Balance Issues with Guild PvE Bosses

Feanyar

Spira replied at 2015-6-30 14:48
In my opinion, the increased damage was needed. However, i was expecting a flat damage increase, and ...

I don't agree that a dmg increase was actually necessary - though it's a viable choice (SH decision there). In the end it depends on where SH wants the gPvE to be located - basically by using your proposed method of balancing.
The way it was done with the incremental dmg-increase isnt very helpful though, because it acts like a soft-enrage timer. Once the boss stacked up more and more dmg, it's basically game-over. No matter what team you have, healer or not, it only buys you few seconds.

Personally, I thought the old system was quite balanced. Yes, the dmg-output of the early bosses was quite low for most of the strong people lurking around here - but dont make the mistake to assume that everyone was able to outtank even the He'el gPvE fights without healers. Several people with good cards had to take a healer because their main DD was to squishy to tank it out, even on +8!

In addition, there was a decent progression in difficulty (=boss dmg output). Let me make an example:
My Tefnut was easily able to tank out all He'el bosses, taking no damage. But then, my Teffy is pimped out pretty hard. You cannot expect everyone (even those with full NM teams) to be in such a situation where their main dps can tank that much - and tankiness on lowdps is worthless because the tank wont get hit in the first place.
Starting with Articum, the bosses actually started to do damage. LuBu managed to bring down ~30% of her hp over the full duration. I expected, that with later bosses even my Tefnut cannot survive without a healer. That seemed fair, since my Teffy has still a bit room to grow.

Considering that with my pimped-Tefnut im waaay above the average player and other toptier discples/teams are in a worse spot (eg. Befafes-centric teams, due to squishiness of the main dd), I considered the previous system reasonable. It gave an opportunity for meaningful progress. Means: If you improve your team / discples you have a noticable benefit in the sense, that one boss after another you might not need a healer anymore - but the bosses after are stronger and you'll need it there still. Step by step you could improve your way and dmg-output towards the higher stages of gPvE fights.

As mentioned, with the current system, there are next to no meaningful improvements because at some point the bosses just kill you. If he starts hitting harder than the WB with much higher attackspeed - there's nothing left to do but die. Buff your healer? Why? If the enemy 2-3shots your team, all that might do is squeete out one single more attack. Maybe two. Then its game over... nothing you actually notice ingame. You could just see a sliiight increase in the number when you check leaderboards - but you don't feel like you have improved at all with all the effort you put in.
Thats a bad thing for motivation.

TL;DR:
- I felt like the damage done by bosses was good before the changes. If SH decides to increase it a bit, it should be done as a flat amount as Spira mentioned - but I wouldnt recommend doing so or lower/midtier players wont stand a chance even with a healer. Keep the progression of dmg output via stages of gPvE fights as it was before: He'el = low dmg, Arti a bit more, subty even more, etc... It was a good way to ensure meaningful progression for improvements and thus motivation.
- Always remember: If you just want to reduce the kill frequency of bosses, you can also tweak their HP... thats much less impactful on how the matches and the benefits of survivability play out but net the same results in terms of kills / hits.

Goddwyn

1. Have a meeting and decide how many times a boss can be attacked before dying.
2. Get a fully evolved, augmented+10, top tier team, with max gear and fight a boss.
3. Tweak the damage and health of the boss to make it easy (but not too much), in a way to confirm what you guys have decided in point 1.
4. Repeat the process for every boss, because each one of them is unique.

So your saying that guild PVE should only be done by the elite-hardcore guilds and players?
I strongly disagree.....casual guilds should be able to raid also..up to a point..

I've crunched some data from my casual guild which has members from level 8 to 50+..
King Barbas
AVG damage per member attack 4,400,000
With all 28 members hitting twice every day it would take 9 days to finish

But with the current time + effort vs reward ratio...its not worth 28 people attacking 2 every day for 9 days to get one or two drops...

Feanyar

Goddwyn replied at 2015-6-30 17:01
So your saying that guild PVE should only be done by the elite-hardcore guilds and players?
I str ...

Well, he said to take a highend team as reference and then tune it to "easy" for highend teams. Thats a valid approach. Of course you could also take a midtier team as reference and then tune it to "tough but doable" accordingly. The results, if doing the maths correctly for progression curves, would be the same.

And I think we all agree that the current state of boss-dmg is ridicuous.

Goddwyn

The results, if doing the maths correctly for progression curves, would be the same.

And I think we all agree that the current state of boss-dmg is ridicuous.

I agree on both points.....But :p  In this game a "top tier +10" team would be extremely-EXTREMELY more powerful than an average mid level players team.. It's akin to comparing a match to a Mark77 (500lbs of napalm).. There would be more guessing involved than math to adequately solve the issue. Which I would guess takes more time through trial and error to figure out...

I mean no offense to anyone, but, I still find myself explaining team building basics like single element teams and skill synergy to players much higher level than I..

diudiuz

I really hope that SH reads this and few others useful empirical data or valuable opinions containing threads. Can Belzial or other mods prod them to do so?

It's true that it's mind-baffling how beta-feel the guilds are, thinking how long they developed em.

I didn't even notice "increasing damage" on bosses, maybe cos our guild is stuck at QV and honestly I don't give a rats ass for guilds until they start giving out what I'm after in this game: fun time waste.

@Nech: I didn't notice the instafinish button, but I'll surely try it out the next time lmao

Spira

So your saying that guild PVE should only be done by the elite-hardcore guilds and players?
I strongly disagree.....casual guilds should be able to raid also..up to a point..

Please don't get me wrong... When i say they should scale the boss difficulty to the +10 teams, i don't mean they can be done exclusively by the stronger players. From the state things are at the moment, not even a +10 team can hold there for that long. There is no cap damage. It raises over the scale constantly making any team, weak or strong, having less optimal damage time (that sweet spot where you can hold on and deal damage).

I am strongly in favor of evolution. It's the feeling of progress and the improving that keep us all in this game. Of course, a guild with top players should be able to beat a boss with less attempts than one that has lower level players. And those weaker players should aim to get stronger in order to get better at Guild PvE.

For the stronger players, what is the point of one-shotting a boss? Taking everything for themselves? That shouldn't be the goal of a guild, but a co-operation instead. Bosses shouldn't be that easy to beat.
That's why i was happy getting some kind of spice into the bosses, which ended being too much for us to handle.

Testing it with a +10 team would only let them know the max of the scale, the max damage we could handle, with or without an healer. Other related stuff (health, skills, behaviors...) should be talked as well as long they know our limits, making the bosses doable for everyone (weaker players can participate as well but they need to improve themselves to deal more damage and help the guild even more)

Nech

My 2nd account (centred on tef) dmg output was 300m on barbas. Raised def to 30k, could did without healer, full time.
Now I do ~40m in less than a minute, since even with healer I don't go anywhere.
If spicy think before was too much, now it is definitely not enough.
I think spyro suggestion isn't bad. Let's say hypothetically few aug 10 decks can defeat a boss, fit the difficulty on that. Or even better fit the difficulty to average guild decks.
Because with pve like that, you should warn casual players: "don't join a guild". Weeks to defeat a boss to have 30+ players bidding on same couple of items? Cannot work.
I don't even know how is going in my main guild, but I bet things aren't better.

@diudiuz Instant finish is the exact button of engage XD

amye201320

Hope this issue shall be fixed after maintenance.

diudiuz

I got it, Nech ;)

Webby

Spira replied at 2015-7-1 09:22
Please don't get me wrong... When i say they should scale the boss difficulty to the +10 teams, i d ...

esting it with a +10 team would only let them know the max of the scale, the max damage we could handle, with or without an healer. Other related stuff (health, skills, behaviors...) should be talked as well as long they know our limits, making the bosses doable for everyone (weaker players can participate as well but they need to improve themselves to deal more damage and help the guild even more)

Ahh ok this would be a good idea if only the powers that be did not assume +10 team is a level anyone is getting to anytime in the near...or even quite considerable distant future.

For me Its shocking that it has gone so far the other way in terms of killing bosses as to make it pretty much pointless to try with even end game teams let alone other power level of teams.... and it does not look like its going to change back or even become half way reasonable anytime soon either.    Not quite sure when, why or who made this decision and what the intention was....?? Hellish encouragement maybe?