Pure Nature 2.0 - Main Thread

[Cocofang]

Quote

And after you nerfed Bloodhorn whats gonna get nerfed next? Fire Dragons or Wasteland Terror + Unity and Bloodthirst?

False equivalency and Bloodhorn isn't even scheduled for any changes.

2 hours ago, Fundus said:

Also i would really like to know why there was no topic about Batariel in the Balance Discussions part of the forum before he was nerfed you just made those changes without asking the BF community first. There are topics about Colossus and Necroblaster but not about Batariel.

I mean, fair enough about there not being a dedicated forum topic. Then again, the Balancing Discord is available to everyone, is more active than the balancing forum and the dedicated Batariel thread dates back to January 9th 2022. The initial nerf patch hit September 14th. Almost 250 days in between. Even before that Batariel was a topic that was brought up repeatedly. And the changes went through several iterations based on feedback. Riling that the community was not asked is blatantly untrue. Similar for Decomposer. Hotly debated topic since forever. "Asking the BF community" also consists of following relevant discussions, which is done. And there is literally a huge, old topic titled "Decomposer" on this forum with staff engagement.

[DieToPlay]

Asking and listening are two different words. You can open any amount of threads and pretend to care about community feedback and in the end proceed to your plan all along.

Edited March 22, 2023 by DieToPlay

[Fundus]

16 hours ago, Cocofang said:

Balancing Discord

Ok first you guys dont want multiple language sections on the forum to not split up the community and then you outsource balancing discussions?

16 hours ago, Cocofang said:

And there is literally a huge, old topic titled "Decomposer" on this forum with staff engagement.

The last post in that topic is from April 29, 2021 and its not even in the Balance Discussions section.

 

Edit:

I found another old thread about decomposer with a poll where the majority of people voted not to change it.

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Fundus

[Volin]

11 hours ago, DieToPlay said:

Asking and listening are two different words. You can open any amount of threads and pretend to care about community feedback and in the end proceed to your plan all along.

I cannot understand this drama every time you personally do not like a change. Yes, I don't like all the changes either, but it would be sheer insanity not to note that the changes in general are simply obvious improvements and are met with great goodwill. After all, the annual surveys show this very good.

But let's stick to very specific examples:

I have always been one of those who thought the old Batariel deck was good the way it was. I always saw the inventory as the Fundus described above. I have been vocal about this. Was this opinion ignored? Not at all.
Yes, Bata was eventually nerfed, but there were always different voices. There was a goal set by the team to include as many opinions as possible and to tone down the deck while keeping it open for speedruns and 10s.
After the Bata nerf came out, the deck was pretty much ruined and there was nothing left of the core. Many, myself included, complained and argued. After some back and forth, the new feedback was taken and corrected, with the result:
The deck is no longer the undisputed #1 fast deck, and the meta has opened up a bit, but it still has a solid place in the speedrun meta.

Sure, I could cry because something has changed, and weep for the beautiful camp one-shots the deck has sometimes shown in good hands - but I could also look at it with a little more perspective and say, "Too bad, but it's still one of the fastest decks, and speedruns have become a little more varied and colorful for it.

 

The balance changes alone have given SR dozens of fun and sometimes very strong new strategies. The fact that some people are talking about the end of the world because some niche strategy has fallen by the wayside, I really can't hear anymore.

 

Let's take the Watcher: Yes, it was always a nice card, but it couldn't really do anything. Yes, there was a valid Amii deck with it, but that was more "how can I make the card useful" - I really liked playing it that way, but honestly, how many times did you see that? Once in a thousand games? I NEVER saw this deck played by anyone else at the time. I'm sure someone did, but that just goes to show how rare it was.
The current Watcher has become an obvious improvement and one of the key cards in Pure Nature, and is really fun to play now. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way: I'd rather have a Watcher that does one thing right than a Watcher that's nice but fills niches.

Of course, I wouldn't complain if it went back to 2 natural and 2 colorless - but if I had to choose, I'd definitely go with the new one!

Do you have to see it that way? Of course not! But again, just because someone does not like a change does not mean that the change may not be seen as positive by others.

The possibility of expressing one's opinion and the approval of one's own personal opinion have been confused in social and political discourse for some time now - the one has nothing to do with the other.

tl;dr
Just because you (feel) you are not listened to does not mean that no one is listened to.

[DieToPlay]

4 hours ago, Volin said:

I cannot understand this drama every time you personally do not like a change. Yes, I don't like all the changes either, but it would be sheer insanity not to note that the changes in general are simply obvious improvements and are met with great goodwill. After all, the annual surveys show this very good.

But let's stick to very specific examples:

I have always been one of those who thought the old Batariel deck was good the way it was. I always saw the inventory as the Fundus described above. I have been vocal about this. Was this opinion ignored? Not at all.
Yes, Bata was eventually nerfed, but there were always different voices. There was a goal set by the team to include as many opinions as possible and to tone down the deck while keeping it open for speedruns and 10s.
After the Bata nerf came out, the deck was pretty much ruined and there was nothing left of the core. Many, myself included, complained and argued. After some back and forth, the new feedback was taken and corrected, with the result:
The deck is no longer the undisputed #1 fast deck, and the meta has opened up a bit, but it still has a solid place in the speedrun meta.

Sure, I could cry because something has changed, and weep for the beautiful camp one-shots the deck has sometimes shown in good hands - but I could also look at it with a little more perspective and say, "Too bad, but it's still one of the fastest decks, and speedruns have become a little more varied and colorful for it.

 

The balance changes alone have given SR dozens of fun and sometimes very strong new strategies. The fact that some people are talking about the end of the world because some niche strategy has fallen by the wayside, I really can't hear anymore.

 

Let's take the Watcher: Yes, it was always a nice card, but it couldn't really do anything. Yes, there was a valid Amii deck with it, but that was more "how can I make the card useful" - I really liked playing it that way, but honestly, how many times did you see that? Once in a thousand games? I NEVER saw this deck played by anyone else at the time. I'm sure someone did, but that just goes to show how rare it was.
The current Watcher has become an obvious improvement and one of the key cards in Pure Nature, and is really fun to play now. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way: I'd rather have a Watcher that does one thing right than a Watcher that's nice but fills niches.

Of course, I wouldn't complain if it went back to 2 natural and 2 colorless - but if I had to choose, I'd definitely go with the new one!

Do you have to see it that way? Of course not! But again, just because someone does not like a change does not mean that the change may not be seen as positive by others.

The possibility of expressing one's opinion and the approval of one's own personal opinion have been confused in social and political discourse for some time now - the one has nothing to do with the other.

tl;dr
Just because you (feel) you are not listened to does not mean that no one is listened to.

While a lot of changes were to the positive, one could argue that buffing a card in a bad state with whatever is going to make a good change in the end.

The issue from my perspective is that some cards are bound to be nerfed from the get-go, so no matter what argument will come along the way and how bad the decision is, it will still be executed.

There also seems to be a habit of promising alternative new released cards to fill the gap for the nerfed ones, but the issue with that is, it takes years to release them after the nerf was already done. Why not first release the alternative, see where it stands, and then proceed to nerf the said card. Not to mention some of the alternatives for a nerfed card is a game mode with a pre-nerfed version.

For example: the NG change was an obvious rush, and many maps are in a weird state right now. We were told that the NG change should bring consistency to what units we can swap etc. when in reality it got even more inconsistent. In their words NG was a band aid for a lot of broken maps, but how I see it, they band-aid the maps right now to do everything BUT revert the nerf.

Not to mention the Nether Warp fiasco, 1 person able to change a card completely without discussing it at all with the community, heck not even mentioning it. (aka ninjanerf)

I understand that you are not much of a cPvE player @Volin, but please understand our frustration when the game is being changed constantly only towards rPvE and PvP. There was little to no good for cPvE. The only changes which I can call positive and healthy for the game is removing the set time for some maps, like Crusade for example, which ultimately affects only speedrunners anyway.

I really hope that one day the balancing team understands that most people are playing the game because they used to like the old version of it. There is a reason why the % of veterans in this game is so big. Balancing the game towards their extreme game views and "balance", might do more harm than good.

 

EDIT: I just wanted to add that most of the people if not almost all who have this "extreme" views and "balancing" philosophy are literally not playing the game.

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by DieToPlay

[WindHunter]

9 hours ago, Fundus said:

Ok first you guys dont want multiple language sections on the forum to not split up the community and then you outsource balancing discussions?

I do not see how these are logically connected. One pertains to the fact that people speaking in different languages necessarily excludes others from the conversation and makes discussions difficult or impossible to follow. The other pertains to where people want to talk and discuss. While English-only has its own problems, we have found it is the best available solution out of a set of solutions, each of which come with their own tradeoffs.

Regarding forum versus discord discussions:
We wanted to, and tried, almost a year ago now to move most balance discussions to the forums in an attempt to involve more people in the process and promote more community participation. This attempt was wholly a failure. People do not read the forums as much, and those that do are substantially less inclined to respond and interact. Even those people who regularly contributed on the balancing discord, which is very active, stopped posting any suggestions on the forums. Faced with this, we started attempting to do both, forum posts and discord posts. Eventually, we just reverted back to the balancing discord, especially in light of the additional workload it places upon us to maintain both mediums. The forums lack both the community and the infrastructure to make discussions here fruitful. Discord allows us to organize discussions based on specific topics and then to keep them highlighted and up-to-date for as long as they are relevant in a way that is easy to follow and understand. The forums simply lack this necessary functionality. Additionally, discord promotes more participation, both formally and informally, and our balancing discord has cultivated an active and engaged community. Given all of these factors, and the additional benefit that you can access discord easily from a mobile app, as well as a desktop app and even your browser, discord has become the discussion place of choice of the community itself. We tried to move them to the forum, it did not work, so we went where the community was present. I realize that you have continually had something which has blocked you from wanting to engage with discussions in this manner, but considering that you can access the balancing discord server as easily from your browser as you can the forums, I strongly encourage you to join us over there. You will also then see just how much discussion happens between the community and devs on these and myriads of other topics. 

[Cocofang]

11 hours ago, Fundus said:

The last post in that topic is from April 29, 2021 and its not even in the Balance Discussions section.

Are you suggesting people would've brought up different points if it was? That the arguments would've changed one year later? What actually hasn't been said about these topics at this point? Even right here it devolved into yet another repeat with the same people talking about the same things ad neuseam. Some of which isn't even relevant anymore.

The discussion and community interaction was there, whether you like to acknowledge that or not. If anything the fact that part of it took place on Discord lead to more input not less. Also awfully selective to completely ignore all the times where things were adjusted or just downright thrown overboard based on community feedback. "Not what I wanted the result to be" or "Too few adjustments to the changes that count for me" does not equal "Nobody asks anyone about anything".

[Fundus]

52 minutes ago, Cocofang said:

Are you suggesting people would've brought up different points if it was? That the arguments would've changed one year later? What actually hasn't been said about these topics at this point? Even right here it devolved into yet another repeat with the same people talking about the same things ad neuseam. Some of which isn't even relevant anymore.

The discussion and community interaction was there, whether you like to acknowledge that or not. If anything the fact that part of it took place on Discord lead to more input not less. Also awfully selective to completely ignore all the times where things were adjusted or just downright thrown overboard based on community feedback. "Not what I wanted the result to be" or "Too few adjustments to the changes that count for me" does not equal "Nobody asks anyone about anything".

Im sure alot of players didnt even know about those changes before they were implemented putting notifications about balancing changes in the Events tab in game or creating a Balancing Changes tab could be a solution. In the old EA days everything regarding Battleforge was discussed on the forum id like to know what features make that Discord site so much better than the forum and why those features cant be implemented on the forum. I believe its just bad to split up the BF Community in 2 forums especially when it comes to important things like balancing changes but i might be wrong.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Fundus

[Danol]

Ok, I know I am late to the party. But since I don't like Discord, have played nature decks a lot lately (mostly rPvE) and want to share some thoughts on them, I'll just do it here.

Obligatory "Primeval Watcher should not require 3 nature orbs" complaint. This has really ruined some decks for me and I don't think it was neccessary in any way.

Besides that, there are some cards that I think don't perform as well as they should as well as general issues.

• Timeshifter Spirit. I really like this guy, he is basically a mobile Mark of the Keeper who can also heal. But there are so few situations that call for this card. He is pretty much limited to pure nature decks, and then only to T3, which is usually short to nonexistent in rPvE. I would love to use him more, so my suggestion is to give him the same speed buff as planned for Grove Spirit and maybe relax his orb restrictions.
• Nature needs something beefy in T2. It feels like there is a gap, compared to other pure decks.
• I would like to see some kind fo root network for support buildings that need to be activated. Like "link together two Fountains of Rebirth and the dormant one will activate once the active one is finished". Same could work for Healing Gardens or Shrine of Memory. Having to manually activate those buildings adds nothing but tedious micro-management once you built two of them and can have them active 100% of the time anyway, so it would be nice to get rid of it. Maybe slightly decrease their effects to compensate for the lacking downtime, but I don't think this is really neccessary.
• I think Giant Wyrm could use a slight buff. It is a straightforward attack unit that does nothing besides damage and it is not that good at it, given it's power cost. Sure, it's orb requirements are very nice so it is extremely well splashable, but this is irrelevant for pure nature decks and multi-color decks have better units to use. I rarely use this card and that's a shame - most other T4 dragons seem to get much more love. My suggestion is to slightly reduce its power cost. Maybe -5 for every update, so 285 in the end.
• I think Dryad should be affected by its own buff. I really like them in principle, but the fact that the Dryad itself becomes a kind of weak spon in your army because its own buff does not apply to it is a bit off-putting. If I, for example, go with a Windweaver plus blue Dryad combination, my Windweavers are noticeably more durable, but my weakest unit (in terms of suviveability), the Drayd itself, is not. This is not really a big deal, but it would be nice to have.
• Hurricane should affect medium flying units. Not for balance purposes, I think the card is fine balance-wise atm, but it just feels wrong that units like a Bandit Skyrake can fly through a Hurricane as if it's a sunny day. I'd slightly increase power costs to balance it out.

Besides that I'd really love to see some use for root networks in rPvE, but I think this is more a question of "will we get a defensive rPvE mode", because root networks naturally should be more of a defensive tool in my mind.