Or nerfing the sandbox.
How would a scenario like this best be handled from a Dev/Game master perspective. You are not a healer or a healing class. At low levels there is a small item that drops with a nifty clicky nothing game breaking- offers a 2 point lifetap heal at level 6- recast every 5 sec. Nothing game breaking for sure and possibly helps take the edge off minor poisons at that level. You could spend day casting it and really never get a full heal out of it at higher levels. Then, a few expansions later there is another item that drops, a clicky that has a small 10min buff that increases all incoming heals by 750 hp. again by itself, not game breaking and by that level, its a nice added bonus, a little more oomph to any incoming heals you may receive from someone else because you are not a healer. But the sandboxxer remembers that low level clicky and probably still has it and while experimenting, realizes that with the new 10min buff on them from the new item that adds 750 to all incoming heals: by clicking that 2point lifetap clicky turns that 2 point outgoing lifetap into a 750point incoming heal- spammable every 5 seconds. At a higher level thats almost a real heal. The sandboxxer is now a self-healer, to a degree.
should that get nerfed? or be allowed to stay as a neat, discovered and unexpected trick from the things in game.
I am sure there will be other examples and other combinations not though of but how would this or somehting like this best be handled without it being nerfed?
If you remember any examples it would be fun to hear.
Hopefully there will be enough testing to catch anything major...but if something like you described did get through there should definitely be some adjustments made. That is basically exploiting the mechanic.
Only the synergy between thoses items should be nerfed. A lifetap is not an incoming healing and should not be affected by something else than damage increase. Overall, game breaking things should be nerfed even if it hurts a niche / reduced part of player that have it or rush to have it once it's well known. It's possible to cap effects of exterior buffs to spells, proc or clickies depending of their relative level.
Synergies are great, but not to the point it breaks class and role balance.
Trasak said: One of the responsibilities of a developer is the maintenance of their game. Removing unintended consequences is not nerfing it is an inherant part of the user-developer contract. The real issue is when an issue is left unattended to for a long period to the point tthat it becomes a game balance issue. An additional issue is when items are left in the game after they have been determined to be un ballanced and no longer Drop. If an item is removed from drop Lists then it also needs to become un equipe able. These un equipe able items could Be kept as a momento, turned-in for the updated version of the item, or turned into a lottery system for a random item of the same value class as the item before adjustment. There is a big difference between emergent game play and divergent gameplay. For the long term health of the game divergent game play (gameplay that goes against overall game design and ballance) needs to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
Eh, I mostly disagree here. To me it really comes down to unintended functionality/use vs straight up unbalanced/overpowered. Something like Guise of the Deceiver wasn't unbalanced or gamebreaking, just unintended classes were able to use it so it was removed and replaced with a fixed version but people who had already obtained the original got to keep theirs. Rubicite wasn't unbalanced or gamebreaking either but it too was removed. Things that are notably overpowered or gamebreaking get retroactive nerfs and the rest get replaced in the world but existing copies can remain, IIRC it was the developers attempting to respect the time/effort players may have put into obtaining those items.
To quote one of Brad's blogs for Pantheon that is fairly relevant:
4. Zone revamps: some really good items should stop dropping. Similar items may start dropping far, far away. Some really good items may never drop again. This gets into collectability/good hoarding. You may have some leggings that only dropped for the first month of the game. We then removed that item from drop tables. We then put a similar item, but called something else, and looking like something else, elsewhere in the world. So maybe you're not necessarily a better tank or you may not do more dps than the guy who has the newer item... but you like wearing that older item because it shows you're old-school.
SoWplz said: Oh. Thats a tough one. I think most would agree it would have to be fixed, or nerfed. That is except the people that carried that small item around forever and finally find a use for it, just to have it taken away. Then again most of us know that these old crap items covered in dust can now be used again... almost breathes life back into that item, the market value, the camp it drops at. If I recall EQ left the old items in but made a change where the newer item would have effects changed slightly. Think it was the circlet of shadows....maybe...
EQ's politic was to change the loot tables with a new item "modified" from the other, however, kept already dropped items intact. I do not support this choice however, as it leaves "unfixed items" into the market and create uncesserary jealousy.
Yes, it should all be nerfed. And for items, retroactively, as well. None of these "pre-nerf" items floating around.
If you want to protect the integrity of your game / intellectual property, you have to be willing to prevent egregious abuse of it. What abuse means is up to the developer, entirely. It's their product.
But the way you prevent these types of things in the first place are caps. Caps on everything. heals per second. damage per second. actions/spells per second. loots per second. quests completed per second. spells per second. AC. stats. resists. resource pools. everything. Every metric you can define, every number in the game needs to have a cap, enforced server side, ultimately. Then when some clever experimentor does figure out a way to implement the OP's scenario? They hit the cap and no immediate or lasting damage is done. And you should definitely investigate when people are hitting the cap, ever, if it's an important enough metric. (and for those picky, whatever "thing" per unit of time, if per second or static value doesn't apply, is the intent)
Through the use of analytics we can find out if there is a game breaking mechanic pretty easily. You just have to have someone (or team) of really good math nerds that know what to look for. Once a game-breaking mechanic is found, it really is a simple thing to create a fix that is addressed with adjusting the mechanic itself, and by including the design and lore team, you should have an in-game fix. In the OP we had a couple of items that worked well together that could become an issue pretty fast. Analytics should pick this out pretty fast. They call a meeting with Design and lore. Design is made aware of the issue and creates a fix that no longer allows the mechanic to function in that way. Lore announces a discovery in-game whereby forcing the pairing of some items may result in the catarophic loss of life and/or items. Instead what happens is by trying to use that obvioulsy broken mechanic you may instantly get yourself killed. Or maybe an item of yours simpliy poofs into nothingness. Or maybe it works as you hoped it would. Or anything else. This very team threw a few items of great interest to me in EQ2. Items that could kill you - or heal you. Things like that. I approve.
This biggest concern is usually that a player might spend a large amount of time farming an item, or a large amount of money to purchase one... and whether it's unfair to penalize them later on when the item is finally nerfed.
As one of the players... I typically can tell if someone seems overpowered but that wouldn't stop me from acquiring it. If it gets nerfed, I'll complain and hope for a positive outcome. But at the end of the day, I was most likely prepared for this to happen.
Beefcake said: I hate post-release nerfing of items. People put a lot of effort into getting items. If they later become more powerful than anticipated, that's the devs fault. They should have researched and tested it before release and before releasing something that might affect it. If absolutely necessary, they can nerf all future versions of the items. But don't punish the players that already warned the item because of a dev screwup.
While I too dislike items being re-adjusted I can see the need for it and while such rebalancing could negatively impact my character the overall health of the game is of greater importance. I fully support developers retroactively applying changes to all version of items if/when that item, skill, ability, spell..whatever..needs to be re-balanced. There should only be the current version in the world.
Beefcake said: Or, they could adequately test all aspects before building something. They have the code, documentation, knowledge of everything. That's the main reason MMOs are minimal on consoles. Its not because of the interface. You can get keyboards and mice for all major consoles. The MMOs that have both console AND PC versions usually cannot keep them both the same. That's because Xbox and PlayStation have standards before pushing out updates. They have to be thoroughly tested first. That's the biggest flaw in MMOs, IMHO. Too often PC MMO developers dont adequately test content before release. Then, they issue half-assed fixes, which are often worse. MMO devs need to test content much better before releasing it onto the rest of us. That's the biggest scourge of the MMO world.
In a perfect world, yes, post release rebalancing would be unnecessary. And I do agree with you that thorough testing is a critical concern and I hope that, in some form, players do get to test items, content, concepts, etc before released, a pre-alpha test of upcoming expansions. I'd go so far as to say those people who are testing in Pre-Alpha right now should be retained as the initial player testing group for future content.
Beefcake said: Or, they could adequately test all aspects before building something. They have the code, documentation, knowledge of everything. That's the main reason MMOs are minimal on consoles. Its not because of the interface. You can get keyboards and mice for all major consoles. The MMOs that have both console AND PC versions usually cannot keep them both the same. That's because Xbox and PlayStation have standards before pushing out updates. They have to be thoroughly tested first. That's the biggest flaw in MMOs, IMHO. Too often PC MMO developers dont adequately test content before release. Then, they issue half-assed fixes, which are often worse. MMO devs need to test content much better before releasing it onto the rest of us. That's the biggest scourge of the MMO world.
Wow. So much is wrong with this.
Unless you have actually written code, designed something for others to use interactively, you really have no perspecitive on how hard it can be to see obvious flaws in your own creations. You made it, you inherently understand how it is to be used. So you are kind of blind to how someone else perceives it.
Any MMO trying to even add a tiny amount of sandbox runs the risk of totally unintended consequences. It's just the nature of creating tools for players to be original with. And frankly, if unintended results don't happen, you are probably playing a locked down themepark game with zero sandbox functionality.
They tried not to do retroactive nerfs in EQ, but sometimes it was necessary. They are human and some stuff gets missed/input wrong, I imagine the same will be true for Pantheon and VR.
A couple mentions from early EQ patch notes:
As always, we strive to avoid making negative changes to items that already exist in game. However, there are cases where a particularly unbalancing error has been made, such as with the Scourgetail Whip mentioned above, where the item in question must be fixed in interest of maintaining game balance.
...
The Runed Fighter's Staff, previously usable by Monks and Warriors, has been restricted to Monks only. The statistics on this staff are much more powerful than normally allowed for warriors. This change is retroactive and will be reflected on items currently in inventory. Though we strive to avoid negatively adjusting items after they have been earned, this item presented a balance issue, making the change necessary. We apologize to warriors that currently own this weapon.