more gooder.

And I'm going to repeat what I put in my previous post: There's a specific reason that the Cyseal area / first ten levels of this games were so good upon release. There's your main reason why even a single-player game benefits from balance passes.

Last edited by Noaloha; 23/08/14 09:54 PM.

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Originally Posted by Noaloha
-lots of good points-


And this is your opinion, which is certainly valid.

However, in my opinion, balanced choices doesn't make a non-competitive game better. If two choices have the same outcome, then there is no real choice involved, and you are once again playing an eBook or Progress Quest.

Originally Posted by Noaloha
And I'm going to repeat what I put in my previous post: There's a specific reason that the Cyseal area / first ten levels of this games were so good upon release. There's your main reason why even a single-player game benefits from balance passes.


And I'd just like to point out that Cyseal was so good because it was not balanced. You could choose, like I did in my first run, to leave through the north gate at level 3, and have a tough scrap against Rob and his zombies, and then head south and east into the villa, then accidentally trigger the Diedrik encounter, killing the party instantly. Or like my second playthrough, heading out onto the beach toward black cove at level 4, then having a jolly time running an orc battalion over the landmines they had placed. Neither of these choices were better then my third run, during which I took the "proper" route to the Northwest.

The myriad of possibilities of your choice of exit from Cyseal proper made the area fun and interesting - and the choices were far from balanced. Soloing the burning legion in the northeast with my level 4 ranger, after sneaking through Luculla to nab the Heartseeker bow was an interesting challenge, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

TL;DR
While I understand the need for balance in competitive games, when I play a single player game I would like to have actual choice in my gameplay progression. Not everyone wants to play an eBook.

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Cyseal is incredibly well-balanced in terms of game design. It feels really finely crafted, an area filled with quite distinct, separate parts that are all connected cleverly, sign-posted accordingly (for those paying attention). It's a smooth experience from Lvl 1 to Lvl 9 or 10 or whatever. The level of difficulty remains consistant (both within the optimal route and also when you go out of your way to try more challenging, buttclenching encounters) and feeds nicely into subtly signposting the player to the optimal areas (enemies too difficult for you? if you want to, maybe you should try the other way).

I'm guessing we're using the word balance to mean two different things. I'm not actually sure how you're using it, sorry. I can't connect Cyseal's open world freeform structure with imbalance. Balance doesn't imply a controlled corridor-like game experience, like your comment seems to be suggesting.

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why balance issue is close to meaningless so far in this particular single player game? because almost all the "unbalance" factors (as mentioned in these forums) could go away based on gamers' decisions. don't like lone wolf and glass cannon? don't use them; mage overpowered? don't play it; 100+ resist healing? don't pump it and don't spend time crafting things. charm too powerful? don't feaking use it. and lastly, don't like everything, mod them to hell.

what exactly does other players using, or "exploiting" all those "OP holes" have any practical impact on those who don't? everyone is playing his/her own singleplayer game...what's the practical/real impact exactly?

as far as the idea that TB = chase goes, it's about enemy AI and higher level combat design. which a mere resist hard cap cannot fix and hardly has anything to make the game more similar to a chess game.

most CRPG have the "late game too easy" issue, because of the nature of the genre: we level up to get more powerful; what's the point of getting xps, attaining powerful abilities, spells, and gathering loots? to struggle like lvl 1 weaklings from beginning to end? if you want to play chess, play chess, and non-leveling up games; there won't be any op holes or "balance" issues (providing that if there's no AI hole to exploit~~).

If Larian is seriously about remedying the nature bane of singleplayer CRPG, take close look at high level enemy AI and unique encounter/ boss designs.

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I'm guessing we're using the word balance to mean two different things. I'm not actually sure how you're using it, sorry. I can't connect Cyseal's open world freeform structure with imbalance. Balance doesn't imply a controlled corridor-like game experience, like your comment seems to be suggesting.


It is being used in different ways.

The "single player game doesn't need balancing" argument is talking about overpowered mechanics being rebalanced so that they are no longer overpowered. This is unnecessary because the game is not competative and players can (artificially) limited themselves to not using those mechanics.

Noaloha, you make some excellent point but I think you're ultimately talking about game design in general, which includes balancing towards providing a certain kind of experience.

It seems to me that individual changes in the former category will effect the overall game design (which you refer to Noaloha), but will not be sufficient to achieve the latter's sense of balance (ie Cyseal vs the rest of the game).


Addition: I still think the easiest and least disruptive way of improving the challenge of the game is to allow the AI to go first in combat. And I think this would be achieved, in most cases, with removing the Initiative bonus from Leadership.

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Originally Posted by Noaloha
Cyseal is incredibly well-balanced in terms of game design. It feels really finely crafted, an area filled with quite distinct, separate parts that are all connected cleverly, sign-posted accordingly (for those paying attention). It's a smooth experience from Lvl 1 to Lvl 9 or 10 or whatever. The level of difficulty remains consistant (both within the optimal route and also when you go out of your way to try more challenging, buttclenching encounters) and feeds nicely into subtly signposting the player to the optimal areas (enemies too difficult for you? if you want to, maybe you should try the other way).

I'm guessing we're using the word balance to mean two different things. I'm not actually sure how you're using it, sorry. I can't connect Cyseal's open world freeform structure with imbalance. Balance doesn't imply a controlled corridor-like game experience, like your comment seems to be suggesting.


Right and I'll attribute that to, that is what we all played in EA and reported back on. If they did that with all chapters, I have no doubt the game would have been better overall. Time and Money, that's all. smile

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Originally Posted by Armakoir
The "single player game doesn't need balancing" argument is talking about overpowered mechanics being rebalanced so that they are no longer overpowered. This is unnecessary because the game is not competative and players can (artificially) limited themselves to not using those mechanics.

Noaloha, you make some excellent point but I think you're ultimately talking about game design in general, which includes balancing towards providing a certain kind of experience.


I see, I think.

Well, can we at least agree that these ideas of (1) whether or not adjustments to overpowered stuff is necessary, and (2) the relative value of balancing towards providing a certain kind of experience, can we agree that both of these decisions belong in the domain of the game's designer?


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Originally Posted by Noaloha
Originally Posted by Armakoir
The "single player game doesn't need balancing" argument is talking about overpowered mechanics being rebalanced so that they are no longer overpowered. This is unnecessary because the game is not competative and players can (artificially) limited themselves to not using those mechanics.

Noaloha, you make some excellent point but I think you're ultimately talking about game design in general, which includes balancing towards providing a certain kind of experience.


I see, I think.

Well, can we at least agree that these ideas of (1) whether or not adjustments to overpowered stuff is necessary, and (2) the relative value of balancing towards providing a certain kind of experience, can we agree that both of these decisions belong in the domain of the game's designer?

No. At least I can't agree entirely. (Sorry ;/)

It's like something I put in another post: of course the designer can do whatever they want whenever they want. It's their product and they have the freedom to change it however they want. But more realistically, at some point your going to piss off your supporters/fans when you change things too drastically, or when you don't remain faithful to the product you initially released. At some point, the players come to "own" the game and their (reasoned) opinions matter more than initial design intentions (ie The People vs George Lucas).

The question is: having been out for a few months, who "owns" the game now?

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Originally Posted by Danarchy
Normally try to avoid whining on game forums, but since I think the previous whining caused you to make the changes you did here goes...

Why on earth would you patch a non-mmo game base on 'Hardcore!!!!" complainers comments? 80% resist cap, henchmen not leveling after you hire them anymore...neither of these make any god damn sense. The game I paid you for is no longer the game im playing. And since I bought it on steam I cant even roll the god damn thing back again to play the game I was loving. Seriously, this is some horrible decision making! My only hope is someone puts out a mod to change these things back the way they were. Ya, maybe I suxor or whatever, but F-U I do not expect this kinda crap in a CRPG and it is exactly why I do not play MMO's.

For the love of god there were already mods out there to make the game harder for those whose self worth is based on their video game meta-achievments. I just want something to lose myself in for a couple hours a day and forget my soul chrushing job.

I was not born with enough middle fingers.

Are you kidding? The main, MAIN complaint about this game is that it gets too easy.

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Originally Posted by Armakoir

Addition: I still think the easiest and least disruptive way of improving the challenge of the game is to allow the AI to go first in combat. And I think this would be achieved, in most cases, with removing the Initiative bonus from Leadership.


this is no different from resist hard cap, or any other form of cutting back resources from the gamer side. you can just not put points on leadership can you not?

imo, it has to be on the enemy side; raise the initiative of high level enemies.

as for who really owns the game? I think Larian should stick to their own concept of core rules of the game. it can be modified based on gamer feedback for sure, but any change should not completely override their original vision of the gameplay. total overhaul is the job of modders.

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I think people saying "Balance is unnecessary because this is a singleplayer game" are being somewhat extreme.

Yes, complaining "game is too easy" while exploiting all the OP stuff is stupid and "Don't use this and that" is a valid advice when we're talking about an individual player's choice but that doesn't mean the game can't be improved with more balanced mechanics.

(Here I'm not talking about D:OS but in general.) Let's say I'm playing a hypothetical game with 3 class options and one is broken. That's okay because I can just play the other 2? No. I still want that feature of the game I purchased.

And if there's absolutely no need for "balance"(here the term balance may have a different meaning) at all, why are there multiple difficulties other than the "easy"? You can just limit yourself by not equpping gears and not leveling up your stats to emulate harder difficulties.

What I'm trying to say is that, you all have a valid point and you are not wrong but let's admit that the game could be improved with some careful adjustments.

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Originally Posted by Armakoir

The "single player game doesn't need balancing" argument is talking about overpowered mechanics being rebalanced so that they are no longer overpowered. This is unnecessary because the game is not competative and players can (artificially) limited themselves to not using those mechanics.


Overpowered, by definition, means OVER powered. If the mechanic is OVER powered, it's a problem. If you admit that a certain anything in a game is OVER powered, you're admitting it's a problem.


What you want to be arguing is that you don't feel the resistance issue is too powerful for the game and explain why it doesn't make the game worse. An important part of having fun in a game IS an appropriate challenge to most people. An argument of "Sure it's overpowered but people can just not do it" isn't a productive one- especially when it's relatively easy to /accidentally/ get ludicrous +Resistances.

My personal argument shall remain that resistances were too good, but a hard cap that denies permanent immunity to /anything/ gets rid of a big chunk of fun to be had and causes a big dissonance when you've got single suits of armor giving 70% resistance to something by themselves.

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Well this whole resistance issue was just handled very poorly by Larian, no matter how I try to look at it they just overplayed their hand.

I understand they can do what they want and personally I am kinda neutral about resistance being hard-/softcapped.

However if you done a playthrough of the game, it should have become clear that either Larian intended 100%+ resistance to be a (big) part of the game or they are really bad at math. I would assume the former.

Now I can understand that Larian is like... hmm this whole 100%+ resistance thing is really unbalanced, we need to fix this. Up untill this point, no complaints from me.

However without realizing what kind of effect of it would have on other items/talents in the game they made the change. Or maybe they did realize and they went like... well let's see how it works. This is the part I can not understand.

Don't they have meetings there... Aren't there people who test stuff and people who would actually realize that hardcapping resistances @ 80% was a bad idea because it would have larger effect then just making the game more balanced/harder.

To me that is what gets to me, it did not feel at all if it was thought through. Whether you have a company of 2000+ people or 20 I expect quality and I expect the companies actions to be well thought through. If they feel that the balance of the game is not as they intended, then they have the right and means to change it. However I do expect those changes to be well thought through. Change for the sake of change does not mean that the intended results of the change reflect the reality.

Like I said earlier, I don't mind whether the cap is 80% or 200%. However if they change stuff I expect other items/skills/talents/terrain in the game to reflect those changes.

Hardcapping/Softcapping affects a lot of areas of the game, not just the difficulty, a few examples are:

Self immolate, phoenix dive, explode: these skills work best with 120%+ Fire resistance, self immolate and explode are probably fairly useless without 120%+ fire resistance.

Elemental shield, elemental absorbtion: these skills are fairly useless with a hardcap and with a softcap I would say the elemental shields are pretty good. (However mostly because they give the target a shield that is equal to their hitpoints...)

Resist all potions are fairly useless with a hardcap and very rarely useful with a softcap, assuming you are @ 80% there is little reason to use large resist all potions.

Weather the storm talent, with a hardcap utterly useless and with a softcap aswell. 25% resistance or 2 attribute points when you are capped @ 80% is a no brainer. So by introducing the softcap this talent went from tier 1 talent, to sub par.

There's a few areas where having Tornado skill or 120%+ resist is useful, but with the current softcap that is all doable, so that is currently solved by having a softcap @ 80%.

Sword of the planets is affected by these changes, and also rubies, elemental essences.

Maybe there is more that is affected by it but this is what sprung to mind at this late hour for me.

Once again repeating myself, if Larian decides to bring more balance, they are blessed to do so, however I do expect them to think about how it will affect the game. Personally I find it hard to believe that someone at their office decided to do a playthrough to test all this and did not see any of this at all. Ofcourse ofcourse there's allways the excuse of well it worked when we tested it and when the patch came it worked differently, but professionals don't make excuses, they take responsibility whether it be good or bad.

With kind regards,

Rashar.


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Originally Posted by Armakoir

We're all trying to beat the game, but the two groups you mentioned are wanting to beat different aspects of it. The group that loved the game as it was were the players who enjoyed the game world and were trying to beat that fictional world (which means self imposed limitations are acceptable), while the group wanting a harder game is trying to beat the game mechanics (therefore self imposed limitations aren't acceptable), and couldn't care less about the game world and the fact that this is an RPG.



^ this. the devs are chasing two rabbits if they start listening to both groups.

Just create a solid ruleset, and maybe put out a statement that the game is not designed to be "unbreakable," because there is always a way to exploit a game like this. No rpg that I know of is not nerfable by a player who wants to get bored really fast.

Just create a solid ruleset and implementation, and then tell players that it's not the devs fault if someone wants to trivialize the gameplay. That is the whole point of rolling characters: you try to figure out what would be fun or challenging or unique to play the game with.

Kids today. They don;t know how to pretend. They think every game is a speedrun competition.

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Originally Posted by Noaloha
...
Now, there's a quote from a podcast I listen to, 3 Moves Ahead. It's a podcast that focuses on strategy games and the hosts of the show had a conversation about what defines a strategy game. The shortest version of the answer that they could arrive at was, paraphrasing here: "A sequence of interesting choices."

Their point being, the intrinsic part of what engages the player is the act of considering options, selecting one, then dealing with the results. To have a choice be interesting, there needs to be balance. If one is obviously more powerful than the second, that's not an interesting choice. That's deciding whether to apply a handicap to yourself for no good reason.
....


You mean like having more health is ALWAYS better than having less health? So choosing "Hard" difficulty is already applying "a handicap to yourself for no good reason". This is what pisses me off so much. They always claim that not using a stronger option is "artifically handicapping" them and yet THEY ALREADY DO THAT!!!

So why is "artifically handicapping yourself for no good reason" by choosing "Hard" difficulty considered to be different from " artifically handicapping yourself" by not or rarely using "stronger than others" options????

They are ruining the fun for OTHER players because they are TOO STUPID to get that!

And apart from Chess there is NO game where this handicapping the player is NOT done.

Also even IF an option is clearly better people are still capable of CHOOSING THE OPTION THAT MAKES THE GAME FUN FOR THEM PERSONALLY, e.g.: Playing a sorcerer makes "Dark Souls" much, much easier than playing a melee fighter. And yet thousands of players are playing melee fighters. Are they "artifically handicapping themselves" or are they "playing the game how it is fun for them"??? It is clearly the latter.

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How about if they remove the cap and make it so that if you gain resistance to an element on an item, then you lose 50% of that resistance on the opposing element. At the same time reduce the max resistance on items.

e.g. on the highest level items: +20% resistance to fire, -10% resistance to water.

Poison and Tenebrium should stay capped at 80%, because poison already has a talent that allows resistance to go above 200% with a recent patch and Tenebrium is supposed to be more powerful than the standard elements. In addition, if you equip an item with Tenebrium resistance, then every other element gets reduced by 25% of that value.

e.g. on the highest level items: +20% resistance to Tenebrium, -5% resistance to Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Poison.

There should also be talents that increase resistance to each element by 25% (one talent per resistance) but those talents also reduce resistance of the opposing element by 10%. Weather the Storm could then be nerfed again to +15% to each element, and a penalty to block and armor percentage added.


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Originally Posted by Sinthesizer
doesn't mean the game can't be improved with more balanced mechanics.


And if there's absolutely no need for "balance"(here the term balance may have a different meaning) at all, why are there multiple difficulties other than the "easy"? You can just limit yourself by not equpping gears and not leveling up your stats to emulate harder difficulties.

What I'm trying to say is that, you all have a valid point and you are not wrong but let's admit that the game could be improved with some careful adjustments.


"improved" from and toward what? in the end, it's all personal taste and standard. you think a fine "balance" tuning would improve the game because it makes the game better for YOU, not to everyone. or you suggest there's certain absolute objective criterion for a balanced single-player game?

read carefully in these forums, not everyone throw "overpowering" around as if that's an absolute game breaking problem. mostly I see people use the term in pvp minded discussions.

game difficulty setting is defined by developers rule set, whatever gamers want to do with it, it's up to gamers. of course you can play on easy and don't gear up (in RPG??) don't level up (in RPG??????), knock yourself out.

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