Disclaimer: Okay, I’m going to try my best to not make this something that belongs in Whiny ****es, as no clbum is really underpowered. Any of the non-challenge clbumes with a good build and good equipment can pwn any forum at level 35 without consumables, so nothing is really too weak.

A while back, ET engaged in a project where he rebalanced the clbumes by taking data in terms of figuring out how much damage each clbum is doing and trying to get everybody around the same benchmark. So some attacks got made better and others got made worse. A few months have pbumed, and it may well be time to take a look at where things stand.

After talking to a number of people, I’ve pretty much reached the conclusion that the challenge clbumes are appropriately challenge-y; emos, camwhores, and hackers are all about equally good; while trolls are just way, way ahead of everybody else. One thing that happened in the meantime between “the rebalance” and “now” was, I believe, the fact that Pink Floyd became fairly readily available to anybody (since it started dropping in HOFF, was widely farmed, and everybody who extracts one is left at 49/50, so they can farm up more copies to sell in Kyoubai easily). The +30 offense granted by Pink Floyd is a considerable amount of offense, and really opens up a lot of offense for clbumes who are intended to be offense-light.

To illustrate this, let me just share an anecdote about a friend of mine and myself. He’s a level 35 troll specced for offense, and I’m a level 35 hacker specced for offense. We both have pretty much all of the high equipment you’d want (Kidney/4 Beast0rs, Earbleeders, Pink Floyd, ****.milf/Ripro, Notorious, etc.) I have 178 offense, and he has 150. With my most powerful attacks, (ipz and Recipe) I do around 3500 damage, my attacks have a high refresh pool, and my secondary stats are limited. By contrast, with flamebait and shock, he does about 6200 damage with effects with virtually no refresh time, which drain a small amount of douchebaggery from an almost limitless pool. Because the plural of “anecdote” is “data”, if you look at the speed run boards for the high level forums you’ll notice that they tend to be full of trolls. Sometimes, trolls who get those spots without really trying (Just hitting 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2 until it’s over).

So it’s pretty clear to me that Trolls have a significant edge, this may be because:

1) They have really powerful attacks (350 and 220).

2) They have as much offense as anybody else when you pile on the good equipment.

3) Their powerful attacks have really no refresh time.

4) Their secondary stat reservoirs are almost limitless.

Now the questions I have for you, dear Flamebaters is “Is this a problem?” Do trolls need nerfing? Do other clbumes need boosting? Do we really care at all if things aren’t balanced for people who are at the level cap and have everything they could ever want for?

Honestly, I don’t know. The game is certainly easy enough for me, being a non-troll, but speed running is significantly harder for me, and I spend more on repairs, etc. I’d really like to hear the opinion of Evil Trout or other CZ folks, and possibly it would be interesting to hear the results if ET used that same data gathering utility that he used for the last rebalance to see how things stand now that so many high level accounts have really good equipment now. At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if things were just left the way they were with trolls far and away the best clbum, because (at least according to the Wiki) ET is an admitted troll IRL, so it’s understandable if he wants to Mary Sue it up a little bit Log in to see images!.

But do we really care about clbum balance at all? Or if we do, do we care about it for people who are at the level cap and want for nothing? Nothing really seems *bad* per se right now, things just seem asymmetric, and that’s that other company that does a web rpg…

Honestly, I’m not too upset at how unbalanced trolls are. It’d be nice to be able to speedrun more easily, but it isn’t a huge deal. I’d be up for implementing a quick fix (something as easy as nerfing Political Flamebait to 220 and Shock Sites to 200, or something similar) and calling it good until Episode 3 is rolled out. I seem to remember ET saying that trolls were about 30% overpowered. Then again, if he could spend that time improving the game for everyone in other ways, I wouldn’t fight too hard for a troll nerfing. Let’s just put everyone on semi-equal ground when Episode 3 gets here, whatever we do before then.

Do I really care? Not very much. It’d just be nice.

Edit: Good post, by the way.

I have no idea if it really matters to more than a handful of players, but then everyday I become more and more aware that nothing matters to more than a handful of players.

Speed running is obviously the only thing that matters in end game play, so logically the overpowered troll has an impact on everyone who plays competitively. Every clbum must tank and heal for itself, I cannot call on another to take damage for me or to inflict damage while I heal. There has been a lot of chatter about clbumes utilizing their special abilities, but within the context of the game, since the clbumes are in fact not functioning together, it makes no sense to have them thematically balanced as tank, healer or whatever. When the fairly significant difference between the clbumes is paired with the fact that a hell of a lot of the serious players have adblocked every single game image to reduce pwn time? I don’t know it seems like there is less game in the game every day.

Personally I was just hoping that Episode 2 would bring a bit more balance and we wouldn’t be sitting in that same place we were with the DML trolls, but on a site that is geared for trolls perhaps it is fitting.

It doesn’t have a huge impact on Domination, the difference is 15 – 36 lemon scoops per week. It’s terribly annoying for the job board. I’ve been slogging away at the job board for awhile now (I’ll finally hit the 1800 peen this week), but I would have been able to finish as much as 3 weeks sooner had I been able to always select a 5 point job. Will that situation impact many players? No.

I’m kind of on the verge of taking a break from the game, so perhaps I’m not the best person to comment on it.

EDIT: Also, Vuron pointed all this out and offered simple solutions over a month ago. I miss Vuron.

scullyangel Posted:

It’s terribly annoying for the job board. I’ve been slogging away at the job board for awhile now (I’ll finally hit the 1800 peen this week), but I would have been able to finish as much as 3 weeks sooner had I been able to always select a 5 point job. Will that situation impact many players? No.

Interestingly enough, as a hacker (and thus one gifted with about 48 more points of luck than anybody else), I almost always get at least 4 untimed 5 JP jobs at different forums every day. So in terms of “grinding for that 1800 JP peen” (I’m at 1040, slowly grinding away at 20/day, 140/week), Hackers and Trolls seem to have an advantage over Camgirls, Emos, and the Challenge clbumes; immense luck being the only real advantage Hackers have over other clbumes.

OrsonScottCard Posted:

I think Trolls may be overbalanced, but I think the OP’s comparison may do just as much to point out how underbalanced Hackers are. The issue is that Hacker attacks tend to be so extremely long-cycle compared to equivalent attacks in other clbumes, and also that Processing Power is the least available and fastest draining secondary. The frequency in which I run out of PP on tough forums, even with the best PP stack available, is ridiculous.

I have no problem with superpowered Trolls. We’re competing against the game, not other players, for the majority of things, so what another player can or can’t do doesn’t matter too much to me. I do think that Hackers should be given a little more, though, to make harder forums a little more evenly matched.

I’m not sure if Hackers are really underpowered, at least from a “I’m level capped, and have leet swag” perspective. I can pwn any forum out there without using consumables (though I can speedrun very few, I almost failed 74 seconds at 9 threads on Suburban earlier). The problem, if anything, with Hackers is that they tend to be tedious, and underscintillating (if that’s a word) at high levels. Due to long cycle attacks, I end up with something ridiculous like using 8 different attacks (avtr, ipz, recipe, 404, poetry, flipr, bg2, and fnt) when pwning engrish lessons because PP is in such limited quantities that you can’t afford to spam avtr (which really isn’t that good anyway).

In terms of “fixing clbumes” Hackers really just need to be thrown something interesting, other than “really high luck”. I mean, increasingly with forumbuildr, forums are going in where the effects of background changing results don’t even show up because they have a solid color in front of the background. That’s just a slap in the face Log in to see images! It would be at least nice if I could see the results of my woefully underpowered attacks, but that’s neither here nor there.

But again, how much do we really care? Everybody (except challenge clbumes) at sufficiently high level, with sufficiently good gear and build, can pwn anything without using consumables. Only one clbum can really speedrun effectively, but that’s only really an issue (as Scully pointed out) for Dom and for Job grinding (and Hackers are actually good at job grinding), so that’s not terribly important… then again, when you’re sitting there at level 35, what else is there to do other than grind for peens and play dom?

Crinkz Posted:

You seem to talk about trolls when Emo Kids are pretty much the same way.

totally agreeing on this, my emo kid alt just went up htree levels on eight forum visits. (level 5 to 8)

Possibly a Cabbage Posted:

I’m not sure if Hackers are really underpowered, at least from a “I’m level capped, and have leet swag” perspective. I can pwn any forum out there without using consumables (though I can speedrun very few, I almost failed 74 seconds at 9 threads on Suburban earlier). The problem, if anything, with Hackers is that they tend to be tedious, and underscintillating (if that’s a word) at high levels. Due to long cycle attacks, I end up with something ridiculous like using 8 different attacks (avtr, ipz, recipe, 404, poetry, flipr, bg2, and fnt) when pwning engrish lessons because PP is in such limited quantities that you can’t afford to spam avtr (which really isn’t that good anyway).

Maybe it won’t be so bad when I get to the cap. My problem right now is that, even with using the same cycle of attacks that you use, I run the risk of wiping myself out because it takes so long that my Ego gets chewed up. The only way to prevent that is to overuse avtr, which then eats up PP. Why is it that the only short-cycle Hacker attack is underpowered AND expensive in terms of PP?

As for jobs, I can’t complain too much, but I have yet to successfully complete a timed job, even in forums where I was able to kill each thread in one hit. Compared to other clbumes, it seems like Hacker attacks take longer to execute, if only by fractions of a second. This seems to be enough that I fail by 2-3 seconds every time I try.

OrsonScottCard Posted:

Maybe it won’t be so bad when I get to the cap. My problem right now is that, even with using the same cycle of attacks that you use, I run the risk of wiping myself out because it takes so long that my Ego gets chewed up. The only way to prevent that is to overuse avtr, which then eats up PP. Why is it that the only short-cycle Hacker attack is underpowered AND expensive in terms of PP?

As for jobs, I can’t complain too much, but I have yet to successfully complete a timed job, even in forums where I was able to kill each thread in one hit. Compared to other clbumes, it seems like Hacker attacks take longer to execute, if only by fractions of a second. This seems to be enough that I fail by 2-3 seconds every time I try.

exactly why I didn’t choose my alt to be a hacker. I’ve heard many people say that the hacker clbum is the biggest challenge clbum (excluding re-re’s and permanoobs) because of not being to upgrade processing power, and of the price to repair equipment.

Possibly a Cabbage Posted:

I wasn’t aware of Emos being out of line with Hackers and Camgirls. Other than “they’re the only clbum that can pwn G!”, are they really terribly out of line?

My Emo deals about 5500 damage with Everybody Hurts when his Ego is below 30. I deal about 4300 damage with Political Flamebait.

So what are you guys suggesting? Different clbumes with attacks that deal the same damage but different names? And maybe we can create 100 such clbumes to make the game more fun?

I think the only problem is that hacker’s attacks have too high refresh rates, and I’d love to see them lowered.