Wizards getting character choice feedback from CB

[Peraion Graufalke]

I very rarely see Runepriests (1, unfortunately he died ), Seekers (nobody seems to want to play one) and Ardents (too much like a Warlord I guess?).

I've played an Ardent (lvl 10), and IMO they're pretty much a fun-to-play psionic subclass of the Warlord.

 

[Aegeri]

Wizards have been very good about their nerfing in some ways, despite various whines to the contrary. I actually like that in general they've fixed most of the main issues. I personally wish some monsters would get adjusted beyond the DM realizing they are stupid. For example giant frogs don't just need hit with a nerf bat, they need to be entirely reworked. A friend of mine - a new DM - was utterly baffled with 5 of them TPKed his party. Of course being a new DM he hasn't learned the art of looking past a monsters level and instead what it does, but such an experience is a quick introduction to the concept.

MV has already vastly improved a lot of terrible monsters. Mad Wraiths are no longer ridiculously stupid for example, normal wraiths are now a playable monster and the Dracolich now doesn't just plain suck. These could be viewed as paid errata, but such is the life of the DM of a RPG.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Well, they haven't ignored the CharOps boards for this edition; quite the opposite, in fact. They've looked at and specifically nerfed unbalanced CharOps combinations, although it has taken them some time.
E.g. Blood Mage forced movement damage, Orb Wizard stunlocks, Feychargers, infinite damage loops (Punisher of the Gods, IIRC), White Lotus Swordmage shenanigans, Sorcerer Daggermaster crit-fishers, Student of Caiphon radiant cheese, Windrise Ports multiclass abuse.

But they haven't nerfed infinite oregano yet.

Honestly, I think the biggest issue is that WotC looks to CO on what to nerf, but not on what to improve.

I mean, it's been how long since daggermaster/sorcs got nerfed...and there's still no new Paragons for sorcerers that are worth a damn?

In other words, what WotC took away from 3.5 is "you need to nerf things that are too powerful." That's all well and good, but they also need to learn "you need to improve things that are too weak"

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Honestly, I think the biggest issue is that WotC looks to CO on what to nerf, but not on what to improve.

I got that impression as well. There are several things that need improvements and further support.
(I dimly remember the promise of a third Assassin build that never materialized; instead we got the Essentials version. I suspect we'll see it in Heroes of Shadow.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Honestly I think the most important thing that this kind of data could be used for is improving the CB itself. For instance if you know what feats are commonly taken together or with other options then you can present those in the UI in a way that makes it easy to find them all. So for example the data shows that high con dwarf fighters take Hammer Rhythm, well you can have that at the top of the feat list, and group it with the other feats that people typically take with it.

This can be extended to pretty much all elements of the game. By knowing the most popular options and clusters of options you can improve the experience quite a bit. Other things they would be smart to monitor would be the details of how people use CB. Are they managing character funds with it? Are they using the pages in a specific order? What options are exercised the most? You can learn a lot from that and streamline your application a whole bunch.

Honestly I don't see VAST value in tracking in terms of game design. It just isn't all that actionable. As other people have pointed out just because you have data doesn't mean you know how to use it to improve the game. I doubt very many people would consider removing classes from the game an improvement in general for instance. We all recognize the power of having a variety of choices. Even if those choices are unpopular they probably still need to exist, and what would be the point of removing them now anyway? I just don't see where you ever get to anything actionable in this direction. Improving the CB application itself OTOH? With a competent expert consultant on this kind of thing they can easily use the data to make really large improvements.

 

[Herschel]

I very rarely see Runepriests (1, unfortunately he died ), Seekers (nobody seems to want to play one) and Ardents (too much like a Warlord I guess?).

I LOVE my seeker so far. They're fun-on-a-bun. I didn't think much about it until PH3 gameday and had an absolute blast. I have a throwing version now that is just cool.

 

[Herschel]

Sadly, it's already been done on the CO forums. In fact, most of this stuff has already been solved. WotC just needs to read their own stuff.

Char-Ops are a pox on the game. Trying to find loopholes and create damage monkeys in a vaccuum is not exactly a group of people to base marketing /the game around. That people follow them is even sadder. There's a whole lot of cool AND usefulness that char-ops just ignore with their short-sighted goal of creating their "uber-solo-stars with DPS".

And if you ask nicely I may tell you how I really feel.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dude, I'm no mod, but unless you tone down that post- "sheeple", for instance, isn't one of their favorite words- I wouldn't be surprised to see some red text show up.


Just sayin'.

 

[I'm A Banana]

CharOp is a good place to go to see the mechanics in action, but it's not the best place to go to see the game in action. It's all thought-exercises and ruleswank.

But if something has a mechanical problem, then CharOp will be the place to go to find out what it is and perhaps how best to fix it.

It's not going to tell you why people aren't playing the Seeker if the Seeker is mechanically a perfectly fine controller. If the Seeker has a more "soft" problem -- like the fact that its archetype rams uncomfortably into the Ranger's, so people who want to play "nature archers" will more likely play Rangers, even if the role/abilities don't entirely mesh -- then CharOp generally won't let you know that.

One of the things they need to separate Intelligence from Information is the idea of how organization influences options. An option that might be good or flavorful that is off in its own little corner of the rules (like the feats that make assassins use poison) might be little-used not because they're bad options, but because they have such limited exposure that people aren't aware of them. If those poison-using assassin feats were available for...I dunno...any weapon-using class...they'd see more use.

 

[Scribble]

One of the good things about this data though is it's raw data and not, for instance, data funneled through the lens of a CHAR OP player.

You can bet they're going to look at what the Char Ops people are saying compared to the data (if you honestly think they DON'T ever look at the char ops people well- you're wrong.)

Char ops though are just one test group to match the data against.