Buffs v nerfs discussion - again

[Rakso]

Hello, I’d like to add a few of my thoughts from an outside of the forum player perspective:

Imagine balance the game around Crucible, when there is also SR, Super Bosses, and also Hardcore mode Crucible, SR and Super Bosses.

99% of the community that plays the game doesn’t care about Crucible speedruns. Maybe only like few % of the playerbase do I guess.

Imagine nerfing builds with hard to obtain 5-6 double rare items in it(example). You shouldn’t be able to ever do that in the first place, because farming for such a build would take a lifetime from you, and it’s pretty obvious it should be as powerful as the assumed (according to game itself only) “time investment” into it, unless fun and meme. Only reason why people can do those is because they stash it. Most players that play the game don’t stash.

Imagine thinking a build is “godlike” because it CAN do sub 4:30 Crucible. It’s not. How long did it took to reach the score though?
Personally from my experience, and also from a beginner player point of view I’d rather appreciate a build that can do naked extra spawns Crucible with a 100% win ratio in an acceptable amount of minutes on hardcore mode, than a build that just “can” reach below 4:30(does not mean it does that every time) - and a video that documents so as well. I find this way more impressing.
The currently taken approach for that feels meaningless and empty from a non-speedrunner perspective. What a build can do, doesn’t equals what it does everytime.

I think the devs approach for this game is that everything should be able to do anything(in terms of content - not time invested), where the content is rewarding, and if it can’t, then the potions, blessings, towers, shrines and such are here to support it. Waystone of the Dead is not part of the rewarding content, neither is Crate of Entertainment boss as example. These exist only to test the players abilities and creativity.

Any build beats Crucible if uses potions. Obviously I can use potions, because they exist in the game, and that’s what they are meant for after all, and farming mats to craft them is also part of the game.

Builds that do more than intended are being nerfed, because they would drive the game boring and not challenging enough at some point, making players drop it though making them feel burned out when playing anything else that would be a lot weaker compared to the mentioned, and nerfing a build is a lot easier than upgrading the entirety of the content in the game to adjust to it, and might also collide with the developer idea of the game design.
Besides that, all the rest of the builds would then need to be buffed to keep up with that one, and this approach is pretty unreasonable? Mainly, because it takes way too much effort and time invested for nothing? Before the rest of the builds would be adjusted, the players would already drop the game in that time anyways, because of the one build being much more superior than the rest.

Builds that you guys are playing and posting about on the forums might only feel superior for you in that regard, but in reality they are not, because once again, “can” and “continiously does” are two different things, and besides, they are severely cut away from the game reality, and even further cut away from hardcore mode reality. And as a short reminder: the game is one, but game modes are two. Keep that in mind.

Thank you for the time invested in reading my poem, to whoever did so. Cheers,

[Archmagister]

You want harder yet?

not necc. harder but same experience of Monster behaviour in all game modes, that’s about it. But as I said… preparing to SR now! Yipppiiiiieh!

[tqFan]

Just curious, have you ever beaten Crucible Gladiator 170?

[Nery]

As far as I know it has been the case since the beginning, far before the whole speed run business.

Well, if that is the case I obviously assumed wrong. Still BAAAD decision imho. Monsters should be equaly strong in all game modes whine

The thing is wave 170 finishes with 4 Nemesis and potentially Korvaak (if he’s left alive). If enemies weren’t weakened some combinations were going to be borderline impossible to deal with. Or create really huge disparity between builds if only few are able to achieve certain standard and others no.

In Crucible mobs have notably less health and also you can use buffs and banners to boost your character. Individual opponents can be dangerous but biggest threat is when enemies gang on you. Especially dangerous cause they can stack multiple debuffs, RR, DoT damage etc. So your goal is to dispatch quickly enemies before they can stack their harmful effects on you. Crucible is usually balance between damage and survivability, single target vs AoE, build quality and piloting.

[Archmagister]

Just curious, have you ever beaten Crucible Gladiator 170?

in Short: no, my best toon, a Conjurer, ran into a hard wall at 163. So, I tried different builds.

[Archmagister]

Crucible is usually balance between damage and survivability, single target vs AoE, build quality and piloting.

All fine with me, does NOT justify making Enemies weaker.

[Retal_Abuser]

Crate of Entertainment boss is not part of the rewarding content

It is. Killing this boss for the first time is surely satisfying. Also the amulet is pretty good for Lowcar speedleveling. You can bind devotions on it and it provides cc for trash mobs.

Imagine balance the game around Crucible, when there is also SR, Super Bosses, and also Hardcore mode Crucible, SR and Super Bosses.

99% of the community that plays the game doesn’t care about Crucible speedruns. Maybe only like few % of the playerbase do I guess.

Imagine nerfing builds with hard to obtain 5-6 double rare items in it(example). You shouldn’t be able to ever do that in the first place, because farming for such a build would take a lifetime from you, and it’s pretty obvious it should be as powerful as the assumed (according to game itself only) “time investment” into it, unless fun and meme. Only reason why people can do those is because they stash it. Most players that play the game don’t stash.

And this is why if GD 2 ever comes out, it should better have a ladder or a competitive mode.
GD has endgame modes, but it simply doesn’t have a form of “legit” competition and thus, most of endgame building/ discussions are anecdotal. It’s forum players ( and others) posting grimtools and videos to prove a build’s performance.

Quite a few regural forum builders ( though there aren’t that many actively posting builds anymore, at least on the forums ) think that playing builds in Crucible is the most balanced way to test their performance. When Forgotten Gods came out, people were divided when it came down to what’s the best way to test builds, since Shattered Realm was something new, but they quickly figured that SR has way more RNG than Crucible has.

[powbam]

Imagine nerfing builds with hard to obtain 5-6 double rare items in it(example). You shouldn’t be able to ever do that in the first place, because farming for such a build would take a lifetime from you, and it’s pretty obvious it should be as powerful as the assumed (according to game itself only) “time investment” into it, unless fun and meme. Only reason why people can do those is because they stash it. Most players that play the game don’t stash.

There is a difference between being powerful and brokenly powerful and between intended and not intended. If something is clearly brokenly OP then you can expect Crate to fix it and bring it in line to a more reasonable state. I don’t subscribe to the theory that just because time investment this unintended broken thing should continue to be broken. That makes as much sense as the people that say “it’s a single player game so it should only ever be all buffs all the time, never Nerf!”

I think the devs approach for this game is that everything should be able to do anything(in terms of content - not time invested), where the content is rewarding, and if it can’t, then the potions, blessings, towers, shrines and such are here to support it. Waystone of the Dead is not part of the rewarding content, neither is Crate of Entertainment boss as example. These exist only to test the players abilities and creativity.

Correct. All the “regular” content through to Ultimate should be “doable” by most any sensibly made build you can concoct in your cranium. Crate doesn’t make it a habit to nerf anything so badly that it isn’t still viable.

[tqFan]

Thank you for the time invested in reading my poem, to whoever did so. Cheers,

This is how these players prefer to enjoy the game. Devs said they don’t balance (only) around it IIRC.
Maybe 99% of the community don’t care about your playstyle either. And besides Crucible speed-runers also make naked runs, play SR, make consecutive Crucible runs, use single rares, sometimes don’t use rares at all, make good all-around builds so please let’s not make false generalizations.

[Stupid_Dragon]

Imagine balance the game around Crucible, when there is also SR, Super Bosses, and also Hardcore mode Crucible, SR and Super Bosses.

99% of the community that plays the game doesn’t care about Crucible speedruns. Maybe only like few % of the playerbase do I guess.

Well the devs claimed they don’t balance around crucible specifically bit they obviously take it into account.

It’s just a game mode that provides the most ample feedback. It’s basically the most practical way to test a build’s potential. SR is much more random for such tests.

Imagine nerfing builds with hard to obtain 5-6 double rare items in it(example). You shouldn’t be able to ever do that in the first place, because farming for such a build would take a lifetime from you, and it’s pretty obvious it should be as powerful as the assumed (according to game itself only) “time investment” into it, unless fun and meme. Only reason why people can do those is because they stash it. Most players that play the game don’t stash.

Afaik devs said they take the number of MIs and affixes on them into account when deciding if something is broken or not.

Imagine thinking a build is “godlike” because it CAN do sub 4:30 Crucible. It’s not. How long did it took to reach the score though?
Personally from my experience, and also from a beginner player point of view I’d rather appreciate a build that can do naked extra spawns Crucible with a 100% win ratio in an acceptable amount of minutes on hardcore mode, than a build that just “can” reach below 4:30(does not mean it does that every time) - and a video that documents so as well. I find this way more impressing.
The currently taken approach for that feels meaningless and empty from a non-speedrunner perspective. What a build can do, doesn’t equals what it does everytime.

That’s yet again a problem with the amount of feedback. Naked CR is nowhere near popular as buffed CR. And if we take it to hardcore then the amount of HC players that play endgame is even less.

Overall you have a good point, in a perfect world it would had at least been better to use average time on a build with average rolls with worst possible mutators in the hands of an average player with success rate above x%, but frankly it’s just neither realistic nor particularly fun for the person involved.

[Rakso]

It is. Killing this boss for the first time is surely satisfying. Also the amulet is pretty good for Lowcar speedleveling. You can bind devotions on it and it provides cc for trash mobs.

Yeah, agree. Me bad here. Totally forgot. Myself been farming it, using, and also trading with other players for 100 purple mats. Maybe that’s the trade system that made me feel like Crate might not be worth it. The time investment between dropping it and farming to buy it from someone is not necessarily balanced though.

I’d rather meant to say, that not every build in the game is capable of doing that boss, and you can definately feel from that entity, that it wasn’t meant to be doable for the masses of builds, unlike the rest of the content available in the game.

This is how these players prefer to enjoy the game. Devs said they don’t balance (only) around it IIRC.
Maybe 99% of the community don’t care about your playstyle either. And besides Crucible speed-runers also make naked runs, play SR, make consecutive Crucible runs, use single rares, sometimes don’t use rares at all, make good all-around builds so please let’s not make false generalizations.

I know, but for example through I like play on x2.0 game speed, even on HC, I don’t think the game as a whole should take this personal taste of mine into consideration, and myself I try to take into consideration mainly the game as a whole and masses, same way as devs definately should not take into consideration sub 4,5 runners, as the game is already balanced in that regard - they can’t do it everytime, and if they do, especially naked, then definately something is not right, and that makes sense to be nerfed.

[Rakso]

Well the devs claimed they don’t balance around crucible specifically bit they obviously take it into account.

Depends if you mean taking Crucible into account, or taking the Crucible 1% speedrunning meta into account. That’s two completely different topics.

That’s yet again a problem with the amount of feedback. Naked CR is nowhere near popular as buffed CR. And if we take it to hardcore then the amount of HC players that play endgame is even less.

Overall you have a good point, in a perfect world it would had at least been better to use average time on a build with average rolls with worst possible mutators in the hands of an average player with success rate above x%, but frankly it’s just neither realistic nor particularly fun for the person involved.

That sure would be too beautiful to be true, I agree, but I guess nobody would complain about the cheapest of potions available being used, or up to let’s say as many mandate points spent as the waves between 150 and 170 would grant you in return, so that you could end up on the 0. It’s up to the players. I think if the Cruci running meta would be driven into a better direction, it would’ve taken more interest from the crowd, but as how it looks for now, sorry for me to say so in such a joking, but also truthful way, I (that’s ofc my personal opinion) think it just looks like a comparison over who has the bigger pee pee in the little group of the 1%'s, but perhaps I might be wrong, as I agree to say I’m not very much involved into this, so that’s only what the cover of the book looks like to me, and perhaps for many many more people passing through.

[Stupid_Dragon]

That sure would be too beautiful to be true, I agree, but I guess nobody would complain about the cheapest of potions available being used, or up to let’s say as many mandate points spent as the waves between 150 and 170 would grant you in return, so that you could end up on the 0.

That’s exactly how it began. 3 buffs 1 T3 banner rule was here because if you clear cruci 3 times in less than 8 minutes you’ll reset your tributes. Later it was switched to 4 buff 3 T1 banner setup because it results in better performance at the price of doing one run from to 1 to 10 in a few runs to adjust tributes. As for options its just a gentlemen agreement of sorts, it’s perfectly fine to use it of you farm for yourself and don’t try to impress anyone.

I think if the Cruci running meta would be driven into a better direction, it would’ve taken more interest from the crowd, but as how it looks for now, sorry for me to say so in such a joking, but also truthful way, I (that’s ofc my personal opinion) think it just looks like a comparison over who has the bigger pee pee in the little group of the 1%'s, but perhaps I might be wrong, as I agree to say I’m not very much involved into this, so that’s only what the cover of the book looks like to me, and perhaps for many many more people passing through.

You’ re yet again not wrong, but if that 1% provides 80% of feedback then devs got no choice but to use it in balancing.

[tqFan]

Builds that you guys are playing and posting about on the forums might only feel superior for you in that regard, but in reality they are not,

Let’s be 100% real for a moment. It’s not about Crucible pilots feeling superior or measuring their dicks. It’s about you feeling inferior and you / your playstyle not being appreciated enough or something along those lines Or compensating for not enjoying the mode / not being able to replicate those players results.

[Rakso]

Althrough I agree I stated that and I don’t regret so, I also said I might be wrong about that (thus not making it a confirmed statement), but unfortunately you did not clarify me nothing about that not being the way I see it as it is, and a display of me being wrong in your current reply, but instead went personal on me, making a claim of which you sound to be sure of, althrough it is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. The fact whether I can do a sub 4 Crucible or not, or the way I play the game myself has nothing to do with my opinion in this topic case which is concerned about the game as a whole and it’s entire playerbase being in the middle of the attention, not the singular unit which do I present to be such.

By the way, to feel superior without regrets in a sort of a way is also thinking that others around you feel inferior, meanwhile that does not necessarily has to be true, but just a runaway, so that your superiority can be mentally justified. It has nothing to do with reality, like I already said.

[Archmagister]

Or compensating

WAT!? Are you serious!?

I am not sure to have made this utterly clear: I am able to pilot weak builds up to Shards or CR-Levels most of the generic/meta/superpowerful boring builds - guys couldn’t even imagine. All I want to say is that NERFING builds because of superior Piloting skills is a DANGEROUS Idea. That’s all.

[ibugsy]

LOL @ this thread.

No one ever realizes they are in an infinite loop.

[Archmagister]

No. We aren’t.

This is an extremely interesting and future-pathing/pacing discussion about how to handle a game like Grim Dawn and its Balances.

Get that!

[Ceno]

I am not sure to have made this utterly clear: I am able to pilot weak builds up to Shards or CR-Levels most of the generic/meta/superpowerful boring builds - guys couldn’t even imagine.

Just curious, have you ever beaten Crucible Gladiator 170?

in Short: no, my best toon, a Conjurer, ran into a hard wall at 163. So, I tried different builds.

Wait hold up, you got me confused here.

---

And THAT is a buff I don’t even understand. These are Arena-Modes. Why nerf the Monsters there?

Most monster-side nerfs have some good logic to them. Grava/Arcanes don’t feature Nullification spells in the Crucible because such spells tend to get lost in the visual clusterfuck that is the Crucible, which defeats the purpose of their otherwise high-visibility design. Kuba doesn’t split (anymore) because splitting would make him persist from one wave to the next and unbalance the intended enemy density of the Crucible.

---

It feels like the Rakso/Stupid Dragon/TQFan conversation above is an extension of a sentiment I shared on the Discord yesterday:

The latter point being reflected in Stupid Dragon’s comment here:

You’ re yet again not wrong, but if that 1% provides 80% of feedback then devs got no choice but to use it in balancing.

Which I inherently disagree with. All feedback is contextual. Crucible feedback is largely given in such a manner that opposes the original intent of Crucible being a mode that brings characters to ruination; instead, such feedback usually directs the balance of Crucible in the complete opposite direction. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if this weren’t the case.

[Archmagister]

Wait hold up, you got me confused here.

yes, as you do not know the build I did it with… why do I have to explain that to you

Most …blaaaa… Crucible.

And!?

balance

I DON’T NEED BALANCE cry

I need Monsters to be SAME everyware and see, if any ‘build’ can handle them! And if not, when ALL options are used up, then… deal with the ‘hard wall’!

Skills? Check! Gear!? Check! Build? Check! Piloting!? Checkcheckchek! That’s how you do it.