Post by "Bill" on Dec 22, 2017 7:16:47 GMT -8
Hey guys, Billy here.
I know we've had talks on Discord about this, but I wanted to take a more official standing to address the discomfort. In the game of the MMM, one thing that sets us apart from most RPGs is the sheer customizability of player characters. If you look at the bottom of every skill list, you will read "custom effect," even on hyper modes. While we tiered some things to ease in creation and approval, the real flavors that keeps the Melee playable to this day over a decade later is crativity and customizabiliyy.
Lets go back to 4.5 as our most senior member, Raven8 himself likes to joke about. We didn't really have much in the way of restrictions, especially at mid-high tier characters. Leveling was a slog, so being v15 was a monstrous feat. Once there, and the game became your oyster, we saw things like full-turn omni avoids, damage in the billions, and attack slots in the thousands. This hit its crux in something Raven's own NapalmMan and Phen's namesake navi Phenoix made use of: turn skips. These were abilities that literally allowed you to double your turn, and all effects: regen, damage additions, charges, etc. This lives on today in people making skills to use charge attacks same turn, and it all-around became some pretty boring copy-paste fests to burn out avoids ASAP.
When Eon fell, and the Elite 12 navis were battling for rank 1, a position naturally held by Genesis, things went dark for a bit, and eventually the MMM would see v5.0 .
This iteration saw, modern virus system, courtesy of resident mod Shasticus,
As well as a revamp of kaizou cards. Kaizou was the defining feature of 5.0 and worked by boosting some part of your navi at some cost. Naturally, as the nature of a game dictates, people began abusing kaizou to be the best, while making weaknesses that didnt affect their navi. Seeing this abuse through approximately 102% of characters meant that your cards, not your creativity, dictated victory. It was about 1 year ater 5.0 that we retired the kaizou system and made the MMM more player-creative reliant.
Come back to today and we have a much more balanced sytem that is more predicated on player creativity. There will always be outliers things that take the vision of the game and how our characters grow and evolve and throws the wrench in it. When we adjusted EXP growth, it was to allow players to feel progress in their characters in timeframes shorter that 2 years. When we opened the automated battles, it was to give players avenues to play without being stuck, frozen for months without staff activity.
This brings us to todays problem: accelerated growth. To date, leveling up has never been faster on the MMM. Between increased story rewards per thread,
to the automated battles, the road to v20 is the shortest its ever been, and thats not necessarily a good thing. You have people who, in one thread are a fresh face in the world, and in 2-3 threads later are tackling bosses and sometimes, if theyre fast enough, can become a seasoned, powerful combatant mid-conversation. We want growth to feel good at the MMM, but we also want it realistic growth on part of the character. Myself and the staff will be looking into providing game-healthy ways to make playing fun for everyone.
To sum up with the title: Why we nerf... its because we have an open form gaming platform where we might not have the omniscient foresight we wish we have. Instead we start without the rules, and regulate things as needed. It sucks that things change, but trust in us that we want to make the MMM a genuinely wholesome experience.
I know we've had talks on Discord about this, but I wanted to take a more official standing to address the discomfort. In the game of the MMM, one thing that sets us apart from most RPGs is the sheer customizability of player characters. If you look at the bottom of every skill list, you will read "custom effect," even on hyper modes. While we tiered some things to ease in creation and approval, the real flavors that keeps the Melee playable to this day over a decade later is crativity and customizabiliyy.
Lets go back to 4.5 as our most senior member, Raven8 himself likes to joke about. We didn't really have much in the way of restrictions, especially at mid-high tier characters. Leveling was a slog, so being v15 was a monstrous feat. Once there, and the game became your oyster, we saw things like full-turn omni avoids, damage in the billions, and attack slots in the thousands. This hit its crux in something Raven's own NapalmMan and Phen's namesake navi Phenoix made use of: turn skips. These were abilities that literally allowed you to double your turn, and all effects: regen, damage additions, charges, etc. This lives on today in people making skills to use charge attacks same turn, and it all-around became some pretty boring copy-paste fests to burn out avoids ASAP.
When Eon fell, and the Elite 12 navis were battling for rank 1, a position naturally held by Genesis, things went dark for a bit, and eventually the MMM would see v5.0 .
This iteration saw, modern virus system, courtesy of resident mod Shasticus,
As well as a revamp of kaizou cards. Kaizou was the defining feature of 5.0 and worked by boosting some part of your navi at some cost. Naturally, as the nature of a game dictates, people began abusing kaizou to be the best, while making weaknesses that didnt affect their navi. Seeing this abuse through approximately 102% of characters meant that your cards, not your creativity, dictated victory. It was about 1 year ater 5.0 that we retired the kaizou system and made the MMM more player-creative reliant.
Come back to today and we have a much more balanced sytem that is more predicated on player creativity. There will always be outliers things that take the vision of the game and how our characters grow and evolve and throws the wrench in it. When we adjusted EXP growth, it was to allow players to feel progress in their characters in timeframes shorter that 2 years. When we opened the automated battles, it was to give players avenues to play without being stuck, frozen for months without staff activity.
This brings us to todays problem: accelerated growth. To date, leveling up has never been faster on the MMM. Between increased story rewards per thread,
to the automated battles, the road to v20 is the shortest its ever been, and thats not necessarily a good thing. You have people who, in one thread are a fresh face in the world, and in 2-3 threads later are tackling bosses and sometimes, if theyre fast enough, can become a seasoned, powerful combatant mid-conversation. We want growth to feel good at the MMM, but we also want it realistic growth on part of the character. Myself and the staff will be looking into providing game-healthy ways to make playing fun for everyone.
To sum up with the title: Why we nerf... its because we have an open form gaming platform where we might not have the omniscient foresight we wish we have. Instead we start without the rules, and regulate things as needed. It sucks that things change, but trust in us that we want to make the MMM a genuinely wholesome experience.