Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

FE added to giants is a nerf.

AlwaysSummer Day wrote:FE added to giants is a nerf.

Then everyone got a nerf.

All casters of all races got one, all sneaks got one, all non casters got one etc... Everyone should be unhappy

mrm3ntalist wrote:

Thids wrote:@mrm you can have all the opinions you want, I am saying that this particular issue should have never been handled by the QC.

Changing a spell should not be commented by the QC? I think you are very wrong on that. By the way, QC does not handle things. The admins and devs do.

Now for a silly comment.

Maybe they should just remove the spell. Not like sneaks get their stealth kits. There disguise bonus to stealth. Their listening kits. Their situation bonus abilities. There's a list of twenty things a rogue has access to in pnp that we do not have IG. Yet spells. Man gotta have them all.

I mean people want to shout balance and fair. .

AlwaysSummer Day wrote:FE added to giants is a nerf.

So is not being able to sneak attack giant commanders.

Thids wrote:And I'm still unsure how you ended up with +0 AC gain. You sure you checked out all the sneak items in the new store?

I have indeed, and now that I look a little closer I suppose my AC might go up after all... depending on which armor I buy. Theoretically speaking I can go from having 28 AC to either 31 or 32(in full stealth mode). If this is the monstrous buff you were referring to... well, if I'm sneaking I sure as hell don't benefit from the AC, but if I fumble my HiPS timing or get sloppy... I'm going down in the same "sack of hammers" manner that I do currently.

At least that rip-roaring 32 AC will save me from the tigers north of Beregost! ... too bad my will save is still 9, and nothing quite says OP like your level 30 pissing his pants from the roar of a CR 10 monster.

How is spell mechanics, stealth mechanics or any mechanics not something QC should comment on? Stealth only useful for RP? Um, any truly stealth / hips character (other than hips mages I suppose) is pretty much dead meat without stealth in pve.

The simple FACT is that a TON of content comes through QC forums. This content comes from DM's, Developers, Player's, PM's forwarded six different times before they land in our inbox, etc. We are asked to review items and we do, we discuss it, we argue a bit, we hold votes, rarely do we all agree in the end on all outcomes, but I think in the end most of what makes it to the server that has gone fully through the QC process is fairly balanced with a consideration that some decisions are specifically made where balance concerns have been called out, but either the RP or the overall good of the server is considered better for it. It is not some simple methodology where QC says "we approve!" and then it goes in. Many decisions have both RP and mechanical parts which require discussions that are held separately by DM staff and QC in separate forums. The point is that decisions are made with a fairly large group and we have our list of prioritized items to test and review. Sometimes that matches up with an individuals list, but most often there are some things folks like and other things folks don't like.

Case in point, it is easy to call out that we 'failed' to nerf Favored Souls, but go back and read through that discussion. The vast majority of INDIVIDUAL posters were either against nerfing it or didn't really care. However, the vocal minority had far more posts, which may make it seem like the community as a whole was mostly in favor of the nerf. This coming from one of the originally most vocal QC members that WANTED to nerf them (and hard). However, after a lot of discussion and arguments I changed my mind because I was willing to admit that, while I personally still feel they are OP with generally weak RP -- not to say there aren't fantastic players that have FS, quite the opposite, but simply that there are a greater number out there than realistically I feel there should be -- I also need to be cognizant that some players truly enjoy the class and what is the actual benefit to nerfing them? The population of Bards increases? Or Dragon Druids? Or whatever other class comes next? At the end of the day, there is a limited number of man days that will be put toward changes to the server in any given month/year. I felt that QC, DEV and others time was better spent putting those man days toward buffing the Barbarian (fingers crossed it goes in soon!), moving on to do some fun things for other classes like Swashbuckler and hopefully some stuff for rogues and the like.

My point in this (probably too long) rant is this: All humans are biased, but that does not mean as a whole that QC makes decisions based on our personal bias. Anyone who reads this can believe me or not, I know I won't convince those that only believe the 'right' decision was made when it is the decision that they personally would have made (often with incomplete or inaccurate information). I am (not really) happy to admit that I don't have all the answers and I do not always have the best ideas. That is the purpose of having discussion in a semi-professional manner. So that during the discourse we can bring up our points and counter-points and, hopefully come to the best overall conclusion. In some player's eyes maybe we do a horrible job... I think the player counter up top tells a different story though, seems the server is pretty popular these days, OP Favored Souls, undetectable OP'd sneaks (Sorry, that is hilarious!) and all...

Let's keep the conversation as polite and as free from argument as we can.

It's always fair for the player base to ask why changes were made, and for us to provide them with our reasoning for those changes.

If there's an opinion among some players that QC needs broader perspectives, then I would certainly welcome more people to apply for positions on QC. All you need is some comfort with the technical side of play, and a willingness to test content for and offer feedback to the devs. It's hard work, but it can be fun, and you frequently get to sneak peek new content before anyone else!

Mallore wrote:So is not being able to sneak attack giant commanders.

The only remedy for this is epic precision I'm afraid. And, like you mentioned, a great deal of the challenging content on the server is difficult for low to mid level sneaks to deal with due to sneak attack immunity, DR, and the like. This basically pigeonholes builds that rely on sneak attacks into taking epic precision and/or expose weakness. Needless to say, it doesn't leave the players of these types of builds with many options for feats in the epic levels, because without those two feats you will be effectively useless as a rogue/sneak attacker, even at level 30. Have a cool concept build idea for a sneak? Psshh, fuggedaboudit... sneak building rule #1 on BG: build to sneak past everything + kill monsters as fast as you can or else it's fugue on repeat for your little tip-toe'er.

*Edit*

chad878262 wrote:Stealth only useful for RP? Um, any truly stealth / hips character (other than hips mages I suppose) is pretty much dead meat without stealth in pve.

See?

Whew... this thread went way off the rails!

well as probably one of the most unbiased people on the forums (totally biased comment) i think its fairly save to say that any bias comments made on QC forums have never dragged a topic to exceed 10 pages discussion

it may have brought up a different issue and then based off of that may have dragged out something, but like nothing gets dragged out because someone is biased

the amp and C&C change was a simple numbers game, that was it

when you look at all of the detection spells vs all of the stealth spells it turns out hide and spot are actually pretty well balanced which is why nothing was touched; listen and move slightly tho, everyone knows that gap was laughable and the sole reason of the gap was +20 amp, which one of the original suggestions was simply to remove amp which would have easily solved the issue

another suggestion was to you know, actually add more MS spells, but most of us know how much of a pain in the ass for stealths to get anything so as you may imagine, that didnt happen

the suggestion that was more feasible was cutting amp in half which would have taken the gap with spells from +30 down to +20, which is still a lot and eventually turned into it being cut in half and not stacking with C&C which brought it down to like slightly over +10 in favor of listen and removed the need to add more stealth spells, or buff pass without a trace which was another suggestion

and as pointed out pages back this was all really started because another detection spell which was shot down was thrown in game anyway

either way its hard to be biased with numbers so no one can really claim that in this case, the only bias thing was that the end result had to favor detection, and all of the suggested changes always favored detection

even that you really can call bias because things being equal will always favor detection, thats not bias thats normal

If you only knew how much work I put into getting a decision made on how we can best balance the spells.