Hey there, instead of continuing my rage on other threads I was inspired to make an actual helpful one on the issue of game balance.
Boundless balancing needs to be adressed period. I think a good chunk of the community will agree with me that it is not fun the way things are balanced at this point in time.
Here’s how you do not balance:
Do not balance anything by looking at the top 10 power players metrics, these kind of players will always outperform your ideas by simply investing a lot more time and effort than your average player
Do not introduce inhibiting factors to endgame loot which makes it less usefull than lower tier loot
Do not steadily increase grind for the sake of achieving artifical scarcity on loot
Here’s some ideas:
Balance on your average player and instead draw a border between high level (power players) and low level (casual players). Most mmos introduce such a border by using a level-based restriction on tool for example. You can achive this by introducing a restriction based on tool rank for example.
Give each tool tier a base rank and add to this the forge rank, this would make a gem tool high forged a rank 400 for example but a lucent tool with the same boons a rank 550. Introduce a min level to allow use of tools of rank x, so that a low level player cannot access a tool.
How to produce feel good scarcity:
Introduce an item that refills once a week, lets call it the exo-mask. Protects you from the deadly exo atmosphere and allows you x hours to remain on an exo world. Once used up you will suffocate when entering an exo planet. Tool refill automatically or needs some effort like producing “fuel” for it.
Investment/reward ratio should not be worse on higher ranks. Make the curve steady instead of increasing grind.
Rebalance meteor drops, how can it be that the high tier meteors drop that little when we have to invest so much more to complete them?
For sure i agree to Point 1. Recent new recipes makes it seems the Devs do not thou.
Agreed on Point 2 aswell.
Given the new found bot menance, scarcity of loot that is actually needed is dimishing i think. So whatever the Devs half heartly implement wont work anyways if the resource in Question is a needed one.
Point 1 is contradicting to the above Point 1 in my opinion.
With the suggested System, power players will still be on top and casual Players will be at the Bottom, just for longer.
Why would you restrict a lower Level Player in what tool he can use? To create more grind.
You Point out alot of the current Problems in this Paragraph.
Another consumable item is not a good idea i think. Even i like the idea of the atmospheric filter mask.
I think the Investment to reward Ratio is Overall out of whack. Losing 30% of mined blocks during refining, compared to other games where you get actually more out in the end, is a bad logic and Needs rework for sure.
The grind is not getting more because of endgame, but because the wrong demographic and metrics are used for the new recipes. Again my opinion.
The whole Meteor and how to get the Drops System Needs a rework. Dont tell me 40 People have more Problems with high lvl Meteors then low Level, because that is not true. The Meteor just gets zerged and the loot looted, port to platform, rince repeat.
As i said, the whole reward vs work System Needs a revamp, so i partially agree to the last 2 Points.
Overall, you Point out some interesting Things, merged in one thread which is allways good. But that only leads to one conclusion, from my side anyways.
The whole Boundless Level and craft, skill and loot System Needs a rework in the Grand scheme.
Which wont happen.
This…this for the love of everything!!! Shedu is my baby. To many drops are in play with the Meteors. Seriously who wants tech components in a high tier meteor. Even ore… I have moved my hunts now mainly to tier 4 which makes me sad. Though I am having fun with Till hunts I will say.
Thank you for your contribution. I will just adress one point since I want a natural flow of ideas before providing addiotional opinion.
Yes it should be reworked^^. But as I see it person A brings (bow x, brews xyz etc). Make a total sum of that and you will always invest more brews, slingbows etc. on higher tiers. You argue on distribution making it negligable, good point, but still even if it gets distributed among more players the investment is still higher on total mats and time compared to the same group on a lower tier meteor.
There are some recent balances I do not understand in particular:
Why decrease the oort drop from meteors with the introduction of sentinels crest, shouldnt something like that be a bonus (meaning extra without taking away from previous drop values)? Instead of giving something to the players these decisions take things away from the players
Also it is less stressful for the servers to make big jumps instead of many small ones, why build the system on small jumps, it just increases load and grind
The lucent tools (my fav topic atm), why in the name of holy was the decision made to make them less forgable than gem tools (10 Flexibility is a hard lock). Instead of giving players some new toys we were given glorified status symbols without any real value. that is not really encouraging players and this in particular looks like balancing on the top 10 power players. The average player wouldnt even know where to begin with a forge like that.
Powered up exo-monster all fine but when the serves almost crash on big hunt groups and the lucent weapons have such a hard forge lock why in heck make them so op for a minimal increase in xp and loot?
As I stated before all the balancing I ve seen seems to be geard towards the top ten power players performance not on the other 90% of the community
Actually, I can sort of answer that one. The reasoning behind lower tier tools being having significantly higher flexibility is to encourage people to get into Forging earlier and to reduce the number of resources required to forge lower tier tools so that it’s not an ‘obvious’ waste compared to using the same resources to get the same effects on higher tier tools.
I’m not sure that the specific numbers chosen have been entirely successful in meeting that goal, but that’s what I believe it is. I’m also not entirely convinced any selection of numbers could be hugely successful, but I don’t have any better suggestions either.
The only way to forge a lucent efficiently is to burn gums and use the stabilisation/invigorating route to power it up a lot before adding boons. its not only extremly tedious but also not worth the investment in mats and time it takes.
The reasoning behind making them almost unforgable evades me completely. A higher level tool is meant to be higher level and fun to use. When the tools get locked like this it is discouraging since there is no value in persuing or using them at all. I cant even remember one popular game that designed their euqips like that.
Oh, I agree, it’s probably not fun to forge (I don’t forge, so can’t comment with any authority), and think it would feel too costly to become a common place tool. 10 flexibility is too low compared to the previous tier of materials.
My point was just that there is a reason for it, even it it’s been over-done.
The only real counter I could offer is that I had already felt that the T6 Forged tools were far too potent compared to their previous tiers (which would mostly be unforged), and the current scenario does at least prevent an even more ridiculous power gap between “Top of the line” and “Average Joe” tools.
You are suggesting that the implementation of a new tier was a mistake to begin with then.
If that was true then the whole introduction of a new tier was a mistake.
There is no way around it that when you add a new level of power to your equips it is very bad design to lock it away like this. Either have it, have it more powerful than the tier before or do not have it at all!
Supposedly the reasoning for that is because the lucents would be too OP so then an argument is made for hey we should nerf/tune down gem tools so that lucents can take their place. That’s bad design also.
If we’re going to have lucents be made more then status symbols then we need something more than an answer of ‘hey let’s nerf gem tools so that lucents can take their place and feel powerful but not really because all we’re doing is changing/reordering values that have existed since we began forging’.
If they bump up lucents to have the same growth as gem tools than I think they have a fear of low tier worlds being decimated more than gems do right now. They never dealt with Pandora’s box of tool forging when they nerfed bomb mining and it’s been allowed to grow like this for nearly a year now.
But honestly I don’t even understand why they’re concerned like that. People want more blocks to build with. A lot dislike gathering. A lot build great builds and they get little footfall as intended because it isn’t a hub or a shopping network or platform or whatever.
Loosen the ‘strictness’ of gathering . Yes I’m sure values of things will drop but if blocks are cheap people will want to stay and play the game more and build more. The game is an out right grind. Clearly there’s those of us playing who like these kinds of games for whatever masochistic reason.
Just my thoughts on it anyways, could get worse could get better, I’ll still be somewhere under a mountain or river gathering before resurfacing and visiting civilization. At least til some other hobby comes and interest me more as things tend to do.
On the thread that FireHazurd did regarding spaceships I was promoting something like this. I think atmosphere stuff should not be skill points but instead suits and masks and things that allow anyone on the planet but requires them to fuel it somehow. They still need to survive the mobs etc but at least you could have a house on a harder planet and put your alts on there without spending skill points. Plus it gives the future ability to have underwater and space travel.
I agree with this. I havent used an exo tool yet. My desire to farm these materials is 0. I don’t get it. The only bonus exo tools have outside of hunting t7 (which isnt even more profitable than lower tiers if we’re being honest) is they look cool.
It’s funny because i can currently forge a gem tool that will decimate low level worlds as well as T6 fairly easily. I dont think we would see much difference if special tools were only slightly harder to forge than gem instead of outrageously more difficult/mat consuming. I think we would see more people using them.
Well perhaps stackable class of pies and brews, like an energy regen and persisting
Or armor pie, with elemental pie with healing brew and strength brew (
Especially for t7 hunts)
Maybe if we had buff classes that could stack?
Hunting examples
Like healing class and energy class could stack.
Or even as @Fallon says, if I could stack an armor pie with an armor porridge, with an armor loaf it could help a lot for t7 fighting. It’s not too much, because you are paying for the benefits and its helping the economy.
If we had this then it would give reason to make all types of food and brews
This…this for the love of everything!!! Shedu is my baby. To many drops are in play with the Meteors. Seriously who wants tech components in a high tier meteor. Even ore… I have moved my hunts now mainly to tier 4 which makes me sad. Though I am having fun with Till hunts I will say.