I think he’s pulling a classic meta and reading it without actually responding
I wonder what’s happening in the balancecord rn
Yeah perfectly explained on the transparency parts
i mourn these features daily
Hi, Former BTeam Member here. I should probably preface this with the fact that I hold no ill will against the BTeam I have a lot of respect for them attempting to balance this game, I left because it wasn’t for me. Though I did want to answer this as I thought maybe I could provide some unique insight. I want to start this with what I believe you guys on the balance team are doing well.
You all are doing gods work in the herculean task of balancing this game in terms of class interactions. It’s something that goes unnoticed but in a game with as much customizability in terms of builds as Arcane Odyssey, it’s a lot harder than it seems to balance the game with this mess of working parts. Elysium PvP outside of all the buggy builds, which frankly is not your problem to deal with, has been pretty good in terms of how fair it feels and this is something I don’t think you get enough credit for.
Onto the bad, I feel like the need for balance in this game has come at the cost of whether something is fun or not. Light Conjurer for example is arguably the most balanced its been, yet it does not feel fun to play as or against. This can be said about a multitude of things such as Long DoTs, Agility, Surge, Mage, Conjurer, Vitality Builds. While some of these vary in strength from each other, even if they were equally balanced they still wouldn’t be fun to fight against, and I feel this is a massive problem. AO’s PvP has been just unfun lately, yes the bugs contribute to that but you can only chase someone around the Elysium as they pelt projectiles at you so much before you start to hate it.
I won’t comment on the biggest flaw of the Balance Team in a public forum post, but if its something that anyone on the Balance Team would want to discuss just shoot me a DM. I think we both know I’ve discussed something with a Balance Team Member before otherwise I wouldn’t have been on the team. I won’t get into any specifics as it’d be a waste of our time.
Anyway, I just wanted to wish you all the best of luck in balancing this game. For those who aren’t on the team just know this is a lot harder of a task than you’d expect it to be.
3 Likes
Your post seems semi disengenuine. I know you mean well. But you could’ve just pm’d a bteam member this and talked to them directly if you really cared. This public post saying they’re “herculean” and “god send” seems like your trying really hard to be on their good side. And then asking them to pm if they want to know about their faults is just not something a freind does they talk to their friends directly. I’ll just assume you really do have good intentions thoe. Have a good day 
The thing is I don’t care for the balance of this game anymore, hence I’m just saying this publicly. I’m saying its a brutal task partially as hyperbole but also because I’ve seen the inside of it and things turned out to be a lot harder than it looks and often times they get flak when I don’t think they deserve it, typically on certain changes. I’ve read some of your complaints about the BTeam though and I will say I agree their communication could use some work. Though I’m not in a position to do anything about it. I only meant the best and if this came across as ingenuine then that’s totally on me. You’re right though I should just make my thoughts known to them directly, none of this goofy ass bullshit. Have a good day man. 
How so
There are many ways it could go wrong, if you want us to be informed, you should probably specify
I’m currently making a EP formula for Meta that is quadratic and calculus. The math is kinda grueling to do ngl. It’s doable but takes time. I don’t know much about the other formulas Meta did but I assume they are of similar difficulty.
Good news is the formula im doing should make every playstyle equal across the board at least math wise. its kind of hard to determine power = size = speed
I wont get to into detail about it (unless you want me to) but there’s a lot of factors that it accounts for that when done should make balancing anything in the future stat wise a lot easier.
Do it
I won’t understand it, but I like viewing the incomprehensible runes
Last thing I have to say is I know I come off as harsh on the Bteam but thats just how the truth is it’s not pretty. I personally like Meta as a person seems like a chill down to earth guy, but he signed himself up for a role that has responsibilities he has to fill. So whatever he fails to do is on him. By any means is failing a bad thing it just takes humility to learn from it 
Well let’s start at surface level. Say that Berserker is overpowered, but Warlord and Warlock are fine, and Juggernaut is terrible. You can’t nerf Fighting Style skills as it would harm Warlord and Warlock, and make Juggernaut Unplayable. Which causes a strange situation where you need to be incredibly careful about your changes otherwise the ripple effect will hit something else.
Furthermore, the Imbues cause a slew of problems in balancing as Light Imbue proved to be crazy powerful, but Light Magic itself wasn’t quite as broken. So theres a problem there that needs to be addressed, which results in a not so intuitive change which other magics need to follow, most notably positive speed magics.
Then theres Warrior in particular and its relation to Warlord and Conjurer, where Warrior is absolutely bizarre in terms of its size, but the other two feel less oppressive, so nerfing base size doesnt feel right nor does nerfing the scaling, but then that leaves you with the only thing possible to change with warrior is its Awakening, which is 3 whole stats so the wiggle room is pretty marginal.
Then there’s the interactions the classes have with eachother, Iron Leg Warlord is incredibly strong right now yet can be invalidated by a passive playstyle on a build that’s not particularly strong. so do you buff the weak build? but then IronLord cant do shit, do you nerf IronLord? but then the matchup feels even worse. And god forbid you buff IronLord. Which leads to a bunch of changes for the match up, all of which causing chaos in other matchups which then need to be addressed. Its like a big game of whack-a-mole.
Not to mention nerfing something somewhere affects it elsewhere too. you cant just drop a damage nerf onto Iron Leg for being too dominant on Warlord and Berserker because it’s not dominant on Savant, same thing with buffing. Buffing something that’s weak somewhere proves to be insane elsewhere. for example buffing Sailor’s Fist because its under performing compared to other FS on Berserker and Warlord, makes it a calamity for the entire update because Warlock and Juggernaut exist.
The BTeam has to tread very carefully with their changes as whatever goes through, we’re stuck with for an entire patch. And Vetex has made it very clear he does not plan on making any updates specifically dedicated to PvP. Not to mention its a huge challenge to try and balance the new skills as they come. Or to balance around bugs that we dont know whether they’ll be fixed, unfixed, or pop up as new ones. A lot of this sounds like typical Balancing Struggles but AO is a strange case where everything is tied to 4 others and the ripple effects of one small change are huge and the last thing they want is to cause another 1.16.7 where the meta is terrible.
There’s also the problem of being not “official” as it was put previously, which makes communication a struggle. I think we all remember the infamous picture of a change being backburnered for no reason provided. As well as the complaints of changes being skipped on the balance doc. It’s rough, but despite the communication issues with vetex and the game being absolutely miserable to balance, they still manage and I personally think its commendable.
2 Likes
So naturally the solution is to nerf thermo
to be honest I got nothing
You are absolutely right, nerf thermo.
1 Like
There you have it folks, the entire balance team process in 3 posts
They just get confused and panic and nerf thermo
Yet somehow half the community consistently thinks it’s justified
I’ve got a thermo jugg rn and I’m pretty sure 4 way vitalisavant is better 
Holy shit, Iron Leg has been destroying everybody this whole patch, Passive Play is at an all time high, and bugs are everywhere We gotta nerf Thermo!
2 Likes
lol I’m like that too.
Well, first off, the Balance team is already headed in the right direction as of now. They nerfed speed affinities and are buffing attack speed scaling which will give stat builds more diverse capabilities. It is heading in the right direction but the current changes are mostly off a whim because of the glaring fault that is attack speed affinities and as a stat in itself multiplicates damage per second. With enough attack speed you can fire 2-3 attacks at the same time a normal build could throw out one, which makes it multiplicative. Size has a similar effect on the extreme investment end as well but instead, size can cover so much area that once you’re in their “red zone” (the range at which u can be hit by an attack) even if u dodge after being hit by the first attack, their red zone is so big that you will still get hit by a second attack. Which then makes size multiplicative to damage per second. also big aoe attacks are pretty much instantaneous they just have longer start up but the ranges at which they reach happen instantly.
None of these things are issues if you can calculate the value of power = size = attack speed. Currently, there is one but it’s made off of mostly speculation and not hard math. Getting the formula consists of getting the following factors/variables.
Factor 1; how much attack speed multiplicates power by. If u have halved casting spd and endlag ur technically doubling your power potentially even 2.5x power if u have synergies because u can land 2 attacks in the same time that someone with normal casting spd and endlag that someone else would. Finding the base average casting speed and then finding out how much atk spd to halve that would make finding how multiplicative atk spd is to overall dps a lot easier.
Factor 2; how much ground/area, size can mulitplicate the average or base size by. The thing with size vs attack spd largely depends on who can reach who first. For example with enough size you can make your attack land against an attack spd user depending on how much ground there is to cover. Stuff like self explosion, raging impact, ult slam can cover ALOT of ground instantaneously. Just depends on how much size you are running, so finding the base area that base size can cover and how multiplicative size is to the area it increases on average. Will help to subtract the distances against each other.
Factor 3; subtract the base area or average base area of size from base average projectile spd. Projectile spd covers a certain distance in a specific amount of time.
Factor 4; once you have how multiplicative atk spd is to overall dps. You also need to figure out how much size increases DPS if your size is big enough to land multiple in a given area successfully. Size users kind of have a red zone so it’s like basically the bigger their red zone the more attacks they can land back to back successfully even with base casting spd.
Having an accurate EP formula means you can’t make the wrong stat values for attacks/affinities, everything will have to equal a certain EP value or at least close to it.
1 Like
Of course that whole paragraph isn’t everything, but that’s pretty much everything that I feel comfortable sharing publicly like this. At the end of the day I would like this game’s PvP to be balanced and fun but the task proved to be a lot to take on. That doesn’t even get into the more complicated side of it either. Anyway, I probably won’t be coming back to this game’s PvP unless I get word that “DUDE ITS ACTUALLY GOOD THIS TIME YA GOTTA BELIEVE ME, METAPOLY MY GOAT COOKED” but for those of you who still enjoy it more power to ya and I hope it gets better from arguably the lowest its ever been. 
I think with out the critical bugs it would still have glaring faults but wouldn’t be nearly as bad. I still play but the bug abuse people be doing, kicks it down even harder. I will say the bugs did give an interesting perspective on what attacks with really high speed and AOE would be like in game, which is pretty much what most of the inverse bugs did. I really hope in the future Vetex doesn’t make lost and ancient magics just have busted stats, and gives them interesting gimmicks. I hope Vetex focus’s on more stuff like that from here on out, tactical, and gimicky stuff make the game fun and interesting. Simply only leveling up in damage, speed, and size really isn’t that compelling.