How should class changes be communicated?

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Obviously as a reaction to the recent alterations to monk. I tried months/years ago to document a kind of “what devs are working on” list so that there could be some awareness, but a) I didn’t constantly update it (my bad), b) it put the onus on the devs to communicate (more work for them), and c) created pressure because suddenly the community had expectations this work was going to get done.

In general, I am a player who doesn’t hold mechanics as being fundamentally important to roleplay. But, I understand that I’m probably in minority of the playerbase. I don’t think we can convert everyone en masse that it actually truly does not matter your monk got nerfed, from a perspective of roleplaying. Character sheets are just vessels for storytelling, after all. But a monk nerf can take away “fun”, and not-fun means roleplaying can suffer, and thus stories falter, and the server is weaker for it.

So. What are the best ways to communicate class/character mechanics?

I think there is a lot a lot of similarity between this kind of communication, and the communication of bannings/unbannings in MTG, Hearthstone, etc, and balance updates in competitive games.

Here’s what I advocate we do not do:

[1] Have some sort of “watch list”
To use the monk nerfs as an example, if it was communicated for weeks that monk changes were “coming” – would this fundamentally change anything? Perhaps people would have not self-releveled, perhaps people would pause on their monk characters, but what a “watch list” does is create a kind of “pseudo-ban” list.

If the watch list currently said that changes were coming to clerics, would you roll up a cleric? Would you want to play a cleric knowing impending change? The change doesn’t even have to be a positive/negative one, lateral changes can totally alter how you might approach the creation of a cleric.

Probably not. You’d wait and see.

[2] ask for rebuilds.
I think instituting rebuilds for characters is not completely fair, particularly in instances of substantive change, i.e. monk. Suddenly, overnight, there is an expectation you can reformat your entire mechanical identity into a new frame. While I understand the invaluable advice of discord and the forums, this is not the entire playerbase. Mechanical overhaul means there will be a new “optimal” and a new “powerful”, and being asked to suddenly figure that all out creates an unfair burden on a player.
I don’t think we should assume everyone knows the mechanics because of how drastically the entire ecosystem of power can change (read: runes and dweomercrafting).

But is it even possible to grandfather old builds in? Is it even fair? Idk.

And so be honest, overall, I don’t really know how we should approach this issue. In any other environment, you just roll with the punches and make a new character. But because of Arelith’s prominent focus on storytelling, this doesn’t really work out. I don’t think affected characters/players should get special treatment, but getting blindsided isn’t an awesome feeling.

Should updates follow a cycle? That is more of a burden on a team of volunteers. But there’s a patreon for Arelith now so maybe it’s not just a team of volunteers anymore and we can expect some greater level of transparency? Idk.

Maybe I’ll be old and crotechy, there was always some sort of idea way back when that you are always at the whims of the server and its development. Jjjerm often espoused that it is a “privilege, not a right, to play here.” I know that is so old school, but Arelith is indeed *a privilege*, and tbh, my personal response to all of this is

Nothing should really change. This is Arelith. It’s going to happen to you. Sometimes it’ll be awesome and your gish cleric/bard/fighter build will suddenly go crazy overnight because of alterations to dispel mechanics. And other times, you’ll get so screwed over that it feels like a great injustice.

[Ebonstar]

the only thing I would ask for in way of notice and communication, is prior to the change going live, is that every change to be made is listed.

the Monk nerf was expected to be SR and the free epic feats of speed and edodge. maybe a tweak here and there.

what we were told was only half of what was done. and notice was a this is now live on your next log in.

everything lost and gained should have been listed, and posted as coming on this day at this time, this goes live.

what is worse, is in the monk eye glow poll, it was said that maybe 10 percent of our playerbase actually use the forums.

that means its possible that 90% of monk players for this example will have gotten zero notice of anything coming to their characters.

imo that is completely wrong in terms of notice and communication.

there should have been an ig announcement in place for a day or two so everyone had a chance to be notified to check the forums for an update. The wiki should have been changed for the new update as well prior to going live with every change, instead of retroactively.

[Irongron]

We don't (and won't) have a 'formal' procedure here, and will judge things case by case.

No doubt monk should have been changed far sooner, but there are reasons as to why it was so long delayed.

I remain very happy with Arelith's class changes, and paths on the whole, but unfortunately, every now and then these giant nerfs do happen.

[Ork]

I recall when spellswords first entered Arelith and everyone was clamouring to play one. When they got tweaked, it was astounding how many of them vanished over night.

It's regrettable that players dropped these characters especially since OG spellswords were grandfathered in and could be considered a very powerful build in our current meta.

When the Barbarian changes happened and eventually nerfed, people left barbarians in droves ..which is a shame, because Barbarians are considered currently to be in a good place in the meta.

These changes happen and I think we get caught up in the hype of how we lost cookies or now this new class is broken. How these class improvements go, we typically find a happy median where if players had held out through the change they'd find that while their character isn't as powerful or as immune to things as it once was..its still a viable vessel for storytelling.

I don't think these things should be broadcast. We, the player base, nitpick and argue and dissect every facet of Arelith. If the Devs were to announce changes a few days before roll out, it wouldn't really change the reaction.