MagusDiablo Posted:

Yeah ,now I know all this stuff… Also deliveries, since the start of the game… The thing is, I used to spend a LOT of recovery items, always tried to go way out of my league in search for XP and stuff… But usually end up pwned in severely ways… Running out of consumables, equipment broken…

Yeah, I was REALLY suckable at the beggining. But started to learn more from the game itself, learned to use skills and consumables in a smarter way, and started to be good at it.

You realize that what you’re actually saying amounts to “I had a much harder time with this game before I learned how to play it better”? That’s pretty much a tautology.

The reason why all that math stuff is getting thrown around is specifically because it ignores individual learning curves and poor build choices/strategy. The math bumumes the current best optimal conditions, to see if the potential of the clbumes is roughly on par. Discussing personal experience without statistical information to back it up just says that one player had a problem, for any number of reasons that might have nothing to do with game balance.

On the other hand, there are objective issues you can discuss and correct mathematically. For example, that the Hacker Hardware benefit becomes negligible as the bonuses of all the non-clbum-specific EQ inflate. If the game is balanced based on hacker eq giving, say, 4 times the combat stat bonuses of other clbumes’ EQ, but an increase in the bonus of non-clbum-specific EQ changes that to, say, twice the benefit, then the hacker in general is effectively half as powerful as it was when things were balanced. It’s not a question of what forums a particular player is choosing, or when/if he uses consumables, or where he put his points. bumuming all optimal choices, playing the best Hacker possible, you’re going to be comparatively weaker than an equivalent member of another clbum.

It might seem a little counterintuitive, since technically all the clbumes could have the same bonus increases, but the hacker is built on the bumumption of having a significant EQ boost as compared to others, with weaker attacks and longer refresh rates.

Take a look at the comparative boosts with and without Earbleeders. The Camwhore bumps from +69% damage to +206%, the Troll bumps from +76% to +213%. The Hacker bumps from +458% to +595%. It’s the same item in all three cases, but the bonus for the troll jumps to 2.8 times what it used to be, the camwhore bumps nearly 3 times as high… and the hacker deals 1.3 times as much damage as he did without. The benefits of new “common” EQ for a hacker are simply not in line with the benefits of new EQ for any other clbum, in terms of actual effect on gameplay. That’s not a feeling, it’s a provable fact – one that Master Balls etc will only exacerbate.

Likewise, even if the Troll mid-game were provably harder, it’s the endgame where people are theoretically going to spend the most time. Leveling up a character doesn’t take that long in the grand scheme of things, so player retention pretty much requires keeping the endgame competitive (and interesting). If the only competition after level 35 severely disadvantages certain clbumes, there’s not much reason to keep playing them.

OK. I just had to say that. I’m not in the endgame, I don’t have the data to do good math. Hell, I haven’t scraped up quite enough BP for Ep2 yet. I’ll stop getting in the way of people smarter and more experienced than I, now. Promise.