Why is the tendency to think up instead of down with changes?

[Zipzo]

I had this conversation earlier with some team mates and I think it was interesting so I thought I'd bring it here.

Essentially, we talked a lot about what needs to be fixed and improved in this game. At the risk of turning this conversation in to a completely exclusive debate on the following subjects (a lot of one track minds), photon flare was something that became an example. Along with hunters.

The overall view of Photon Flare (the ice tree in general) is that it's a pointless build, the skill itself is weak as hell, and it needs to be buffed to be of any use (or changed radically). Same went for Shifta and Deband skills in the Techer tree. Another subject was Hunters and how their damage should be scaled up to match the output of forces and rangers because of the lack of down time they have by being ranged.

This needs to do more damage, this needs to give more stats to be useful (Shifta/Deband Advance), and so on. My question is...why is the tendency to think upward? We all know that armies of mobs in this game (in AQs on VH) even at high levels of risk get wiped out in 1-2 shots, the more annoying mobs possibly a few more but with concentrated party effort they are just as meaninglessly non-existent and purely exist to serve us experience on a silver platter.

Why does *anybody* believe that the fix to *any* of the classes problems no matter what they are, is to make X skill do more damage? To have X skill provide a significant amount of your main offensive stat? To get bigger numbers from [your under-appreciated skill here]. If we get any more powerful there is barely any game left to toil with. As players, we already have so many tools and passive power over the mobs in this game that we literally destroy and mutilate hoards of mobs within seconds of them appearing, bosses are not even worthy of note either whenever everyone knows the weak points and especially if you have weak bullet. It comes up a lot particularly in relation to the hunter subject, this & this & this all need to do more damage etc. Do they? Do they really? Maybe everyone else needs to do less damage?

Maybe photon flare is a decent burst skill, but most are used to much better skills in the same tree and so obviously PF gets compared to them, and in contrast PF is incredibly weak. Why should it be buffed though? Something should not be buffed simply to give everyone a reason to want to use it because if that happens, everyone uses it because it's simply the strongest and most intelligent choice. Not because it has interesting situational uses or comes in handy at certain times. The boost is not significant, sure, but why does it need to be?

In conclusion, my point ends up being that when we talk about change or class modifications, we should be discussing brilliant or intelligent ways to tone down the classes (or tone up the mobs, not in terms of damage) without destroying the enjoyment of the game. The factor of there being very low reward in the current game came up and it's a valid point to make but it's also a separate topic. Let's assume the extra effort we put in to the game should our classes be more fundamentally difficult to use in the average mission is in fact rewarded better than the game today seems to reward folks. I think Zonde gettin' the shaft is a good start, and a good sign that a good number of native JP players feel mutual about this, at least about outlier'd cases such as Zonde's current state.

We need to discuss ways to better the utility of certain moves, that's for sure, but I think discussion of how to buff the damage as opposed to nerfing of damage is silly and eyebrow raising.

Anyways, that's all I had in mind.

[Macman]

Uh, hello? They're going to nerf Zonde, the biggest imba thing in the game at the moment.
I just hope they don't hit it so hard with the nerf bat that it goes back to being completely useless compared to lolfire.

[omgwtflolbbl]

Because it always feels better to see that something you might want to use become better, rather than something you already like to use become worse.

Personally, I want to see weak bullet gutted, but that's just my opinion...

[Zipzo]

Uh, hello? They're going to nerf Zonde, the biggest imba thing in the game at the moment.
I just hope they don't hit it so hard with the nerf bat that it goes back to being completely useless compared to lolfire.

...Obviously I knew that...


I think Zonde gettin' the shaft is a good start, and a good sign that a good number of native JP players feel mutual about this, at least about outlier'd cases such as Zonde's current state.

That's written in the post above.

[Chik'Tikka]

"Enemy analysis complete. They are insignificant."

+^_^+

[UnLucky]

Nerfs feel worse than buffs.

Dealing more damage feels better for progression.

Monsters taking more damage to defeat feels like you're going toe-to-toe with something much stronger.

Lower damage feels like regression.

Monsters receiving less damage feels like you're getting weaker.

You can achieve balance by scaling everything up, and it doesn't feel punishing to players in doing so.

[Alenoir]

In conclusion, my point ends up being that when we talk about change or class modifications, we should be discussing brilliant or intelligent ways to tone down the classes (or tone up the mobs, not in terms of damage) without destroying the enjoyment of the game.

Sega mentioned directly, many times, that they will try all they can to not nerf anything, that they are against the "nerf" idea in general. Zonde is "supposedly" the first time they have to nerf something (and tell the public about it), which is why they're giving us compensation for it.

[Alisha]

id like to see deadly archer substantially nerfed

[Zenobia]

Because it always feels better to see that something you might want to use become better, rather than something you already like to use become worse.

Personally, I want to see weak bullet gutted, but that's just my opinion...

LMFAO WB gutted? Are you srs I understand its your opinion but its the only game maker and helpful to the party if you remove that RA becomes another HU.

Now if you want t nerfed then thats good I can actually say ITS TO GOOD to be honest,but honestly that skill is way to good to even...just no!

I know it's aggravating that you have to wait around for your pp to come back which is aggravating as hell.

Honestly they should change how it works they should have it to where once you load you can change weps and still keep your WB stock once the WB runs out you can switch back and re-apply lessening the frustration.

[Gardios]

I'm generally against buffing, powercreep and stuff. Works in the beginning, but ends in players playing Disgaea when it comes to damage numbers. Nerfing is usually the way to go, but you're average Joe won't like that, no matter how justified.

I'd type out more about what I think PSO2's problems are and how I'd go about fixing them (spoilers: mostly nerfs), but I'm posting from my VITA in bed right now where typing is a bitch. When I get to my PC, the thread surely is a dozen pages long, if not closed... Gah.

[UnLucky]

WB would be amazing even if it were only 50% more damage. And it's 3x.

And Rangers are still OP even without WB up. 206% damage on weak points when standing still. 156% on weak points without standing snipe. 132% with just standing snipe.

Hunters get 121% and some change, but reduced defense.

Photon Flare is too little too infrequently with too harsh a penalty. You would literally have to nerf every single other thing in the entire game, including pure Stat Up skills, in order for PF to achieve balance.

[omgwtflolbbl]

I'd like it to be gutted and replaced with something else, or revised in the way it works. You yourself say that the skill is way too good.

I mean really, what's the next closest thing in the game that lets up to 12 people (11 really since the ranger will probably just be sitting around, but whatever) triple their damage output with the use of a single skill? It makes no sense whatsoever. I'd like to see that power dissipated elsewhere in the ranger tree.

Also, I am a gura, so yes I am advocating nerfing my class.

[Zenobia]

I'd like it to be gutted and replaced with something else, or revised in the way it works. You yourself say that the skill is way too good.

I mean really, what's the next closest thing in the game that lets up to 12 people (11 really since the ranger will probably just be sitting around, but whatever) triple their damage output with the use of a single skill? It makes no sense whatsoever. I'd like to see that power dissipated elsewhere in the ranger tree.

Also, I am a gura, so yes I am advocating nerfing my class.

I said before in my earlier post it shouldn't be removed but yes change the way it acts like being able to switch weapons and not lose your stocks of WB's cause yes it is bullshit.

But at as far as removing it completely I disagree purely on it.

[omgwtflolbbl]

I think I'd rather see it replace one of your rifle PA slots, so that you actually have a way to regenerate PP other than AFKing or changing your PB around it. Any sort of game design that makes it so that using one skill means you're better off afking for 10 seconds is really bad design in my opinion. It breaks the flow of things and feels unnecessary. When a fight breaks out, I'd rather see players actively fighting, not staring at the enemy intensely. Even if it's just spamming an auto attack, it's a step up from not doing anything. If you're designing a game, I hope your goal isn't to watch people afk in battle. It's like chasing a boss that leapt halfway across the field for no reason after you just caught up to it as a melee. It feels like you're wasting your time.

And then I would lower its bonus damage to +50%-100% range. Because triple damage output is dumb. The only reason why I feel that gunner chain trigger damage is okay is that it's a short burst that only one person gets the benefit from. You get the bonus damage for maybe like 3 seconds, and that's it, and it's easier to mess up. The damage spike provided by chain trigger alone in a party is nowhere near the spike provided by weak bullet, and weak bullet can be sustained for everyone. And the only reason that gura chain trigger instagibs work so well in the first place is because of how ridiculous weak bullet is (along with weak hit advance).

[Gardios]

Photon Flare is too little too infrequently with too harsh a penalty. You would literally have to nerf every single other thing in the entire game, including pure Stat Up skills, in order for PF to achieve balance.
It giving plain stats is crap anyway because even if you buffed it, it would just become crap later on again when we get new weapons with higher base stats that give even more stats due to grinding. Yay for non-linear stat progression!

Changing it to a % increase isn't a buff for me as much as a fix of a faulty design decision. Isn't that what they're doing wih Hunter now, too?

[ShinMaruku]

On paper nerfs seem good but in practice they go to far and turn something useless again. It's probably going to happen to zonde. You guys will get your wish it's nerfed and other techs aside from fire will still be shit.

You want balance that does not piss too much people off, you make everything feel powerful. Make everything have it's place PSO2 is not in that spot yet. If they want photon flare to be good make it percentage based so it scales nicely with gear and make it have a chain effect like chains in PSP2 then maybe ice and wind would have a bit better mileage and then the cost might be worth it.

To make melee worth it there has to be some good control on what they can do, I mean stuns on bosses interrupts things like that. Utility that makes the party kill even faster. Like say you have a gunner and a force and the weakbullet/chain trigger cooldowns are up stun the boss and let everybody unload.

[gigawuts]

Zonde's need for a nerf - at least its damage alone - is symptomatic of the game as a whole. Even if the tech cost 10 more PP people would still use it and it would still need a nerf. Why? Many enemies have so little health that it kills them in one hit at all ranges with complete ease, so long as you can target the boost point.

Solutions: Remove boost points' weak point status, give them vulnerability to all 6 elements to equalize tech vulnerability and reduce emphasis on FO elements, reduce bonus hp of boosted enemies, increase all enemy hp (or nerf force damage a bit).

A lot of things in this game just die too goddamn fast by intended design. Until things need to take more hits to kill, across the board and for all players, balance will be a laughing stock. Melee would almost certainly be more balanced in a game where enemies took even 50% longer to kill and small enemies had more health but didn't spawn in such large quantities, given that the point of melee seems to be sustained close range combat. With everything dying so fast, well, close range means moving a LOT.

[UnLucky]

It giving plain stats is crap anyway because even if you buffed it, it would just become crap later on again when we get new weapons with higher base stats that give even more stats due to grinding. Yay for non-linear stat progression!

Changing it to a % increase isn't a buff for me as much as a fix of a faulty design decision. Isn't that what they're doing wih Hunter now, too?

Meh, if enemy defense scaled up a tad in higher difficulties, pure stats would be more useful. Though static gains are still bad, so I'd rather it be a % of your stats vs % of your damage.

The lv11+ technic buff was the right idea, not touching fire techs much, but boosting a bunch of others. Ice techs not enough, and bolt techs too much, but hey.

[Aine]

Don't boost points already have vulnerability to all elements? Hit a boost point with any element weapon and you'll see the special effect.

[gigawuts]

Don't boost points already have vulnerability to all elements? Hit a boost point with any element weapon and you'll see the special effect.

Look at the info box when selecting the weak point and it specifies fire, ice, and lightning. I know all graphical effects show up, but either the graphics lie or the info box lies.

[Syklo]

Look at the info box when selecting the weak point and it specifies fire, ice, and lightning. I know all graphical effects show up, but either the graphics lie or the info box lies.
Likely to be a lie - not all boxes can list all required information :P

IIRC, i remember experimenting with 3 basic gunslashes of the same kind - One neutral, one ice and one light.
The elementals did roughly the same damage as each other, and the clean one did less (duh).

This was waaay back though.....before I got fighter.

[gigawuts]

Hmm, now I'm curious and will test it some time.

[Lumpen Thingy]

id like to see deadly archer substantially nerfed

and this is why you don't work at SOJ

[Alisha]

hello whats with you people? DA is on the same level as Dus Daggas at PSU launch and Blade Destruction in phantasy star portable 2 and both were nerfed. seriously go back to being sheep and DA is your herder. oh noes i need to press more than 1 button to win whatever will i do :(

[TaigaUC]

Weird op post. Some stuff has already been pointed out, but here goes:

- Buff to make useless stuff more useful, so more people use it
- Nerf to make overpowered stuff less useful, so less people use it and try alternatives for more diversity among players
- Generally, people prefer to get stronger instead of weaker (forwards instead of backwards)
- Increasing damage for bigger numbers is because this game focuses heavily on offense, so it makes sense that adjusting damage output is the main focus of rebalancing/adjustments
- Adding utility would likely require redesigning various gameplay elements (ie. adding more utility to all classes and enemies) and is more difficult to balance than just changing numbers. There'd have to be a lot of testing involved, for one thing. In other words, SEGA is lazy.

Edit: I also wanted to say, it's obvious that SEGA isn't thinking about utility or purpose of attacks, because every class has a bunch of Technics, PAs and Skills that are completely useless, and nobody uses them.
It's clear they just throw stuff in without thinking about it, kind of like how they keep making outfits with terrible colors that nobody wants. They're there to perpetuate the illusion of content or to act as fodder for the real content.

[UnLucky]

Hmm, now I'm curious and will test it some time.

From what I gather from the JP wiki, infection sites "only list 3 attributes" but are "weak to all attributes"

I'd rather the thing not be weak to anything... The boosted stats mean nothing if they take double damage from everything.

[gigawuts]

Yeah, that's something I realized after posting. If the problem is force's crazy range means getting to one-shot these things from max viewing distance, removing element vulnerabilities from the boost points should be a priority. Techs gain huge damage boosts from weaknesses, whereas every single other type of damage only gains smidgens of bonus damage.

Until we get resistances of 50% or more we shouldn't really be getting crazy weaknesses. Actually, even then we shouldn't. Weaknesses shouldn't ever be crazy high for just techs.

[Omega-z]

Yeah, balance is needed badly which would be better if thing were re-applied restoring in less damage for many and would require better skill to play the game, even tho that may be a nerf to some because they get used to the OP damage. But Sega's not going to do that since they make there $$$ with Fan-Service now these day's and just upgrade. The game "IS" getting boring fast doing it how they are, I mean I would like to see 400K+ hit's at Lv.200 not Lv.40 or less or any thing pass 5K-10K at our current Lv. Because that's poor balance Even PSU wasn't this bad or PSO for that matter. Upgrading will not fix much at all and will make the foe's unbalanced as well too, to weak or to strong.

[UnLucky]

Well, Weak Hit Advance works for anything above 100%, so I imagine Element Weak Hit does the same.

That's why I want something that would create weaknesses, like say, Weak Bullet. Does nothing else. Standard weak point at the target location. All other weakness multipliers apply. That's it. (Hint: It's still useful)

Or like other games have skills that can turn resistances into weaknesses to stack with bonus damage to a targeted weakness. Like with EWH, on enemies 120% weak to Light, any Light tech you use does 144% damage. But enemies with 85% to Dark will take 85% Dark damage. But if you had another skill that made the target take 120% more damage to all elements, that 85% resistance turns into 102%, effectively becoming a weakness, so you get EWH's bonus for 122% Dark. And of course, using their actual weakness makes it become 173% Light.

It would be better than simply having EWH2, and would benefit the whole party.

[TaigaUC]

Until we get resistances of 50% or more we shouldn't really be getting crazy weaknesses. Actually, even then we shouldn't. Weaknesses shouldn't ever be crazy high for just techs.

I always thought that was BS too. Elemental weaknesses gives Techs an advantage over everything else. It does encourage people to be more versatile, but it's just plain stupid when it only really affects a specific class.

[ShinMaruku]

As said before make people feel powerful in different ways and some of the balance issues will be dealt with. That said don't nerf too much or else you end up with a bunch of useless shit.
I also think there should be a return to enemies that take reduced melee,ranged or tech damage which can be over taken by using elemental weakness. Just like in PSP2 you had some things that took reduced tech damage that you needed trickery to take down as a force (Elemental damage or just chaining high enough that it would get melted regardless)

[Nikoshae]

I think the biggest reason is because it's unfair to take something away from a player (the numbers they already get) unless the particular skill was not functioning the way it was intended. So buffing the others' numbers to compensate for happenstance of one class getting higher numbers is typically the way to go.

[Overlord Emizel]

People generally think up instead of down because less people get upset when something gets buffed than when something gets nerfed.

but realistically good balancing for this game will include both nerfs (downs) and buffs (ups)

[Overlord Emizel]

hello whats with you people? DA is on the same level as Dus Daggas at PSU launch and Blade Destruction in phantasy star portable 2 and both were nerfed. seriously go back to being sheep and DA is your herder. oh noes i need to press more than 1 button to win whatever will i do :(

If Fighters had a good gap closer/dashing skill/faster movement I might agree with you. but even with the great damage on DA right now, it doesn't really compensate for the traveling times and general melee issues.

nerfing it right now would be very silly.

[ShinMaruku]

Melee needs air trick or stinger.

[Overlord Emizel]

Melee needs air trick or stinger.

Indeed

[Zenobia]

Needs anything that gives us some fucking moblity sure the dash step is cool and all but dayum I hate for it to have to be my only source of mobility.

[~Aya~]

Honestly they should change how it works they should have it to where once you load you can change weps and still keep your WB stock once the WB runs out you can switch back and re-apply lessening the frustration.


I.. I was just talking about that very same thing last night as I was running quests with Johana/Himizu... Do what you said or make it so that you have to hold another key/button to shoot the WB itself like a FO would swap to their second 3 palette spells.

[ShinMaruku]

That's why melee needs air trick. Swipe to the back or front and shank monsters.