Pe3eWe3e is right. Blizzard can use cookie cutter chars easily in the test environment. What they want for the PTR is the variability that the player base brings. We think of things they would not have considered. They don’t rely on just our feedback or the PTR leaderboards. They have a whole slew of internal tracking metrics going for all we do on the PTR.
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Then all is fine and we have superb diversity, right?
Answer
No.
I did not say all was fine. I said I agreed with Pe3We3 that making cookie cutter chars on the PTR won’t help get more diversity. It creates less actually. It removes all the unique builds players prefer to play and come up with on their own. I don’t think balancing around pre-made PTR builds would benefit diversity.
Part of this is that some people want every single possible build for every class to be equally viable. Not sure I have every seen a game achieve that. There are just plain some builds that are better than others for each class. What that build is, changes as items change. It would be really boring to have a game where my skill choices don’t matter at ALL, and every build can do the same exact things. I like being able to play with skills and gear to find things that are more powerful. That feels good. Of course, that is my opinion.
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It would. That is the way to go - balance past builds on future PTRs with premade chars snapshotting the meta builds from previous Season/Era.
There are two things here:
- Switching builds from A → B → C where C is more powerful than A & B might feel good for some and bad for other enjoying the less powerful builds more
- Improving the power of a chosen build always feels good
If they properly balance the sets of all classes in say 3 tiers:
- GR100 and below
- GR100 ~ GR120
- GR120 and above
So that each class has at least one playable build in each tier and equal role in 4s people would be more than happy. To achieve this they need better PTRs.
I agree 100 % MissCheetah, I’m right there with ya.
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Challenge rifts anyone?
Yes, they can improve these (with proper snapshots, all classes and tier progression) and use them for balancing. This has been suggested in the past by us, but they somehow don’t consider investing resources in this for important.
Their priorities (from reddit) are:
Let me see if I understand.
Does Blizz want to balance builds or not? I understood that the goal would be to balance classes / builds.
For this to be possible, it would be necessary to have information about the potential and capacity of each build.
In that case I ask you, who could provide this information?
Players who are not pushing, or players who are pushing?
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Intellectually, I am struggling with this too. Cross-referencing the top 200 worldwide WD clears by paragon and generously restricting it to 6K or less paragon.
The only thing that I can figure is their definition of average may try to account for the popularity of the build in regards to what range among the leaderboards they consider.
When you scale or transform data, it often leads to errors.
You must have been nitpicking some really shady data to conclude that Wds are similar to Barbs and Wizards in power level. Did the angry Barb mob scare you off?
Your data also seems outdated since we are entering February and you looked at early December. And why would you look at estimated 5k paragon clears rather than the actual top clears? You are including players that aren’t even attempting to push. How is their result relevant? Also, player clears without augments? Like really?
It’s as if you want to handicap your balancing process by including garbage variables.
I guess it doesn’t really matter since D3 leaderboards have always been sort of a joke, but the fact that you are not choosing to balance from the top down just further cements this notion.
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Due to my bad English I have difficulties to understand some words. But from what I’m reading, it seems that what I understand from the blog is right.
I still find this methodology very prone to errors.
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Here are some examples from leaderboards for everyone:
WD rank 345 from EU poplopsipo#2711 cleared 115 @1276 Paragons in 14:52.
He spent almost all time he had it is close to 15 mins. But he is missing paragons: 120 @ 5K paragons?
Maybe he will have better items when he gets to 5K Paragons? Maybe he will augment gear? But maybe not?
DH rank 148 from US RollTide808#1913 cleared 119 @7876 Paragons in 9:42
He did it pretty fast so +2 GR based on clear speed but he is well over 5K paragons so -1GR for that: 120@ 5K paragons?
how do you even scale this?
I think that your reality check for players that are actually ~5K paragon is critical.
If you look at the top 200 WD era 12 clears, this should be incredibly biased data that inflates numbers since this is not average level of play but “represents the highest level of play” on steroids. Specifically, you are only considering the top 200 solo clears of 4,000 on the four WD leaderboards.
I get 128.0 GR clear on average for WD players at 4.5K-5.5K among the top 200 worldwide. This include several clears made after early December, presumably inflating the numbers even further relative to earlier.
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How do you even explain that scaling results showed that Crusader is on average slower with Season buff than without it???
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Unfortunately you (Blizzard) have errors in your math. MicroRNA has shown far more realistic numbers. You haven’t removed the insane amount of botters before taking the numbers. Your 5k paragon average calculation is a laugh.
The whole calculation is worth less the paper it was written on…
Sorry but this is the truth. It’s a slap in the face for every legit player.
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Probably because it takes more individual skill not riding on the back of the skills of others and gives a much better benchmark of an individual’s true skills.
EDIT: If you are saying anyone that perpetually and only plays in a group of four an entire season should get at least 3,000 paragons, I’d agree. Try playing it solo the entire season without anyone helping you. It is far more challenging and personally rewarding. See how easy it is not to get 3,000 if you do not play it all day.
Holy cow. I did not notice that. Wizard potential in season and non-season are identical, too.
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How would that be possible when he doesn’t have access to all the data they use?
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Do you think that seasonal theme would reduce the GR potential of a 5K paragon player?