It’s a historical fact that that “meta” clear times have gone down from about 10 minutes to 5. But you wouldn’t know that since you’ve only been around for barely a year.
Sorry to say but that sounds seriously off-putting in many ways, and must feel like a pain in the Turducken to balance around. The ‘benchmark’ you suggest is not an average, nor can it be universally applied. It’s not aimed to benefit everyone but to stop a few individuals who try to compete and achieve best results for their builds with a handful of top pilots. Now you want to take those numbers, recognize them to be universal facts and apply them to the community? And then what, you trim it down from there until you met the average players building and piloting skills? Sounds ridiculous, sorry.
What about fun and competition among them? It just makes no sense.
Balancing is indeed not an easy task, but if the goal is to standardize elements which allowed everyone to compete among the vast community, then you will only hurt those who are not as good, leaving the majority behind and earning their rightful scorn.
I am sick of starting over by now. If I come back to a character after a few weeks and can’t even recognize the state of my build anymore, cause everything changed as much, it’s just not the kind of concept and gameplay I want to stick with.
Sometimes it is important to take a few steps back, and to look at things from a different perspective, in order to successfully move forward.
Edit: I actually wanted to quote a specific reply but that didn’t work out, overall I think it matters little cause it already seems to be the general census, but I could be mistaken, so I hope nobody will take it personal.
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This is usually an over-exaggeration, but I’ll grant that when things like Conversions are messed with it can seriously result in some head-scratching for how to salvage/rebuild your builds at all levels (new -> veteran) of play. Hence why I’m genuinely not an advocate for it to be toyed with too much on existing items. The latest Pack of Treacherous/Deadly Means changes come to mind as having screwed a lot of people over and it’s rough to watch unfold.
There are cases, though, where I think it’s a good thing, like with Star Pact. (Even though Allagast’s got F’d in the immediate, though that has since been rectified)
Everything in moderation, and, moving forward, hopefully you won’t have to “start over” any more!
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Except as Z pointed out the meta used to be 10 minute builds. No average player is being hurt by the nerfs unless hurt means enraged that a handful of their builds loses the ability to faceroll crucible here and there.
First of all, the average player never even touches the forum. 95% of players don’t even beat ultimate apparently. So let’s stop your misstatement right there.
Everyone is skirting around a simple idea : The developer feels that their game is better designed when players cannot reach a certain level of power. The skilled players will still push the limit on what’s possible but this allows the devs to tune that properly.
Enough parties feel both ways that it’s a moot point. And furthermore the people pushing for more and more clear speed have gotten the devs to compromise again and again and again never satisfied. In reality they are the loud (and obnoxious at this point) minority pretending to be the champions of health for the game.
He’s not taking them as universal facts. It’s very simple: no matter how skilled a player is, their character should not be performing beyond “x.” X being a level of performance the developer decided is unhealthy for the game, and when performing past it, it means something can be considered overtuned.
To add nuance, Zantai does look at the consistency of the builds. He considers multiple factors involved in the builds recorded times to the best of his ability, but the simple truth is people want their sub 6 minutes and will make up any bullshit framework to back up their entirely egocentric desire for their own personal brand of fun.
To give you some room to breath on the other part of your statement, as Ceno addressed, sometimes sets are reworked in a way that “nerfs” a build and I’ve always said I empathize with players frustrated by that. But it’s often the case that while you’ll find some player who enjoys an aspect of the game the way it is, sometimes an item is changed because it is not doing what it thematically was supposed to be doing.
Your statements reflect a complete ignorance of what actually goes into the decision to nerf things and how to do so. It ignores that the hard line of 6 minutes was already factoring in survivability, ease of play etc.
As for starting over… if you just played normally instead of chasing the god tier stuff that is obviously performing beyond what is intended, this would likely not happen… or if you didn’t hold yourself to build performance at a standard that is probably also not intended to be the standard.
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Alright then, looking forward to the hotfix! 
Don’t forget to nerf Deathmarked again! I’m sure there’s still someone out there somewhere who can do 5:59:99 with the the green pants and top rolls on everything…
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Oh don’t worry, I’m looking forward to your latest batch of tears.
That seems like a rather extreme reaction to any changes we’ve made.
But how will this latest batch of hot fixes impact my Mad Queen times 
If anyone reading this is confused. I’ve made a diagram for the bellcurve of players to approximate what is really happening here.
The green circle represents the vast majority of players that the game is most intended for. Simply because they represent the majority of consumers and GD’s design has chosen to lean a bit toward being unfavorable to bad players. The red circle represents the absolute most hardcore players in GD.
(This is just a visual representation, the numbers are not meant to be taken as anything close to exact)
What is happening is that a tiny disgruntled and emotionally over-invested fraction of players in the already small red circle, are trying to make the case that if you hurt their favorite god tier builds, you will be hurting players in the green circle, when in reality players in the green circle are almost always entirely unaware of any of the stuff going on here or uninterested in the extreme min-maxing competitive scene. Consider how many players bought the game vs. how many actually visit the forum for starters. And even among those in the green circle that sort of care about becoming really good, often they decide to do it their own way and not following standards set by the community.
Also consider that only 4.5% of players who bought the game beat even the vanilla content (Loghorrean) on ultimate difficulty. That’s not a made up number, check steam global achievements.
The blue circle represents the section of players chasing after the red circle player’s build performance but aren’t as skilled, and upon nerfs to god tier stuff they are the ones dying or more realistically, just performing worse after the most grossly overtuned stuff gets tuned down.
So now that you know where you really stand depending on the descriptions above:
Red circle top tier players: The game is not going to be balanced so you can get the speeds you want. To those among you who help happily expose the overtuned stuff, thank you. To those among you who whine because your arbitrary sense of what performance you’re entitled to? Get over it.
Blue circle players: Either get better and land yourself in the red circle or get over the fact that you’re not good enough to pilot builds that barely survive by just doing egregious amounts of damage.
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Hey Zantai, that came across wrong. I know that change is inevitable and of course as your team has proven again and again that is most of the time a very good thing (new content, textures, improved mechanics and interface, controller game-play and so much more, only to name a few goodies). I would not feel discouraged about rightful balancing nerfs and the patch 1.1.4.0 update you guys provided us with was mind blowing.
I just don’t like whenever my builds break, sometimes even become unplayable. I for one don’t recycle characters. As Ceno mentioned for example, this mostly happened when Conversions where concerned, removed or shifted around. Of course we are talking of a time frame of my experience within the past three years (I played 1671 hours for example), so I can’t really narrow it down, just remembering that it happened.
I think what I wrote came a cross a little too strong. While my standards may be higher (if really the majority of players don’t even clear ultimate), but I am really not a fan to generalize too much when setting benchmarks. I know there has to be a ceiling somewhere (else content would become trivial and unchallenging), but that ceiling should not be approached from the top players skill set but the games difficulty. I know in case of the Crucible it is hard to make any adjustments at first look, but there have already been some suggestions been made (like weakening buffs, or banners). Of course this again could hurt the majority of players, which might feel the game is too hard, so maybe additional game-modes would be another option, but usually everyone wants to be able (and unfortunately expects to be aside from the own effort being put in) to clear everything.
I can understand that it might not be possible to please everyone and there might be more experienced people around and your own visions of what the game should be like should count a whole lot too, which the players tend to forget, so sorry if anything I said came across selfish. I am confident you guys will find a way to polish things in a way everyone will be happy with.
@Psykrom If what I wrote came across as too strong to you, I also would like to say I didn’t mean to single you out too much. Was just responding to the general line of thought you had and that I’ve seen others echo to a more extreme and unpleasant way.
I earnestly implore you to SHARE your builds that actually become broken after a balance change, here on the forum and explain why it was broken. Zantai is actually a pretty giving guy and I’ve seen him revert nerfs or add in something new to help a nice player keep their build alive in a slightly different way many many times.
But if your build is “broken” only because it can no longer clear an extremely high level of challenge content, that probably won’t be qualified as an actually broken build. But you can still ask since again, he’s pretty generous despite all the gruff.
Also I think it’s still lost on people that Crucible 150-170 has become magnitudes more accessible than the developers intended it to be. Originally it was supposed to kill off more builds and the last 20 waves would have a narrower list that can clear it.
“but that ceiling should not be approached from the top players skill set but the games difficulty.” This is just a bit closed minded imo. Why can’t it be approached considering multiple factors? Just assume that if the top players ceiling is 6 minutes than it’s intended that worse players have a ceiling more like 6:30 to 7:00. And yes that means some nerfs will kill off the glassiest of crucible builds but those builds don’t even do well in Shattered Realm which is closer to meaningful content to consider balance around because it’s part of the game’s actual campaign and isn’t just optional dlc. They’re builds that basically only survive and thrive off crucible’s buffs and banner.
An absolute ceiling for even the very best of players has its uses.
The phrase broken/dead tends to be a bit exaggerated around here, but if we genuinely made a playstyle impossible, that is feedback we will look at and consider the options for.
I admit that I underestimated the effect the belt Ceno mentioned would have on some player’s builds, so we rectified that in the following update. The end result is a new item was added.
No worries!
Just curious, how would you balance something like Pyran? When it first came out, one of the biggest feedbacks for this set is that it is very glassy for the sake of very good offense.
Fast forward a few weeks later and players have embraced the glassiness for faster clear times. I’m an average player myself and Pyran builds were the first time I got sub <6 min clear times despite the occassional failures from its lack of defenses. I’d welcome slower speeds for better consistency. Note that the hp regen on the set is already very good if you stack enough +%hp regen.
Also not a fan of nerfing base skills if it overperforms just because of some sets. Maelstrom comes to mind just because of Cyclone. Back in vanilla, this skill node was considered a 1 pt wonder just to help proc things on Wind Devil. Nothing has changed for the past 2 years and all of a sudden, Cyclone comes along and its apparently Maelstrom’s fault that Wind Devils are so strong.
Demon Fire is a skill that is treated the same way Maelstrom used to be. Even on BWC builds, Demon Fire is always a 1 pt wonder even now because there is no meaningful chaos to fire conversions on gear for this build. Tome of Atonement exists but the offhand slot is highly contested for casters.
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By now I have like 60 characters between 20 up to 100, I can’t even take track of them without saving all the details on a spreadsheet.
I spent many hours of gaming commuting trains to work, compromises must be made, and I don’t get paid to write those things down either, but If I have had Internet, I probably would’ve done that too. Though seeing some of the players feedback, I can’t say I would’ve found any joy in that.
The way I put that initially came across close minded, have to agree. What I meant was that the players skill set is one thing, but the top players builds are fine tuned to perfection as well (gear is all best in slot). Average players and especially legit players usually won’t be able to copy or live up to that. Of course everything can be achieved with effort and time. It can be a long road, though where is the fun in that? One must consider the random rolls on the items too. I had differences of ~3k HP at times, compared to piloting videos, cause my drops weren’t max rolls obviously.
That’s why I think 30 to 60 seconds doesn’t do it justice. I am not suggesting a time frame, just saying I find it not accurate enough considering the points I made, but it certainly can b to some degree, given more leeway.
I remember the Crucible being a whole lot more brutal, and I can’t say I disliked it, but obviously a whole lot of people did, right?
Balancing is even harder when it comes to crucible in comparison to shattered realm, cause their play style is very different. Though I think both have their own unique charm and should find equal support to continue co-existing, while both maintain being attractive and fun. They appeal to different kind of players, thus they both should matter.
That phrase truly is a problem in many gaming communities. I can see how you dislike it, considering the efforts being put into maintaining build diversity and balance here.I welcome being made aware, as it is always the first step to rid oneself of bad habits, which I respect.
I’ll just write my views here cause I didn’t read many of the walls of text.
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In the current state, I’m still in favor of making 151-170 so hard the infinitle loop farming is reserved for the best of the best builds. Consequently, nerf the loot so that no one would recommend farming it and buff 100-150 loot so everyone goes there. That way, 151-170becomes akin to current SR 80+.
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There’s also some fault in us builders that whenever we post builds, especially the top tier ones, we strongly advertise the best cleartime we had and when John or Shoot chimes in it looks even stronger. There’s no problem with that really but the problem is when discussions like this arise, stuff like “it only clears sub 6 because of top rolls and that john piloted it” are said but then that’s almost never said in the build threads themselves!
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I do hope Crate is now more aware that whenever a builder posts a build please try to add around 1 min on the posted cleartime when considering it for balance, cause we can’t stop using highrolled items. It’s natural if we want the best results. And that doesn’t just apply to Gdstashers but also to vet players who already have tons of items farmed legit.
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I did not like Crate’s decision to nerf base skills instead of the strongest sets supporting them. I understand canister and mortar because of the thermite buffs, but EoR? Man it’s cyclone. Same with buffs. I noticed they’re adding more and more mods to runes but the runes themselves barely got buffed.
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@Psykrom I’m at over 7000 hours now with 135 level 100 characters atm. And some non level 100’s not worth mentioning. I can empathize with having too many to cycle through and reply to keep track of, but still I feel the time a character was broken by a change is probably but a handful. Otherwise I could usually just swap some things around and make it work well enough. Well regardless, so long as you share the next time it happens, I hope you’ll get help to salvage your character or Z will show mercy.
As for the 3k hp difference and >60s crucible difference. That’s not addressing my point, which I guess was not addressing your point. I meant players playing the SAME build with the same items will probably receive that much time difference depending on skill level. As for players with incomplete or in-optimal builds, yes they will do much slower or worse but I think that’s supposed to be the price to pay… And we do have some beginner guides on the forum that are pretty easy to gear and perform rather well.
I think SR and Crucible already coexist it’s just that there is a somewhat disproportionate amount of attention drawn toward the absolute best builds and to crucible in general. In terms of build diversity, if you ignore the standards here on the forum the amount of different builds you can play that actually feel different is staggering. I <3 GD.
- I don’t think that’s going to happen at this point but God do I love the idea.
- That’s true but you can assume that Z knows this and is still fine with nerfing it knowing that the average roll performance is worse, because he does.
- He’s aware, as above. I think we all are XD
- I really don’t mean to come across as rude here because I’m actually a fan of your stuff x1x1x1x2, but I dislike generalized ideas on how to balance things like disliking a base skill nerf over a set nerf, period. I think you know that though and that the nuanced answer is that sometimes it’s appropriate to nerf a base skill (I mean they’ve like all seen buffs since vanilla lol so there’s probably room on some) and sometimes you nerf the item.
That being said I am strongly in favor of set nerfs (especially skill mod nerfs) over item nerfs because it makes complete sets less the focus and puts more emphasis on the player finding synergy elsewhere, and also makes it easier for non-set legendaries to compete. So overall I concur with your opinion.
I too felt EoR’s main problem was just cyclone set being supa amazing and the other builds with it were often more or less fine. But we’ll see how it do next patch.
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That’s some dedication right there! 
Yeah I see your point now and it makes more sense. It is right that crucible times got faster and faster in general and I agree that at some point one would want to draw a line.
I don’t mind the times much really, for me what mattered most was the fun and challenge I had in doing those things with my setups and not in how quickly they passed me by.
I did not mean to criticize any specific pilot or theory crafter or their builds. I just thought it was not right to set their example as benchmark but after our long discussion I can now see how conclusions are drawn from there, even if I don’t like it.
I for one was always happy to learn from the community sharing their builds and seeing good pilots always set an example for me to become a better pilot myself. Though I would always want to inject my own ideas and focus on what was realistic considering my circumstances but not everyone wants to play that way.
Somewhat related, but maybe a bit unrelated opinion. I personally think that Crucible blessings and banners could maybe use a nerf instead of items and builds if faster Crucible times are the only concern.
Playing with Blessings+Banner and going naked Cruci are 2 completely different experiences for example.
That said, I can see that approach also causing problems if the builds in question cannot even survive the crucible without said blessings or the extra damage from banner.
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I second that.
To stop a riot I think 2 things have to be done:
a) A new “thinking” for fast Crucible builds. Survival 1st, time 2nd.
b) Mad Lee has a point with “Damage to survive”. Should be compensated with defensive stats but I think Crate is working on something like that.
@Zantai and rest
for me as someone with out all sets and dont cheating best in slot gear with mods. Some nerfs hurts a lot and kill the fun in the game for people like me and the mass.
Nerfing skills cause a Set of items is to strong compared to other sets feels realy bad for people with out full set.
Rune of haggard nerf was bad for beginner build
The wind devil line nerf was bad for beginner build
some nerfs back in the day for some demolist skills was bad
etc…
Keep this in mind that other people beside the crucible min/maxer plays the game and want to have fun.
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