Balance Team AMA 10/04/2016 Answers

#29

For all of us we came from different backgrounds. Guidance was a freelance character artist that played games competitively. Lord Death just graduated High School and was playing games competitively and I was going to college for accounting and had also been playing games competitively my whole life.

We all got a chance at TRS through Brandon, who had been a character artist at TRS for 4 years at the point I met him. Myself and Guidance met him by playing Dota 2 for awhile and we were all pretty good and played almost every night until Evolve launched. After launch we interviewed for QA positions and all of us were hired on at TRS by the end of June at different times. We then started helping out Chris Ashton in any way we could with feedback, learning XML and playing the game at a high level to get a better understanding of how everything worked.

Fast forward a few months and Stage 2 was greenlit, so Ashton moved off the project and gave Brandon Lead Designer on the project with Guidance/LD/myself to give him a hand. Kaisertim ended up coming on at this point and then we had our completed balance team that you know now.

There is some smaller details but it’s kinda a crazy thing how we all got here. In all honesty I don’t think any of us expected to be here when we first learned about Evolve but I don’t think we’d want to be anywhere else :slight_smile:

13 Likes
#30

I don’t have the data at home but maybe @mizx can grab this today if he has time?

Right now, no. I feel he is in a good spot and he rewards skillful play which is exactly where I feel Torvald should be.

5 Likes
#31

Cataclysm with ReneAbe and Mad Mags

Better than what it was before, but still needs adjustments. We need to hone in the spawn locations and maybe adjust how many buffs spawn each round. We may try having duplicates spawn.

We only balance when the 5 of us are free, which can be a little tricky at times. (LD does all the script setup for everything, Guidance pretty much does a little of everything, Kaisertim makes content release videos, Insane does a ton of community stuff and I have to manage the expectations of each team). We’ll usually start out balancing something for fun, if it’s a new character for example, we’ll play for awhile, everybody rotating on it, this is just for feels and we don’t care if we make any fine tuning process. We then usually try and incorporate the character into whatever current meta we’ve seen, get some hardcore no fuck around games in. This usually leaves Guidance super salty, so we’ll take a break. We’ll repeat that until we’ve run out of time or we think it’s ready to go out.

We also know that with our small team, we won’t be able to figure out all the meta angles and that within an hour of release, there will be 10x the amount of games play than our entire development. So we are usually on the forums, in streams and playing with the community post launch to try and figure out adjustments. We enjoy reading feedback and discussing issues with players. It shows that they are passionate about the project(like we are) and that they want it to improve.

14 Likes
#32

We plan to go back and reevaluate the maps to open up feeding routes. We are aware that there is a best route on every map and the others don’t compete. We also plan to add more maps as the are completed

The buff spawning at set places and times is for consistency and I don’t think anything in particular with them make the game bland. They are game objective that you can contest or deny the other team that have noticeable impacts on the match.

Balance updates and content also helps add variety to the game.

5 Likes
#33

It’ll be worked on probably after Kraken. Plans could change it could come out sooner :slight_smile:

I think it’s ok to have a character like this in Evolve as long as we have other options for players. A big thing for me in any game is that there is a lot of character depth so I can expand my skillset and feel like I’m growing and learning. He is a huge risk, but I feel when you run a team around him you can help reduce the risk and create some really fun moments.

2 Likes
#34

No eta

We have this fix planned, battle cabot got in the way, but I think DJ is on it after.

No, we have ideas on what we would change, but haven’t had time to start on them.

We removed them to save download space (which is a big f2p issue). I don’t know if our menus support links to browsers.

6 Likes
#35

Nothing new on Meteors passive. We still have an idea of what we want it to be but we are not close to implementing it.

No eta on Sunny’s adaptations. No planned Sunny nerfs at the moment, though we know she is strong.

Grounder dot is low for two reasons. The damage should not compete with the venomous claws line up and the debuff is strong enough by itself that the perk doesn’t need a large amount of extra dot damage on top of it to be a strong pick.

The claws perks are still powerful in their current state and likely are still too strong when both are taken. It’s likely they will get nerfed again due to the problematic unavoidable damage build going on right now.

5 Likes
#36

Laz is a oddball for sure, his play style isn’t straight forward and honestly, even the players who think they get him, don’t. Laz’s meta for a long time has been the threat of the glove not the resurrection mechanic, and forcing the monster into a specific spot while you punish.

We do have some perks coming that should reinforce Laz’s play style (maybe later this month). Keep an eye out.

11 Likes
#37

Personally we still find Dust Tag to be pretty useful during fights. Maybe it’s just good against how Guidance plays but keeping tabs on the Monster through all geo for a short time keeps our damage going.

Prob the Wraith decoy changes. And what food to order.

Brandon is good with big picture stuff. Guidance is good with Monster and level stuff. LordDeath is scripting and Medic stuff. I’m good with feeling and level stuff. Kaisertim is good representation of player feel and how they’ll react to a feature, plus his trailers are #1.

All in all our biggest attribute is we all can work together for ridiculous amounts of time and not kill eachother. We’ve been at it as a full team for almost two years so that’s pretty cool. (Competing and working as a devs)

8 Likes
#38

We have plans to make his buoys more durable. It’s currently a chore to constantly replace them constantly since they get destroyed so easily against most monsters.

Most of the medics are a little under of where they need to be. Paladin seems like he is in a good state. Slim is too strong and needs to come down.

5 Likes
Slim is way too strong and so is Goliath
#39

So we think it’s the high damage potential abilities coupled with her being hard to hit. If you don’t dodge or move during decoy attacks or supernova, you get rekted. If you do move, Wraith feels super weak. We have changes coming that should help address this, by allowing us to increase the burst but limit the over all damage potential.

2 Likes
We are the Balance Bros @ Turtle Rock Studios -- AMA
#40

Having one player perform at a high level compared to four Hunters is always going to prove some difficulty when it comes to balance. I don’t think we’ll ever escape that just due to Evolve being a 4v1 game. We have our systems in place to help people, but I think it’s always going to be an uphill battle.

For me it’s hard to pinpoint it to any one thing we can change to give a fix across all levels. Matchmaking is easy for us to ensure solid matches but if it comes down to player skill at the end of the day the better team/player should always win. That is simply just the design of a competitive game.

For the future it’s something we’ll keep thinking about, keep watching and keep trying new things. I think there won’t be a change that hits all of our issues but we’ll continue to making the experience better for all players. Just takes time :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#41

Yeah that was the design Brandon wanted for Battle Cabot. This will also carry over to the other orbital-based weapons in the game soon.

7 Likes
#42

A lot of our hotly debated balance team topics are managing fairness between monster and hunter. Something we think is super fun on the Hunter side will make Guidance super pissed and vice versa. Slogging through that mess is what we spend most of our cycles on.

We favor T hank and Cabot a lot. Our medic and support players use a more wide range of tools and it’s also our jobs to adapt quicker. For instance with the new dome timer mechanic, it only took us a couple games to start to counter the re-engage Guidance was putting on us. Guidance is actually pretty decent at Bob, so we aren’t fully sure that the competitive scene has the right Monster player for him to shine.

4 Likes
#43

I think that she is a viable monster but has a few frustrations both playing as and against her. Playing as Gorgon the traversal can feel a bit unresponsive at times and we are working on fixing that. Acid Spit has a large inconsistency with the damage it deals due to the mechanics of the ability, which we will have a fix for soon.

Playing against Gorgon, there isn’t much counter play into her kit. Other than spider trap, which is unreliable at best, Mimic, Acid Spit, and Web Snare are all used point blank as shotgun abilities to make them nearly unavoidable.

6 Likes
#44

His art is done, but he isn’t on the design radar. We have ideas for kit and timeline era. No eta.

We’ll see about the damage thing. He is definitely a skill based character, may take time to see full potential. On the click to fire issue, we can fix that.

Depends on the character, ideally they would be perfectly balanced at launch. But that’s pretty much impossible with how many different comps and perks we have. Usually, we get it to a good fun place and release it to see what the community does with it.

It’s not off the table for sure.

7 Likes
#45

Aftershock will be replaced with a ranged ability, similar to a lava bomb AOE but it’ll give some other effects alongside damage and such. We have designs but we need to play them once we shift focus to Kraken after Wraith is done.

Banshee mines will remain as a deployable but will trigger once a Hunter is in range and will explode once they reach the zone the Hunter was last standing. We have some other ideas but that is the general idea for right now, which could change once we get into testing.

10 Likes
#46

I don’t think we’ll venture too far away from the defense matrix with the assault class. Personally I feel I have a good mix of Assault styles when it comes to how I’m going to deal my damage. RAbe fits the need for poke and consistent damage, Torvald hits the burst and so on.

For me the big areas to push Assaults apart is with their actual gear, not the class ability. It’s something you need to succeed as an Assault in my eyes.

My Mom raised me with good Olive eating habits. I used to put them on my fingers and eat them while my parents cooked.

9 Likes
#47

We want to create new content, it’s just more about having the time and resources for it.

The Monsters we want to create would be pretty damn fun.

11 Likes
#48

This one is a delicate balance and I am not sure that it needs to be sped up. Recently we had the pull up on harpoons and kraken couldn’t get away.

No, why would you think that?

There are some funky interactions with Gorgon like you mentioned, but I actually think that is on gorgons side. Having a traversal fail instead of interupt would mean you wouldn’t easily see why you can’t move, your traversal would just disapiate. How would that work with Monsters that are already mid traversal?

I don’t know, I’ll have to check. I am leaning towards it not being an easy change.

5 Likes