Hi YayuSheng, freydom and Pat437,
I am honored to have received your heartfelt opinions and I thank you for taking your time to read my long posts. I am sorry for replying so late but it has taken quite a lot of time from me to write those posts and I have had little free time since yesterday. However, I will still do my best to respond to your enquiries and further discussions. However, for those questions that I find not meaningful to answer either because I feel that my original posts already contain the exact answers or I feel that nothing positive will come from these questions or there has been a much better answer from someone else, I will be quoting from those. So let's get down to it.
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First, for YayuSheng, in response to your old posts about Shizu Magebane. After reading a few of your posts, I conclude that the reason why we hold very different views is because of our differing view on the right point of balance as reference. I say this because you have, on multiple occasions compared Shizu Magebane against the revamped Freya Dragoon. While I totally agree with your conclusions when you perform such comparisons (mostly that the revamped MB Shizu is miles weaker than the revamped Freya Dragoon), notice that I personally gave the Freya Dragoon revamp a 6.5/10 because I find her to be way overpowered. So that's our main point of contention it seems.
With regards to how MB Shizu can deal with mage threats before turn 6,while I do recognize that a 6-turn CD skill is not effective at stopping all forms of offensive magic attacks, I stand firm in my judgement that the new Magebane Shizu, in a well-designed squad, will be very useful in battling against mage-heavy comps. She may need an additional source of silence or stun, probably one that is a 4-turn CD single-target, and/or maybe another source of aura-powered silence to complete the package. You then have another 2 slots in the squad to cover other weaknesses (maybe physical defense?) and provide additional flexibility/damage.
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Second, for freydom, regarding the "use valianite" response. Now, nowhere in my writings have do I talk about new players catching up with older ones. I merely talked about the impact of bad-RNG hero rolls. Consider the situation where two players start playing VF at the same time and they have made the same number of hero gem-rolls within a certain period of play. Player A, with his godsent RNG, got all the strong meta heroes for the current arena and even a few of the new event heroes to become a strong contender in current event maps. Player B on the other hand, rolled significantly worse, with no meta heroes and lots of underpowered ones instead. Sure, at this point, using valianite to obtain one or two meta/event heroes is an option that Player B can take, depending on how much valianite he got. However, is this really a "solution" to the problem? It seems like yes, but the advantage that Player A has over Player B will now manifest as superior faiths of the heroes as well as equipments since Player A, unlike Player B, does not need to spend his valianite on obtaining enough "effective" heroes, Player A can now spend that same valianite on other things to further increase the gap between himself and Player B.
So yes, I totally agree with you when you say that things are always changing, gameplay is a long journey that requires time to be invested and options are always available, but the main crux of this is that the game needs to make the players feel like the options given to them can eventually change their relative power-level in the game. If all the options available can at most keep them fixed at a point of perpetual disadvantage, then players who never had good enough luck at rolls would simply lose interest. Your points work very well in terms of motivating a single player, but from a top-down systemic viewpoint, when you consider the entire player economy, it can be very player-defeating.
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Third, for freydom as well, regarding the SDD and imbalance. You mentioned the new Matilda as a possible candidate for SDD, and I do agree that it is something that I have overlooked. However, it does not matter to my main points of specialized versus blanket imbalance. However, on your response as to why Kahuna is not used in a "team with sufficient consistent healing which can trigger any non specific unit to attack dealing heavy single damage with the right equips", I think that you provided the wrong reasons. You said,
obviously no one tries such a setup because its non mainstream and extremely costly and impractical
Let's go over those one-by-one. Non-mainstream? Well the reason it is not used cannot be that it is non-mainstream since the term "mainstream" means commonly-used. It's circular reasoning, just like saying that the moon is shaped like a sphere is because the moon is spherical. That's not a real argument. Next, extremely costly. Well, many meta squads such as full trigger-archer squads are also extremely costly, but their effectiveness makes up for that cost, which is what makes them good. So cost can't be the sole reason such a team is bad. Lastly, impractical. Well, what does "impractical" mean? I guess that it would be something along the lines of inconsistency, ineffectiveness and inflexibility? If so, combining this with the cost factor, what you mean is that, such a team is bad because it is too inconsistent/ineffective/inflexible for its cost. Then you conclude this as an example of VF having choice and diversity. This is where I find your ideas of choice and diversity to be very wrong. It is not a meaningful choice if it is merely a calculation. A downright bad choice is not a real choice for players in the game. When I talk about diversity, I am talking about the possible ways to make squads that are not obviously weak or inefficient. If you use your definition of choice then even a 1-unit squad with a lone level 1 1-star skeleton also becomes a meaningful choice that creates diversity for the game. This is clearly not the case. There is a video that explains this much better than I do so I'll just link it here. I hope you find this video (as well as the others in the series) helpful.
P.S. Go to 02:15 for the relevant part or you can just watch through the entire video
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Fourth, still for freydom, about blanket utility. To clear up any misconceptions you may have, I shall quote a block from myself:
newnar:
...more flexible heroes that do not have strong specialties so-called "have a market". They fill the gap where the absolute best hero for the job are unavailable, and where they are weaker than those heroes, they makeup for it by able to be included in more squad archetypes. However, going overboard on flexibility is equally troubling, as heroes that are too much Jack-of-all-trades will generally end up being able to fulfill no role properly, and when these heroes get rolled by players, they are essentially "pack-fillers" that don't really contribute to anything. On the other hand, if a hero becomes a Master-of-all-trades because he/she is extremely flexible yet can still outshine other heroes with less flexibility at the same role, then we get to the aforementioned problem of blanket imbalance, where this hero becomes an auto-include in more than half the squad archetypes in meta and creates too much homogeneity between players. Therefore, we want a good spectrum of heroes, some more specialized, some more flexible, but not overperforming in both nor underperforming in either.
I hope this answers your questions about my view of how the game ought to be. In short, I am not against having jack-of-all-trades heroes, but I am against master-of-all-trades heroes or jack-of-all-trades heroes that are so weak that they have become "pack-fillers".
With regards to your claim of "This same diverse but F2P costly result you want ironically contradicts with the ideal homogeneous game you want--- results from your massive nerfing of existing useful heroes be it inside or outside arena." I am bewildered by how you believe that if all heroes are properly balanced amongst the diverse way the game can be played, they would be homogeneous. What I would want is simply for all heroes to have appropriate weaknesses for each of their strengths, with as similar of a degree as possible. Rarer heroes like Valiants can be defined as those with slightly less weaknesses for their strengths, but definitely within a threshold that makes them still beatable by exploiting their weaknesses. With each hero having different strengths of different degrees in different areas but equivalent weaknesses to balance these strengths out, I do not see how this must lead to a homogeneity among heroes. Also, if you prefer not to nerf, that's fine as well. My main concern is the relative strength of heroes, not absolute, so if you are against nerfing existing heroes that are deemed overused or overpowered, buffing the least-used or underpowered is an equally effective option. The only concern that I may see coming from this is that certain PvE aspects might become too easy, since using buffs instead of nerfs to balance the scene would no doubt raise the average combat capability of all heroes, but this is a small matter for the devs as they can allow the PvE aspect to scale as they buff the heroes.
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Fifth, for Pat437, I have found your reply the most difficult to answer as we may have very different frameworks. However I can try to explain myself within your framework. Basically, using your theories, I would essentially be someone who finds many things in VF to be not working as intended. I fully recognize the bait and switch effect and I would personally attribute this effect mainly to undertesting the game before releasing new content. I am not bashing the devs on purpose here but I really feel that if problems already arise by the time new heroes are released, the bait and switch cannot really be avoided. With regards to the negativity to nerfing heroes, I will restate what I stated in point 4, that if nerfs aren't an option, sure, I have no problem with going for buffs instead, given that PvE content is also scaled up accordingly. But note that the bait and switch effect will still exist even if buffs are used in place of nerfs, since those who paid lots of money going for the most OP at the point of release won't be happy when many other viable alternative heroes appear after a patch lands 2 weeks after they have spent that much on some hero they first thought was "special".
Finally, regarding this line..."For one, this is a gacha game, where people could have possibly spent (a lot of) money just to get the heroes they wanted. Why? Because they are OP/fits their deck/useful/versatile/whatever."
I cannot find myself to agree with making people spend money on purpose to get a specifically OP hero, especially if I put myself in the PoV of a dev or a system designer. And with MiloD's latest response to the thread quoted below, I am sure that working towards non-OPness is definitely a direction that the devs share.
MiloDinosaur:
Disclaimers:
1) Do note that when the Valiants Revamp do get released, it will definitely not please everyone. But that's not our job. Our job is to make them strong yet balanced. Fun and not overpowered.
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Extra point: regarding Hungshu's posts, yeah I understand that he's quite brash with his words but he does bring up an important point that I have totally overlooked. EleKeira's active skill not only has worse effective O/S ratio as compared to Talilock and the Ronans, but it also faces a deployment problem where there can be cases where it is simply unable to hit every enemy unit, even though it is a supposed 3x3 AoE spell. If this happens, it only makes her O/S ratio even lower and further reduces her flexibility as compared to Talilock and the Ronans, who do not suffer from this problem.I personally faced this same problem in arena early on (my 2nd valiant was Kiera), but I have swapped her out for a Ronan long ago so I completely forgot about this weakness.
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Disclaimer:
For all readers who are not following the discussion between us, do not need to read this. It probably consists of many things you already know. It contains no suggestions to improve valiants, just a generic response and discussion of game at large. But if you are bored, or feel strongly for some view points previously discussed, please forgive the long message. I do believe there are some point of views worth pondering over.
}
Hi Newnar,
Thank you for your reply. I am writing at length partly in respect of your passion and how you structure your arguments coherently, although unfortunately for me, your viewpoints are still not as comprehensive as you made them sound to be.
Quote:”Now, nowhere in my writings have do I talk about new players catching up with older ones. I merely talked about the impact of bad-RNG hero rolls.”
Yes, you did not raise example of bad-rng rolls specific to new and old players, but I brought it up as that would be the main concern with regards to impact of different RNG rates on players.
If you use exceptions to substantiate your point, obviously, this discussion will not be heading anywhere fruitful. How many people will be player A? How long can player A remain a player A? (one who have lucky rolls all the time) If you suggest that the advantage player A inherits from the start of the game will give him an insurmountable advantage overtime (without spending money), then you are implying the game is rigged for some players. Assuming both players plays for sufficiently long duration, both not spending any money, there is no guarantee that player A advantage can last him all the way and that player B can never catch up with A. Using the alternative heroes, player B can still make progress in game while building his character level and garrison. With time, unless player B is an exception (on the other end of spectrum) and continuously have poor luck, there will be periods that player B can close the gap with A especially since meta changes.
Quote” If all the options available can at most keep them fixed at a point of perpetual disadvantage”
I am not feeling this. Are you sure you have been playing VF? All options keep them at perpetual disadvantage? How are you playing VF now when you based your decisions on meaningful choice but all options keep u at perpetual disadvantage? It be more meaningful if you can substantiate in what circumstance has this game not provided gamers with enough options. If you feel that you have elaborated on that earlier, then I get your perspective. You are just not acknowledging the choices available at present.
Sure, some units have only max 4-star growth and some 5 star units are not as strong as other counter parts, but that does not mean they don’t serve a goal in the intermediate game phase. Just because a 5-star hero has lesser value than their OP counter part, does not mean it serve no purpose in a player journey in getting an OP counterpart (if its their end goal). If a player is dealt with a bad hand, served lemons, make lemonades. That’s the nature of gatcha games. Already this game developer has included options to reward players’ effort and time, make it possible and easier to get almost all available units with time (except valiant) how else do you think they should improve considering their resource constraints?
Quote:
“Non-mainstream? Well the reason it is not used cannot be that it is non-mainstream since the term "mainstream" means commonly-used. It's circular reasoning, just like saying that the moon is shaped like a sphere is because the moon is spherical...This is where I find your ideas of choice and diversity to be very wrong.”
If you choose to evaluate my statement as circular reasoning, you are missing my point and you are just counter arguing for the sake of counter arguing. A team setup can be unpopular (or increasingly/remain unpopular) because of it not being used commonly (coupled by various other reasons), although the later reason does define the term itself, that does not mean it cannot hold as a supporting point. Such a phenomenon exists. One way to call it is herd mentality. One reason a healer dominant team is not a popular choice can be simply because not many high tier players build them, and seeing that, new or less resource players refrain from building them (regardless if they enquire about the extent of experiment conducted) and do not talk highly of them which results in a downward spiral of such a team popularity. Whether that same team is ineffective in truth, unfortunately can be made unimportant by popular rhetoric. It is sadly rampant in our society today where truth is backed by rhetoric rather than facts.
This is even highlighted in the video you quoted where they raised the example of World of War Craft where players are deprived of a meaningful choice (in your definition) when they are told which builds are not viable. So, yea seems like my reason stands as it is supported by a video you quote to support your own definition of meaningful choice. In this instance, the idea of non-mainstream as a reason for people not using the team is validated by an example in accordance to your definition of meaningful choice as seen in the video you used to support your stance.
If we continue our discussions by nitpicking individual words where there is more than one way to imply (or misunderstand) the underlying meaning, it will not lead to a productive end. But just to address an overarching theme of your argument, meaningful choice, I shall elaborate more on my view on it.
Quote:"This is where I find your ideas of choice and diversity to be very wrong. ....P.S. Go to 02:15 for the relevant part or you can just watch through the entire video "
I think you missed 2:50 part of the video where the commentator explained: The same choice can be meaningful and not meaningful to different players. By that statement itself, strictly speaking you cannot argue on the basis and definition of your meaningful choice, and since there is no right and wrong to begin with, it is not convincing to back up your argument with that.
While meaningful choice (as defined from your video clip) can be a good applicable theory in some instances of life or other games with a clear end goal and objective, in this gatcha game where there is no true end game until the server closes (hopefully never), can we claim that any one unit is and will forever be a permanent advantage or end game unit?
Quote from earlier and current post:” Therefore, we want a good spectrum of heroes, some more specialized, some more flexible, but not overperforming in both nor underperforming in either.”
It is precisely this point/quote block that does not explain what you want clearly. For one is it too vague. What you are asking for, all the balance, is already existent from a big picture perspective. So, it is indeed perplexing why you are complaining its absence when you choose not to acknowledge its presence. There is no downright bad choice, every hero can be a step towards a better hero. Pack fillers is a part of this journey! Pack filler for a highly competitive player can be an ace unit for a budding player. It is all relative. If an earlier build hero has served its purpose and it has no further combat purpose (if deem so by you) send them for expeditions, use them to reroll faith of other heroes etc.
Your absolute harsh stance on how this game is unbalanced is unfounded. Perhaps a few units may seem OP, but even without those units, this game is enjoyable for a free player. (There is always so much to do) Perhaps less so for a competitive free player with mismanaged expectations.
Quote:” I cannot find myself to agree with making people spend money on purpose to get a specifically OP hero, especially if I put myself in the PoV of a dev or a system designer”
It all boils down to your expectation of the game from a F2P player perspective. But if any player wants to compete at the highest level which I feel is what you are basing your entire argument on, please be prepared to spend money. Out of respect for others at the top like Sojubeer who is spending and supporting, for the developers who also need to feed their families, for the fact that players reading this love this game and want to support developers’ efforts. How can one not expect to spend much and be on a similar competitive tier as those who splurged on the game? Adding on to Pat’s point, who will then want to spend on game? If no one spends, there is no game. Are you sure you put yourself sufficiently deep in the developer shoes?
Quote:” With each hero having different strengths of different degrees in different areas but equivalent weaknesses to balance these strengths out, I do not see how this must lead to a homogeneity among heroes”
In theory, it is so nice and easy to paint this utopia scenario, but isn’t this what developer want and are already and always have been striving for after factoring finance constraints? Hence, I do not understand what is your intent in bringing this point out since it is something if there exist no constraints, every player would want. If you do indeed feel that there is something about this game that need improvement, rather than increasing all players’ expectations (as you can present points clearly, your words may have some weight/ can be influential, should be responsible about the message you are spreading) without considering the constraints faced by the developers, why not provide them specific solutions.
In theory, it is easy for me or you to say it will not lead to homogeneity, but if there is no tier separation between heroes (which is already minimal in this game), as Pat mentioned, no one will spend to summon for heroes. You are hence asking for this gatcha game to be a non gatcha game. Or developers are left to make money by getting players to summon on equips, buy costumes etc. And then people will ask for all the equips to be the similar in terms of utility. This will never end. At the current stage, it is clear VF is a gatcha game, the “perfect game” you are seeking will need VF to take a completely different direction as a game from a big picture perspective. You claim to think in developers and players’ shoes, but are you really? You reckon such an opinion will be helpful for the developers?
F2P players must manage their expectation. If the game gives equal competitive advantage to any single player at any one point, expect to pay a fixed fee every month. That is probably one way this game can survive without giving prestige players or spenders sufficient advantage in game. No one will want to buy prestige if this game is made easy that way. It is easy to say all you want is more equal trade off in terms of strength and weakness within a hero while brushing off the potential implications (trade-offs incurred) that might bring to the game (including the developer’s survivability). Hence, I think it is more meaningful if you want to advocate that, suggests ways that can be done, also considering the financial constraints of the company.
Final word
On a side note, it is never my wish nor intent to pick emotional exchange with forum posters. As these thoughts are presented in words over the net, I want to make this clear in the event there is misunderstanding of intentions. I do however feel strongly, whenever I see comments that in my opinion are not as comprehensively thought out, though I never feel any bad feelings to any individual.
I appreciate you taking time to respond at length, and I do feel your passion and how you largely mean well for the game and various parties. It is quite clear that we hold contrasting view points, especially on how we each define a meaningful choice. We are all entitled to our own opinion and if we substantiate and define them responsibly, there is no right or wrong. But just a word of caution/ concern, you are a smart player, and I think quite a few players value your inputs, but if you continue to apply your definition of meaningful choice as such in this game, you will not find satisfaction in the game in the long run. If you decide to leave the game due to such reasons eventually, that would be most unfortunate. Some ideal scenarios just cannot be achieved due to company’s financial constraints at current point in time.
Like myself, I have qualms with how the game plot is delivered, but I understand there are always constraints, so am waiting patiently until they launch globally, where they have even greater access to capital.
As we may have deviated from the thread topic and how we should also spare the readers our tsunami of words, I think enough have been discussed on this topic. I welcome all your future responses, but I might not reply them going forward. Take care and hope you can or will continue to enjoy the game.
Cheers,
Frey
, & i am glad our discussion ended very healthy & ofc agree to disagree is a common in community, so i will respect urs & thank you to tone it down & being considered even too slightly
