Suggestion on how to deal with game balance

kris

The developers have mentioned that they have noticed that there is a problem with balance. This balance issues was not spotted in the test environment but noticed by the community and more specifically the vets.

Thanks to our dedicated community, it has come to our attention that the Downfall update has introduced new combat behaviours that were not intended nor spotted in the test environment. To put it bluntly: a lot of veterans are saying the game is broken. We have investigated and identified a couple of Core Combat bugs impacting balance, so the current balance of the game does not reflect the Design intentions. Unfortunately, our Programmers have to focus on the Xbox version, which has been more complex than expected. We need to release it as soon as possible, which is why some gameplay debugging is taking longer than usual.

As soon as we have some bandwidth (in a couple of weeks), we will take a deep look into these issues and update the community.

source : https://www.absolvergame.com/news/absolver-update-october-2018



It is great to see that in a couple of weeks the balance will be looked in too. I have already seen a lot of discussion about the game balance , sadly a lot of it being contradicting. Everyone can talk online, people from all levels of skill can give there balance ideas, meaning filtering the good and the bad feedback could be hard. Luckily absolver has the unique scenario of knowing it's top players as mentioned by no nobugz ( rip rank tho pepehands )

There has been lots of debates regarding ranks matches, both internally and within the community. Our current position is that ranked matches are not critical: hardcore Absolvers know the top players already, it could create toxicity, it would split the community, negatively impacting matchmaking which is already problematic when not enough players are online, etc. Besides, it would be a huge development effort, so at this stage, it's unlikely that we will offer ranked gameplay.

source : https://www.reddit.com/r/absolver/comments/9dk1gz/absolver_qa_with_sloclap_now_live/e5i8658



What i would like to suggest is something that some of you who watch Core-A Gaming might have heard, from his most watched video : Analysis: The Consequences of Reducing the Skill Gap

At 11:28 Gerald says, what i want to suggest perfectly.

This makes me wonder; why can't companies work with the players to make the game that suits their communities if they're in it for the long haul? And I don't just mean some out-of-touch ideas of what you'd think they might like, I mean actually listening to what the most invested players want, and making a game they'll be excited to share with everyone around them.

source :



The top players are known and through the power of the internet sloclap can get in contact with this players, it would be great if they would do so and that these top players would also answer sloclap too and give there feedback. This would greatly improve the experience of the game for everyone and bring some of the vets back, while also keeping the new xbox people interested to play the game. This is because it would show that devs do listen to the players and take their feedback seriously. While also being ensured that the balance is run by the most capable people possible

methamos

Nicely said kris.
I can confirm all this and fortunately I even know core-a gaming and so on.

I heard alot of players complain about the decision to go for the xbox version first but actually I imagine that interrupting the work on the xbox version is senseless because of deadlines from microsoft and because every dev. Would have to get into the topic all over again. further the xbox version sell could fill up the budget so they have more time for working on the actual game.
Im looking forward to the patches after the xbox release. But either way I have alot fun playing absolver even if I get hit by moves that I dodge perfectly or get hit by an eq every 5sec because absolver is so much more than that.

methamos

But before I forget, I think you can already talk to the developers right here pretty well.
I feel like alot of my suggestions have been noticed especially my suggestions to change stagger are pretty simular to what sclp actually changed.

slcp_Kaolin

Greetings kris,

Thanks for all the suggestions balance changes! I'll pass these along to the rest of the team. While I can't promise any of it will make it into the game, we do want to make sure we review all player feedback and suggestions to stay focused on adding/change things to the game that the community wants. Please continue to do that; we need your feedback.

Thank you once again for your support!

Shaadea

While I agree that devs should listen to the community and even take suggestions from there into their considerations I don't believe that the "Top Players" are the best address. They might be good players, I don't doubt that, but mainly they are top at the curretn version of the game (with the currnt mechanic), using the existing system to their best. They might have a good insight in the balancing (often finding weaknesses/oopholes and exploiting that). That don't make them experts in what the company/devs want the game to be.
You get better input by listening to the "normal" player, the casual one. He already stepped over the border of being a nameless somone by stopping by in the forum and posting, so listen to that guy!
What does he like? Why is he still around even without being super successful in PVP? Is the way he describes his experience the same what you as dev wanted to transport/give them? Top players (or those with ambition to be one) are maybe 5% of your customer base, you need to listen to the other 95% of casuals to spread the game and make money ;-)
For technical/balancing issues, listen to the top players, they show you the unbalance in the system