Musa wrote:So far your predictions were correct, are you a part of game developers team? Not many changes lately, what do you think will happen next?
Kind of funny how this animation discussion thread turned into Blader balancing discussion thread
As for your first question - no I'm not working for PA or in any way affiliated with them, there are just obvious out-of-balance things that can be seen even by players that don't play on particular classes, but are familiar with the game and what's happening in it. That said, to me it does seem like the majority of in-power position devs don't actively play their own game on official servers (personally I think that it's a bad sign, but that's completely separate discussion that I'm not going to touch here), or at least that's the way I can explain some obviously dubious balancing decisions they made over the years.
As you've mentioned "not many changes lately", and that was to be expected. Let's call it "initial balancing phase end", this is the point where devs think they have reached somewhat balanced state, I mean to players it's obvious they're doing stupid things, like buffing Striker, which if anything requires nerfs not buffs, and nerfing classes that nobody wants to see on wars/tournaments (that is by the way one of the things that show that devs don't actively play their own game, they just listen to complains of people that play on outnumbering classes, which are outnumbering for reasons). Now we're in phase where devs are mostly chilling for a bit and checking up how changes have impacted the game. Once again, since devs don't seem to actively play their own game, in order to properly check how things have changed (by that I mean not just listening to players' complains) they need a set of data and here is where tournaments come in. There already were official 1v1 same class tournaments announced in few servers, which means that devs firstly decided to look on how classes stand against themselves and to figure out which players actually know how to play their class under the current meta. Expect a wave of adjustments based on the final matches of tournaments (I expect to see impactful changes to Sorceress, Archer, Shai, as problems with them should be fairly obvious, Striker and Wizard on the other hand not so sure, but who knows). After those adjustments there probably will be either further tournaments (between different classes, either 1v1 or 3v3) or some events related to release of new nation wars (Calpheon vs Valencia, including GMs in game taking the leading roles on both sides), then you'll see another waves of balancing.
As for the Blader in this whole balancing scene - probably it won't be touched too much, some small nerfs to Tradition and maybe small buffs to Awakening. There are only 2 possible impactful changes that I can see possibly coming, but most likely they won't. The first one is if devs suddenly decide to rework how Accuracy/Evasion works, but since they decided to reduce 100% accuracy on skills for all classes it most likely won't happen any time soon. The second one is more worrisome and is related to dashes (Chase), it seems like devs are playing with skills animations and "gaps", I can see a possibility of prolonged gaps between dashes in exchange for less stamina consumption, but at that point Blader will become a dead class, without a total rework, so most likely it won't happen either, but since once again devs don't seem to actively play their own game...so in the end my guess is that there won't be any major changes related to Blader for a while, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
this was the first time I could "feel" my skills, almost like if I added haptic feedback to my keyboard. To be fair it's not as bad without video recording, but still noticeable, hopefully devs will tinker with particles emission a bit more.
