Combat Medic Archive
Thread: 6/3/04 Question and response
The sole reason I, personally, want to know the answer is so I can better assist the community with getting our wants and needs across. Knowing what we're supposed to be, the role we are to fulfill in-game, will help us decide how much change is needed to get us to that point.
Without that bit of direction we're left somewhat floundering, commenting and suggesting ideas based off the current state of the profession andnot on where we need to be headed.
Oh and jf,for the record, I'm a guy
Zarlor wrote:
Frankly, I just don't think having a Dev "Vision Statement" for CMs would make one bit of difference. Sure folks may THINK that it will allow them to focus feedback on balancing the "profession", but I think the devs have made it pretty claer that they are not interested in balancing the "profession", they are interested in balancing the "template." Hence the exact abi.ity of the profession itself is, effectively, irrelavent, it is only when combining the skills in toto that comprise the discussion they are intersted in when it comes to balance. Then as I suspected, this whole combat rebalance will be a joke, and completely ineffective..
We all know there are many skills in CM that are currently a bit unbalancing because of how they were implemented/used when compared to the skills they presumably counter. The combat balance shoudl address a bunch of that stuff, but likely not all of it. You actually trust them to get it right?I think when all is said and done it doesn't matter who thinks that CMs should be "primarily healers and a support class" and who thinks we should be "bio-terrorist" or any level of ability in between. All of that is effectively irrelavent in the large scheme of things simply because there are no "classes" in this game, only skills organized into professions. If there is an issue with a CM skill ro ability, then address that, How do you address a certain skill or ability when you have no idea how the rebalance will affect it?but getting a "Vision Statment" likely would do nothing at all to further the cause of getting those individual skills addressed, IMHO. Just a different viewpoint that I think is pretty relavent, so feel free to chew on it for a while. (hint, hint)
Morganite wrote:
Zarlor wrote:
Frankly, I just don't think having a Dev "Vision Statement" for CMs would make one bit of difference. Sure folks may THINK that it will allow them to focus feedback on balancing the "profession", but I think the devs have made it pretty claer that they are not interested in balancing the "profession", they are interested in balancing the "template." Hence the exact abi.ity of the profession itself is, effectively, irrelavent, it is only when combining the skills in toto that comprise the discussion they are intersted in when it comes to balance. Then as I suspected, this whole combat rebalance will be a joke, and completely ineffective..
The statment means nothing without qualification. You suspect it will be a "joke" based on my premise, but fail to explain why. It seems to me that if you balanced combat by class then the uber-templates will always exist, because they balanced to a profession instead of the templates that can be made from the skills in those professions. In other words, why are we even talking professions at all when the issue is with certain skills and how those skills inerect with other skills?
We all know there are many skills in CM that are currently a bit unbalancing because of how they were implemented/used when compared to the skills they presumably counter. The combat balance shoudl address a bunch of that stuff, but likely not all of it. You actually trust them to get it right?
Did I say that? 
Trust them to get it "right"? Depends on how you define what would be a success int hat situation. Frankly we KNOW a great deal already about what teh combat balance will do. It'll be the secondary set of "Specials" bars (whatever they will call it.) Follow that to it's logical conclusion (as had been done MANY times on many of the forums here, including this one) and you'll see the massive amount of issue that one change alone will address. Will it be "right"? How would I know? I can only guess that even that one simple change should fix many things and lay the groundwork for quite a few other fixes as well. I've always been a proponent of seeing it action, though, before making any final judgements. Just don't condemn it out of hand, though. What's the point in that?
I think when all is said and done it doesn't matter who thinks that CMs should be "primarily healers and a support class" and who thinks we should be "bio-terrorist" or any level of ability in between. All of that is effectively irrelavent in the large scheme of things simply because there are no "classes" in this game, only skills organized into professions. If there is an issue with a CM skill ro ability, then address that, How do you address a certain skill or ability when you have no idea how the rebalance will affect it?but getting a "Vision Statment" likely would do nothing at all to further the cause of getting those individual skills addressed, IMHO. Just a different viewpoint that I think is pretty relavent, so feel free to chew on it for a while. (hint, hint)
But we do have some ideas of how it will affect it. ANd certainly the Devs have some ideas about that as well. It's not like we are tlaking about a bunch of morons, here. You're still playing the game, right? So they certainly got something right. Right enough for you to pay for this game and whatever monthly rate you are paying for as well. There is MASSIVE promise int his game, IMHO, and I;ve certainly gotten many hours of enjoyment from it. So it seems to me the Devs are not so idiotic as some on this forum want to brand them. Sure they make mistakes, even owned up to them and then made changes to address those mistakes, and they will no doubt make more mistakes, but why simply assume that all their decisions will somehow be wrong when the vast majority have been pretty darned good.
Atempting to balance templates is a waste of their time and ours, as it is impossible. To many combinations to consider.
Think so? I say if anyone has the tools to do it, it's the folks who put the code together. They can number crunch the statistics and a ton more ways than we can, while we in turn provide the feedback of gameply because, collectively, we play the game a MASSIVE amount more than the Devs ever could... there's just a TON more of us. So we'll find things the numbers don't point out, that's for sure, or we'll find things they weren't looking for. Either way, though, I wouldn't call the attampt to balance templates as impossible. THe number of skills in the game is finite, as is the combinations of those skills. Certainly it's a daunting task, but not impossible. Indeed I would say that the task is, when all is said and done, a REQUIREMENT, because the game is not about professions, it's about those templates. We can balance professions all we want, but as I said above, if that is all that happens, then the uber-templates that ignore professions in favor of skills will walk all over those nicely balanced templates, and then you have an unbalanced game. Just my opinion, of course, but I think there is a tad more merit to it then my opinion alone.
Message Edited by Zarlor on 06-09-2004 11:47 PM
How can the game not be about professions, when they force a profession based system on us? Templates are based on professions. A rifleman should be as good as a pistoleer, and as good as a carbineer, as good as a pikeman, fencer, tk, swordsman if used properly. It would be easier to have your faith in their ability to do this right, if in the 11 months this game has been "live" they would have at the very least fixed all the broken specials and skillsspread across the various classes.
Zarlor wrote:
Morganite wrote:
Zarlor wrote:
Frankly, I just don't think having a Dev "Vision Statement" for CMs would make one bit of difference. Sure folks may THINK that it will allow them to focus feedback on balancing the "profession", but I think the devs have made it pretty claer that they are not interested in balancing the "profession", they are interested in balancing the "template." Hence the exact abi.ity of the profession itself is, effectively, irrelavent, it is only when combining the skills in toto that comprise the discussion they are intersted in when it comes to balance. Then as I suspected, this whole combat rebalance will be a joke, and completely ineffective..
The statment means nothing without qualification. You suspect it will be a "joke" based on my premise, but fail to explain why. It seems to me that if you balanced combat by class then the uber-templates will always exist, because they balanced to a profession instead of the templates that can be made from the skills in those professions. In other words, why are we even talking professions at all when the issue is with certain skills and how those skills inerect with other skills? There is a plethora of combinations that can be used to make a full character template. To many combinations to try and make a balance, nor would you want to. Trying to balance everything is entirely to difficult of a task, there are what, 500 some skill combinations one could use in building a combat-template? I find it impossible to believe they can balance 500 some combinations when they have not been able to balance 15-20 some professions currently..
We all know there are many skills in CM that are currently a bit unbalancing because of how they were implemented/used when compared to the skills they presumably counter. The combat balance shoudl address a bunch of that stuff, but likely not all of it. You actually trust them to get it right?
Did I say that?
I think when all is said and done it doesn't matter who thinks that CMs should be "primarily healers and a support class" and who thinks we should be "bio-terrorist" or any level of ability in between. All of that is effectively irrelavent in the large scheme of things simply because there are no "classes" in this game, only skills organized into professions. If there is an issue with a CM skill ro ability, then address that, How do you address a certain skill or ability when you have no idea how the rebalance will affect it?but getting a "Vision Statment" likely would do nothing at all to further the cause of getting those individual skills addressed, IMHO. Just a different viewpoint that I think is pretty relavent, so feel free to chew on it for a while. (hint, hint)
But we do have some ideas of how it will affect it. ANd certainly the Devs have some ideas about that as well. It's not like we are tlaking about a bunch of morons, here. You're still playing the game, right? So they certainly got something right. Right enough for you to pay for this game and whatever monthly rate you are paying for as well. There is MASSIVE promise int his game, IMHO, and I;ve certainly gotten many hours of enjoyment from it. So it seems to me the Devs are not so idiotic as some on this forum want to brand them. Sure they make mistakes, even owned up to them and then made changes to address those mistakes, and they will no doubt make more mistakes, but why simply assume that all their decisions will somehow be wrong when the vast majority have been pretty darned good. It is impossible to give them feedback when they know where they want to go with the rebalance, but we dont. you are correct that there is massive promise in the game. The entire "economy" they have created here is my main reason to keep coming back. It is an outstanding system that allows the players to set the values for everything. The combat system has been not so good ever since I have started playing. I have gotten tons of hours of enjoyment from it as well, as it is one of the more comprehensive games on the market today. That doesnt mean I am willing to put blind trust in them to get it right. Why else would they have started the entire coorespondent system if not to get feedback from people who actually play the game in how the professions interact, and fiter important information up to them in a more orderly fashion. If our coorespondent does not have an idea where they want to take the game in general, and this profession in specific, how can he evaluate their changes in advance, and give them the crucial feedback they have coorespondents for in the first place?
Atempting to balance templates is a waste of their time and ours, as it is impossible. To many combinations to consider.
Think so? I say if anyone has the tools to do it, it's the folks who put the code together. They can number crunch the statistics and a ton more ways than we can, while we in turn provide the feedback of gameply because, collectively, we play the game a MASSIVE amount more than the Devs ever could... there's just a TON more of us. So we'll find things the numbers don't point out, that's for sure, or we'll find things they weren't looking for. Either way, though, I wouldn't call the attampt to balance templates as impossible. THe number of skills in the game is finite, as is the combinations of those skills. Certainly it's a daunting task, but not impossible. Indeed I would say that the task is, when all is said and done, a REQUIREMENT, because the game is not about professions, it's about those templates. We can balance professions all we want, but as I said above, if that is all that happens, then the uber-templates that ignore professions in favor of skills will walk all over those nicely balanced templates, and then you have an unbalanced game. Just my opinion, of course, but I think there is a tad more merit to it then my opinion alone.