@Qarl - Clarifying GGG's balancing goals

Excellent use of the term organic. Approved.

P.

Good questions, but the answers would not be of much use. Balance is not static, nor can they even plan for it completely since new game content comes from multiple sources including the community itself. Not to mention ideas that they haven't yet had.

OP, how do you figure having specific balance expectations will help?

Hi

Great questions, they could almost be used as template questionnaire for balance to any games Dev's.

Balance is sand and video game development is a bucket, each patch adds new *dings an'holes to the bucket whilst attempting to build a malevolent sand castle/finished game. Will the sand castle last a 1000 years? Only the Gemling Queen knows.

Cheers

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Finkenstein wrote:

Hi

Great questions, they could almost be used as template questionnaire for balance to any games Dev's.

Balance is sand and video game development is a bucket, each patch adds new *dings an'holes to the bucket whilst attempting to build a malevolent sand castle/finished game. Will the sand castle last a 1000 years? Only the Gemling Queen knows.

Cheers

Pro tip: Fill the bucket with sand, Flip the bucket over then slowly move the bucket upwards. Perfect sand castle every time.

I'd love to hear a response as well! Maybe we'd see less frustration with all the changes to balance if people had some idea of where GGG were headed in the grand scheme. Plus I love hearing future plans and ideas!

calling it now, this topic will never have a _GGG named user posting in it.

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_wuv_ wrote:

calling it now, this topic will never have a _GGG named user posting in it.

Now that's an interesting take. Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't the entirety (or near entirety) of their income coming from us players in the form of microtransactions? Well, I'm pissed off enough that I won't buy any more. I have assumed that whoever is buying the big ticket items must be approving of the game as is. In other words, the only way I could figure them doing what they're doing is if the important people (read that as 'big spenders') are happy.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's perfectly appropriate that someone who spent 10 grand on this game gets a lot more input than me who spent $20 and might possibly kick in another $40. But man, don't they sort of HAVE to be at least a bit responsive to the people actually paying the bills?

Some interesting questions but I too doubt that we will get any substantial response. Some of them are at least somewhat answered or dev post from here and there. Sadly the whole manifesto thing and (I think) the community question answer thread Chris was going to do were mostly forgotten.

That said I understand that GGG is a small studio and have limited resources. Obviously they can answer everyone's questions but every few months something like a bit updated manifesto or their view on current state of the game would be very appreciated buy the community. We do get the daily news updates are really nice to have even when they are something small. Tracking dev posts also gives some nice insight and clarifications on mechanics but it's hard to keep track of all that's been mentioned here and there, especially for people who follow the forum less.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

A lot of the forum is taken up by speculation as to GGG's design goals because we never really get told just what the ultimate goal is, if GGG were to take the time to elaborate more via the Dev Manifesto I believe they would save themselves effort in the long run as everyone would know where they stand. It would also give players a better understanding of the game & how they can help GGG reach their goals as well.

I can definitely relate to this part. Too many threads the first comment states something and asserts that this is the design goal, the second post completely contradicts it yet claims also to be the design goal, this goes on and on.

Ther eis a danger when you tell people something, and then change your mind they will hold you to your first idea and crucify you for not delivering. But I think if its just totally honest and you say to people hey, this might change but these are the current thoughts on the issue people can deal with it. There are people with sense in this community, and if you give them an explanation that makes sense they will take the time to relay it and argue it with the others. If you leave everyone in the dark on very important issues to them you just piss everyone off and end up with so much grief.

If I were GGG Im not sure I would care to answer that whole list but some clarification of goals on highly charged and debated issues would go a long way to putting people at ease.

It's pretty simple that they want the game to be hard until you aquire great items and then you can still die and lose everything to that one power creep. They clearly do not like people to farm areas in order to gain better items and progress, Which you can see when you run an area looking for upgrades because you cannot progress. In short you better have the gear to progress directly into maps or you will feel a huge loss in drop rates and never be able to progress with that character. Once you hit maps you do not face loss in drops per level so you could blue 66 maps all day for orbs...