Perhaps Balance Is The Answer? (Duh?) (in General)

So, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the balance is this game, the "power" of certain items or skills or mechanics over other things. But, whether or not these things ARE too powerful (This thread will not be addressing that subject).

But, perhaps instead of spending so much of our time thinking of what's wrong with this game, we should just move on and trust Jon for awhile (le gasp!?)

So, here are about 20 million suggestions for the game in the future. Some of them don't need to take place for a long, long time. Others.... Well, you decide for yourself. I hope you enjoy at least some of them. Comment on what you like. I'm sure alot of the ideas will be repeated.

- Rolling bonus, keeping pace with Ranger. This would replace the NCB. It would NOT replace the NUB. They still need a bonus to cash. This idea has been suggested many times, and, I believe, is quite a good one. Not to say that the N*B is wrong, but this system seems more effective.

- Delayed or extended NUB. Make it last 6 months. Or give them a month before it starts. OR, and I really like this idea, give them NUB starting the day they pay supportership. This way, they determine when the NUB starts, Jon makes more money (Always a plus, neh?), and by the time they're at that point they have a much better shot at their NUB.

- I'd like to see more items with affects based on using the time over boosting the item. Things like AoI, TSA, EH, CGI, AoF. These items give people with less money a way to combat those with more. It provides an interesting alternative for people with less money a way to get powerfu affects without USD. A few suggestions:
---- A new armor slot: Talismans". These could be bought and have a variety of affects on the equipped minions. The idea would be to have a-lot of them for every minion class to promote uniqueness, deeper strategy, and that ache people have when deciding between two things. You know the ache I'm talking about ;P A few examples of this:
Whet Stone: Gives equipped weapon an added vorpal effect of 2%. If the minion is using a Vorpal Blade, the affect doubles.
Thumb Ring: The affect of archery on equipped minion is automatically raised by .03. This mean, to get the full affect, you'd only have to invest the exp needed to get to .97
Lava Rock: Equipped minion's DD spell splashes on to one minion on the team for 1% of spell damage. This damage cannot be reduce by AC. Would not apply to decay. If equipped on a CoC mage, damage is decrease on the leading minion hit, by increased on the rest. With fireball, all damage dealt would be increaed by 1%.

Things like that. Small things, but ones that when used appropriately become quite influential to battles. If you find the above ideas too powerful... Well... Not like this is a changelog thread, so cut the flamethrowers off.

- A new spell added. There have been hundreds of ideas around this. Vampiric Touch, Chain Lightning, etc, etc.

- A new shield, non power shield or power shield, whatever. But the current ones are only good if you have tons of money. *waves his buckler furiously)..

- A Character tournament slot. I want 4 farms. And I want to eat my cake. So I think a seperate slot for just tournament characters would definitely promote involvement in them.

- More consumables. This idea has been talked about alot.
------ Apples- Regenerates 1% of max health per round. Uses one apple.
------ Cherry Bomb- Adds 1% of your DX to damage dealt every round. What this means is that if you had a tank with 5 million DX and 20 ST, you'd hit for 50k damage, as many times as you hit. An interesting idea, I think.
------ Pants(seriously)- A pair of pants lasts through one battle. It adds a 4 points of AC. Simple and happy ^.^
------ Silk HandWraps- Lasts through one battle. Reduces AMF on a mage by 1% of what it casts for. Or by an automatic .01. Whichever.


I have tons of ideas. But I'm busy right now. So I'll finish later. Besides, I've given enough ideas. If they're met positively (or at least they don't get served back to me extra crispeh) I'll post more. Enjoy =D

Sorry for spelling errors. I tried to go back to correct them, but my computer tried to erase it. I didn't want to lose it, so I just posted it. Don't kill me for not copy and pasting and blahhhh.

I think we should let Jon be the creator...If I were Jon, i would find the constant recursion of ways to "fix" the problems, insulting. We should lay off and let him do the thinking,I am happy with the way the game is now, and I feel that everyone should be greatfull for what we have. This is not meant to be offense towards GW, but that is my opinion and I thought I should voice it as well.

variety is never the answer. having a lot of "talisman" to choose from doesn't mean that they will all be used. Inevitably, some will just be flat out better than others, and "balanced" by price disparity. e.g. Tier 1 talisman will just be better than Tier 2 talisman, except player charges you more for it. Hence to optimise a build, you don't have that many choice.
e.g. at the moment, BG is broken and deals too much damage. TG is functioning correctly. When given the choice, BG is better. now add a new "armor" that has 10 base AC and no +ST. It will be better than TG as a wall armor etc. Try thinking of 30ish effects that are "unique". I believe it's just not possible.

I agree with that, Salvatore. Re-read the beginning of the post. All I'm giving here is a series of suggestions that I feel would make the game more fun =D


I've never once assumed that I was a any sort of creator, lol. I just thought these things would be cool in the game.

Look at it this way, Salvatore: How much do you think Jonathan plays Carnage Blender? Does he really have time to play himself and use all the strategies we do to see how balanced everything is?

He can do the formulas and make everything the way he wants it so that it ought to be balanced, but he won't know for 100% sure until he sees reactions, posting of tests, fight logs, and the general feedback of the community. I am sure sometimes it comes off as insulting, but for the most part, it's probably good for the game.

after playing many mmorpg's over the last ten years (ac, daoc, ao, eve, coh, wow, swg, eqoa, eq2, mom & cb2 to name a few) i have come to the conclusion that games where the developers listen to the fan base too little are doomed to failure but also when they listen too much the same holds true.

there seems to be a fine line between listening to the users and having a vision. so far jon has done amazingly well. while i have some ideas for the game, i do trust his vision as i have stated before. he has a very difficult task taking all of the complaining and trying to decide if it is natural angst over the rock paper scissors design of the game (no one strategy wins against all, except at the highest level) or if it is a true imbalance in the game.

he also then has to balance his time going in to the game and decide to give us new usability features (new design of interface or facebook widget) or focus on balance issues that never seem to end, especially if he implements new items (robf and amulets). all in all i believe he does an excellent job and give kudos to him for a great game that i have now enjoyed for almost five years which is longer than i have stuck with any of the other games mentioned above.

one more thing though, as i stated in the other thread, if a rolling bonus is implemented, it could replace the xp side of the nub and the time period of free ba could be adjusted to compensate for the cash rewards, in effect not charging as much cb cash would work out to the same as giving more cb cash. however it would only benefit them if they are fighting all of their fights and not if they are just trying to horde cash to sell out.

Wow, dudemus. I think I agree with everything you just said. -applause-

Oh yeah, and I'm very much largely in favor of a new shield. We could even call it a...Razor Shield? *peers at the past polls*

Dudemus, awesome points there.
And GW, you do have some great idea's. I would like some of them implemented ;)

"Try thinking of 30ish effects that are "unique". I believe it's just not possible." --PK

There was a thread a couple weeks ago where we came up with abilities and uses to throw on to a bunch of the currently-existing items. I'm pretty sure they were unique.

I also remember, way back when, suggesting a "Freakin Huge Scimitar" as a melee weapon, that cuts you so bad that it reduces your DX in a fashion similar to an Axbow. Now, that's not a unique effect, but it's unique as far as melee goes.