Star Sonata is a complex game. With its myriads of possible ship, gear and augmenter combinations, it is significantly different from almost any other mmorpg out there. It is the reason why Star Sonata is so special, but also the reason for our current predicament.

I am of course talking about balance, class balance to be more precise. A class rebalance was part of the recent suggestion round and I think I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was downvoted into oblivion. What was surprising however is that there was still a lot of talk about the necessity of a rebalance on the forum.

In retrospect, that is not surprising at all. Suggesting a massive rebalance as a yes/no vote while not offering any insight on why we want to change certain classes at all was a naive approach to say the least.


I have been made responsible for any kind of class rebalance and would like to use this post to shed some light on my plans.

Within the next two week, I will be collecting and analyzing current tech 21 setups, preparing the results and eventually publishing them on the forum. Expect graphs, tables, numbers and hopefully, convincing conclusions.

The next step will focus on you guys. After showing you the results of my own analysis, I will offer a variety of ways to provide feedback and discussions, including surveys and forum threads. Hopefully we’ll find a solution that will satisfy everyone.

Please note that any thread I make including this one will be moderated rigorously. It is in everyone’s best interest that feedback does not get diluted by off-topic discussions.


I also want to encourage everyone to message me with feedback, complaints, suggestions, doubts, everything. As long as it is related to the topic of class balance in any way I will read your message and I will respond.

Idea of zerker being slow and tanky doesn't work in solo play, make it speedy and tanky warrior. It won't affect team play much, but it will give solo players opportunity to actually do something on their own.
Also being slow is really REALLY REALLY BORING!


And if you decide to, there are a few options.
1) Leave speed multiplier at 1, get rid of -shield on zerker travelling fields
.....Why? Because it fucks up shield bank and if u decide to use it in dg, you will lose shields.

2) Increase speed multiplier by about 1.2x, bet get rid of zerker travelling fields.
.....1.2x Should give enough edge to do dgs solo.
.....Although, be prepared for shit storm if you do this, because players use zerker travelling fields on trading slaves. That could affect someone's colonies. Hint!

3) Increase speed multiplier and scale resists with speed.
....I don't see a point honestly, 2 fighting zerkers would look ridiculously as they stop in front of each other and hit.

There are probably even better options, but I cant think of any atm. I personally like 2nd opion the most, since it would bring plenty of action into fights.

Please also look into low levels and certain classes...like seer. It isn't fair that you kinda need slaves to level as a low level seer because you either didn't do enough damage, or you didn't survive more than a few seconds.

Yup, since we're at it, it's a good time to do major clean up.

Introduce nonlinear skills bonus as some classes just don't have right to exist at low levels.
Also, look into this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=54403
It's good time to settle this up, quoting after enk

First off I'd like to point out that I voted yes on the suggested changes as they were. But since people seemed to hate them (for some reason without any feedback whatsoever) I'll give some feedback on the class balances for Speed Demons because this is my main class.

SDs their current main problem, in my opinion, is a shortage on energy regen.

We're pretty heavily pushed into auging for some kind of elec tempering to make sure we can either power our weapons or atleast fire them at our max RoF potential for a decent amount of time.

Jeff suggested to give us a higher amount of damage and a lower amount of RoF, which is personally liked, because lets face it more damage is always a win-win scenario. Also, according to the math we'd get a fairly decent damage boost which I believe (hope) was done to make us compete with Snipers and Berserkers a bit better.

However since people seemed to dislike Jeff's suggestion another option would be to give SDs somekind of inbuilt elec tempering. This could even scale with our speed because currently, the faster a SD goes, the more RoF he has which results in a higher elec usage per second. So for example you could give SDs the same scaling with speed for elec tempering as for with RoF and damage bonuses. Also, if the intention was to give SDs a bit more dps output then it's a possiblity to increase the variable of the damage-speed bonus.

As for the barrel roll dodge: I love the concept and I think it would be a great addition to the game since Speedy Demons are, well, speedy and therefore you're expected to dodge bullets which is probably the reason why we're quite squishy. However with the gigantic amount of beamweapons coming into the game the dodge factor is becoming less and less important. It would be insanely cool to be able to avoid some of this damage with the barrel roll mechanic. However, to keep it from becoming completely broken it needs somekind of internal cooldown and (I know this is probably insanely hard to code) it would be best if it was calculated on the foe's RoF potential so you dodge a certain percentage of his shots rather than 1 shot every few seconds, even tho your enemy is schooting 10 bullets a second at you, which would mean dodging one shot would still be quite useless.

Hope this feedback helps,

~DS

Edit: typo & barrel roll section

Part of the problem is you guys are trying to balance stuff around tech 21 end game stuff. Tech 21 is insanely over powered, and it should be its not easy to get. However, the more you balance stuff around it the more you leave 20 and below behind. Instead of nerfing things add insanely harder stuff to do?

Then we get the problem of insanely powerful players/teams in the pvp range of teams just starting to get into T20.

Nvm mind post.. Sleep deprived. I actually voted yes 21 times for class rebalance. I don't get why it was down voted so much and have yet to see a reasonable argument why someone would. Other then "don't Nerf my insanely over powered sniper!"

Unfortunately, change will always be opposed by those who are both highly invested and inflexible. Those who are not invested don't know what should change, and some of those who are flexible don't care enough to be intelligent on the subject. Listen to the < 5% of people who intelligently support rebalance; ignore the overwhelming majority who don't. (thats why popular vote on the subject isn't going to get you anywhere)


That being said, I'm an engineer; I work primarily with what is and make it the best it can be - and within that arena I can get very creative. I can't offer you much advice on how balance *should* be, but if you want to bounce ideas off me, compare numbers, talk squad dynamics, etc... pm me.

My initial feedback is more on method, and not balance...

Don't over-do things. If you plan on graphs, detailed analysis and high visibility for all the players, then you increase the risk that this will be delayed (or even canceled) due to administration. Analysis is fine, but don't over-do the presentation of it. We don't need this to hit bull's eye at the first shot - start with hitting somewhere on, or at least close to, the dart board, and then we tweak it into bull's eye together on test server (hell, or live server for the initial few weeks). If Snipers do piss-poor DPS, or Gunners rule PvP and zerks go 700 speed in combat setups... as long as it's just for a few weeks on live, then I say that's fine. Advice is to be cautious with making too rigorous plans on how to analyse and then present your findings.

Will not be butt-hurt if this post is moderated away, as I don't contribute to the balance discussion.

signed

This is a really professional approach, just that is needed

graphs and detailed analysis is kind of a waste of time, most players who know what they are on about know exactly where we are now. Everybody knows the balance of power between the classes which is OP and what not.

Don't take the mass downvoting as a sign that every aspect of the proposed rebalance was hated, because some things in it was universally loved.

I would split whatever you are doing into a class by class suggestion and vote. You will never get the whole thing palatable in its entirety. Some of those class ideas would get accepted and loved in an instant, whereas other class concepts need working on. I can see the sticking point is sniper, because for all its faults, that has become the lynch pin of any teams loadout. Its also a testament for what you have done to sniper in the first place, its a really fun class to play and does the business.

The only concerns I had with the changes Jeff proposed, was that fleet focus and berserkers were not getting the attention they deserve, and the proposed stats made for the speed demon class would be unparalleled in pvp fights.

The main problem with the Fleet Focus class right now is that they are dependent on using certain damage types to take advantage of their class skills, when a lot of end game weapons and bosses do not synergize with these damage types. Think of a way for a Gunner or Fleet commander to capitalize on damage from class skills in the same ratio, but not using a specific damage type and everything else Jeff suggested is perfectly fine.

Berserker is an entirely different situation.. in my opinion the major thing this class could use is a type of shield passive, mixed with a slightly less speed nerf, and slightly more weapon hold. The shield passive would be something like for every 1% shield missing, a berserker's shield regen will increase by 2%. This combined with a shield charger could work wonders in solo play, allowing you to actually function better at low shields, and be completely negligible in squad play. Instead of -2% speed per sub skill, just make it -1%, and increase a berserkers weapon hold so that at Arsenal Expertise 21, a berserker can use a pose wave and get 10 weapons out of it without auging for it (even if its a weird number).

I want to hear other peoples opinions on Seer and speed demon before I comment, because nothing Ive heard so far makes any sense.