Chris' Release 8 Ramblings!

First, lets do the boring stuff! The number of players and hours played were about inline with release 7. I personally had predicted a small bump for R8, but when I made that prediction, I didn’t know that Bungie was going to open Destiny to anyone who wanted to play during, you guessed it, Thursday to Sunday.

I think the more important number for this release is 11,045. That is the number of PVP kills between Friday and Sunday. The actual number of kills would be much higher but we had some issues with logging, so a lot of kills were probably missed.

Ok, on to my usual blathering!

The big new shiny things for R8 were obviously the combat system and PVP. While there is LOTS more work to do on the new combat system, overall response has been amazingly positive. Even a few of the long term skeptics were willing to post positive things about it.

So, in hindsight, here are just some of the big ways we screwed up combat this release:

• New and very different combat and skill system with steep learning curve and nearly zero in game help and no real documentation or videos outside the game until after we were live
• We focused on completing a number of skill trees rather than evenly scattering them about. This means that if you didn’t go heavy armor and blades, you were at a disadvantage because those were the only two combat trees we finished.
• Didn’t give enough skill points to allow for players to experiment with multiple builds at once. Until I added 40 more skill points on Friday night, most people didn’t have enough points to get any focus skills and have a full set of 20
• Not enough feedback to the user on what was going on (buffs, debuffs, critical attacks, etc.) made it difficult to know when something important happened

There’s probably a hundred more things we could list but the good news is: IT WAS FUN!


Now to talk about why what we’re doing makes sense from a realism standpoint!

There are still a handful of people who are still upset that we’re removing their ability to have a direct connection between buttons and skills.. They are upset that they don’t always have every option available at all times because we’re moving glyphs in and out.

I’ve seen other players try and reason with them and either explain that it is just a game mechanic. I've seen other players try and reason that just having that bar there at all was once a new game mechanic and some games limit the number of buttons or how many spells you can have memorized at once. But there is a reason we went with this style of combat. We honestly feel it's more realistic. Let me throw out an analogy.

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I used to be a competitive racquetball player. For those not familiar with racquetball, it is kind of like tennis in a big square room. There are a ton of different shot types and serves. When you’re serving, you get a bit of time to prepare and can try any type of serve you want. Just like any serious player, I would imagine the serve I was about to hit and also imagine what type of returns the opponent might hit from that serve so I could adjust my position and strategy accordingly. I would have that information fresh in my mind so if they did return as I expected, I already knew what I would do.

Once the rally was going, there were tons of shots to hit. Kill shots, splat shots, drop shots, passing shots, and ceiling shots. What I would actually hit depended on a lot of things. My position, the opponent’s position, the opponent’s movement, speed of the ball, height and location of the ball.. A lot of rallies end up being long, slow rallies with players hitting defensive shots as players wait for each other to mess up or try and force a bad shot.

So, long setup to get to the real point… In racquetball or tennis or most any sport, just because you know how to hit a shot doesn’t mean you always have that shot available to you. I see the people raging against the deck system as the people who would watch two pros play racquetball or tennis and say, “Why are they hitting all these stupid shots, why don’t they just hit a kill shot every time.” Uh, they aren’t hitting a kill shot because they can’t in their current situation but they are waiting and paying attention and working towards getting the opportunity to hit one!

The serve, or when you are choosing to initiate combat, is the one time when you get to collect your thoughts and plan things and choose how you start things. In SotA, that is where you can initiate combat mode and wait until you get a few of the cards out you want before starting. After the serve/start of combat, you don’t get to choose your exact shot/attack. Instead, you have to react and respond with the best option you currently have available or stall and hope for something better to come up.

Ok, so that might not be a perfect analogy but I wanted to throw it out there for those still stuck on having a real world comparison for why they couldn’t use any skill or spell at any time in combat.


Ok, back to stuff that most people want to hear me talk about, combat and balance!

Hopefully everyone experimented with some of the “Focus” skills. If you didn’t, you missed out on all the fun! The focus skills were the main thing that would allow you to tune the play experience to your liking. With the focus skills you could increase the number of glyphs that could be out at once, allow for locking some glyphs, increase the speed that glyphs came out, and how long they stayed out.

While these are called “Focus” what they really do is allow players to turn up the difficulty and rewards to match their skill level or play style. My expectation is that once players get to a point of mastery with the deck system they will be playing with the number glyphs and the speed all the way up. They will probably have 1 or 2 glyphs locked for emergency use. They’ll be discarding glyphs every free moment to maximize the number of glyphs they see. (You guys knew that if right-clicked, or ctrl-# a glyph it would discard and be replaced quicker, right?) They will be using temporary lock glyph (adds time to how long a glyph stays out) to cast on other glyphs that either might be needed soon or might result in a powerful combo. They’ll be doing all this while staying within melee weapon range, trying to get behind their opponent, and also executing appropriate glyphs.

Intimidating, yes, but the new user will probably play much like they play any other game except they’ll have to pay attention to the UI a bit more. The average user will probably make use of some focus skills and do some occasional discarding but not think too much beyond that.

What I describe above is what we expect to be done by hard core players. I think there will be a number of people who even go a step beyond that and have multiple decks that they move between during combat.

What we were shooting for is something on par with chess, not tic tac toe or even checkers. We wanted something that players could get into without too much effort but always have room to improve and grow. We wanted to make sure combat was fun for all but we also didn’t want to make combat something that was decided purely by level, equipment, or by who attacked first. We think we’re on right track but as always, we would love to hear your constructive feedback!


I know with this release there were some people worried about balance. Honestly, if someone played this release and judged balance of the final game by what they saw in this release, they should be worried! We’re aware and we only did a bit of balance work for this release. We really just did enough to make sure balance wouldn’t ruin the fun.

Trying to really balance powers is going to require that we have most of the planned powers and systems in place first. That unfortunately means that R9 will only be a bit more balanced than R8, BUT we will be giving people lots more options for play styles. We’ll also be adding reagents for R9, which will help bring some balance or, at least some pain, to the higher tier spells.

R10 is where we hope to be able to start thinking seriously about balance. Most, if not all skills should be in place. Durability and a repair loop will probably be in. Reagents will be in. The only thing that will be missing at the start of R10 will be players and I’m sure you guys can help us fix that!

On the topic of balance, it seems that everyone thinks they know what is needed to balance a game. I would argue that no one, not even us, KNOWS how to balance the game. But at least we KNOW we don't know. And knowing that is half the battle.

Now that I’ve instilled great confidence in you guys, I’ll explain why I say that and why you shouldn’t be worried…

We have tons of plans and ideas on how things will work and how to balance stuff. We just know they are all wrong at some level. We have big picture balance items for counters for different elements. We know the focus for each of the major categories of spells skills and what makes them different. We are really good at math but there are just some things that you just can’t put number values on. We can guess at the value but you guys will prove us wrong.

So, you shouldn’t be worried because you guys are going to show us where our guesses are wrong! Important thing to notice is I said “show” and not “tell”. I’m sure you guys will tell us where we’re wrong too but this is one of those things where observing what people do is the only way to get an accurate, unbiased answer about what is really balanced and what is over or under powered.

So, on the topic of why we can’t just point to a spreadsheet and say something is balanced… Let’s start by talking about the most simple thing, attacking someone with a sword with your auto-attack! So we’ve had a number of people ask us to just show damage per second on weapons instead of the other numbers. So the problem is, there is no fixed DPS for a weapon. Your strength, dexterity, and level all play factors in how much damage a weapon does. The armor they are wearing plays a factor. Even what food you’ve eaten will play a factor! The only thing we could do is give a value for specific case of say a level 1 player attacking some fixed creature or player config but that really isn’t useful in the real world of balancing.

Ok, so that was just for the auto attack for a sword and you can’t come up with a direct way to get even a simple damage per second number. Let’s work with it a bit though and say instead we set up a spreadsheet to show DPS for a few different cases of attackers with the sword vs different targets with the sword! We can do that! Awesome! Progress! We’ll pick some target numbers that factor in values based on what our desired combat lengths are and bammo! We might be getting some rough estimates for values to use to balance some specific cases! Rock and Roll! Half way there, right? Ok, maybe not….

So with the above process we can come up with some SWAGs (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses, military term) to get us started. Next step: factor in some skills and spells! Piece of cake!

So we’ll start with the first spell on the first spell tree… Air Magic, Gust. Hrm… does no damage, cost focus. Hrmm… this spell has no value… :/ Ok, get creative. Let’s assume if you’re using gust that you have a way to damage people at range. So, let’s figure out how much time it buys you, figure out how much damage you could do in that amount of time, and use that for a number. Progress!

Oh wait, except that it also prevents you from taking damage in that time… what is that worth? Oh, and it is only useful if they can’t do ranged attacks… gah? More variables for the equation! Hrmm… it also buys you time to get off a spell that has a concentration time to it without being interrupted. Oh, and it will interrupt them if they are casting. brain… hurting.

Ok, screw Gust. Let’s do the next one, Lightning bolt. Easy peasy, it does damage, take time to cast! Those things are numbers! We like numbers, right! Now we got a DPS number for it! Back in business! Now we just need to figure out how to value range. Ok, I’m going to be bold and say ranged is a 1.5 multiplier! What ever its DPS number is time 1.5 for ranged to get a DPS number so we can compare it to a weapon!

Now, how to value stun… agony. Ok, screw it, we’re saying a stun is worth a players base DPS number time the length of the stun times three! Three because stunning someone is twice as cool because it buys you time and costs them time and 1.5 more because its ranged or something. Now to factor in focus use… screw it, subtracting 1 dps per focus. Now to factor in that the spell casting can be interrupted… or fizzle… or be resisted… and has a spell reagent. *BOOM*

That boom was the sound of your head exploding as you realize there is no real mathematical way to prove this stuff. We can make educated guesses and pretend we know exactly how things are going to work out but in the end, we’re going to be wrong. Like many things in the world, the only way to truly know is through repeated observations and sometimes double blind tests. From that we can continually refine our SWAGs and eventually steer things in the right direction.

Another huge variable that is impossible to measure is situational value. For instance, the douse spell is a waste of space 99% of the time. BUT for that 1% of the time we’re you’re on fire it is invaluable. Another example is Gust. It is a decent little spell if you need some room or if you see something chewing on your healer but, if you’re on a cliff or a ledge and have more enemies than you can handle it suddenly becomes OP!

Also, the above examples are looking at just trying to balance things at the atomic level. The real value in all things are how they work together. Not just in planned combos but how they fit together in terms of casting times and cool downs, high mana use and low mana use, expensive reagents and free spells, control spells and damage spells, fast cast and slow cast, etc…

So, as I was saying earlier, we know we don’t know how to balance the game BUT we do know how to take some good guesses and then let you guys show us where we screwed up.

Ok, I’ve blathered on long enough. I need to post this thing and get back to work! Take care and sorry this one turned into even more of a stream of thought than most of my post mortems!

R8 is dead! Long live R9!

 

Remember, I need to save something to post in the DevPlus group over the next week! I rushed this thing out today because I lost a lot of time to being sick this week. Damn plague baby infected me again! The above ramblings is just scratching the surface on combat thoughts. I'll try and go into how, where ever possible, we're moving things to be active vs passive. Also I'll try to remember to try and go into how everything adds or subtracts from the value equation including passive vs duration vs instant active.

 

The difference between the system and other MMO's is only in that you have to think about things before you click them. You aren't having to click more than any other MMO and actually, unless you're working really hard and fast at clearing cards you don't want, you're probably clicking less than other MMO's. It seems what you're suggesting is we favor character advancement over player skill and I don't think that has ever been what has been asked for or talked about. We aren't going for twitch skill though but more pattern recognition, short term memory, and strategic thinking at a modest pace.