Balancing "leaks" on discord and how they affect the game

    • New

    Some of people might know that there is a guy posting upcoming changes in random general talk channel on official nostale discord. I don't use discord so I'm getting information from 2nd hand but I had a chance to observe conversations regarding these leaks and I fear that the singular person who makes changes (and is posting them) might be influenced by a small fraction of the overall playerbase.


    What do I mean exactly? It's simple, from the overall playerbase only part of it is going to be on official discord, from that part majority is probably not talking there much, or at all. So from the overall game population we have very tiny fraction of the playerbase providing constant feedback loop to the one guy making all balancing changes. Don't you see the problem here?


    I observed that there's quite a lot of pvp players there, despite nostale having no pvp content at all, I'd say 99% of the playerbase doesn't care about pvp, yet I feel like changes are being made with pvp in mind as well, for example why would you nerf archer's SP2 when it's super weak and nobody uses it in the game? Well it's simple, because of pvp, which again doesn't exist in this game apart from a handful of players. Either disregard pvp when it comes to balance entirely or make pvp content. As we all know act 4 update failed miserably and this was the best shot they had at revitalizing pvp content and making pvp relevant again, so why bother with pvp balancing?


    Personally when it comes to such a big thing like SP balance I'd rather have feedback be collected from the entire playerbase, send notes to everyone advertising a feedback survey, provide small reward incentive for filling it in instead of listeing to the same people over and over.

    As for the "leaks" I think it's lame that the guy responsible for them makes such a big deal out of sending cropped screenshots of changes one by one instead of being transparent with it from the get go (and we know you love transparency so much gameforge). Personally I think he is only doing this for ego boost but that's just me haha. Not to mention all people not on discord missing out on this and having no way to point out bad changes until it's too late.

    • New

    Hi,


    I believe you're referring to Prism, one of the game designers for Nostale.


    Regarding your concern about the possibility of the game being influenced by only a few players on Discord, I want to reassure you that the SP balance changes are based on feedback from a wide variety of sources. There are multiple game designers involved, along with several testers and feedback from the entire Game team.

    Before anything is finalized, it needs to go through an approval process, so there are many people reviewing and contributing to the decisions.


    For example, if Archer’s SP2 isn’t viable in PvE, and only a small number of players use it in PvP, it makes sense to consider changes to improve balance. It’s much easier for Gameforge to make adjustments to SP abilities themselves, rather than waiting for changes to come from Entwell, the developer.


    As for the "leaks," the screenshots shared by Prism are likely already approved and a finalized version of the changes. They're likely just sharing these images for fun and interaction. There will be a full overview of the changes when they’re ready.

    • New
    Quote from 7Days

    likely already approved and a finalized version of the changes.

    I would slightly correct this part that, till changes/patches go to live servers everything even what is shown by Game Designers and QA people as teasers are still subject to change.

    But yes of course its a more ready version so to say.

    morgot13.png

    • New

    Aight, but now that I think about it there's other angle here worth considering.

    People on discord, monitoring changes can sell or buy about to be nerfed and buffed SPs before prices change. I don't know what would be the solution for this other than not sending leaks which you probably want to do.
    One thing you can do tho is delisting items from bazaar during maintanance so people who dont play each day get their items bought for cheap when prices rise due to patch, you get what I mean?