An open discussion regarding game balance

And I’m not saying ursena is a better tank. But I will say I wholeheartedly agree that finley or jabber over another less ideal wing option is just as, if not more impactful on win rare than telly over guin or kunchen or ursena. Telly simply has a far higher saturation rate. Now I may be wrong. But this is where the devs can set this straight

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That highlights another critical point: Telly is abundant.

Both Guin and Ursena were (and are) much harder to get. Full Ursena tank war lineups were likely scarce (I wasn’t in a high enough tier alliance to experience that then), 30 Telly alliances nowadays are a dime a dozen.

Point 1: It seems we were actually saying the same thing at one point. I had to look up “fungibility” because I had never seen that word before. :joy:

Point 2:

I actually didn’t even consider this part. Rather, it was Guin/Kunchen/Ursena themselves that fall obsolete in Telluria’s wake. They are still very powerful, but they have, in most defensive squads, been replaced.

Exactly this. Telluria/Vela dominance already made many older heros completely obsolete, so I’m really struggling to understand requests for more power creeps - as a solution to one pair of power creeps. So our rosters, that we built for a long time would become more and more impotent.

It looks like players actually want to increase profits of Small Giant - to chase those new powerful heros again and again, to pay them more money. And yet, those same players are constantly making accusations that this company is driven only by their earnings.

The easiest solution for these two was to tone them down a bit. And the cheapest solution as well. For us.

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Eldente that highlights my original point. Preserving game integrity is about correcting critical flaws. A hero like finley that goes everywhere. It is not about abundance.

There is a fundamental problem in my opinion, if everyone got guin, then they nerfed guin, only because the saturation rate was high. If it was imbalanced in the first place, it should have been corrected at that point. Not after everyone gets her

Yeah, I noticed you basically wrote the same thing right before I posted my last reply.

However, I still believe Telly is severely overtuned and I’d very much like to see official stats on which compositions have the highest defensive winrate (perhaps specifically at 18 or above talents).

An Ursena defense is fundamentally different from a Telly one.

Ursena is a major threat herself, but she’s squishier and does not affect your own game plan. If you kill her before second cast, you can likely recover.

Telly on the other hand is a time waster. She exists to deny you specials and damage until the fast 4-hero powerhouse around her makes a crater at the bottom half of your screen. Killing her first isn’t even the point, since you need to worry about actual threats.

I’m very curious about which is more potent in practice, peak Ursena comp vs peak Telly comp.

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My guess is an ideal telly setup is considerably better.

But the end all point is that no matter what the tank, finley goes in. So does jabber. They are also no slouches attacking either. I don’t use telly to attack at all. Nor vela . They are targetting the abundant while leaving the actual imbalance as is.

I mostly agree that Finley and a few others desperately need a touch of the nerf bat, but abundance is a large factor in overall game health.

People on average care less about how broken Finley is because they don’t smash their faces into a wall of him often. Telly actively makes people not want to play the game, and it’s a sales issue as much as it is a balance one, so that is more crucial to fix.

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Wow this was a fantastic write up! Probably my favorite explanation of the game as it is right compared to people’s angry rants typed out of frustration (myself included).

Devs, PLEASE try to read and listen to their post!

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Great post. :thumbsup:
One thing I’m probably misunderstanding as it reads slightly at odds to the rest of your post (to my comprehension ability):

By ‘game integrity’ I read as ‘game balance’ (within the context of the discussion). Would this be similar concepts?

Comment: This certainly seems to be the case.

Comment: When I began playing I thought a particular power set would be available in every colour. Once more familiar it clearly wasn’t the case. (Seems strange to me.)

With the previous sentences above is it being suggested that increasing the diversity would then bring integrity into the game? It’s this part I struggle with the most given the previous.

Related, but not a direct comment on the post, it seems to me SGG don’t really do game balancing very well. I’ll relate my experience of another game, which I’ll call Wibble, with respect to game balancing and power creep.

Wibble is an old game. A hero ‘card’ game. Select a few cards and send into battle. It had hero rarity like E&P’s (up to 5*). Then they introduced heroes who are labeled ‘5*’ but clearly a class above. Eventually it would lead to Wibble having up to 7* heroes (and technically 8* via ascension).

Being based on a fantasy setting, typical dwarves, elves, etc. the devs started to rebalance the game class by class. So at the beginning the first class had a clear advantage over the non-balanced classes. The second rebalanced class had a fairly clear advantage but less. And so on and so forth.

Broadly the rebalancing was for 5* and up heroes. Some heroes had their stats drastically slashed. Later they would rebalance even 3* and 4* giving them skills they previously didn’t have. Even now as new abilities are added previously released heroes are changed to accommodate these new skills.

Generally as a result of the rebalancing, certain teams aren’t as dominant. There are now favoured dwarven teams or elven teams, etc. each having their advantages and capable of beating another. There is more variety now in what we face and no longer dominated by a specific team.

The active rebalancing period for Wibble was painful when one class was obviously overpowered, but we players were kept informed where the game was heading via in-game messages; we didn’t have to read a forum post to find out what was going on. The devs of Wibble aren’t afraid to rebalance the game when needed and actively listen to feedback.

How does this compare to E&P? Two names come to mind to illustrate the rebalancing: Telluria and Horghall.

I would also like to ask the developers 2 questions: @Staff_SGG

  • Why is there no red dispeller in the game?
  • How many red cleansers in the meta, how does it compare to the other elements? (NB: I’m not asking how many unique hero, I know there are 3: Zimkitha, G.Kong, and L.Loki. What I ask is the total number of them in the server compared to the other colors)
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Let us look at a range of possibilities.

  • (1) each color basically has the same heroes, just in a different color, all with the same rarity (chance to be obtained). Then, the game is balanced, everyone eventually has the same heroes in all colors, there is no reason to pick one hero versus another on defense, and you get variety at all levels because there is no distinguishing features between colors. But we might as well be playing checkers.

  • (2) Since the previous alternative is nonsense, some differences must be introduced, each color has some special skill pretty much reserved for them (e.g., blind for Holy/yellow heroes), heroes have different stats, strengths and weaknesses, and come in different rarities. Some unbalances will be created. Now what unbalances are ok, and which ones are not ok?

  • (2a) the strongest heroes (defensively speaking) are/were relatively easy to get (e.g., Telluria, Vela in the modern era): this means a lot of people will have that combo, and thus use them on their defenses. This kills game diversity on all playing levels.

  • (2b) the strongest heroes (defensively speaking) are/were relatively difficult to get (e.g., Guin and Ursena in the past): this means that relatively few people will have that combo, so only the top spenders and thus top alliances will use them on their defenses, without affecting game diversity too much in the medium/short term. Eventually, more and more people will have that combo, but new rare heroes can be introduced to reset the META.

So, in my view, it is better when the best heroes are the rarest (so event/costumed heroes), so the game is less broadly affected by them, and more variety at all levels (excluding the very top) is achieved. Then, balancing is a matter of making sure all heroes have some use and stay relevant in the game, however niche it may be. It is impossible to make all heroes excellent in all parts of the game (see alternative (1) above), but each hero should have at least one thing he is good at. Releasing Telluria and Vela as HotMs in their original version was definitely a mistake. SG wanted to release a strong green tank, but by design made her OP by combining too many skills (the mana generation debuff should have been removed). Vela came out as the perfect blue flank to any green tank by having balanced base stats and special skills that punished and neutered red attackers (the next best blue flank was Magni but his low def stat - however balanced with his defense buff when/if he triggers his SS him - made much easier to go around). But short of completely redesigning them, even with Vela now “only” neutering" ALL attackers, both are here to stay.

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This is an excellent, well thought out, and well expressed analysis. Thank you @beepbeepimajeep, this needed to be said

I fear that this will all fall on deaf ears. This game could and should last 6 to 8 years I think, but lately all of the decisions and inclusions introduced in the game seem to be about money, rather than balance and longevity - which I think would lead to more money in the long term. It seems like they’re thinking it only has another year or two as a viable product, so they’re kicking as much out of it while they can.

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The problem with Ursena is that her special is damaged base so she has to be run at Flank for maximum potency. Placing her at wing reduces her potency since she is likely going to fire late when the enemy’s health is more likely going to be sub 50% and thus she deals less damage. Because how how much superior Gravemaker and Vela is/are/was at flanks, this has ushered Ursena out of top defences. Pre-Telluria, Ursena was the preferred flank in position 2 for Guin setups.

OTOH, Killhare as a wing makes perfect sense because her special is not conditional. When she fires, she is going to hit like a truck. If Vela/ Grave/ Finley have softened up your team, KH going off often means 3-4 dead heroes. The fact she is fighter class who can randomly revive is just gravy.

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I think snipers today can’t one shot. That means they don’t get anyone of the table and dot is making the attacker become desperate

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This guy, @yelnats_24, has been saying this over and over in every forum thread regarding GTV. And I agree with him.

No red dispellers, or easily accessible red cleansers in the game. I totally agree that Telly and her entourage are OP, but if Caedmon or Sonya were red, with their costumes, I would have better win rate against Telly teams. It is that simple in my opinion.

Dispelling and cleansing are not class specific properties like burn or blind. They are basic necessities and therefore they should be easily accessible to all colours.

In addition to @yelnats_24, I also think that this game needs a proper 5* red Sniper which is fast. Marjana hits like a wet noodle compared to Sartana, Lianna, Magni and Joon. New season 3 hero called Gefjon is promising but can’t be trained at TC20.

There are great red heroes in the game but their talent diversity is not good enough to face Telly teams.

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Much of what you have written is well-thought-out and clear.

This though, I can’t agree with.

Not so much the first line as what follows. Game integrity took a hit with the release of Telluria, more so in my opinion because of the (apparently unrealized) OP synergy between her and Vela. This can’t be fixed by releasing matching heroes in different colours (which in most cases would also require different colour Velas as well). That would simply drive an insurmountable wedge between the haves and the have-nots and result in two different and completely independent games here, and kill game integrity once and for all.

Some would argue that there already is an insurmountable wedge between the haves and the have-nots and in a sense that is correct. Have-nots will not consistently compete at the top. But a have-not like myself can through intelligent play and luck compete in the diamond tier right now. With five Tellys in five colours that would be impossible. Right now the players who quit in frustration are those who see the Telly situation as untenable. Have-nots will quit in droves if the power creep is accelerated that much 5 times over. I know I would.

The issue is not easily solved. It could have been easily avoided with a better and more structured beta program. But I personally think the game integrity is better served by the balancing they are trying to achieve here than it would be by simply raising the bar up to a higher level.

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Ah… so I’m not the only one who sees that part as a bit at odds with the rest of the post.

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Yeeeeah…no. If that was the case, everyone would just go with random heroes, and we’d see 87% less Tellies and 8474% more Owls.

Look what I do now… I acend four star captain of diamond c sonya and belinhinder against five star green tank… Crazy…