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Comments
Closer dps=/=balance. I also don't see any data that supports the game is closer to balanced with the talents anyways. The performance of the classes in KR is not just altered due to talents, keep in mind they all play with fairly similar and low ping, in NA we do not have that luxury and some classes suffer more than others from desyncs, delays, and general packet loss problems that occur more often with out infrastructure.
No where have I mentioned all classes being 100% equal. It is a fact that even if you have two classes performing in a similar range in instance A the gap could widen in instance B with 0 changes made to either classes, and this has in fact happened. Berserker for one example saw a pretty wide average dps in two different instances of the same patch. Then you have HH that functions differently than RMHM enough that Gunner can be perceived as competitive there while being trash in RMHM.
As for the debuff comment, that is exactly my point. You can't look at strictly just dps, because each class has had its own set of strengths. Despite the fact Lancer is vastly superior in literally every single way for boss fights, guess who NA thinks is the OP tank? That's right Brawler just because personal dps is all people look at. On the subject of Brawler, their dps varies extremely widely depending on the boss fight for another example. What do you do when Brawler has to deal with a boss that hardly attacks? Do you buff them and nerf them again when it's a patch where they attack often? What if a patch consists of bosses that do both? How do you balance desyncs that are going to occur on NA for certain abilities?
Also what skill level are you using to determine what is balance? Your example of Warrior, they were still taken to speed runs on NA before they even got buffed the first time a while back, suggesting their debuff, and ability to enrage the boss, made up for the lowered personal dps, yet you think otherwise. Archer was also taken to some speed runs despite being "low tier" according to the average player base. Does this mean you're looking at how the average player base performs to determine what is balanced or not? Should you simplify all class mechanics like resource generation (Edge, WP, Chi) and remove Brawler's perfect block mechanic just to achieve balance in a mediocre setting without breaking them at higher skill levels?
Now those are strawmen. The examples I gave are actually valid definitions that relate to class balance, not complete nonsense that have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this conversation.
And you'll never get it, because (as they've said all along) they balance classes for the common/global build (i.e. the one that every region gets, without consideration for any publisher-specific variations). So, once again, this conversation is completely and utterly useless.
If there is something in particular that exists in the talent system that is needed to make the game more balanced in NA (and it really would make it more balanced), that is the feedback that needs to be sent, and that change would have to be made in the global build (including Korea). It's useless to say "hey BHS, you can never balance the game as long as you keep talents in Korea"; you might think they don't care about our opinions in general, but there's nothing they'd care about less than our opinions on their dev process.
The crit resist difference does not apply to the case of Berserker, I only used HH for a more recent example. However you can go to the previous season and you would see the differences in average dps for each class was different depending on the instances. Some instances also favor range, with others favoring melee. Some bosses a Brawler can achieve high enough dps that it can compete with a Lancer as well, and for most of them they can't. All bosses are not the same, even if you gave them similar crit resistances there would still be variances. Unfortunately my old desktop is a few thousand miles away so I can't bring up the data from before.
Each class still has pretty wide variance in mobility, slapping on a high cool down dash, where a boss could random aggro multiple times, isn't going to do a whole lot. Also, it's not like dps is all that is imbalanced, the usefulness and reliability of each tank class is pretty wide, and the difference between Priest and Mystic is constantly varied. Even if say you buffed Berserker's damage, why would you want one when Lancer is not only as good but more reliable? Reliability and ease of use is partly why Lancer is more common for RMHM. The same is true for Mystic, their motes make literally anything so easy, and guess which healer keeps receiving buffs and QoL changes? That's right, Mystic. How would you balance out Lancer, Berserker, Warrior, and Brawler, along with Priest vs Mystic without making them all function the same?
I had said anytime there is utility involved, you can not have a class with utility have the same personal dps as one without it. This is one of the reasons Lancer should have THE lowest personal dps of every single class that deals damage. However, they have very high dps when performed at a peak level, and yet the community constantly asks for Lancer buffs. Utility is not all you can look at either.
I am talking about that version of Warrior, they were apart of the fastest runs despite being the "lowest" dps, and by the way, they were not the lowest dps at the time.
Increasing the window, or lowering the effectiveness is the same thing as simplifying it... You're either making it easier to do, or not worth doing. The end result is it becomes easier to achieve peak performance. This also effectively makes the class less interesting to play all around. Sacrificing how good a class feels in the name of balance for a shortcut probably results in more dissatisfaction than imbalance itself does. Again, I will use Berserker as an example, even when it is performing well, and all the qol it received over time to be more reliable, it is still an all around unpopular class. Why? Because it doesn't feel good to play even if it is strong. This is why these "revamps" aren't only straight buffs, they have animation changes specifically for the appeal factor.
At the end of the day this is an MMORPG, pve wise any sort of reasonable balance isn't going to ever be achieved until all classes and instances are homogenized; however, doing so would make the game bland as Counterpoint said.
More importantly, on the matter of talents, no one has shown the dps gap between the classes for Korea.
It should not be "bewildering" at all. The fact that people are so focused on having near-identical DPS outputs under the guise of that meaning "the classes are balanced" is part of what results in this sort of race towards similarity in the classes. It's what a lot of people have argued for (in this and many other MMOs), but that doesn't mean I think it's the right way to do things. And this is exactly why I think it's very important to clarify what is meant when we talk about "class balance" -- it's not as obvious as you are arguing that it is.
The other definitions I provided are based on the threads we see on the forum all the time. You may think them completely invalid, but they're perspectives that need to be considered if we want to get the game to a point where the overall perception is that the classes are balanced.
They care to the degree that we're one voice at a table of many. There have been changes made to the game based on feedback specifically from our market, when other markets agreed that our feedback made sense. But it's clear that they're not that interested in doing things for us specifically. That's why problems have to be stated in such a way that they can change the build worldwide to address the issue. Arguing that they have to do special balancing for us is a total nonstarter.
Even if we just looked only at damage as the only thing that matters, it's still a multidimensional equation.
If the talent system were designed with some subtlety, it would be trying to give people different options or play styles that have different benefits on your damage in different circumstances. It would be contextual or situational so that there's some sort of trade off (or a reason for prioritizing one set of talents over another).
Otherwise, all that really matters is that the "net change" for each class at "optimal talents" be equalized. Then it'd be no different than having "class balance" at level 65, while also having "class balance" at level 70 (which in this case would be "65+talents"). You could indeed balance for both, although it'd be extra work. Obviously it would not work if the talents for Class A give a global net DPS boost, and Class B get no net boost.
But this is why it's important that talents can't just be a runaway train in the first place, and why the whole talent system is flawed. IMO, it was a questionable idea with terrible implementation.
That was never actually my answer. My answer was that talking about talents is a complete waste of our time. It still is. You're not going to win any argument trying to tell BHS how to do their job (because that's something they truly don't want to hear from you or me). The only hope is to focus on the concrete problems. They've told us they don't balance around talents, yet the classes still have balance problems. That is the problem.
Let's say that in Base Build your class achieves damage level of 5000, and this applies equally to all DPS classes (they are "balanced").
And then let's say that, with optimal Talent configuration, the net effect is a damage level of 5500. The way it accomplishes the increase is different for each class (i.e. which skills get boosted and in what way). But if the boost with talents applies equally to all DPS classes, then they are once again "balanced".
So, if the talent system were designed with balance in mind (and under your theorycrafting model where there is one and only one optimal build), it is completely possible to have two different balances at the same time (one with talents that's balanced to itself, and one without talents that's balanced to itself). But that isn't the way the talent system is at the moment, which is just one of its many flaws.
(And well, furthermore, with a true branching talent system, you could still have multiple parallel optimal balance points, but that'd require a much deeper change to the game.)
In other words, you keep putting the two at odds with other, but they needn't be. It only is because they didn't design it properly.
Again, I know you think this is immaterial to the technical argument you want to have about class balance by the raw numbers. But the amount of players who are really at that level of gameplay is actually quite small. Most of the arguments on the forum about class balance are not able to discount all these many other factors.
But this is exactly why worrying about talents is not our problem.
BHS says that they balance the game without talents, which either means they are saying that a) the game with talents is not balanced, or b) the game with talents has an alternate balance that cancels itself out. So if our game is not balanced, talents has nothing to do with it -- according to them. So any arguments we put forward as players can't be like "hey, you're a lying sack of [filtered], so let me tell you what you need to do". We need to play in their court.
It may help to keep in mind where I'm coming from in this conversation (and in general on the forum). What I care about is formulating an argument I can raise to EME about what the problems are in such a way that will be seen as objective so that it can be escalated and passed along. All the posturing and accusations and speculation and whatever are interesting, but pointless. EME and BHS will definitely just ignore it all. You may argue that they'll ignore everything anyway, and that may be so, but I have to try. So that's why it's useless to say "our game will never be balanced unless you get rid of talents"; that's up to them to decide. What we can say is "this class is underperforming and we think it needs that to fix it". That's objective feedback that can be passed up the chain. Whether they act on it or not... who knows.
A long and arguably-pointless discussion about semantics, mostly. lol
but lancers are easy to use compared to brawlers.
Then, I can pretty much guarantee this feedback will never be listened to. They will say, as they've always said: "we balance this game without considering talents, as that is the game that is distributed worldwide. The talent system will never leave Korea." Whatever you think about the veracity of their response, the argument is dead in the water. No matter how right you think you are about the cause, you have to focus on the symptom ("tell me where it hurts") and let them figure it out. Everything is political.