[MXLS] Charms Overhaul

[Taem]

But you do realize that would mean nothing changes in terms of needing the charms to be able to defeat the higher leveled ubers, don't you? Literally nothing would change, except the charms would be dumbed down and so would the ubers, but still not enough for a fully decked out player to handle the harder ubers without the charms meaning that absolutely nothing would change in terms of what is required for hard ubers, which contradicts what Marco said.

Going off of what Marco said about removing charms as a requirement for harder ubers, then if any character can do any uber with this "new" update without the need of charms, then like I said before, whats to stop expert players from roflstomping all ubers in a couple hours? I believe that there is a balance with the structure of things as they are now, and that's why there are hard ubers and easy ubers, and rather you agree with it or not, it is the charms that make the difference, so removing the need for them would make the harder ubers trivial and make charms pointless. Equalizing everything is probably not the answer here, but if that's what everyone wants, then c'est la vie.

[suchbalance]

But you do realize that would mean nothing changes in terms of needing the charms to be able to defeat the higher leveled ubers, don't you? Literally nothing would change, except the charms would be dumbed down and so would the ubers, but still not enough for a fully decked out player to handle the harder ubers without the charms meaning that absolutely nothing would change in terms of what is required for hard ubers, which contradicts what Marco said.

How so? I mean it's pretty obvious right: more charms = stronger character = every challenge the game throws at you become easier. There is no way you can interrupt this connection unless the charms gave no stats at all. Therefore having charms no matter how nerfed they are, as long as they give SOME positive benefit, will always be better for end game ubers.

Furthermore if you balance all the content against being doable with 0 charms you do realise that everything will be faceroll for an experienced player right? You somehow want to achieve a reality where having charms is irrelevant to uber success ratio and on top of that have challenging ubers. I don't think that is possible, because charms give beneficial stats to your character.

The hardest ubers will always push your character setup, knowledge and execution to the test (within the confines of the d2 engine) so if you balance them against a fresh 120 char in a1 town you will end up with candy crush saga. You have to assume that when a player reaches the final ubers he has already defeated easier ubers and hence balance accordingly.

[Daimoth]

Meta charms will never be a thing - otherwise Truine cycles become too overpowered. This would completely negate the effects of the charms downscaling.

Er, obviously it wouldn't apply to cycles.

[Taem]

Furthermore if you balance all the content against being doable with 0 charms you do realise that everything will be faceroll for an experienced player right? You somehow want to achieve a reality where having charms is irrelevant to uber success ratio and on top of that have challenging ubers. I don't think that is possible, because charms give beneficial stats to your character.

Well, that is what I understood from what Marco wrote:

Dependency - Necessity
Well as we know, the game IS in fact balanced towards having some of these stats above mentioned. By no means are you able to clear duncraig with no charms, it's almost a requirement to have some basic ones before you can succeed at this uberquest. Why is charms necessity bad? Many reasons, first it makes obtaining charms less enjoyable. If charms are required, they become regular quests and lose all their "uber" mystic. It is also bad because it prevents people from moving on. Some stats simply have such a big impact in the game (for example: 5% Max Resistances from Azmodan) that without them your character is so much weaker. This usually promotes the famous median stuck loop: need gear for charms, and need charms for gear. This leads to:

[...]

What will happen?
All charms, rebalanced. Old charms = legacy = they're gone. I know that it will be a bit awkward for those who play Single Player. But if the goal is reached (lower charm dependency/effect in the game) it means it shouldn't be such a big problem for your character. Because to compensate, the game difficulty will be rebalanced accordingly.

[...]

I just wanted to illustrate how broken the combined amount of stats from all items is.

It seems clear to me that Marco intends to balance ubers without charms based on what I'm reading above, perhaps minimal charm requirement to complete the "hard" ubers, but doesn't seem like anything that couldn't be done without a perfect gear setup if I'm understanding Marco correctly. I know I already said this, but an experienced player with gear twinked from a higher leveled toon will be able to do all these ubers even without charms if I'm understanding this correctly.

The hardest ubers will always push your character setup, knowledge and execution to the test (within the confines of the d2 engine) so if you balance them against a fresh 120 char in a1 town you will end up with candy crush saga. You have to assume that when a player reaches the final ubers he has already defeated easier ubers and hence balance accordingly.

Exactly, so as I said above, nothing has changed if this pathos is still adhered to. You still will requires charm x,y,x to be able to defeat uber a+b. So in truth, the only reason for this rebalance is to tone down all the damage and bonuses so that roll-over is harder to hit, which in theory allows for more build variety as different damage types are now viable. I get the premise, but it's being obfuscated by the concept of being able to defeat any uber with little to no charms, as stated by Marco.

[suchbalance]

@Daimoth Not sure if trolling... you want to condense charms to free up inventory space. More inventory space = more space to put cycles in. How does that "not apply" to cycles?

@Taem Well in fact something has changed.

• Nerfing charms means that the "charm stats" are a smaller proportion of the total stats pile also known as "your character".
• Thus your character strength is now determined more by equipment choices (take into account MO changes which will add a new level of diversity here) and gameplay rather than charms.
• Because charm stats now play a much reduced role in determining your character strength they won't influence your success in ubers nearly as much as now.
• Given the above 3 points the harder ubers will still be balanced around having the easier charms by the definition of them being "hard". For reasons discussed in my previous post.

I think you are somehow confused in assuming that if certain ubers still take into account that you have beaten the easier ones down the food chain, this somehow relates to nothing changing. Well the above 4 point logical sequence explains why this is not the case, and in fact a big change has been made.

[spoil=Disclaimer]Just going to write this out so some people do not get confused, although it should be obvious. I am in no way directly involved in the making of mxl 2016. My opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the game dev.[/spoil]

[Daimoth]

Because it sounded like you thought I was suggesting cycles be infinitely condensable.

Cycles have always been a bad idea. The problem solved by reward charms is the fact that charms in LoD put the player at odds with their own inventory space. When there's a finite amount, this issue is greatly mitigated. Cycles... reintroduce the problem.

[iwansquall]

Laz removed non uber charm

Marco added cycle


POWER CREEP AND MORE DIFFICULT UBER!

[Taem]

@Taem Well in fact something has changed.

• Nerfing charms means that the "charm stats" are a smaller proportion of the total stats pile also known as "your character".
• Thus your character strength is now determined more by equipment choices (take into account MO changes which will add a new level of diversity here) and gameplay rather than charms.
• Because charm stats now play a much reduced role in determining your character strength they won't influence your success in ubers nearly as much as now.
• Given the above 3 points the harder ubers will still be balanced around having the easier charms by the definition of them being "hard". For reasons discussed in my previous post.

I think you are somehow confused in assuming that if certain ubers still take into account that you have beaten the easier ones down the food chain, this somehow relates to nothing changing. Well the above 4 point logical sequence explains why this is not the case, and in fact a big change has been made.

I actually feel we are saying the same thing, but just have a different opinion on it. With many of the builds I have played, I could do all of the "easy" ubers without any problems, and a majority of the intermediate builds with just tiered uniques and runewords. I remember farming fautz in terror to gain levels before even getting my first charms. Charms were helpful, but hardly necessary until later difficulties with the classes I play most: i.e. necro summoer, 1.a to 1.z holy melee paladin, xbow necro, 1.a to 1.z fairy ring amazon. My point being that with these particular builds I played, charms really weren't necessary, nor was sacred gear until the more difficult ubers, nothing that couldn't be made up with mystic orbs and crafted gear. Don't get me wrong, having their benefit was nice, but I didn't see an incredible difference in my damage output with +skills with the builds I played, but more from +%damage, or +/- element 'x'%. The added levels was icing on the cake, but hardly noteworthy, and the added elemental protection... well shit, I usually had 85 to 90 all resists by destruction anyway with just tiered uniques and crafted gear and gems, so I feel like I really only "needed" charms for the harder ubers. But in the beginning, I only played hardcore on MXL and survival meant great sacrifice to ensure that you had 90% resists early on and as much dr as possible, and I still play that way in softcore.

Having said all that, based on what you wrote above, either one of two scenario's will be played out here:

• Ubers will be dumbed down as charms are dumbed down making the initial ubers ridiculously easy for more experienced players, and the harder ones just a simple gear check sans charms, or
  
• Harder ubers will still require easy charms to defeat - the same as it is now, for me anyway - thus completely negating the need for this revision at all if the only goal were to make ubers a gear check, because in reality, nothing will have changed as charm x,y,z are still required to defeat uber a+b.

As I said before, the only logical reason to do this for a player such as myself is to lower overall damage output to allow other forms of damage to be possible, as Marco also said:

Median XL isn't all about: What build can beat all ubers?
Many builds have become non viable simply because they lack uberpower. Any build who uses some sort of complex mechanisms / skillswitch will usually get punished over the spam-one-skill build. So having charms being such a necessity, promotes mindless FotM builds. I know, I know, there will be always "the easiest op build to play" and people will pick it regardless of how balance paradigms change. The goal here is to simply make builds that are not that straight forward not get so punished when they first hit the end phase of the game.

...thus allowing for more skill/class diversity. It's ironic, but your points actually support my points and we are saying the same thing here, however I guess due to our vastly different play-styles, its clear to me that your the type of player whose grown to rely on his charms to progress, and I'm not. Making the game more of a "gear check" will make the game much easier for some of us, and much harder for those who rely heavily on charms for their stats. One thing I'd like to make clear here is I'm not saying this isn't a good idea, I rather like the idea; I'm arguing that the logic of if is severely flawed if the goal is to make ubers doable with just a gear check (steamroll them) or to keep them as is (require charm x,y,z). I'm reading between the lines and seeing that the true purpose of this update is to lower the damage output of skills that benefit from +skills so that most builds are viable endgame for more diversity, and to rely on gear check rather than charms, and to this end I completely agree with the premise. I respect you as a poster, but please don't think repeating yourself over-and-over again as you've done in your other two posts is necessary because I've understood your point of view from the onset and I fully understand what you are saying here and I actually fully agree with you, so nothing is in contention between us... at all, however I'm looking beyond that and elaborating upon the possibilities based on my experience playing mxl, and stating what I feel this patch represents to me and the penultimate outcome of it.

[Marco]

The best approach to take, in my opinion, would be to actually "undernerf" the monsters on release. So releasing the game with slightly stronger monsters overall than originally planned. This is because of the whole "negative bias" aspect. If it turns out that this is a good balance level - great. If, on the other hand, you have to adjust monsters to be slightly easier a few months after release it won't cause any community drama as buffing the players is seen as a positive outcome.

I don't think that's necessary as the balance changes will cover not only charms, but skills, so new patch will require different strategies so people will already have to adapt to the new play styles. Making everything harder might cause some people to feel rejection towards some changes. For example, new patch comes out and player reads changelog and decides to give an opportunity to previously unused build, and fails, even if a "buff patch" comes afterwards, there's a big chance people won't give a second try at these builds again.

To be fair, the bosses/ubers were in fact balanced around just this, so to say it's "broken" is not really true in that regard

Yes they were balanced around them but that doesn't make it less broken. Heroic shields are a clear example of this, as sometimes they serve as last resource when it comes to making uberbosses resistant. You could give them avoid instead but that heavily punishes melee builds. Point is, it isn't really possible to make tough monsters just by giving them a bunch of health.

However, I get the point you're trying to make about how half the ubers can't even be completed without the rest of the charms, but tbh, I always thought that's how mxl was meant to be played. Are you suggesting all ubers to be dumbed down to the point anyone can do them once they hit 120? Doesn't that defeat the point of "hard" ubers?

That sounds as if charms get completely removed. That's not going to be the case and many charms will still be strong.

Going off of what Marco said about removing charms as a requirement for harder ubers, then if any character can do any uber with this "new" update without the need of charms, then like I said before, whats to stop expert players from roflstomping all ubers in a couple hours? I believe that there is a balance with the structure of things as they are now, and that's why there are hard ubers and easy ubers, and rather you agree with it or not, it is the charms that make the difference, so removing the need for them would make the harder ubers trivial and make charms pointless.

Your view of the current state of the endgame isn't really the way it plays out right now. All uberquests are accessible right now due to two factors:
a) Characters can become virtually immortal and "resist as long as necessary"
b) Characters are able to take down a monster instantly as soon as certain resistances drop

So in both cases, player skill isn't actually being rewarded. Instead, "knowing" and using specific specs is what lets you beat the game. So you don't need skills, you just need to know what build "breaks" certain quest. Do you think beating uldyssian acutally requires skill or just obtaining 50% slow which makes AI behave retardedly and then just run while re-applying open wounds with queen of blades for several dozens of minutes?

Charms are breaking the stat pool, so you can technically not make a hard uberquest even giving it a thousand instagibs because one lucky shot will still grant you the win. Lowering the stats granted by charms will prevent these two problems and it would allow other builds to succeed at these ubers without needing cheesy tactics. Eventually, lowering all values in the game will allow for stronger bosses which will have more tools to hurt you as characters will no longer have all stats maxed. People will need to choose their stats wisely rather than "have them all". And here is where people skill will kick in and reward them for well-thought build specs.


Lowering access to certain stats by nerfing charms will force people to choose skills and gear more wisely. Then:
1) Hard-point based skills become less appealing because maybe your 1-pt spell that was "doing enough damage" thanks to your charms no longer deals enough damage so you have to invest more in it or your 1-pt spell that was "giving enough defense" no longer feels like it's enough. This is mainly achieved by reducing the amount of +skills you get. This reduces dependency on these skills thus making more skills viable and adds more build variety.
2) Stats in your equipment such as resistances, flat health, stats, %stats, +skills, ias/fcr, block, etc. become more appealing. Eventually characters will become strong enough and aim for unique stats such as procs, but at a much lower rate. So gear diversity is achieved too but also an increase in performance will be seen too as a consequence of this.

[Heathen]

Just seems the biggest current problem is stat inflation. The old engine doesn't like big numbers, so monster healthpools get supplemented with shields to compensate. And what I think Marco is suggesting is a total reduction in stats, so those shields aren't needed anymore. But the game will ultimately be pretty similar. E.g.

-Player dps gets nerfed from 1k to 100.
-Monster Healthpool nerfed from 10k to 1k.

It's the same damn thing, except then Marco can get rid of those stupid invulnerable shields.

I assume he will rework balance a bit from how it is now, but i'm guessing it will end up playing more similar than people think.