February patch preview, input appreciated

[Jona]

Any idea if the map team will be fixing the chat glitch on siege?

[San]

Map team isn't active AFAIK.

[Jona]

Rip siege.

[Senni__Ti]

One of the LODs seems to be bugged and sometimes a part of the armor becomes infinite. This screenshot is from 2013 when I among others first reported it:

(click to show/hide)

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Weird, I've never seen that bug.

I'll give it a look though.

[Daunt_Flockula]

That used to happen with the Eastern Star Scale Armor. Very disturbing especially when it overlaps with sun glare. Believe it or not it almost tore a hole through my eyes once due to the extreme contrast effect it caused.

That aside, Dede fixed the Eastern Star Scale Armor and said it was a problem with vertices. Here is the relevant thread itself for better insight: http://forum.melee.org/crpg-client-beta/that-bugged-armor-eastern-lamellar-robe/msg719154/#msg719154

[Senni__Ti]

Yeah it's a rigging issue, some vertices weren't rigged for some reason.
EDIT: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gic7eqp2qzyue0m/AAA6kMc3MUqKgSQrMILPuAKHa?dl=0

Fixed?

[Daunt_Flockula]

By the way, do you guys have any changes planned for team balance? If not, I suggest you do. It is beyond annoying. Needless to say clanstacks tend to be strong. But what I have observed so far is even more disturbing. The game insistently balances, say, the overall top 5-6 players to the same team frequently. This happens regardles of whether those people are of the same clan or not. Mostly they also join a clanstack and it all becomes a no go for the other team. Seriously, "balance" sounds a lot like "no balance" most of the time.

I know clanstacking is a controversial issue. So I'll leave that aside. But can't you guys at least create an algorithm that distributes top performers evenly?

[San]

By the way, do you guys have any changes planned for team balance? If not, I suggest you do. It is beyond annoying. Needless to say clanstacks tend to be strong. But what I have observed so far is even more disturbing. The game insistently balances, say, the overall top 5-6 players to the same team frequently. This happens regardles of whether those people are of the same clan or not. Mostly they also join a clanstack and it all becomes a no go for the other team. Seriously, "balance" sounds a lot like "no balance" most of the time.

I know clanstacking is a controversial issue. So I'll leave that aside. But can't you guys at least create an algorithm that distributes top performers evenly?

I changed the player "worth" formula to be more accurate and influential players give out more points/peasants less when you damage them. As far as how the autobalance actually distributes players, I haven't looked into that but quite frankly I'm just scared to touch any of that, lol.

[Senni__Ti]

I changed the player "worth" formula to be more accurate and influential players give out more points/peasants less when you damage them. As far as how the autobalance actually distributes players, I haven't looked into that but quite frankly I'm just scared to touch any of that, lol.

Looking now

[Jona]

Is the player worth formula taken into account in the balancing code, or does changing the player worth simply make people get more points for damaging certain players?

[Daunt_Flockula]

As far as how the autobalance actually distributes players, I haven't looked into that but quite frankly I'm just scared to touch any of that, lol.

Can't really blame you

Actually, this should have been solved ages ago when the mod was more alive and there were more people helping with patches.

[San]

Is the player worth formula taken into account in the balancing code, or does changing the player worth simply make people get more points for damaging certain players?

Before, level was given a much heavier weight with a small influence from kd. Your worth also decreases if your team loses. After the patch, players would be given values based on their level, kd, and the score:death ratio with better weights. These values are used in autobalance to distribute players. I performed a small test with several others and it seemed to match well enough.

With player worth based more on score, score needs to be less about how many peasants you can hunt.

Chances are that it'll still be bad if autobalance distribution isn't so great, though.

[Jona]

Cool, seems good on paper, hope it works in practice. If you ever need more people to test things, let me know. I live nearby, so I can probably connect pretty easily, unlike when Tydeus tried hosting a test server once.

[Rebelyell]

Before, level was given a much heavier weight with a small influence from kd. Your worth also decreases if your team loses. After the patch, players would be given values based on their level, kd, and the score:death ratio with better weights. These values are used in autobalance to distribute players. I performed a small test with several others and it seemed to match well enough.

With player worth based more on score, score needs to be less about how many peasants you can hunt.

Chances are that it'll still be bad if autobalance distribution isn't so great, though.

what is my PRIZE!!!!!!
tell me NOW

[Leshma]

San based on what you wrote here, seems that changes will benefit STR builds. That means more people will respec to STR. Extra added heavy armor will be more popular which will lead to prolonged survival rate. Not that I have problem with that, but most people will pick non cut weapons to be able to quickly dispose of their opponents. Do you plan to release a hotfix that will buff cut weapons after few weaks of testing the new patch?

Horses and shields seem to be affected as well. Shields are mostly fine, although they could use a buff (sideways coverage is pretty poor for most shields). Horses however, seem to be balanced towards agility builds. Most decent horses have quite high horse riding skill requirement. I understand that cav should be "forced" to take less ATH skill and invest in RID skill but current state of the game makes that rather difficult. On EU side, most popular server during the day is Siege server and having cav char on siege is waste of points mostly. Would you consider changing horse stats to those ancient stats where only few selected horses required more than 5 riding skill?