thoughts on the ultimate end state of the 7.0 combat design

[Carba]

There are some good reasons why all classes are currently designed with an abundance of abilities. Principally, there are three different combat environments (PVE, PVP, solo) , all classes should be balanced and equally able to participate in all aspects of the game. The current game design reinforces these objectives. Yet, I recall many previous upgrade cycles they were not met. For example, in the past some classes were “disinvited” from operations or PVP groups. We don’t want a return to that history. Yet, its true that not all current abilities are needed in all play environments.

What would it take to have a set of loadouts to cover all aspects of the game? For a start, you want at least one for each of PVE, PVP, and solo. Then, you probably want an additional set of three for each class discipline. Most people might just want to swap tank/dps or heals/dps. So, that is six loadouts. But we’ve also been promised at least two “play styles”. That would seem to double the ideal loadout list to 12. There are of course innumerable specialty situations in operations calling for a separate loadout for each.

Each of the loadouts would have fewer abilities, but in total you have a nearly full set keeping in mind some have been dropped altogether while others have been added. What about balance? Ironically, having fewer abilities per loadout makes balancing harder due to the knapsack theorem. Now suppose the Tech play styles are ranked from best to worst for PVP and I find my main character is at the bottom. I can create a top ranked play style and compete with the best. But it then seems likely everyone will play the best play style. Is that what “balance” is to mean? Imagine in December your first operation with 6 Powertech play styles all spamming Searing Wave in unison every 15 seconds for a couple of hours.

Its not clear to me that the design philosophy of 7.0 has encompassed this end state view. Nor that the loadout design is envisioned for 12 or more loadouts.

[TrixxieTriss]

Try using line breaks to make smaller paragraphs. A wall of txt is difficult to read. Edited August 29, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[LordCamTheGreat]

Classes will always be disinvited to ops or ranked pvp etc. In theory the game could be perfectly balanced such that every class has the exact same dps or hps and can perform the same across all content, but the classes are asymmetrical and it is practically impossible to balance them to such a degree. Theorycrafters will always find the perfect combination and class guides will always advise you to pick one thing over the other for optimal dps - this is how it's always been and probably always will be, combat styles and loadouts won't fix that.

 

If you really want one loadout for pve, solo and pve for each discipline, you'd actually need more like 18 loadouts to cover every possibility, but in practice most players probably aren't going to be swapping their combat style or even their disciplines anywhere near enough to warrant more than the 4-5 that the devs have said we are going to get. For the players who want more, I'm sure there will be cartel market unlocks just as there are for quickbars - and that's not pay to win or pay to play, it's just a quality of life improvement compared to what we have on live. Getting any amount of loadouts at all is already a massive increase to the 0 we currently have on live. I'd rather the devs get 4-5 working now with a chance for more in the future than give everyone 10 and cause a significant negative performance hit to everyone's gameplay experience (and the devs did include tech issues in their reasoning for 4-5 loadouts).

 

Combat styles appear to be getting balanced so that they can't do everything at once. We've gotten pretty used to every class having a hard stun, soft stun, self heals, multiple dcds etc. but now the devs are stripping that away to reset the playing field which would in theory allow them to do more interesting things with new abilities in the future instead of going; "commando got a new defensive last expansion so now sorcerer needs to get a new one to keep up". Onslaught had some of the most boring abilities we've received in my opinion because there isn't much room to expand beyond what we currently have. We may end up in the same situation in another 5 years time, but hopefully the devs have learned from their experience and are using this as an opportunity to put what they've learned into practice and better differentiate the combat styles.

 

If you ask on the forums "what is the best spec", people will already point you to parsely and say vanguard/powertech is the best for ops etc. Players are already ranking classes from best to worst and always will. You will always be playing the game in a non optimal way if you don't pick the best combination for the best class, but guess what? Not everyone wants to play the best combat style/advanced class just because its the best. Classes are balanced well enough that it doesn't really matter if one has +5% dps over the other in most content. What's more, we haven't even seen what's happening with the NPC fight rebalancing which combined with ability pruning, should theoretically allow more than one tank to excel on a certain boss because they can "cheese" the mechanic to take no damage for e.g.

 

 

I don't think we're going to have the issues you're talking about with loadouts and people only picking the "best" class because that's not what happens on live where we don't have access to loadouts or multiple combat styles.

[Voroschuk]

In theory the game could be perfectly balanced such that every class has the exact same dps or hps and can perform the same across all content, but the classes are asymmetrical and it is practically impossible to balance them to such a degree.

StarCraft, Team Fortress, and most fighting games have an incredibly good asymmetrical balance)) It's not impossible, it's hard, but you just can't have a good multiplayer experience without balance.

[TonyTricicolo]

I have mixed feelings towards not being to switch combat styles during phases. Unless you are out and about in the open world then you are pretty much in an instance. If you are set as Dps in a Flashpoint and the Tank disconnects you'll have to leave the instance to switch to Tank. That's more cumbersome than just calling a companion and continuing on. It's not a one to one comparison, but GW2 has a swap feature where you can switch weapons during combat after a short cooldown. The pace moves forward. SWTOR should adopt something like this where you can switch styles easier.

[LordCamTheGreat]

StarCraft, Team Fortress, and most fighting games have an incredibly good asymmetrical balance)) It's not impossible, it's hard, but you just can't have a good multiplayer experience without balance.

 

Part of the issue is that we only really see balance parses when an expansion goes live, and few in-between. If we had even one consistent balance pass per month to bring disciplines in line, we'd be in a much better state. Another issue is that we were told we'd have horizontal gearing but we didn't get more set bonuses or tacticals - resulting in for e.g. the death knell set allowing deception and infiltration, the burst specs, to outparse hatred and serenity, the dot specs because it works far better for the former spec than the latter. Do I even need to mention Apex?

 

It's not impossible to balance in theory, but it's certainly been that way in practice for SWTOR since launch. Fingers crossed the devs are more active in balancing once combat styles goes live.

[Toraak]

Part of the issue is that we only really see balance parses when an expansion goes live, and few in-between. If we had even one consistent balance pass per month to bring disciplines in line, we'd be in a much better state. Another issue is that we were told we'd have horizontal gearing but we didn't get more set bonuses or tacticals - resulting in for e.g. the death knell set allowing deception and infiltration, the burst specs, to outparse hatred and serenity, the dot specs because it works far better for the former spec than the latter. Do I even need to mention Apex?

 

It's not impossible to balance in theory, but it's certainly been that way in practice for SWTOR since launch. Fingers crossed the devs are more active in balancing once combat styles goes live.

 

While I truly agree with this, we need to understand that BW doesn't have a very large staff, so if they're doing class balance on a monthly basis, then they aren't working on new content.

[LordCamTheGreat]

I have mixed feelings towards not being to switch combat styles during phases. Unless you are out and about in the open world then you are pretty much in an instance. If you are set as Dps in a Flashpoint and the Tank disconnects you'll have to leave the instance to switch to Tank. That's more cumbersome than just calling a companion and continuing on. It's not a one to one comparison, but GW2 has a swap feature where you can switch weapons during combat after a short cooldown. The pace moves forward. SWTOR should adopt something like this where you can switch styles easier.

 

The point about switching in phases is tricky. It prevents you swapping if someone disconnects unless you leave the phase, but it also prevents people queueing for tank and healer and then swapping to dps. On the other hand, the vote kick feature does exist so realistically you can just kick someone if they do swap outside their set role. Maybe the devs could work out a feature so that if someone leaves, the swapping restriction is temporarily lifted until a 4th player joins?

 

The GW2 weapon swapping thing is not at all similar. In GW2 and ESO, weapon swapping is part of the in combat experience and is absolutely necessary to play the game at all levels. For SWTOR, you don't swap your discipline in a fight to gain access to your other hotbar of abilities. You also cannot swap your combat proficiency equivalent in GW2 or ESO while in combat - just like you can't in SWTOR.

[CzarnyKolor]

StarCraft, Team Fortress, and most fighting games have an incredibly good asymmetrical balance)) It's not impossible, it's hard, but you just can't have a good multiplayer experience without balance.

 

While I cannot speak for Team Fortress, you are dead wrong for the other two.

 

All fighting games that are actually asymmetrical have winners and losers. Only a portion of characters in every such game is actually balanced as to be competitive at relatively the same level. That's why Tier lists and metas exist, and why some characters see zero representation in the tournament events.

 

And Starcraft is a different beast altogether. Starcraft has only three factions to be balanced against one another, and the teams involved are massive. Original Starcraft took three years of balance patches since the Brood War expansion to settle where it is today. That's three years of balance changes and no new content. And it's so delicate that each new map pack released by Blizzard decides the meta.

 

And Starcraft II's last patch was barely a year ago. That's five years of balance changes without new content. And by the way, there might be another one on the way.

 

And we are talking about a product so delicate that changing units stats by percentiles can affect things.

 

By comparison, TOR has 8 classes with 3 specs each, for total of 24, which need to be balanced for three different types of content, all of which can be played at different levels and interact with one another. You won't see them balanced unless the team in charge of that will grow to the size of the entire TOR team as a separate entity.

[Voroschuk]

By comparison, TOR has 8 classes with 3 specs each, for total of 24, which need to be balanced for three different types of content, all of which can be played at different levels and interact with one another. You won't see them balanced unless the team in charge of that will grow to the size of the entire TOR team as a separate entity.

Well, it still needs to be done, or else why keeping the multiplayer part of the game? Imagine spending a huge amount of time and cartel coins on your char to find out it's trash.

[Sounders_Fan]

Well, it still needs to be done, or else why keeping the multiplayer part of the game? Imagine spending a huge amount of time and cartel coins on your char to find out it's trash.

 

why not just find out how a character/class performs before investing the real money?

 

but the combat style system coming in 7.0 also is a remedy for this. don't like the combat style you chose, pick another. that is 2 chances to pick the FOTM class/combat style

[Voroschuk]

why not just find out how a character/class performs before investing the real money?

Why not just stop pretending this is how it should work lol

but the combat style system coming in 7.0 also is a remedy for this.

More like a temporary fix till the next meta switch