Auto-Balancing

There are hundreds of race/class/specialty/cabal/subcabal combos, but how many of them get played? A dozen? two dozen? In my personal opinion, its gotten to the point where if you aren't rolling a power combo its challenging to even be competitive. That's because half the combos aren't viable, and some of the combos are just ridiculously powerful. 

So I propose a fairly simple system, wherein each Class, Race, Cabal, and Subcabal, as well as the interaction between each of these is essentially assigned a viability score.

Every combo starts at some baseline, let's say 100. 

Each time a PK happens, the viability score of that combo drops very slightly. Each time a combo is PKd, the viability of that combo increases.

We tie the viability score into the underlying probability (roll) system of the mud, at a deep level. If Ogre Warriors are trashing FL, every successful one causes their viability score to drop, until all of a sudden ogre warriors are an underpowered combo. Over time, they rise back up. If faerie warriors are all failing they will slowly rise and become more and more powerful. The combos that are all successful all become weaker automatically, and the unplayed or constantly dominated combos become more powerful automatically. It would be slow enough that no one character is shaking the balance, but at a high level enough contribute so the combo gets "auto-balanced". Combos that are repeatedly rolling the pbase will fall down to a point where they aren't anymore.

This would have to tie into underlying rolls for damage, saves against spells, defenses, losing concentration, etc.

My problem with this would be the opportunity to be good enough to nerf yourself. Remember a lot of it isn't the combo, but the player.

13 minutes ago, MasterOfPie said:

My problem with this would be the opportunity to be good enough to nerf yourself. Remember a lot of it isn't the combo, but the player.

We could hold a player's pks until that characters goes "inactive", but we'd have to define inactive. Rare purge?

Yes to automatic metrics, no to automatic balancing in this form.

Why?

1. If it is tied to a specific combo (religion, align, level, perk, race, class, path, subcabal, cabal rank):

You'll find that the balancing needs to adjust on very low thresholds (i.g. in the 10s or 100s of PKs). You'll see large dips after certain characters are successful, but they won't really be noticed outside of that character, as the likelihood of an exact same combo isn't that high. More than likely, it would be erased by the aggregate of non-as-successful people playing the same combo.

1. If you tie it to general combos (ignoring align, ignoring path, or ignoring the current cabal rank):

The balancing will be thrown off by the amount of your 'estimation'. For example, if a certain combo doesn't come into power unless it is in a certain subcabal at a certain rank, the numbers will be greatly skewed. This is the case for most combos that you'd want to balance this way.

1. Since our playerbase is statistically tiny, the numbers will be determined heavily by individual player skill, rather than the intended aggregate strength of the combo. It would thus be very inaccurate.

2. This system does not account for equipment (worn or even just consumables), one of the most important aspects of PK balance.

3. Combos are not isolated. The strength of a combo is greatly determined by the presence of other combos. Ogre warriors are all great until clerics show up. Your avatar might be trashing the place until a Watcher shows up. What about having strong cabalmates? It certainly makes a difference. This system also can't take into account the interplay between combos (both friendly and adversarial) which is a requirement if you want to have a self-adjusting system.

4. Even if the system were to be implemented perfectly, the system itself would become a balance variable. It would be treated like any other PK mechanic and subsequently be exploited to no real gain as per your intentions.

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I do wholeheartedly agree with your thoughts on rebalancing or eliminating many of the lesser combos, however. Right now, they are mostly newbie traps.

this would make anything that requires kills to get stronger to become incredibly difficult.

I think you guys are imagining these happening alot faster than I was thinking.

At its core, the +/- system is  kills - deaths in pk. I was thinking something like  an imbalance of 100 pks = 1% drop.  It would take months or years for a significant trend to emerge-- but it would eventually emerge and I expect would "stabilize" at some point where things aren't changing very much, because the combo drops/rises to a point where its kill - death is roughly zero.

I don't think everything has to be equal to be fair.

Are the bigger, stronger races more suited as warriors? Seems alright to me.

Are the dimwits not the most apt spellcasters?

I would love to see some measures taken to make medium-sized melees a bit more viable in the game (although there's some decent qrace ones out there at the moment), such as elf archers or feral warriors, much in the same way that the success of a cleric/caster is more determined on skill than race choice (i.e a human, avian, faerie, or gnome invoker are roughly the same power level, whereas the half-elf, feral, or drow warrior will never come close to the levels of an ogre or giant). I would like to see for a skill that reduces the impact of size from lagging attacks for warriors, rangers, and berserkers, effectively reducing the size of larger opponents by one when struck by a bash/bodyslam/etc. Rogue/hybrid classes would still be susceptible to all the lag, and the halfling warriors/rangers would actually maybe get a command in every so often when fighting an enlarged giant.

Look at the ninja rework.

Lets consider your plan.

Lets say it looks at 100 pks across a combo, I choose Feral Ninja.

We saw at least a dozen unsuccessful Kotrag wannabes.

They were NOT Kotrag, many failed, many died.

By the end of player intrigue alone, Kotrag would have gotten a boost from your Idea.

Now all of the feral ninjas gave up, so Kotrag is the only one left. Well Yesterday anyway.

So it will take forever for this ONE feral to increase the defecit created by so many explorers.

Basically, increasing the best player of any given combo's chances to be successful.

Its a nice concept, but the fruit it bares may be sour.

11 hours ago, Lexi said:

I don't think everything has to be equal to be fair.

Are the bigger, stronger races more suited as warriors? Seems alright to me.

Are the dimwits not the most apt spellcasters?

I strongly agree that fair need not be equal.

I also agree that not every combo should be a viable one. Some races are not suited to some classes.

That said, the problem comes down to a certain contradiction given:

1. If a race/class combo is offered as a base choice, it is intended to be fairly balanced.

2. If a race/class combo is not offered as a base choice, it is not intended to be balanced.

yet,

1. We offer race/class combinations as base choices that are not intended to be balanced.

We do not offer fire giant invokers. Therefore, players don't expect them to be at all balanced. If you want to do one for RP reasons, you are free to do so and will have to accept that you will be certainly gimped out of any PK competitiveness.

If a combination is offered, it should be competitive as per the intended balance of the game. If a combo is not competitive, but still offered, that choice is a bad choice, thereby becoming a trap to players who otherwise expect offered selections to be balanced. Who is by definition every player who doesn't know better, aka newbies.

Do we offer class paths, selections, etc. that are bad choices? Maybe, but not certainly not intentionally. The overall goal is, and should be, to make every choice viable. If a certain path choice is terrible, we expect it to be rebalanced at some point or removed. Why are race/class combos different? This is the inconsistency.

My issue is with combos that are offered as base choices but are NOT even intended to be balanced or acknowledged as out of balance.

For example, gnome warriors, faerie thieves, and half-elven rangers should either be:

1. Made competitive and in line with other choices.

or

1. Removed from base choices and therefore be acknowledged as out of balance.

Note: I am NOT saying that you should make gnome warriors equal to ogre/giant warriors. I've been completely misunderstood as making this argument in the past (yes, I've brought this particular issue up several times before). I certainly do not want them EQUAL. I want them fairly BALANCED -IF- they are offered as a base choice. That is, a gnome warrior should have different options or be stronger against different combos than a giant warrior, if offered as a base selection. The combo needs to have some reason to be chosen beyond "RP". Pure RP reasons are rightfully limited to application only.

I also do not have a major problem with certain race/classes being out of balance. Eventually, they will be looked at/rebalanced. However, if you acknowledge that a race/class option is intended to be uncompetitive by design (and therefore will be ignored - this is the argument that small warriors should be worse than giant ones), then I have a problem with that. At that point, you should really just remove the option and make it by application only.