Current class numbers in gold+ disgust me

[KamijoTouma]

How did this happen:

1.people play FM and BM

2.people find FM and BM are underpowered

3.people can't get on gold as FM and BM, and FM and BM are less above gold.

4.people desperate, quit FM and BM and reroll summoner, BD.

5.people find summoner and BD are strong and easily get on gold.

6.even less FM and BM and even more summoner and BM above gold.

 

[Cogbyrn]

8 hours ago, Gamemako said:

So to recap, Roxefeller thinks inferences are impossible because reasons.

 

At this point, I see only two even remotely plausible explanations: Summoner and Blade Dancer have attracted an overwhelming number of hardcore PvP players due to perceived strength, or Summoner and Blade Dancer are having extraordinary success at high levels. The former would be trivial to test if we had Bronze and Silver player data, but as far as I know, we do not. Nevertheless, the notion seems quite unlikely given the breadth of rerolls required purely for 1v1 in the short term. If someone has an alternative explanation, I should like to hear it.

 

Anyhow, if you look at other MMO data, you'll find that many alternative explanations are comparatively unlikely. Short, childlike player characters are not overwhelmingly popular in the West. If we compare to FF14's player census data (2014, 2015), you will see the childlike race disfavored compared to an even distribution. In 2013 and 2014, Lalafell were 14% of players of 5 races, or about 70% of what would be an even selection. With the addition of a new race in 2015, they were 11-13% of the population out of 6 races, or about 72% of an even share. In the top 955 by OddFinrir's data, Lyn players are at least half of all top 955 players, pulling fully twice an even share. It seems quite unlikely that players are using these characters because they like Lyn specifically, certainly not at a 3:1 rate compared to a game with essentially no race contribution to class/role. The decision to use Lyn in 1v1 arenas is very likely dependent on the classes themselves, and not on the race. It is also worth considering that one unique Lyn class is essentially an easier variant of a class used by two other races, which would dramatically curb the effect of class selection on overall prevalence-- that is, you would not expect BM and BD to each have equal share as were they two entirely separate classes.

 

//EDIT: It strikes me as intuitively unlikely, given the sheer volume of rerolls required, that Lyn success is purely due to players selecting a perceived superior option.

 

The FFXIV data is interesting, and probably does point towards the fact that Western players do not prefer small, childlike avatars in MMOs, from an aesthetic perspective.  I think you have to consider the communities involved, though, as part of the analysis.  FFXIV is, in my opinion, a PvE/RP game.  RP communities often go with sexy, manly, or womanly cutesy, from my experience (I've been in an RP community in FFXIV in particular).  That focuses mostly on Miqo'te, some Hyur, some Elezen.  Additionally, each race had their own unique beneficial statistics, so if hardcore PvEers were going to min-max, they'd choose races that best suited their role.  I believe Lalafell were only potentially "best" as BLM, maybe.  I forget exactly, but they for sure weren't best suited statistically for tanking/melee combat.

 

On the flip size, based on some experience in GW2, PvPers will often grab any advantage that they can.  Since the game focused highly on character animations as an important aspect of combat, many players chose the smallest models they could:  the Asura, and made them as short as they possibly could.  This more effectively masked what you were doing, and therefore gave you an advantage over the normal/larger models in the game.  It was a very common complaint among PvPers, and eventually they made it so you could, in ranked matches, normalize character models to Humans as a standard.

 

So I'd argue that, in a competitive PvP community in a game where watching a player is important, PvPers are not necessarily disinclined to using smaller, childlike character models, since they can effectively give you an advantage.  That's just an off-the-cuff idea regarding personal preference and how it weighs into different types of games.

 

As far as the potential for re-rolls for 1v1 Arena success, I don't personally put anything past PvPers when it comes to bandwagoning.  Also, all the numbers I"ve seen so far have fairly consistent % representation of Summoners from Gold+ to Top 50.  I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but if representation stays fairly consistent throughout each tier, I don't really have any reason to believe it isn't consistent for the larger Silver+ population as well, meaning the overall population is just larger for whatever reason.  If there isn't an increase in representation though, can we really conclude that the class is apparently OP?  I would think that an OP class would shine brighter at higher levels of play.  If it does not shine brighter, or is in fact dimmer, then to me that smacks of a skill issue among the players who are in the lower rankings.

 

That isn't to say Summoner isn't easier to play.  From what I can tell, it does appear easier to play.  I just don't think that's a bad thing, nor do I think it necessitates any class changes.

[KingMufasa]

 This isn't supposed to be the balanced patch you morons, the level 50 patch with HM skills is the balanced one. Summoner isn't even considered one of the stronger classes in the east because of HM skills. 

[Duniak]

So we are supposed to wait 2 years to play pvp because scummoners and broken BDs just faceroll to Diamond? We DO NOT GIVE A CRICKET ABOUT PATCH THAT WILL COME IN TWO YEARS. There were tweaks, changes, buffs, nerf HAMMERS on KR patch, and they didn't implement here. We are dealing with the same shit that was proven broken and overpowered, and they didn't even implement those changes. It's not like HM skills are the only thing that balanced this game moron.

[BigBoomBoom]

6 minutes ago, KingMufasa said:

 This isn't supposed to be the balanced patch you morons, the level 50 patch with HM skills is the balanced one. Summoner isn't even considered one of the stronger classes in the east because of HM skills. 

 

The thing is we aren't playing Korean BnS, people aren't having lvl 50 HM skill and there's no balance patch in sight yet. It's like saying: we know there's a problem, we have a solution already, just wait till everyone is dead and it's too late then we will give you the solution.

 

That does not help.

 

Considering that Arena PvP is boasted as the main attraction of this game, because PvE is quite lacking to be honest. And lol OWPvP. That does not help.

[EbonYxi]

...NCSoft gonna murder another game with amazing potential with some really half-a-brain-cell inspired choices again...

[Princess Zelda]

As of right now there are 5500 players that are kept track of in gold and above. Out of all those, 182 are BM. There are 182 BMs in Gold and above...3% around. There are around 350 force masters. There are 1000+ Summoners, Blade Dancers, and Destroyers. There are around 600 KFM, and 700 sins. 
Seriously, the second least prevalent class is still almost double the first least prevalent class.

[Gamemako]

10 hours ago, Cogbyrn said:

 

I think you have to consider the communities involved, though, as part of the analysis.  FFXIV is, in my opinion, a PvE/RP game.  RP communities often go with sexy, manly, or womanly cutesy, from my experience (I've been in an RP community in FFXIV in particular).  That focuses mostly on Miqo'te, some Hyur, some Elezen. Additionally, each race had their own unique beneficial statistics, so if hardcore PvEers were going to min-max, they'd choose races that best suited their role.  I believe Lalafell were only potentially "best" as BLM, maybe.  I forget exactly, but they for sure weren't best suited statistically for tanking/melee combat.

 

Elezen are actually about equally popular with Lala.  The over-represented groups are predictable: generic humans are always popular (I bet Jin are more than 40% of players, though bots all rolling Gon Destroyers would intensely skew the data), and catgirls have universal appeal among gamers. Remember that Hyur are the most represented group in that data. Additionally, stat differences are minimal by design, offering up to 4 of a stat out of 1000. Race selection in FF14 is all but essentially purely aesthetic.

 

Short characters used for mechanical advantage is not uncommon (I remember people using female characters in Starsiege: Tribes for that purpose), but remember that the effect could only apply to Force Master here because Blade Dancers and Summoners are unique to Lyn. We might see some advantage if we viewed FM race breakdown, but FM generally are brutally rare right now. I don't see this explanation as a meaningful contributor to the overall numbers advantage for Lyn players in gold+ matches.

 

Testing on my BM alt, I do not see the same numbers of summoners in Bronze/Silver as you suggest, but I don't think I would want to play a low-level alt nearly enough to get a semi-representative sample of who is queuing for low-rank PvP. Furthermore, you run into self-selection bias: players who struggle against summoners are more likely to simply quit doing PvP rather than continue to queue. Thus, we may see disproportionate number of Lyn players queuing for 1v1s at bronze/silver. It's hard to imagine gold+ being skewed by that effect, let alone the top 100.

 

I'm still interested to see how much changes when they tackle the lag and bug issues which have been such a boon to Lyn players.

[Kensho1996]

10 hours ago, KingMufasa said:

 This isn't supposed to be the balanced patch you morons, the level 50 patch with HM skills is the balanced one. Summoner isn't even considered one of the stronger classes in the east because of HM skills. 

THIS might be true BUT then why is it that this has awards like IT was balanced .. 

 

IF they know it isn't balanced the awards shouldn't be there and the ranks wiped WHEN they think it is balanced .. 

 

The game WILL never truly be balanced (the stupidity of believing in any MMO being truly balanced is a laugh) .. MMOs with different classes/levels SHOULD get smart an stop with the PvP as either the classes are the exact same with slightly different graphics between class abilities OR they are the exact same LIKE any FPS game..

 

NOW having said that they did an incredibly bad job here with the game since some classes HAVE no or few required setups for combos while others too many making IT at least feel like some classes are OP when it may well just be that they are idiotically simple and because of this to keep their ability balance up they have to do things like allow a stun/rooting ability that can't be broken or can be constantly reapplied (such as the FM atm) 

 

Me i just made a summoner so I can 1 2 the simply spam and never have to consider block or active evades

[Sieghlyon]

it must be the reason why a see so much summonner , destro , blade dancer since i do a reroll

I think the ping don't help to balance the thing since KFM and assa can't do combo without or use some skill with a ping > 300 

[Travesty]

Lmao keep waiting for your lvl 50 balance patch, by the time they decide to release it, it will be not worth it due to horribly low population 

 

It's really sad when sh1tty company ruins good game

[KatHead]

10 hours ago, Princess Zelda said:

As of right now there are 5500 players that are kept track of in gold and above. Out of all those, 182 are BM. There are 182 BMs in Gold and above...3% around. There are around 350 force masters. There are 1000+ Summoners, Blade Dancers, and Destroyers. There are around 600 KFM, and 700 sins. 
Seriously, the second least prevalent class is still almost double the first least prevalent class.

 

Let the fotm BM players reroll, Im k with that. BM is still the only really fun class in this game. 

[Ghobe]

13 hours ago, Princess Zelda said:

As of right now there are 5500 players that are kept track of in gold and above. Out of all those, 182 are BM. There are 182 BMs in Gold and above...3% around. There are around 350 force masters. There are 1000+ Summoners, Blade Dancers, and Destroyers. There are around 600 KFM, and 700 sins. 
Seriously, the second least prevalent class is still almost double the first least prevalent class.

There are more tracked than that. The rankings display the top 1000 of each class(as long as it's above gold). Last I checked...Summoners, Blade Dancers, and Destroyers all had over 1000 and none of them had a flat 1600 in the 1000th place(iirc #1000 was like 1635 for summoners, so there's probably a few hundred more than just 1k). And quite frankly, I can feel it as I play as a bm. Every match I manage to win is hard fought and I find myself uttering a phrase like "omg I just lost to a horrible ____" often :\ I find that I need to play virtually flawlessly AND my opponent needs to make SEVERAL mistakes.

[Ansel]

For ppl that looks like dont know shit about pvp, summoners are op in here becouse of the level.

Blade dancer are the most op class in the game, now and in next patch and forever, so far its the same problem in korea.

 

KFM/ASS/ are the mid(balanced classes now, and very good at 50s)

 

For ppl that dont know, at 50 BM and destros got a major buff, in korea, but we alredy have those class changes, so when the 50 comes, with more skill points BM will be better.

 

Now SCUmmoners/BC are top op tier, Destro are noob stomper becouse ppl dont know how to play yet, KFM/SIN/FM are fine,BM suck.

 

When 50s hit, Blade cancer and warlock will be the op class, sum, destro, kfm, sin, will be fine, BM and FM will be the top tier in top player hands, but shitty for everyone else.

 

I think summoners are bugged, if you see a vid of pvp, from 50s they deal the same ammount of damage now, probably a bug made this issue.

 

Numbers mean everything, go in the early zone, all you see are BC and SCUMMONERS>

[Zooks]

Summoners are fine. No really. They're perfectly balanced. 

 

 

 

 

 

[LatinLegacy]

FM would be fine if the game didn't have so many damn knockdowns, stuns, grabs & stun locks. I can burst a player down extremely fast using a Flame w/ burn spec but the amount of CC the game has overall, across all classes, is very overkill. I'm lucky to even get a single 2 to 3 hits off before getting smacked with a stun or knockdown lol.

[Altonat]

It's hilarious to me that there are people who are genuinely trying to make the argument that the numbers don't mean anything other than popularity. Did they forget that this is for gold+ and that there is a gigantic portion of the population below gold that's unaccounted for? Popularity my ass... Given that we all know what the combat in this game is like, it's fair to say that success should be an indicator to some extent of a class' balance. Considering that there are twice as many summoners in gold as there are the one before across na/eu, it's fair to say that these numbers are a good indicator of balance right now. If it was relatively even across the board with maybe just a 10-20% difference between each class, then it wouldn't be fair to say that they're OP, but twice as much as the next one? You'd have to be delusional to think it means nothing.

 

Really, it smacks of desperation when people try to justify it with wishy washy arguments. Feels insulting too, like they think they can come up with any old lame excuse and people will buy it.

[DaviJunior]

yeah ofc its so balaned.. all classes have parry skill or block without any cd and they are blocking everything and deflect when other classes have cd on their defensive skills.. bd can block almost all fm atatcks but fm to save his ass has cooldowns to his shields when bd dont have any cd.. nice logic

[wolftonrei]

Gotta love hatin on the summoners. Easiest to reach max potential, and thus easier to race to the top while every one else tries to figure out there class changes. Despite people seeing as much hate as they get, i am pretty sure a vast majority rerolled to play what is seen as the "superior" class after having such a hard time with it. Why play a class you can love when you can play a class that is "op"?

[Cogbyrn]

2 hours ago, Altonat said:

It's hilarious to me that there are people who are genuinely trying to make the argument that the numbers don't mean anything other than popularity. Did they forget that this is for gold+ and that there is a gigantic portion of the population below gold that's unaccounted for? Popularity my ass... Given that we all know what the combat in this game is like, it's fair to say that success should be an indicator to some extent of a class' balance. Considering that there are twice as many summoners in gold as there are the one before across na/eu, it's fair to say that these numbers are a good indicator of balance right now. If it was relatively even across the board with maybe just a 10-20% difference between each class, then it wouldn't be fair to say that they're OP, but twice as much as the next one? You'd have to be delusional to think it means nothing.

 

Really, it smacks of desperation when people try to justify it with wishy washy arguments. Feels insulting too, like they think they can come up with any old lame excuse and people will buy it.

 

Honestly, I have no idea what percentage of the population is below Gold+.  As an FM, I dabbled in the arena for a short while, lost 5 games because my ping was 1000+ one night, but still hit Gold in I believe fewer than 20 games.  It really didn't seem like a big deal, so I figured Gold was where people were.  I fought and beat my share of Assassins and Destroyers who demonstrably didn't know what to do beyond some cheesy business, and it wasn't all that bad.

 

And to me, it smacks of desperation when people will do everything they can to try to convince the world that Summoners are OP.  There's no discussion around what to change in order to fix them and how that affects various match-ups, so what is the point of trying so hard?  It regularly reminds me of Dave Chappelle's bit about trying to convince your friends you didn't sleep with a woman you are accused of sleeping with:  youtube.com/watch?v=N2mnLGWXGPI.

 

PLEASE BELIEVE ME.

[voodooblade]

On 2/13/2016 at 11:36 PM, Cogbyrn said:

 

The FFXIV data is interesting, and probably does point towards the fact that Western players do not prefer small, childlike avatars in MMOs, from an aesthetic perspective.  I think you have to consider the communities involved, though, as part of the analysis.  FFXIV is, in my opinion, a PvE/RP game.  RP communities often go with sexy, manly, or womanly cutesy, from my experience (I've been in an RP community in FFXIV in particular).  That focuses mostly on Miqo'te, some Hyur, some Elezen.  Additionally, each race had their own unique beneficial statistics, so if hardcore PvEers were going to min-max, they'd choose races that best suited their role.  I believe Lalafell were only potentially "best" as BLM, maybe.  I forget exactly, but they for sure weren't best suited statistically for tanking/melee combat.

 

On the flip size, based on some experience in GW2, PvPers will often grab any advantage that they can.  Since the game focused highly on character animations as an important aspect of combat, many players chose the smallest models they could:  the Asura, and made them as short as they possibly could.  This more effectively masked what you were doing, and therefore gave you an advantage over the normal/larger models in the game.  It was a very common complaint among PvPers, and eventually they made it so you could, in ranked matches, normalize character models to Humans as a standard.

 

So I'd argue that, in a competitive PvP community in a game where watching a player is important, PvPers are not necessarily disinclined to using smaller, childlike character models, since they can effectively give you an advantage.  That's just an off-the-cuff idea regarding personal preference and how it weighs into different types of games.

 

As far as the potential for re-rolls for 1v1 Arena success, I don't personally put anything past PvPers when it comes to bandwagoning.  Also, all the numbers I"ve seen so far have fairly consistent % representation of Summoners from Gold+ to Top 50.  I'm not sure if that has changed recently, but if representation stays fairly consistent throughout each tier, I don't really have any reason to believe it isn't consistent for the larger Silver+ population as well, meaning the overall population is just larger for whatever reason.  If there isn't an increase in representation though, can we really conclude that the class is apparently OP?  I would think that an OP class would shine brighter at higher levels of play.  If it does not shine brighter, or is in fact dimmer, then to me that smacks of a skill issue among the players who are in the lower rankings.

 

That isn't to say Summoner isn't easier to play.  From what I can tell, it does appear easier to play.  I just don't think that's a bad thing, nor do I think it necessitates any class changes.

 

Umm this must have been before the season, as winning 5 games does not get you gold anymore. 

 

[Altonat]

21 minutes ago, Cogbyrn said:

 

Honestly, I have no idea what percentage of the population is below Gold+.  As an FM, I dabbled in the arena for a short while, lost 5 games because my ping was 1000+ one night, but still hit Gold in I believe fewer than 20 games.  It really didn't seem like a big deal, so I figured Gold was where people were.  I fought and beat my share of Assassins and Destroyers who demonstrably didn't know what to do beyond some cheesy business, and it wasn't all that bad.

 

And to me, it smacks of desperation when people will do everything they can to try to convince the world that Summoners are OP.  There's no discussion around what to change in order to fix them and how that affects various match-ups, so what is the point of trying so hard?  It regularly reminds me of Dave Chappelle's bit about trying to convince your friends you didn't sleep with a woman you are accused of sleeping with:  youtube.com/watch?v=N2mnLGWXGPI.

 

PLEASE BELIEVE ME.

 

Of course it's desperate. People desperately don't want to play against summoners. What do summoners have to be desperate about? They're summoners for god's sake. Yet they keep on trying to tell everyone they're balanced despite the overwhelming number of people expressing their frustration in fighting against them. I mean really summoners, we get it, you don't want to get nerfed. Whatever, but fair is fair. We just want to be on a roughly even playing field. That's not too much to ask.

 

Truth is, I've seen plenty of people bring up how summoners could be balanced more effectively, some suggestions are good, some aren't, but it is happening. Not everyone wants to play a summoner. At the same time not everyone wants to play against a summoner because of how irritating it is. The real question is if NCsoft will man up and make a few balance changes instead of strictly adhering to the Korean client just because "that's what they did in Korea, so we might as well follow it like doctrine, even though it has some truly terrible ideas." 

[Gamemako]

22 minutes ago, Cogbyrn said:

 

And to me, it smacks of desperation when people will do everything they can to try to convince the world that Summoners are OP.  There's no discussion around what to change in order to fix them and how that affects various match-ups, so what is the point of trying so hard?

 

Identifying that there is a problem is much easier than solving it. Most players lack the technical chops to even begin to argue how to solve the problem, let alone the experience to suss out the root cause. I'm quite convinced that there is a problem, and I've provided evidence for that viewpoint. However, with my own limited experience with B&S and with my catching the latency contagion, I'm not convinced I can give any accurate evaluation on cause at this point. The ping problem in particular is rather tough to discount.

[Yongnian]

Summoner is an easy class.  What does that mean?  It means that it is easier to approach the full capabilities of the class than it is as another class.  If all classes are balanced around people playing them to their full capabilities, then summoners are going to perform better than others in PvP soon after the game is launched due to them simply being easier to pick up.  However, as time goes on and people get better at playing other classes things will even out.  Also, as you can see from looking at the current PvP ladder, other classes can and do reach high ratings, thus proving that summoners can and are getting defeated regularly by those who play their classes to their full capabilities.

 

One of the very top rated PvPers in on the NA ladder is a Force Master.  I also play Force Master, but I can't even hit 1600.  I lose to everyone.  Does that mean that FM needs buffs?  Obviously not, as when it is played to its full capabilities it is frighteningly good.  I however play like a turd because I just got this game and so lose quite frequently.  I actually win against summoners more than any other class, amusingly enough.

[Sonofabyss]

8 minutes ago, Yongnian said:

 I however play like a turd because I just got this game and so lose quite frequently. 

 

So you have no idea what your talking about.