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Post Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
I've been wanting to make this post for a while, mainly because (as many of you probably know), the game isn’t really going in the right direction, well it would be if it had a sense of direction. In fact, it seems to be going in the complete opposite direction that we're told it's meant to be going in.

Before I do this, I'd like to tell you a few things in an attempt to legitimise what I'm going to say. In 2012 I started doing some content development work for several different SC2 mods. Sensing that game design was something I enjoyed, I ended up completing several courses in design and development in Jan '13. In early 2013 I developed a balancing tool for the SC2 version of DotA, through a competition sponsored by Blizzard, which I won. This got me the attention of Blizzard. I ended up getting to meet Dustin Browder when HotS launched in Australia, and had the chance to do some work with both him and Blizzard. After that I started doing development work on several mobile apps and games, mainly UI and balance work. I then started working on a remake of a popular WC3 map, and through this I was again given the chance to work with Blizzard on some of their official releases from both a development and a balancing perspective.

The first problem is that the game has absolutely no sense of direction. There is a disconnect between what we're hearing and what has actually been happening. The focus has largely been on allowing new players to catch up to the endgame, and compete with endgame players. The problem is that the last few unis have actually had the endgame players getting further and further ahead. Industrial Commods have massively screwed up the endgame economy. Players with enough resources to begin with were able to pull in 100b+ a day. With the addition of commods like Dementium to PPS, endgame players have a new source of Dem, and getting 100+ in a day is not particularly difficult. The problem is that endgame players are now so far ahead due to content balance and design mistakes, that new players are just never going to be able to catch up to the current level of endgame players. It's just beyond reach. Attempting to fix it is pointless.

If we take the mentality that new players can't ever reach the current point that endgame players have managed to get to, then it ironically opens up a lot more options. The focus at the moment is extremely self-destructive and goes against basically every principle of good game design. Attempting to go back and un-fuck the game will cause too many problems, and with the changes to the Prawn, and the move to the Resistance, the game is literally going to be screwed up for several unis. It's like the butterfly effect, but on an enormous scale. The way we allow newer players to catch up is to make the current endgame gear close to obsolete. As much as I hate using the term, the best way to actually do this is to simply grandfather out of it, and then revise the earlier issues. The problem with the current developer mentality is that the endgame, as it is now, is seen as “The End”. There is no going past it, that's it. It feels like there is no intention to expand the game further. It feels like there is no planning past what we currently have. This in itself is disturbing, short-sighted and will result in many problems down the track.

Expanding the game through new content, like T23, can actually provide many and varied benefits, most importantly: fix the issues which are currently plaguing the game. In order for this to work, it would have to be immune to the problems which have thrown off game balance: mainly bindomite and stupid balance decisions (HM, Prawn). The best way to do this would be to make the gear from T23 token-driven and about 15-25% stronger at the highest tier than current unmodded T22 gear. It would also have to be neurobound, or ideally operate with a new mod system. The reason this works is that it allows players to progress past the point where they’re at now, and reach a new endgame. For the problems with Star Sonata, it works toward solving many:

  • The players who lucked out and got massive mods can now upgrade their gear.
  • Players who haven’t got the resources to sink into bindo’ing several hundred pieces of hydra gear can now reach an even footing in terms of gear power.
  • Players who don’t MC can now reliably get the gear they want, making non-MCing viable. Token-driven content means that players can collect tokens through runs and then spend them on gear for their character. It means that when there’s 8 players on a run and only 1 player can get a use out of an extremely expensive and rare piece of gear, that player won’t inevitably lose the roll to someone who’ll just sell it.
  • Encourages players to work together on runs, without all gear coming from drops, players can go on runs with each other knowing they can still get the gear they want.
  • One of the problems with Olympus is that it is next to impossible for individual players to get high-tier gear, a single player could save up and use tokens on gear. Essentially this means that as long as a player is regularly completing their lockouts, they should theoretically be able to upgrade their character at the exact same rate as everyone else. It’s just too hard to get good gear unless you MC.
  • It lowers the RNG aspect in Star Sonata, which is already ridiculous.
  • It opens up options for safely revising content down the track without pissing half the playerbase off.

It also means that the current power of overmodded gear is not beyond reach, but achievable. This subsequently means developers can go back over content and fix it, since it’s not seeing heavy use anymore. You could literally remove, or change, mods on gear and, importantly, not that many people would care. Some content would need to be rebalanced, however this wouldn't cause a shitstorm the likes of which would happen if you tried it now. Without ridiculous luck in terms of Bindomite and the bugs that contributed to broken gear, it means that newer players can then progress forward into the new content and be on a much more equal footing with the endgame players.

Before everyone inevitably shouts OMGPOWERGAP – this system is pretty much used by every MMO ever. WoW is a classic example of this, and as much as I hate using it as an example it is an example of good game design, from a business and development perspective. Expansions allow players to upgrade their characters further, which means that the endgame changes every time a new expansion comes out. This also brings back older players and encourages players to play more which, importantly, generates more revenue. Screwing over players who have dropped years into their gear and content is a perpetually fucking stupid idea, and achieves no good. You need to give players the ability to progress forward, and developers need to be moving in an overall forward direction, not focusing all their attention backward. If the dev team of ANY game cannot achieve this, then it needs an overhaul.

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Sun Jan 08, 2017 11:35 am
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
10/10 would read again, I said all the Bindo'd stuff would be grandfathered out eventually anyway.


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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
Would ur T23 bosses also drop T23 gear, that you can acquire from exchanging Tokens?
Why would T21-22 content balancing first, not be worth it?


Sun Jan 08, 2017 12:23 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
KonanCruss2 wrote:
Would ur T23 bosses also drop T23 gear, that you can acquire from exchanging Tokens?
Why would T21-22 content balancing first, not be worth it?

First one I don't know, maybe generic loot like how Twisted drops PPS content, or maybe you can have something that works with the new mod system.

As for the second one: people don't like to be nerfed. That's basically it. If everyone moves out of the gear they're currently using you can go back and fix it without it causing a shitstorm. It'll be pissing off the people who pay the bills, and that's really not ideal.

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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
A very well written post. I intend to talk about some of the topics you brought up in blog posts later this month.

Let me talk a bit about the current balance approach.
The main principle behind Star Sonata's method of achieving "balance" is that of a power curve. In essence, if you consider tech 0 to be a "power" of 1, each tech level adds an additional 0.2 power. The difference between a tech 0 and a tech 1 item is therefore a whopping 20%, while the difference between a tech 21 (power 5.2) and a tech 22 item (power 5.4) would be about 4%. This design, in theory, means that the higher we go in techs, the easier it is for a lower tech player to compete.

This tech power curve is applied to every individual type of item, not a player as a whole. You called it the Butterfly effect in a similar context, but in essence, a character's power is incredibly exponential. A ship's total strength is not the sum of its parts, but the product. Assuming that a ship's total strength (a fairly arbitary metric, but useful for theoretical comparisons) is roughly Weapon Power * Energy Power * Shield Power * Hull Power * Augmenter Power, that would roughly mean that the power progression is tech^5. Punching in the numbers for power per tech, it would mean that a t22 player is roughly 20% stronger than a t21 player, just as a t21 player is roughly 20% stronger than a t20 player.

Fairly reasonable numbers. If this were the case, then 2 tech 20 players should be able to fill in the role of 1 tech 22 player.
In practice, the theory obviously deviates from what is actually happening quite massively. I still think that this approach has merit if it was executed correctly.

Bindomite has been a case of unanticipated scaling. Instead of the tech^5 curve I have used as an example, I am honestly not sure how I would approximate the current power scaling. They cause equipment that did not previously boost combat strength to suddenly become significant, such as extra weapons, radars, scoops, .... While some of these things had (and have) inbuilt mods as well, these inbuilt mods add with Augmenters, meaning the more powerful your Augs, the less significant these inbuilts are in comparison. Bindomite mods however a) multiply and b) provide rare bonuses, such as hostility and critical hit chance. The Super Intelligent mod by itself has caused an increase in the value of Critical Hit Strength, making it undervalued by the balance sheets.

The Hepheastus Machine is indeed a prime example of bad design, but I believe the biggest problem was not being able to identify and rectify the issue quick enough. It was partly not wanting to anger those who had already obtained it that led to it simply staying as it was. I cannot comment on the Prawn.

There is another issue that has continued to snowball the problems caused by individual design choices, another butterfly effect: The fear of disappointment.
Star Sonata's development is driven by passion. More specificly, by passionate volunteers. It is players who want to go the extra mile of not only enjoying the game, but making it more enjoyable for others.

Bear with me for a bit since I can't resist the chance for anecdotes:
I believe I was among the first of what eventually became a wave of people getting involved. I was quite sneaky: When C2 was on the horizon, there was a volunteer project to convert some of the C1 content into the slightly different format that C2 used. Some sort of reward was involved I'm sure, but I didn't care: it meant I got to look below the hood of my favorite hobby.
I ended up not really doing any of the actual conversion to the new format, but rather used and abused the tools I was given to make my own project, which would eventually become Red Photon. A very small addition in the grand scheme of things, but my main thought when making it was simple: I hope other people will find this as cool as I think it is.

Cutting this a bit short to avoid writing a book: Most of the "action" in the game currently happens at the top-end. Back then it was t21. No content developer wants their addition to the game be redundant, or known as the place that "sort of exists of nobody ever goes there". Being cool isn't enough: it has to be useful. And the easiest way to do that is to give it drops that matter. The easiest way to make drops matter is to make them better than something else.
In addition, the balance sheets are very good at keeping things mathematical. A tech 22 item should roughly be 5% stronger than tech 21. A 5% increase in a laser for example is easy enough to see: It's probably 5% DPS or so. The issue is more complicated with ships, or items that are unusual.
According to the balance sheet for hulls, a ship that is tech 21 with 110 hull would be as "balanced" as a ship at tech 20 with 100 hull. All the additional power the ship may have thanks to its higher tech is going into hull.

But 10% hull feels really lackluster... let's also give it a bit higher resistances. Maybe 10% speed. A really cool super item. Repeat this trend a couple of times, each time taking a ship that is already ever so slightly too good as a base, and making it ever so slightly better because surely it won't hurt and it would be really cool if people actually used this thing that comes from what I made. Each time this has been done was, without a doubt, a design mistake that helped spiral the game into the state it is currently in. But each mistake was motivated by the simple desire to make the game better.

Coming back to your actual post, you suggest adapting a system similar to World of Warcraft, where each new tier of gear makes the older gear redundant. I think it would be great to have a system like that since it means you can phase out mis-designed gear quite easily and have no cascading damage as we have currently.
On the other hand, it would make lower tech players playing together with higher tech players impossible. The divide would have to be large enough that even niche and/or truly overpowered gear was no longer useful, even with a single tech difference. In WoW, the DPS difference per tier is big, the difference between expansions enormous. For the average player, most of the game only happens at the current tier, be it pvp or raiding. Each time a new tier is released, mechanics are set in place to pretty much skip right to it, making most previously designed content redundant (as is the intention of the system).

While this design has its benefits, I think that it might make the lack of manpower that the SS development team has quite obvious. WoW has its playerbase play together by making it very easy to reach the top and then slowing down significantly. SS cannot simply put everyone at tech 22 and still have enough content left over. It cannot release a new tech which also includes months of additional gameplay, not enough to be equivalent to what a new player would normally experience with the current system of progression, as flawed as it may be.

Making t23 the "only" tier could be a compromise. In essence, the curve would stay from 0 to 22, but 23 would be big enough of a jump that all lower tech gear is redundant and phased out voluntarily. The only people who would then be affected by changes to 0-22 would be those in the transition phase, unlikely to have invested months of worth into their current gear, who can look forward to the constant and adequate balance of t23.
But eventually there will come a point where a decision has to be made where the progression system is headed: A tier based system, despite concerns about manpower and lack of content per tier, or going back to a curve, now smoothed out for 0-22. The concerns about the former I've already mentioned, while the latter would inevitably mean that t23 has to be brought in line and since it was created with a massive intended power difference, the resulting nerf would have to be equally massive.

If the former is unfeasible and the latter is inevitable, why not simply consider t22 our current temporary "tier"? It would be easy enough to leave t22 untouched, fix up 0-21, then adjust t22 once everything else has been fixed up.

Please note that none of what I'm saying is meant to indicate what is or is not planned or being considered.

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Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:35 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
Thanks for a reply.

I agree with the majority of what you say. One of the reasons I made this post was because someone told me that there simply wasn't an alternative, and I wanted to actually provide one.

As it currently stands, it's too difficult for lower-tech people to compete with higher tech people. I'd even put it as impossible. Even between T21-T22 point, there's simply no way to compete with the power difference, and this isn't fixable unless you overhaul all the T21-T22 content. It's something we see in WoW with the massive powergaps between expansions. I do like how WoW has this sense of phasing out and progression, but at the same time I think it's extremely overdone. Currently in endgame T22 we use T22 gear the majority of the time, but there is still some room for T21 gear.

The reason T22 can't be used as a "temporary" tier is, unfortunately, the fact that it is currently used by the majority of endgame players and it can be neurobound for mods. Some players have some ridiculously modded gear (me included, just ask DS about that krmikosa) and the problem is that newer players just won't be able to catch up, ever. On the other hand we don't want to anger and offend people by destroying their setups they've pumped years in to. If we want to introduce a new mods system where we can customise weapons/items to how we like, this is something we could do:

  • Introduce T23 to be about 15-25% stronger than current unmodded T22 gear.
  • Once pre-T23 has been mostly phased out, go back and remove mods from pre-T23 gear.
  • Nerf the stats of all T23 gear by 10%.
  • Give all T23 gear modules/modifications under the new system to make up that 10% nerf.
  • Players can then use the new modifications system to customise their setups how they like.

This means that T23 gear only works out to be 5-15% stronger than T22 gear.

EDIT: Fixed the perils of attempting to write essays on 3 hours sleep

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Last edited by Masterful on Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:23 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
I like where this is going

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Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:15 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
I like the spirit of this thread so I'm just throwing in some extra thoughts here. I don't have time to write out a mini essay :P


A lot of the passive, stacking mods are not dependent on tech level. Spare weapons, scoops, radars, capacitors- they're kind of a wider spread balance issue than mods on conventional gear and removing pre-23 mods would be a huge nerf to that, which conflicts with your "nobody wants to be nerfed" approach.

If you want to get rid of the old mod system, why not prevent mods/introduce a new system on t23+ gear and leave the old stuff to lose relevance? Maybe add slightly easier alternatives to modded weapons (etc.) like a straight up weapon slots -> stats item; could give extra super items lots, capacitor slots or just stat bonuses like the old system.

Although it's kind of stupid I actually like radio/evil/SI weapons because they add more variety in viable setups and are relatively easy for new players to get. A uni or two and a determined newbie could have a decent set of their own.

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Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:47 am
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
The Salty One wrote:
If you want to get rid of the old mod system, why not prevent mods/introduce a new system on t23+ gear and leave the old stuff to lose relevance? Maybe add slightly easier alternatives to modded weapons (etc.) like a straight up weapon slots -> stats item; could give extra super items lots, capacitor slots or just stat bonuses like the old system.

That's basically what this suggests.

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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
My semester just started and I haven't had time to read this thread closely, but I just want to make a preliminary remark. If we do rebalance the item modification system, we will do so in a way that does not hurt people who benefited from the old system.

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Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:05 am
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
anilv wrote:
My semester just started and I haven't had time to read this thread closely, but I just want to make a preliminary remark. If we do rebalance the item modification system, we will do so in a way that does not hurt people who benefited from the old system.

Thanks for clearing that up, it was one of my main concerns.

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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
Now this is a thread i can fully agree with, so if i'm not mistaken the concept in question (thus far through this discussion at least, this is what i'm taken to assume, though anything here is subject to change anyways obviously) is to possibly release T23 under a new system, whilst keeping the old system on T22 and below, then slowly phase T0-T22 into the new system as they become less relevant to those that the change would mostly effect, in essence, avoiding any outlash from said people while also changing the game for the better (hopefully), correct?

Possibly a lot less relevant to the subject, but uniquity is a value this game could really benefit from an increase of while you're at it- and by that i mean take weapons for example, the weapons you tend to see most are usually simple yet effective ones, lasers for example, and pulse weapons, these weapons work best not because they're simple, but reliable and tend to have good numbers.
The issue isn't that the simple weaponry is overpowered although that could very well be the case, not the point i'm getting at. It's more that the unique weaponry tends to be few and far apart, and/or never have another higher tech variant- to be honest, it feels like alot of the more "unique" weapons are seen later in the game, which makes the early game pretty stale, where you only really have pulses, magcannons, torpedo's and generic lasers of several damage types- slowly expanding to allow for some relatively neat, yet sometimes pretty useless niche weapon variants.

Some weapons just feel lackluster in general, i don't know if people actually use Torpedo's ever but last time i used one they felt extremely..lacking...in pretty much anything, which didn't make up for it's super low tracking and fire rate.

I personally use Reavers Breath and love the effect (albeit niche), but it and i think Faranji Flower(?) are the only weapons of the variety, which sadly will eventually force me to phase it out in favor of more generic, stronger (and probably more reliable) weapons just to get jumps in power.

This may not be on the subject of mods particularly, but mods could potentially tie in to this, unique mods potentially adding some flare to otherwise boring, generic weapons, now i aint gonna bullshit and say i have the damnest clue about what is balanced or not, so i can't speak for how well this'd work balance wise, but the possibilities are here to make things more interesting than they are currently. Just as an example, one could apply a "Type" and or "variant" to every weapon, and add exclusive mods (or maybe something other than a mod) to those with the tag, IE: 50% additional Projectiles, or Fires several times at fractional power for the same energy, projectile splits up to X times every Y seconds/distance, etc.

I'm sure you already do this to an extent with some weapons, like chain transferences, lasers and projectiles with an AoE, so and so, maybe the code isn't there for some ideas, maybe it's difficult, but i just wanna get it out there that this game has more than just new bosses/ai and altered numbers for stats, things don't have to just go up or down, they can be on a completely different level of change. This doesn't just have to include weapons, either, shields for example, you could take borderlands as an inspiration, and add effects to them when they regen, are full, are low, etc its a freakin RPG for gods sake, add some flare! :P

All seriousness though, the game is fun, it is, i just feel theres a little more room to make a "build" more of an actual, interactive activity, where no two ships are the same, where you can take one completed ship, compare it to an identical ship, and both would have COMPLETELY different setups, rather than just a few differing components, mostly comprising of augs and weapons, at the end of the day, not everyone likes copying "The best possible X class build" piece for piece, and i wanted to chime in that, i'm the kind of person that rebels against the generic and tries to make something weird and interesting work, even if i end up several times weaker than i could be if i just rushed the go to powerful generic gear, it's more fun to me when something people look at with puzzled faces and confusion actually works.


....This ended up a hell of a lot longer than i'd intended but that's just my two cents going forward.

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Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:56 am
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
We've recently re-acquired a balance sheet guru. He will bring balance to the sheets, given time. He already came to the conclusion that pulse guns and torpedos are among the weakest weapon types and thoraxs are among the strongest.

That's a discussion for another topic, though. Let's keep this one to the possibility of a new gear modification system.

I'd also like to add that we, as far as I know of, don't even have a concept for T23 yet. So it may be a long while before we get a chance to implement a system that will be agreed upon in this thread.

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Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:53 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
Aye, i blew it a little out of proportion but a general mostly on-topic bit i mentioned, is i was trying to hint that mods don't necessarily have to be +X% damage, range, RoF, etc, they can be unique too and have special effects tied to them based on the item they may appear on, which would add previously unseen flare, and some uniqueness to new and old gears alike. Raw stats aren't the only thing that a "Mod" can imply, though i suppose this could be suited for a system more all on its own than as a side project to the Mods system.
Either way, my point was made.

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Tue Jan 10, 2017 1:14 pm
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Post Re: Moving forward with the endgame - mods & content
The main criticism of the current system for gear modifications (modding gear) boils down to how the mods stack on top of the formula, providing huge gains when finding modded drops and then Bindomiting the items; How tech level scales most mods through the roof and how many passive global mods contribute to the entire setup rather than the specific item (for example Evil modded Radar doesn't actually affect Radar stats); and comparatory weaker items can be mass produced and modded which results in a more powerful setup overall.

Even with non-multicative mods stacking upon mods (all mod stats are one single multiplication rather than 20 mods being 20 separate multiplications), you can have situations that are completely unbalanced. I can have a zerk with very low damage output (even low for a tank) but yet hold aggro over something that has dps into the millions. Hostility, Shield Bank, Radar, Electricity, and Tractor Strength (Range) can get very, very stupid with mods. Damage can be stupid if your setup is the sole tank in the group/solo.

Obviously higher tech mods should be stronger than lower tech mods, but they're stronger and the gear is stronger, meaning mods provide a massive power jump. It's still a considerable jump if you use lower tech mods (the old Dung Pellet 2 meta comes to mind) for setups with tons of weapon slots.

An item with say 200 power vs an item with 180 power. The 200 power item is stronger, but a single mod (barring stupid things like Composite) renders the 180 power item effectively 210 power, all the while costing half to build and can be built on a far larger scale. This is one mod. You would normally have 5 mods after Bindomiting a modded drop, which would make this 180 power item have 300 power. Oh, and the item is also lower tech so these are lower tech mods.

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