Idea from another forum: You are the balance specialist.
July 23, 2016 7:02AM
edited July 2016
As we've seen in the job postings, EA are looking to hire a "mobile gaming balance specialist."
Pretend you've just been hired, and need to lay out a general plan of attack to balance the meta, make more characters viable, keep PVE content at a good place for all players, and other related balance tasks. You will not be addressing the credit crunch, monetization plans, or mod refunds. These are out of your jurisdiction. What do you do? What is your most immediate focus? Long term plan, if any, given that this is a 6-12 month contract, as per the advert. Share your ideas!
My long term goal will be a steady revision of the gear system. Characters will have their gear looked at, adjusted to make it fit their class better. Some lesser used characters with especially difficult gear will have their gear requirements eased (and not at a sacrifice of stats). The gear will make sense. No stacking special damage or potency on characters that do not use it. Less characters with low potency who depend on it, etc.
Adjust mods to a flat rate bonus, and bring speed down a touch, adjust the other mods up a bit to bring their power levels in line. Remove speed as a secondary stat. Move Accuracy to the square mod, and crit reduction to the diamond mod.
Normalize speed among characters in the game on a scale beginning at 110, ending at 164. All characters will have their speed adjusted to fit on this new scale, maintaining the order of their speed before the change. JKG is still the slowest character in the game, but with a speed of 110, rather than 85. If sufficient changes in character viability are not evident in testing (another change!), I will use 115 as the low end. Almost every character will receive a speed boost. For example, some new character speed levels, will be as such:
JKG: 110
Ahsoka Tano: 116 (yes, Ahsoka recieves a disproportionate buff because of her unique. This will be tested, but I assure you, it's fine.)
Asajj Ventress: 119
Cad Bane: 125
Boba Fett/Clone Seargent: 121
CUP: 124
Darth Vader: 134
FOTP: 139
General Grievous: 118
Poe/QGJ: 150
Teebo: 133
And so on.
Character reworks, aiming initially at one per month, in light of other changes that are being made. Eventually the goal would be every three weeks. An official Poll will be placed in the game on a popup asking players who they would like to see reworked first. That character will become the monthly login for September. The candidates will be Boba Fett, Asajj Ventress, Cad Bane, Stormtrooper, Finn, and Kylo Ren. Following this, characters who are adjusted will be rotated through the different acquisition methods. IE: If we start with Asajj, from arena, the next character will be from Galactic War, followed by Hard Mode only (Veers, FOST, or Hoth Soldier?) then Cantina Shipments, and Cantina nodes will be last since Anakin was the most recent.
Slower characters will see a damage increase. Starting small, probably 5% or so initially for the slowest. Adjusted again at a later date if necessary.
I will begin to revise leader abilities only of the following characters: Darth Maul, Old Ben, Count Dooku, Ahsoka Tano, General Veers, Cad Bane, Greedo, and any others who suffer from leader overlap. I am unsure exactly what changes will be made as of yet, expect an update when I am nearing the final versions. No characters leader ability will be strictly worse than another.
And finally, November's login character will be Scout Trooper, and the December login character will be Max Reebo, my first fully designed characters.
And there is a section about constructive, realistic Galactic War suggestions in the first iteration of this post, but apparently that was worthy of hiding the thread in the GW feedback section. Head over there if you want to see my idea.
Pretend you've just been hired, and need to lay out a general plan of attack to balance the meta, make more characters viable, keep PVE content at a good place for all players, and other related balance tasks. You will not be addressing the credit crunch, monetization plans, or mod refunds. These are out of your jurisdiction. What do you do? What is your most immediate focus? Long term plan, if any, given that this is a 6-12 month contract, as per the advert. Share your ideas!
My long term goal will be a steady revision of the gear system. Characters will have their gear looked at, adjusted to make it fit their class better. Some lesser used characters with especially difficult gear will have their gear requirements eased (and not at a sacrifice of stats). The gear will make sense. No stacking special damage or potency on characters that do not use it. Less characters with low potency who depend on it, etc.
Adjust mods to a flat rate bonus, and bring speed down a touch, adjust the other mods up a bit to bring their power levels in line. Remove speed as a secondary stat. Move Accuracy to the square mod, and crit reduction to the diamond mod.
Normalize speed among characters in the game on a scale beginning at 110, ending at 164. All characters will have their speed adjusted to fit on this new scale, maintaining the order of their speed before the change. JKG is still the slowest character in the game, but with a speed of 110, rather than 85. If sufficient changes in character viability are not evident in testing (another change!), I will use 115 as the low end. Almost every character will receive a speed boost. For example, some new character speed levels, will be as such:
JKG: 110
Ahsoka Tano: 116 (yes, Ahsoka recieves a disproportionate buff because of her unique. This will be tested, but I assure you, it's fine.)
Asajj Ventress: 119
Cad Bane: 125
Boba Fett/Clone Seargent: 121
CUP: 124
Darth Vader: 134
FOTP: 139
General Grievous: 118
Poe/QGJ: 150
Teebo: 133
And so on.
Character reworks, aiming initially at one per month, in light of other changes that are being made. Eventually the goal would be every three weeks. An official Poll will be placed in the game on a popup asking players who they would like to see reworked first. That character will become the monthly login for September. The candidates will be Boba Fett, Asajj Ventress, Cad Bane, Stormtrooper, Finn, and Kylo Ren. Following this, characters who are adjusted will be rotated through the different acquisition methods. IE: If we start with Asajj, from arena, the next character will be from Galactic War, followed by Hard Mode only (Veers, FOST, or Hoth Soldier?) then Cantina Shipments, and Cantina nodes will be last since Anakin was the most recent.
Slower characters will see a damage increase. Starting small, probably 5% or so initially for the slowest. Adjusted again at a later date if necessary.
I will begin to revise leader abilities only of the following characters: Darth Maul, Old Ben, Count Dooku, Ahsoka Tano, General Veers, Cad Bane, Greedo, and any others who suffer from leader overlap. I am unsure exactly what changes will be made as of yet, expect an update when I am nearing the final versions. No characters leader ability will be strictly worse than another.
And finally, November's login character will be Scout Trooper, and the December login character will be Max Reebo, my first fully designed characters.
And there is a section about constructive, realistic Galactic War suggestions in the first iteration of this post, but apparently that was worthy of hiding the thread in the GW feedback section. Head over there if you want to see my idea.
Post edited by hhooo on
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This discussion has been closed.
Replies
Sadly none of those balance changes will happen, since they take a lot of time/effort and dont flood the money in like releasing new characters or adding new progression systems, where you have to spend lots of chrystals to stay competetive
Otherwise, VERY nice and thoughtful post.