2011-03-24, 07:10 PM
Yeah, I think I mentioned that % Attack was bugged a few pages back.
Sorry about abruptly stopping work on this spreadsheet without giving any explanation other than "I'm lazy." There's more to it than that. I don't find the spreadsheet to be nearly as useful as it used to be and that is extremely demotivating. Reasons for this:
1. Release of the potential system. MS has always been a damage-whoring game. Sure, they threw in some other things to do later on, but they were really poorly conceived and managed. I still don't understand how people bought into Monster Book at all. There are so many games out there with better and more interesting collecting. The one class that has any support-like ability does not upgrade to support that ability. There is hardly any endgame content and the only point of levelling past 160 is to make the number bigger. Before potential, if there was an imbalance in the damage classes did, you could clearly see that in-game just by looking at what kind of damage people were doing. You couldn't change that too drastically with gear. I started this spreadsheet because I'd wonder "just how much stronger is x than y?" This spreadsheet helped to clarify that, I think. You could see which classes were overpowered and which classes really needed help. I think people were under the impression that Buccaneers were overpowered before this came along.
With the release of the potential system, Nexon diluted the problem of class imbalance by making it possible to make even larger disparities in damage through quality of gear. Before, Class X might do three times the damage of Class Y. Now, who cares that Class X still does twice the damage of Class Y? You can triple your damage through potential! And I simply don't care enough to evaluate the balance of a game where your damage is based entirely off how much money you throw at it. You don't even have to kill bosses for pomegranate. Getting a CHTP (assuming you actually earn it) does nowhere near as much for your damage as handing Nexon 100 dollars. It's ridiculous.
2. Skill mechanics have become more complicated, making it harder to give classes a simple number. There is an optimal DPS option for every class, but people don't use it. I have to include options like how a mage Teleports because they made it such a large portion of mage DPS, but mages can't Teleport at every boss. It's become very difficult to do this when I have no idea what the situation to calculate for is.
3. Formulas keep changing, and people haven't been keeping up with the spading. We don't have a good table for attack speeds anymore. They keep changing all the time, and all the attack speeds being used in the spreadsheet right now are a combination of old data and guesswork. Do we even know the Mechanic attack speeds? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy changing mechanics, and I wish they had started actual attempts at balancing before Big Bang (the preceding class balance patches seldom made any real changes to class strength - usually just a fix with a major annoyance like the complete uselessness of Pierce and Snipe when they first came out), but I don't have the time to keep up with it all.
So in conclusion, I will not be making updates to this spreadsheet until further notice. It's incomplete, and it'll remain that way. If anyone wants to pick up the slack and use the existing spreadsheet, fix it up, and put their name on it, feel free to PM me about it.
Sorry about abruptly stopping work on this spreadsheet without giving any explanation other than "I'm lazy." There's more to it than that. I don't find the spreadsheet to be nearly as useful as it used to be and that is extremely demotivating. Reasons for this:
1. Release of the potential system. MS has always been a damage-whoring game. Sure, they threw in some other things to do later on, but they were really poorly conceived and managed. I still don't understand how people bought into Monster Book at all. There are so many games out there with better and more interesting collecting. The one class that has any support-like ability does not upgrade to support that ability. There is hardly any endgame content and the only point of levelling past 160 is to make the number bigger. Before potential, if there was an imbalance in the damage classes did, you could clearly see that in-game just by looking at what kind of damage people were doing. You couldn't change that too drastically with gear. I started this spreadsheet because I'd wonder "just how much stronger is x than y?" This spreadsheet helped to clarify that, I think. You could see which classes were overpowered and which classes really needed help. I think people were under the impression that Buccaneers were overpowered before this came along.
With the release of the potential system, Nexon diluted the problem of class imbalance by making it possible to make even larger disparities in damage through quality of gear. Before, Class X might do three times the damage of Class Y. Now, who cares that Class X still does twice the damage of Class Y? You can triple your damage through potential! And I simply don't care enough to evaluate the balance of a game where your damage is based entirely off how much money you throw at it. You don't even have to kill bosses for pomegranate. Getting a CHTP (assuming you actually earn it) does nowhere near as much for your damage as handing Nexon 100 dollars. It's ridiculous.
2. Skill mechanics have become more complicated, making it harder to give classes a simple number. There is an optimal DPS option for every class, but people don't use it. I have to include options like how a mage Teleports because they made it such a large portion of mage DPS, but mages can't Teleport at every boss. It's become very difficult to do this when I have no idea what the situation to calculate for is.
3. Formulas keep changing, and people haven't been keeping up with the spading. We don't have a good table for attack speeds anymore. They keep changing all the time, and all the attack speeds being used in the spreadsheet right now are a combination of old data and guesswork. Do we even know the Mechanic attack speeds? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy changing mechanics, and I wish they had started actual attempts at balancing before Big Bang (the preceding class balance patches seldom made any real changes to class strength - usually just a fix with a major annoyance like the complete uselessness of Pierce and Snipe when they first came out), but I don't have the time to keep up with it all.
So in conclusion, I will not be making updates to this spreadsheet until further notice. It's incomplete, and it'll remain that way. If anyone wants to pick up the slack and use the existing spreadsheet, fix it up, and put their name on it, feel free to PM me about it.