Did this game became a fight between the Devs and Rob?
Because since pre season 1, they are in this dance:
Devs release something
Rob breaks it
Devs fix
Devs release something
Rob breaks it
And its being like this until this season, now with the pet damage.
I’m not criticising Rob. He is doing his thing, that is also important because shows us what is wrong with the game.
But the other side of Rob’s job also causes damage, because people will follow him to have an OP character.
And on the side of Blizzard, they should be asking: Will we keep tuning our game based on a streamer all the time?
This is actually a great discussion topic about game development trends in general. It touches on the role of “influencers” in gaming on both the public audience, and on the direction Devs take games.
It has resulted in a lot of people not liking streamers for “ruining” the fun. When they show a build that is very OP - they are RIGHT - but it gets the attention of the Devs due to their public profile. The Devs then consider if that is really how they want the game to be played, or if it is bugged/overpowered/underpowered.
Reality is most players don’t follow streamer builds, so are they doing the broader player base any favors by “catering” to the min-max folks?
It also leads to memes that you should never talk about “fun” or it will get nerfed.
I am actually ok with streamers bringing bugs to the attention of the Devs. That is usually good for the game overall. It is when the Devs eventually end up building a game that seems to cater to the whims of those streamers that it goes too far. Also, streamer fandoms are just a bit odd to me. The impact on those is also just…eh…
I’m just not sure if I agree with this point.
In my point of view, that guy who will get to level 100 and try to complete all the tasks for the season will do it in one of two ways: He will make his own build and it is good, it works and will get him far. Or he will follow some guide to make his character. And the guide he will follow, will come from the likes of Robies and wudijos. This if he isn’t directly following the streamer (meaning, wasn’t a friend (or a search) that recommended the build.
In game you see a lot of players with op builds because of this (hell, even I asked for the help of one of those guys with Uber Malphas).
In my view, it is generally ALWAYS the developers fault (and no, not necessarily the individual devs, more likely their management).
Blizzard should be a lot more proactive with their balancing. Nerf faster. That would solve a lot of the current issues, where imbalances are just allowed to fester.
And if devs listen too much to streamers, like making a game that you can only progress in if you play 23 hours a day and have a 1000 people feeding you (either literally or at least in-game), then that too is on the devs. Since they should know better.
In the end, the streamers are just loudmouths yelling on the sidelines. Like them or not, they are not the ones making the decisions.
As for following builds, let people follow builds or come up with their own, whatever they like.
Neither of those choices represents an issue. The issue is if if there are significant imbalances between these choices. Nothing more.
just give us a PTR! Rob and the other guys gonna be happy to find the stuff for them to fix before they punish us with their spagetthie patches on the liveservers
PTR. I will keep saying it until I can’t say it anymore. PTR. PTR. PTR.
Even if they don’t have the top streamers in there, or hundreds of pages of feedback posts, they collect a ton of data on the servers from the players. What builds are used, how the skills perform, against which bosses, etc etc. They can find out a ton of info on how their mechanics and affixes perform before the server release.
This is going to be even more important when they start doing ladders. Esp if the ladder is ever start of the season.
While I am not a fan of PTR in terms of testing new content (much more fun for everyone if it is kept a secret until release), I would be fine with PTR specifically for testing balance changes.
Some testing environment where classes/builds/gear can be tried out.
New content can give balance issues too obviously, like the robot, the blood powers and all those other season shenanigans.
Still I’d prefer for those not to be tested beforehand (by players that is, Blizzard should rehire some QA exactly for this :P), and then nerf/buff as needed on the live game.
Of course, Blizzard should also just think a bit more themselves. It REALLY should not require external testing to figure out that Barber in season 1 was broken.
Apparently a well known streamer. I actually have never watched any of his streams and don’t personally know who he is. I have heard of him here. I probably should find out, just so that I have some idea what posters are talking about.
I am not into the whole streamer fandom thing so tend to shy away from anything other than small streamers, usually ones I have met IRL, or know through friends. Leviathan, Rhykker, etc. I know a lot of the older folks so drop in now and then.
the reality is that people followed the most optimized highest damage build since before streamers existed.
there were no existing streamers on the planet in 2002 when every paladin in d2 was a hammerdin.
so streamers i would say shes right. i dont think the vast majority of the population follows streamer builds, i think they follow whatever build is highest damage / most optimized, regardless of there being a streamer behind it or not.
Agreed. Also, doing any balance changes of any kind mid-season is a colossal error. The only balance changes that should occur during a season should be the result of fixing literal game-breaking bugs (e.g. whatever that Necro skill was that caused the game to crash due to the amount of damage calculations it did). There’s a reason PoE leaves balance completely alone during its leagues, even if a build is blatantly overpowered.
The one time I can recall them making a mid-league balance change was Delirium, where they fixed a hidden, bugged interaction that ended up nerfing the top build. Even though that build was still orders of magnitude too powerful after the nerf, it sparked such a massive community backlash that they had to make public apologies for the nerf.
I recently read an article of an interview with a dev of a game (not D4). They were talking about how they watched streamers and youtubers play (big ones you can assume) and adjusted their thinking of how to balance around that.
I had to shake my head because they’re balancing their game around the 1% of the 1% of players, and the game will suffer because of it.
I havent played much PoE, but isnt PoE infamous for releasing broken seasons, and then fixing them in the first week or two? They basically always make changes within the seasons.
Personally, I think there should be weekly balance changes throughout seasons.
Nerf fast. Nerf hard (when needed). Then repeat. Only way to ever produce a good game.
Streamers including Rob also have easy access to uber uniques compared to most players. The barb build he did with his pet hitting for trillions of damage used multiple uber uniques. You can get pet damage to somewhat higher amounts without them probably, but nowhere close to what he’s doing with multiple uber uniques.
Didn’t look too deeply into it but from what I saw the only particularly buggy part was the poison damage stone mechanics. The rest of it was from insane gear and a player could make a one-shot build with the gear and their own damage anyway, so it doesn’t really matter that much if it’s coming from them or their pet.
Launches have been smooth in terms of stability for quite some time, but they always release several patches that change the balance of the seasonal mechanics within the first few weeks. Quality’s also gone up since they’ve been willing to delay a season by a month if it isn’t ready, rather than rushing it out to meet a 3 month deadline. Their seasonal team is also only like 8 people or so, since the overwhelming majority of their devs are working on PoE 2.
PoE is also able to get away with underwhelming seasonal mechanics on launch due to the core game being vastly superior to D4. If the seasonal mechanic is bad, you can ignore it for a week or two and have a great time with the core game until the balance patch hits.
No. If you invest dozens of hours farming out perfect gear for a build, only for that build to get nerfed and that gear effectively being useless, then it’s a rugpull, especially if those nerfs are coupled with a competitive mechanic like the Gauntlet. Save the nerfs for between seasons, when everyone’s progress gets reset regardless. The game lacks sufficient inventory space to save optimal gear and aspects for every possible build a class has, so you generally need to discard loot that isn’t good for what you’re playing.
If I fully invest in Charge Barb with the Gauntlet in mind, only for balance changes to make, say, Double Swing more optimal, then I’m screwed, because I’m not building a set of gear for Double Swing, and leaderboards aren’t spec-specific al a Warcraft Logs. HotA/Charge both stack Overpower on weapons, so you ignore 1h axes/swords completely, plus maces that don’t have 3 of str/stats/OP/berserking dmg, but they become useless if the new best build doesn’t utilize Overpower.
And due to how competitive atmospheres work, you need to do what’s optimal, or you’re being strictly worse. Once the optimal spec and items are determined, as well as techniques for the type of content you’re doing, that becomes the standard.
Blizz or game devs don’t tune their games based on streamers, it’s the impact to the game that gets devs to move.
I don’t see this as a fight but more like a win-win situation between devs and streamers. Streamers work freely for devs as testers and devs give streamers games to make contents of. But this is only if the devs can react quickly to the impact and deliver some adjustments that make sense, else their game can suffer, but this is arguably the fault of the devs themselves in the first place.
If Double Swing ends up more optimal than everything else, then it should be nerfed next.
Nor does nerfing Charge mean it automatically becomes useless. It could still be best after a nerf. Then maybe it gets nerfed one more time after that.
This isn’t a war at all. It’s more beneficial to the developers for people to ‘break’ the game. Warframe has a long lists of mechanics players broke but eventually became features.
By this logic, there’ll be weekly nerfs, and everything will be in a state of uncertainty and instability. This is bad due to how loot functions in the game.
It is when you’re competing with other Barbs. You’re objectively at a disadvantage if you’re not playing what’s the most optimal. The only case where this isn’t true is if multiple builds are completely equal in every aspect, which is effectively an impossible task for the devs to achieve.