Hello Travelers,
In between attempting to save the citizens of Eterra, and eradicating them, almost 70,000 of you have joined in with your voices to discuss mid-cycle balance changes. The turnout for this survey has been fantastic; and further, is in addition to the many discussions here on the forums and other platforms on the topic. We want to first thank you all for your enthusiasm on this topic driving it forward.
Today, we want to share the results of the survey, as well as the decisions which have come as a result of the feedback.
For the purpose of reading the below results, the following information can help:
- Scale:
- 1 - Strongly Disagree
- 2 - Disagree
- 3 - I have no opinion on this topic
- 4 - Agree
- 5 - Strongly Agree
- When we first started the survey, the scale was in reverse. We received immediate feedback about this, and swapped it before too many results came in. While the results below do not reflect this change, we made this change very early into survey so it had minimal impact on the results
OVERPERFORMING BUGS
With over 74% of all votes in the survey crushing the other options, as well as in written feedback, the stance from the involved community is fairly clear. We should be fixing bugs which cause skills or items to highly overperform, and as such, will be doing so. This is a change from our previous stance where we didn’t want to alter balance mid-cycle. Now, if it’s the case of a bug, we will be pushing out these fixes in mid-cycle patches.
MILDLY OVERPERFORMING BUGS
In the case of a bug resulting in a build, skill, or item mildly overperforming, there’s a much less clear stance. From written feedback, it’s a bit clear as to why: What is “mildly” overperforming? Being a bit of a vague categorization, it’s left up to an individuals interpretation.
We have decided in this case to use case-by-case discretion. This would be based on feedback we’re seeing in the community, and just how far the bug results in a power shift. So we may chose to, or not to fix bugs which are ‘mildly’ overperforming mid-cycle and will discuss them as they arise.
OVERPERFORMING BALANCE
On the other hand, if a build is overperforming, but not caused by a bug, the feedback has largely weighted towards “do not change”. While not quite as one sided as with bugs, this is still a fairly strong sentiment from the community with over 57% voting not to make these changes. This also matches our existing stance as well, in not taking too many steps to alter balance mid-cycle. As such, we’ll be avoiding balance changes which are not bug related, even if it’s resulting in a build, skill, or item highly overperforming.
MILDLY OVERPERFORMING BALANCE
As one might expect, as the power from something not bug-related becomes less impactful, the desire is even less for changes to be seen to them. Weighted quite heavily towards no changes, we agree with this stance and will not be making balance changes mid-cycle which are not bug related, and only result in the skill, build, or item mildly over-performing.
MID-CYCLE LEADERBOARD RESET
In the event that we release a change or bug-fix which was resulting in an item, skill, or build to overperform, the desire for leaderboards to reset has been quite mixed. We discussed this a fair amount, and have made the following determination: We will not reset leaderboards in this instance, however, we will instead add information to the entry to indicate when the entry occurred. The goal of this being to make the information available to identify entries which may have used a build that has since changed.
We decided against a mark or icon on the entry indicating it was an overperforming build, as we didn’t want these to appear as a “mark of shame”. We felt this was the best way to be able to allow competitive players to continue competing on the leaderboards, without taking away other player’s previous hard work on their builds, even if they were overperforming.
PARTIAL LEADERBOARD RESET
While the above answer also addresses this question, for consistency we want to show the results of all of your votes here.
NOTIFICATIONS VIA PUBLIC POSTS
To everyone’s surprise, it looks like almost everyone agrees that receiving notifications about upcoming balance altering bugfixes or changes is a very strong desire. As we’ve been showing this last week since we started getting feedback on the survey, we fully agree with this, and will start trying to provide more head’s up when these changes are coming.
Though with this, we will still reserve the right to not provide information regarding the upcoming change if: Doing so would result in players rushing to take advantage causing severe issues, or we could release the fix almost as fast as releasing the notification that the fix is coming
So for these changes, if we feel we can release the information in full about the change, we’ll do so. Otherwise, we may try to be more vague (such as with the Infernal Shade infinite damage bug) to limit its impact before the change, or we may withhold it completely if it’s something which is regularly crashing servers when it’s utilized to minimize its impact until we can get it fixed.
CONCLUSION
This round of discourse with the community has resulted in some great changes to our stances that we’re quite happy with. The two big changes here being:
- We will release fixes mid-cycle for bugs which result in an item, skill, or build highly overperforming
- We will add leaderboard functionality displaying which specific patch, or timespan an entry happened during.
Once again, we’d like to thank everyone for your involvement in Last Epoch, and taking the time to make your voices heard. It’s with all of your feedback we’ve made Last Epoch as great as it is, and is only by continuing to work with the community and listening to feedback that we’ll continue to improve.
Until next time, may RNG be with you Travelers!