just put Saul in charge of item balance, problem solved.Admittedly, as much as I like saul's ideas, they're certainly a bit extreme. Also, what Urist said. From my understanding, having a planned patch date would itself provide more motivation for devs. The issue, is that none of us really understand just how time consuming full item patches are. Judging from past experiences, it would seem like it's a day long event for chadz, if not longer depending on any problems that arise.
Democracy isn't suited for this communityTo be honest, democracy isn't really suited for any video game. They're elitist by nature, though that's not to say it has to cater to a specific group, even they do generally cater to either casual or "hardcore"(I really hate this word) audiences.
this stuff could work if you were able to find the right people, wich i doubt :lol:+1
Or solicit community feedback on an equation for a singular item fitness parameter, apply it uniformly to all items without incorporating any human bias, and change the coefficients based on how the community responds to the results (i.e. if the item fitness equation make Cudgel insanely OP, then increase the fitness coefficient for blunt damage or knockdown or whatever).
But the devs don't like this idea, so oh well. "Balance until it feels right" is what we get, even if it yields such turds as the Falchion.
There are way too many factors as that you could balance items properly only by fitness. It will already fail if you consider that you'd have to calculate each item value with the item combination which is to be expected on the servers. Pikes are not that useful if the enemy has no cavalry, but on the other hand cavalry is plain useless if the enemy team consists only of pikemen. It's not like you can calculate this.
But that is still better than NO decisions being made. After a good long period without balance patches, cRPG metagame becomes stale. Right now we have a rather boring influx of xbows
Everything can be parameterized, especially things in a video game that are already parameterized into 1s and 0s anyway. You just have to make sure the weighting for the coefficients is based on some rational basis, and everything will work itself out.Again, one of the reason this is shit for games, or at least this one, is you can't account for metagame changes. Sometimes Fallen shows up in force with 20 archers, sometimes there are only a couple of archers. How are you supposed to balance ranged for when there are lots, and when there are few? You'd have to have a dynamic system setup that changes game mechanics each round, and that will never happen.
For instance; say server statistics show that cavalry make up 20% of the server population, on average. Thus, assign horse-rearing weapons a 20% "bonus" to their fitness parameter, as a starting point. Then tweak later based on how the community responds.
Again, one of the reason this is shit for games, or at least this one, is you can't account for metagame changes. Sometimes Fallen shows up in force with 20 archers, sometimes there are only a couple of archers. How are you supposed to balance ranged for when there are lots, and when there are few? You'd have to have a dynamic system setup that changes game mechanics each round, and that will never happen.
Class balance with a greater weight over banner balance has been proposed and requested for some time now.That is just a coincidence where the chosen example happened to be just a "class", not a weapon or armor type. What if I had used heavy cavalry, as opposed to light, instead of archers?