Announcement & Discussion

[Namohysip]

Hey all, I have some announcements. First off, the big one: this round has been delayed by a week due to various scheduling issues that were told to me in public and private. I don't do this very often, but there were enough people this time that it was warranted. Note that the incoming plot scene is NOT the walkup, so feel free to join. Related to that...

Small request: This is more an informal request, but I am noticing that a lot of players are generally only interested in player-to-player scenes. That's fine and I can respect that, but if any of you are hesitant to join NPC scenes because it'll make me busy, or because you don't think you should, I'd like to say to the contrary. Generally speaking, if you all leave Owen to do the plot matters, you will generally get the "okay" or "good" outcomes to the plot, but rarely the "best" outcomes if he's all on his own. Don't forget that there's actually a story you guys can sway!

Balance update: Blast Seeds are now the same price as thorns and spikes. This is only beneficial to players, so the change has already been made and any purchases of blast seeds in the past have been retroactively refunded by half to accommodate.

Clarification: Generally speaking, abilities and moves that suppress or alter an opposing Pokemon's moves and abilities will NOT work on enemy Blacklight moves. For example, Damp does not suppress Blacklight or Blinding Meltdown.

Reminder: Don't forget to prod at your fellow Support players to purchase perk slots so you can boost your Support Burst contributions during battles. It may be expensive, but it may also be worth it! Also, don't forget your Blacklight Boost!

 

[Namohysip]

Hey all, just giving a final reminder to everyone to check your stats, especially if you're Front Line. Things to consider are ascent, Supports, Blacklight Boost, perks or perk slots (for Support Burst), items... And for newcomers, don't forget to get your Shadow and Radiant moves in. Fellow players, help each other out if you want!

Also, as another reminder, while there IS a Front Line priority list, if someone is well below max level or hasn't done any challenges for a round, they are subject to case-by-case removal from FL for that round and so on. Make sure to log your things down!

 

[Namohysip]

Hey everyone. Good work on another boss battle completed! Though it seems this time around the difficult part was winning instead of the special condition! Though I think there was some interplay there, as keeping up the special condition was what made you vulnerable to attack.

Anyway, I have a few things to announce. Some of them are balance adjustments, and some of them are things a little greater. Please, as usual, read through them carefully.

Owen's Perceive

Early in the fight, there was a discrepancy between what Owen saw (thresholds) and what the team wanted to see (Stagger rate). It used to be an informal thing per fight, but I'm not really sure how to make that less chaotic when deciding. It could be a matter of open discussions, or you can leave it up to me to let this just be something Owen can make a judgement call on his own on what to do, just make it one of Owen's tattle features that I personally manage? Up to you guys, really. Floor's open.

--

The battle schedule

I have noticed that even for Front Line players, the current battle schedule combined with the sheer complexity of the battles in addition to how rapidly things can change from one turn to the next has made for a very stressful battle. And not necessarily in the fun way. Along with that, the battle schedules have been pretty tight, I'm busier than usual, and more mistakes are being made.

I am wonder if, going forward, the battle schedule should be revised to deal with all of these issues all in one swoop. However, this may require a dramatic shift in the way rounds are carried out as a whole. This is how it may look.

If there is anything you are paying attention to in this post, please pick here

Right now, battles are scheduled to be every four hours with the exception of breaks for sleep or a gap in Saturday for outside obligations on my part. However, the most stressful parts for both myself and other players is the four-hour gaps where there is only time for an hour of strategizing what are very complex turns. People rarely have time to even make roleplay replies to corroborate the fights, and in general can make things feel still land hectic, and perhaps not in a way that is enjoyable.

So, with that in mind, I am wondering if an extension of the scheduling system (for the final time) would be useful. It involves, in general, granting more time to everyone.

Mechanics wise, there will be no difference. At the normal time that perhaps turn 2 usually happens, moves will be due for the first turn. However, instead of having another turn immediately in four hours, it will be the next day, about 12 hours later. Then, the next turn will be in another four hours--typically when turn 5 is due. And so on and so forth. Essentially, (by Hawaii time perspective) there will be a turn every morning and evening on weekends, and every evening on weekdays, with turn 10 (the same time limit) being next Friday.

"But won't that cut into rp time?"

Yes, which is why I suspect an additional change may be needed: making rounds permanently four weeks long to accommodate for this extended time. This will give people time to wrap up their scenes from the last round, too, in addition to giving a more relaxed pacing for planning turns instead of the artificial difficulty of cramming decision making into a few hours after results are made.

"But what about challenges and BLECs?"

Well, I can't really change BLECs, I think. Like, you guys can suggest things if you feel, but I don't really know if that's something I want to touch. It will make the campaign longer, and maybe I can find a way to make things fair by cutting off BLECs after a point so we have time to award everything before campaign's end? So it would still end at the normal time as before, even if the campaign runs longer, and the BLEC points are still balanced properly.

Aa for challenges, though, I could leave them as-is, or I can make them about 33% more difficult to accommodate for the 33% extra time. I'm also leaving this up to you guys. My main proposal is the core issue of battles being a little too cramped to be properly enjoyed, especially in the flavor text and roleplay side of things. Please give me your thoughts on this proposal and any concerns and clarifications you may have! This used to be a discord campaign that was much more fast paced, and it is slowly being adopted to the slower and more elaborate forum environment.

--

Status effects

The balance team, after seeing the results of this fight and the sheer weight of status moves, have realized that perhaps the multiplier added to them was an oversight in our planning process. While at first you guys thought that status moves were useless, you guys have rapidly come to realize that it's perhaps your most powerful tool. Perhaps too powerful. Specifically, the damage multiplier for Freeze and Poison. We were considering reducing this multiplier from 100% to 50%.

This is in accordance with almost all other big boosts in the game, and would level the playing field. In exchange, however, bosses will be less bulky to compensate for this, and in general will be more balanced. We are currently heavily leaning toward this adjustment, but we also believe this will make both players and bosses more balanced to diversify their strategies and still have viable options with what they currently have. (Power gamers can probably assure us that a 1.5x multiplier on top of everything is still extremely strong, in addition to the other things that status moves typically give.)

--

A confession about this last fight

Alright, so this was something that I'd been deliberating with myself for a while as well as with my balance team, but I've decided after a few hours of thought to come clean about it.

In the discord, I mentioned during a pivotal moment in the battle that when the team fell short of knocking out Kyogre, which would have resulted in a world of pain. This, combined with the Blinding Aegis move, led to frustrations from typically roll-with-the-punches players to the point where I began to sincerely weigh the value of fun over difficulty and how I may have swung too far to the right in this fight.

The balance for this fight was a comedy of errors. But the long and short of it is, in the middle of the fight, I adjusted its difficulty from 8 to 7. There was no "glitch" in my app that weakened everyone's attacks. I simply re-applied the same boost twice and claimed I had a bug, which thus gave you a smoother fight when I "fixed" the error and recalculated everything. It was, effectively, what the boss would have been like had the difficulty still been 7. And I am sorry for being dishonest to you about it, but I'm not a very good liar long-term since it always eats at me, so I decided to just come clean about it.

Ironically, the boss in general would have been harder, had I not doubted my instincts an hour before the fight. Rayquaza used to have about 30 extra defenses, which I took away thinking it would be too hard. But then you guys nearly one-shot him, thus proving my first gut instinct right. The boss was going to be a joke, so I quickly reverted the boss stats to normal, but that ended up being too hard. None of these numbers would have been easily noticed by you all because they were made on-the-fly before calculations were revealed, and I'm not really happy about that. I don't like playtesting in live environments. But it was a hasty judgement call in the name of balancing difficulty with fun, and I'll be treating it as a learning experience going forward. I hope that the fight was still enjoyable for you all in the end.

But I know that some of you, especially the blood knights, won't be satisfied with this. I made the boss easier for you. Some of you may view this as me seeing you guys as not able to handle it. So, I'm willing to offer a makeup, if you guys are interested. It is very easy for me to have Rayquaza and company challenge the team again, perhaps at the Colosseum, in the name of his Legendary pride, along with the others of the trio. It won't be an actual campaign boss battle, but a Colosseum fight, even if it will be at the same scope as a boss fight. This can double as a pioneering of the new battle scheduling system above, if you guys approve of that, too.

It can start at the time it usually would, this coming Friday night (my time) and run for the week. I'll also allow you guys to be a little anachronic about it and have parallel rp scenes during the fight, too, since this is a make-up battle on my part. The battle will be at the "true" difficulty, and with lower stakes, I can afford to not hold back. No points will be consumed, no items either. I will make a special sheet to tamper with for the fight.

Anyway, that was essentially what was happening behind the scenes for this battle. Again, I apologize for my dishonesty, but I hope you understand why I went about it, and I hope we can have an open discussion about what we want from this campaign going forward. Both in terms of fun and challenge, and what people consider a challenge. I know that a few players have talked to me in private about this, and I hope they can come forward to speak about what they want. I won't be able to satisfy everyone, but I want to at least fine a compromise that most can accept.

Thanks for reading, I know it was a lot. Let me know if you had any further questions or concerns and I'll be sure to get to them! Thanks all, and I await your thoughts.

 

[Equitial]

As for challenges, though, I could leave them as-is, or I can make them about 33% more difficult to accommodate for the 33% extra time. I'm also leaving this up to you guys.

I'm not much involved in other stuff, but if the round time gets increased, I would definitely like the challenges to increase along with them.

 

[TheGOAT]

Battle 6 Retrospective



Welcome to the mid-game. Welcome to 8/10. I have a lot to say.​

Challenges…

Eh. I don’t have a ton to say here, but all things considered, I’d rather them stay the same. Irl isn’t making things easy and the last round demonstrated that for a lot of people.



Supports...

Virgil and I spent a lot of time plotting and contacting all of the active support players. This time around, we made some big improvements to the arsenal. The support boost meter going off and allowing Kyogre to be knocked out was only appropriate. To all the support players — thank you! Keep being awesome, and I hope we can continue to build on this performance moving forward!



Status…

An effective-immediate halving of the status multiplier might be good for the meta in some respects, but that can’t be the full extent of it.

I can definitely speak as someone who has built a lot of their unit around status, so you should know that it would be a huge blow for Radiant Iceberg to be nerfed so heavily. I’m not really in a position to like, ask for stuff, but… yeah. I’m asking for stuff here. When Psych Up was nerfed, refunds and workable solutions were offered right away for those who used it. Similar compensation would be nice here too, especially since this situation is a little more permanent (i.e. BL moves, which cannot be un-learned or replaced, are having their utility directly impacted).

If status is being nerfed, then the weight it carries in custom moves ought to shift proportionally to that. That’s my stance.



A compromise?

How ‘bout this: instead of going through the hassle of reevaluating BL moves and whatnot, just let enemies be statused more than one time. Let that be the big change to go along with the smaller multiplier. Broaden the curve by increasing the number of occurrences that things are statused, but decreasing the multiplier on damage. In the end you almost certainly end up with less damage overall, which, considering the motivation behind this nerf, seems to be the desired outcome.

I’m not personally in favor of this next thing, but if it opens y’all up to the idea any more—perhaps there could be a scaling threshold system for status? Like, where the first time something is afflicted with a specific status condition would only require hitting the normal threshold. Then the second time would have to hit x1.5 the threshold, and so on. It would certainly help prevent status spam.



Untapped elements of the meta

Moving forward, we should anticipate that the full range of available perks/items/etc will likely be relevant in battle. Namo tends to leave room open for everything to matter in some way; it’s uncharacteristic of his writing style to make something have no use or impact somewhere, and that carries over to Blacklight in the sense that certain unlocks could be hints of what’s to come. For example, with a perk like Feeling Okay available, you can infer that status-adding attacks will likely be used on the party at some point. Why else would the perk exist?

That’s just an example, but this goes a little deeper than that. It’s reasonable to expect neglected perks/items/etc to have their usefulness boosted due to the mechanics of certain fights. We witnessed this happen in the last fight with Owen’s Perceive picking stagger instead of thresholds. I joked about it being a sales pitch, but seriously, there’s no better way to demonstrate opportunity cost in Blacklight than designing battles to expose it. Look out for that.



Logging things...

Right now the character sheet looks pretty weird, starting with the names section. Only a few people have submitted Cibus names (RX effect) and translated Cibus names (food). Not a big deal at all, but still, it’s a fun feature and I wanna remind people it exists.



Astrid is officially sending out an S.O.S.

Okayyyy, I kinda need to talk about this one because it’s been on my mind since the very beginning and it came up in the recent battle. Um, basically, too many of our attackers are physical. It isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault, either, it’s just... where we’re at.

Currently there are only four noteworthy Magic weapons: Cynthian, who is on an indefinite hiatus; Vix, with Fuze being a no-show for last battle; Owen, with Namo electing to step back from FL unless a spot opens; and Astrid.

I’m serious. Please help. We’re playing on 8/10 difficulty and the sheer lack of depth on the Magic side of things might start to become a serious issue that can’t be swept under the rug any longer. Until a hypothetical new player joins with a FL Magic build, we might benefit from emphasizing the Magic side a little bit more in our strategy to supplement the lack of depth. Bosses can catch onto our weaknesses and imbalances at this difficulty, and as long as we continue to stick with it and potentially go higher, we will find ourselves making necessary micro-optimizations that would’ve been an afterthought otherwise.



Physical attackers not getting a fair shot?

I respectfully disagree. And considering how the surplus of Physical attackers have spent the campaign thriving and synergizing together while Magic has had no such luck, I struggle to empathize as well.

Look, part of Blacklight is understanding that a lot can happen in one turn, and that means risking the viability of certain combos that need to be timed precisely in order to work. It can mean being put in a position where the task your build is best at isn’t immediately available to you. Please begin to anticipate this, and please plan ahead! The only remedy is being dynamic with your moves, perks, and so on; if you have more than one or two things to do on the battlefield, you’re far less likely to be put in a position where you can’t do anything useful, even at these high difficulties.

Above all, let this be your takeaway: you must be adaptable. Being adaptable requires preparing for the worst.

I think whenever we encounter a problem in the future, you should ask yourself if it’s a problem that could’ve been avoided with an alternate move, perk, or some other readily available alternative. You should also ask yourself, albeit with less weight, if it’s something you could’ve avoided by having someone on the team grab a custom move that could help solve the problem. If the answer is a reasonable yes, then it’s an obstacle you won’t get very far complaining about. Learn from it and work around it.

Finally, please cut Namo and the balance team some slack. Their job is to expose Team Spectrum’s weaknesses and, well, they’ve done tremendously. I’m very grateful to Namo, ExplosiveTurkey, Magyk, and MadderJacker for all the work they’ve done. Considering we were the ones who requested this difficulty bump, I endorse everything that happened in the last battle, recognize it as mechanically sound, and am looking forward to future battles.



Speaking of the Difficulty…

9/10 when?



And lastly…

I wonder what we’re unlocking? 👀 I honestly don’t know, since by this point this campaign is relatively different from the former campaign. Cant wait!

 

[Ambyssin]

As soon as we can get access to mid tier Blacklight moves Bahamut can become a ranged attacker.

 

[Namohysip]

About that...

Incoming for round 7... Mid tier Radiants!

Just like before, it comes with some restrictions... but the restrictions are slightly lifted compared to the low tiers. More info to come later, but like before, here are the basic requirements:

The mid-tier Radiant move must...

• Start with "Shining" in its title
• Costs 20 stamina, and therefore adds 40 corruption per use.
• Be ANY SINGLE CHOICE from...
  • 140 power
  • Add 500 to a stat debuff
  • Add 250 to a non-powerful (e.g. Toxic) status effect
  • Buff a stat by +5
  • Buff two stats by +3
  • Or, as usual, some other effect
  • A mixture of any of the above at weakened levels
• Like before, does not cost a move slot in your normal four, existing moves. This will be a third move in your Blacklight moveset.

And to Support players... choose one stat to add a +1 to. This can include a stat you already boosted, up to a cap off +2 total.

 

[Negrek]

I'm not much involved in other stuff, but if the round time gets increased, I would definitely like the challenges to increase along with them.

Hard same.

Let that very same principle be a warning, then: if you disregard the group initiative, and especially if you do so in an unnecessarily rude or vague manner, the top players will take notice, and you should not be surprised when you find yourself hard pressed to acquire Support buffs and teammate assists in the future. Also, you will have less goodwill built up in scenarios where there isn’t enough space for everyone to FL. Actions have consequences, what goes around comes around, what you give is what you get, and so on. I can attest that playing as a team will benefit you more individually in the long run.

Please don't make vague call-out statements like this. I find them unproductive for anything but creating resentment. Nobody enjoys being put on blast like this, the people who you're trying to reach may not even realize you're talking about them, and people who you're fine with may well think that they're the ones you're displeased with. If there are specific players you believe are being disruptive, please address the issue with them directly, or bring your concerns to Namo so that he can mediate. That's what he's here for! If there are players whose behavior is preventing other people from enjoying the game, it's the DM's responsibility to sort that out. You've been quite vague here, so I can't say whether or not I agree with you about that--one of the reasons I find these sorts of statements unproductive. But there is also the fact that in a game like this, people can and should play their characters however they want to. As you state! And that may not be in a way you like. But as long as they aren't actively sabotaging other people's ability to play the game, they aren't doing anything wrong, and it's on you to deal with any dislike you might have of it.

I also deeply dislike the labeling of some players as "top players" and the rest of the group, implicitly, as not. This is not a competitive game. The only reward you receive will be your own satisfaction for having accomplished whatever goals you set for yourself in the RP, doing the cool thing you wanted to do in battle, whatever. People place different levels of importance on different aspects of the RP and therefore may not pay as much attention to one or another of them as other players. That doesn't somehow make them not a "top player;" it simply means that they have different priorities and get something different out of the RP than you do. You are absolutely not required to extend help or support to another player if you dislike them, dislike their conduct, whatever. For any reason. But I really can't get behind the framing here where you suggest that you and some other vague group of "top players" may punish others for not playing in the way you prefer. That's not in the spirit of the game, and I don't like to see it here. (I also found your snipe at Fusion later in the post unnecessary.) Again, please address problems you may have with other players either with those players or with the DM rather than by vagueposting about them here or in the Discord channel.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Would having an extra layer of rewards for the extra time be an interesting/reasonable alternative to requiring more out of the challenges? A wave 4 that just gives extra BLECs or a very small additional number of points or something? Speaking purely personally, extended time for the regular challenges would mean that I actually have a chance of meeting them more regularly; more time + higher requirements would just leave me treading water same as before. But I do realize that these challenges are probably not particularly difficult for most people, and if the majority would get more benefit/enjoyment out of having more to do then that's fine. "Actually have a chance" is probably the operative statement when it comes to me anyway, lol. (Though the holiday season probably isn't the time to put that into effect, heh, so perhaps at least one more round with extra time but normal challenges might be for the best?)

 

[TheGOAT]

Please don't make vague call-out statements like this. I find them unproductive for anything but creating resentment. Nobody enjoys being put on blast like this, the people who you're trying to reach may not even realize you're talking about them, and people who you're fine with may well think that they're the ones you're displeased with.

I didn’t consider those angles. Thank you for pointing them out.

If there are specific players you believe are being disruptive, please address the issue with them directly, or bring your concerns to Namo so that he can mediate. That's what he's here for!

I’ve put a great deal of effort this round helping the others get things sorted, and I promise you, I attempted both of these things with earnest effort. My failed attempts at sorting out the situation privately and cordially are the source of my frustration. The above post was not my first or second response to the situation.

Although… reviewing it the morning after, I wish I was less confrontational about it. Mmm. I sincerely apologize for that. It isn’t my intention to create resentment or take a casual hobby and impose higher stakes on other players; I had a lot to cover and admittedly didn’t pay that section nearly as much attention as I’d have liked to in hindsight. That’s on me.

But as long as they aren't actively sabotaging other people's ability to play the game, they aren't doing anything wrong, and it's on you to deal with any dislike you might have of it.

I mean. I would describe this situation as sabotage, but not necessarily active sabotage. So I dunno. Basically, it was bad enough to warrant a serious private discussion about how to deal with it—a discussion that included a TR mod—as well as how to handle the slight increase in difficulty that it entailed.

I’m not sure where this situation falls, really. To me, sabotage is sabotage regardless of intent or activity, and solving it should be pertinent either way. But if this is the final ruling, and I’m in a position where I simply need to accept it, then I will do so without complaint. You won’t hear another public statement from me about Quiet regarding Fusion or any specific users.

I also deeply dislike the labeling of some players as "top players" and the rest of the group, implicitly, as not. This is not a competitive game. The only reward you receive will be your own satisfaction for having accomplished whatever goals you set for yourself in the RP, doing the cool thing you wanted to do in battle, whatever. People place different levels of importance on different aspects of the RP and therefore may not pay as much attention to one or another of them as other players. That doesn't somehow make them not a "top player;" it simply means that they have different priorities and get something different out of the RP than you do. You are absolutely not required to extend help or support to another player if you dislike them, dislike their conduct, whatever. For any reason. But I really can't get behind the framing here where you suggest that you and some other vague group of "top players" may punish others for not playing in the way you prefer. That's not in the spirit of the game, and I don't like to see it here. (I also found your snipe at Fusion later in the post unnecessary.) Again, please address problems you may have with other players either with those players or with the DM rather than by vagueposting about them here or in the Discord channel.

Clarification: I’m referring to involvement, not skill level. Measuring players by the latter and declaring that lower-skill players automatically get less of a say in decision-making isn’t really something I’m interested in either. That ruins team chemistry and generally isn’t a very nice way to act.

When I refer to the “top” players, I’m referring to the players who spend a good amount of time setting things up for everyone behind the scenes, strategizing, searching the meta for new ideas, and so on. Technically, anyone could be this provided they had the time available; I’m trying to measure input, not output. I’m referring to the people who spend the highest amount of time and effort helping set things up before and during the battles, regardless of how their characters actually perform in them.

But this is a casual game, so perhaps it’s best in many cases that nothing at all gets measured. And that’s certainly true to an extent: I’ve noticed a few players have recently brought up how they’re more interested in the RP side of things (although, that can get competitive as well…), and given the main purpose of Blacklight Campaign, it comes as no surprise. Like, I joke about moving up to 9/10 difficulty, but I’ve also been playing this game for a while and I can vouch that this game is designed such that RP > mechanics. As the campaign continues into 2021 and the plot continues to progress, this will continue to ring more and more true.

However. When preparing for battles, brainstorming strategies, and so on, there has been an undeniable pecking order for who has been involved in decision-making and who hasn’t been. This also comes as no surprise to me; some people have the free time and/or motivation to leap in, others don’t. And others don’t care at all. That’s perfectly alright and nobody can hold that against them! But this also means that players who are more involved will, inevitably, have a higher level of influence on what the team does. These players are trusted by the playerbase to make big decisions, hence the comparison to a hierarchy where a “top” exists.

…That being said, I’ll adjust my descriptors appropriately for future posts that address the group at large (a regular thing I hope to continue doing after each battle). “Top”… yeah, I can see how that would give the wrong idea. Maybe something like “the strategists” or “power gamers,” as Namo tends to put it. I really don’t want to give anybody the impression that this is some kind of oligarchy. It’s not! For anyone reading this, no matter if you’re FL or support or ethereal, know that you can always meaningfully impact the game and there is nothing inherent about anyone else playing that makes them matter more than you.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

I think the way this fight broke down was a symptom of a larger meta.

So, obviously our species distribution is also a part of this, because it meant we didn’t have the team comp to get around Aegis by smashing things on alternating turns, but I think there’s a deeper problem:

Our solution to every problem is to smash it to bits before it hurts us. This is not a strategic failing on our part, but a symptom of the way Blacklight is currently balanced. Killing the enemies will always be an important part of the game, obviously, but our current meta is heavily skewed towards a hyper-offensive strategy where our “defensive” rhythm is just killing everything really quickly.

I think the fight that most clearly demonstrates this is the fight against the creation trio. Let’s look at their special moves for a second and think about how we countered them, and how we could have countered them:

Dialga’s Blinding Timestop: Suppresses the stamina and action boosts gained from Speed for one turn; cannot be avoided or blocked.
We countered this by smashing Dialga to bits before he could use it a second time. How else could we have countered it? It can’t be evaded or blocked, so we could have... just let ourselves be maxed to 1 action? Of course we chose to smash him to bits instead.

Giratina’s Blinding Antigravity: Nullifies Evasion boosts for the turn; cannot be avoided or blocked.
Most of us weren’t using Evasion that fight, but if we were, how would we have countered it? This just punishes Evasion, with one counterplay: Smashing Giratina to bits.

Palkia’s Blinding Spacecrash: Switches everyone’s row positions. Isn’t in the sheet, but a “cannot be avoided or blocked” clause is a safe assumption.
How did we counter this? We moved back to the front row and finished smashing Palkia to bits.

The only boss where “smash it to bits now” wasn’t a dominant strategy was when we were gunning for the special condition in boss 4, which had a whole neat sub-meta around corruption management, balancing tanking corrupting moves from the machine with calls at the teammates we had to restore. (Which was actually quite fun, in my opinion.)

I think the real problem with Shield’s Aegis is that it took smashing things to bits before they can act away... for one turn. Sure, a more balanced team comp could’ve continued smashing things to bits, but I think that would’ve been skirting around the main problem of this meta.

While it’s mostly chance that we have so many physical species, it is no accident that our team has so many damage-oriented units with nothing that helps us endure a turn that isn’t filled with hyper-offence.

Sure, a good chunk of our units run some status moves because of how much better at smashing things the defence-dropping status afflictions make us, but the list of active players that aren’t oriented in one way or another around high damage output is...

Bahamut.

It’s literally just Bahamut, who doesn’t have the offensive stats for damage. And now he’s getting his new radiant, which is planned as a special version of Body Press. Unless there’s a meta change, he’s probably going to get roped into joining us in smashing things and then this list will contain nobody.

(Sure, I hope that list will also include Celeste one day, but it’s not going real hot for me build-wise and I just get used to smash things even though my stats aren’t optimized for it. Maybe if we squint a little and don’t look at the reason why Curio wants to drop the enemy’s defences we can pretend she counts, too.)

—

So, what I’m getting at is this: Physical/Special split be damned, you I feel like in a healthier meta, you would be able to take both flavours of ‘smashing anything that scares us to bits before it can act’ away for one turn without it requiring retconning an enemy to already be dead to prevent us flirting with a TPK.

There’s a number of non-damaging things people could theoretically build around, and I think there’s good reason they’ve nearly all been ignored in favour of killing things quickly.

Before I put more ramble about builds, one thing that runs as a common thread through all of them: Stamina costs. There are good high-power attacking moves for single-digit stamina, with small conditions attached to them. Without that you’re looking at more like 10-13 stamina.

Your entry-level status move is 10 stamina. 20, if you want to touch something as powerful as... Attract? Or weather? I had the impression stamina action multiplier was supposed to help prevent people gunning down bosses really quickly, but status moves (so, most every defensive one) are the ones to suffer most, leaving lower cost attack moves as the ones only things that are affordable to regularly chain. Sure, people sometimes put tons of stamina into redeeming their defence-crippling status move of choice, but it’s not a sustainable choice, so it’s only used when it justifies that cost by feeding further into hyper-offence. This has made they hyper-offence meta worse, not better.

If you want rambling about why certain things aren’t being built around, here’s more ramble:

Spoiler: more ramble

Team Buffing Builds:
At the beginning of the, buffing moves were used, but since then they’ve mostly disappeared. They’re not necessarily bad now, but they’ve all been out-competed by one move: Psych Up. Moves like Coaching cost the same amount as Psych Up, but they’re much slower and more expensive than just having one or two person set up, then having everyone else copy what they need. Plenty of people took buff moves for their low tiers, and most of those people haven’t used them too much. Starr’s gets used to seed all the Psych Ups, but most others are outcompetes by Psych Up.

This isn’t necessarily a call for more Psych Up nerfs, but it will likely continue to outcompete team-buffing for the foreseeable future. Honestly, if team-buffing did become viable again we’d probably still just use it for faster smashing anyways.

Enemy Debuffing Builds: (I’m talking stat stages. Status conditions that come with stat debuffs are a whole other thing.)
There is one form of enemy debuffing that’s seen use, and that’s defence lowering via Curio. That’s a debuff that contributes to hyper-offence, so it sees play.

Since they have no stamina, Speed only impacts bosses at every 4 stages. Bahamut’s, bless him, has helped keep bosses from reaching up towards an extra action, but the 1600 points that’s be required to deprive a boss of one action just isn’t worth doing, especially when Valour will pull it back up anyways. If speed had a real impact on bosses before -4 it might be worth touching. Negative Evasion and Accuracy... well, unless I missed something on the rules list, don’t seem to do anything except cancel out some Valour.

Of the neglected stat drops, offensive stat drops were the ones that really had the best shot at seeing play. As it stands, the drops are too small and the enemy attacks too devastating to make a difference to the teams overall survivability. If an attack drop doesn’t make the difference in the number of hits people die in, it doesn’t increase our survivability. Dumping over a dozen attack dropping moves might make that difference for enough units for it to be noteworthy, but it’s not worth all the actions, move slots, and stamina that such a project would cost.

Status Condition Build:
Status conditions are great, so why don’t we see people making status conditions builds? Well, Bahamut and Celeste did a good job of that in the second fight, but ever since the nerfs in round 3, there’s been no such thing as a status condition build because something you can only do once per enemy isn’t a build. Even when we use status conditions like poison or freeze, they’re something thrown onto a hyper-offence build. Poison and freeze are such a boon to hyper-offence that status conditions in general have been nerfed to the point where statuses that could’ve given us a defensive rhythm just... don’t see play anymore.

Tank Builds:
Tank builds need two things to really click: The ability to survive attacks, and the tools to make sure they’re the ones doing the tanking. Bahamut has one, Zane had the other before going inactive. Unfortunately, Bahamut struggles to draw enemy attention and when Zane used moves like Follow Me, he didn’t last long.

This one is one I think is most heavily affected by species choices, because I see no reason there can’t be someone with good survivability and the ability to make sure they’re a target. Hopefully I can get Celeste here... eventually.

Well... there is one thing. If scary teamwide moves are going to be commonplace, tanking will be useless.

Healing Builds:
Healing has seen some play on Bahamut. (Though Celeste’s Wish bottomed out beneath even my lowest expectations.) While healing is helpful, “healing builds” aren’t going to be a thing for as long as healing continues to have such high stamina costs, meaning we can’t count on it as a source of defence. It’s given us some insurance, but it’s not something you can count on to keep you alive in the long run.

 

[Virgil134]

Owen's Perceive

Perhaps a strawpoll can be started as soon as the boss' identity is revealed? If the link is shared on Discord and in a separate announcement post as well (kinda like when we considered extending the round) then I think everyone should be aware of it and get a chance to vote.

The battle schedule

I totally support this! This new schedule means everything can be a bit more relaxed and stops timezones from being an issue for certain turns. I don't RP all that often during boss fights, so this can hopefully change that. Round extensions would be logical as well then, yeah. I'm admittedly not sure how to handle things for BLECs, but I think the challenges should remain the same as opposed to becoming more difficult. For me personally it's not that difficult to complete all the challenges in time, but I've noticed that does seem to be the case for a decent amount of people. Giving them more time would make things more enjoyable for them I imagine, and also make the boss fights go a bit smoother since there will be less people going in with incomplete loadouts or worrying about taking certain actions due to being low on points.

Status effects

I think I can see the argument here. Assuming the defenses of the bosses are indeed lowered because of this I think I can support this. I do think Goat raised some valid concerns, but I'll get to that when I reply to his post. I really appreciate you're asking players for feedback instead of just making the change though.

A confession about this last fight

Ah, it's unfortunate to hear that we didn't actually beat the boss at 8/10. I guess it's more a 7.5/10 if the difficulty got switched halfway trough? Either way, I'm not too upset about it. We had already talked about it in Discord earlier so I won't say too much about it, but I do think the original situation the team was in was a bit unfair, so I think things worked out for the better in the end. At least we can all learn from this moving on.

That said, I'm totally on board for prioritizing fun over making things challenging! And this is coming from a guy who always likes his video games on the highest difficulty, heh. I think in the past there were times where challenge has been prioritized too much over fun, especially when it came to balancing certain aspects, so I hope this is something that can be kept in mind more moving forward. Because of that I'm suggesting that for Round 7's boss fight we switch difficulty back to 7/10. If I was playing Blacklight solo, or with just a few of the other really active FL players I'd ask for a switch to 10/10 in a heartbeat, but that's just not the case here. Looking at this fight and the previous one I have the impression that people enjoyed the difficulty of the last fight more and also had more fun with it. I don't think there's any shame in lowering the difficulty if it results in more people having fun, especially since 7/10 can still provide a decent amount of challenge. It's called "Hard" for a reason after all! :p

Though I think the offer to have a rematch against Team Shield at 8/10 difficulty is very nice! I'll look forward to that. ^^

Status…

I think you raise some good points here regarding how this nerf affects players with status move or even (partial) status builds. The suggestion you made on Discord is a great fix for this I believe. Have the current nerf go through, but also allow us to cast status effects multiple times. That way status moves remain just as viable, but in a different way. Making it so that repeating status effects can't reduce the action count of an enemy a second time seems like a fair compromise to me. We might wanna think on how to handle Paralysis though. If Paralysis is used more than once I do think it should do more than a -2 speed for a single turn. ^^;

Physical attackers not getting a fair shot?

I'm afraid I have to disagree with this section here (since I assume you meant this as a response to people saying that Physical Aegis + a catastrophic attack wasn't fair for this fight), though we also covered this on Discord earlier, so I don't think it's worth thinking about it too much. I do think we'll be fine in the future though. Overall I think it was a fine post!

 

[Ambyssin]

Unfortunately, Bahamut struggles to draw enemy attention and when Zane used moves like Follow Me, he didn’t last long

I suppose I need to clarify that Bahamut's defensive build is less about drawing attention away from the bosses and more about making sure he can survive to actually heal people when they need to. In the first game, we had someone attempt to use a healer build. But their build had lackluster defensive stats and, as a result, they were often one of the first players to kick the bucket and frequently attracted bosses' attention. That was one of a couple of factors that frustrated them to the point of quitting. I think heal supports were an attempt to mediate some of this, but since shield supports are proving so much more useful for folks, it is what it is.

Also, when Namo brought up aggro for this campaign, he made it sound like healing people would, again, be a surefire way to draw bosses' ire, so I built based on that. Either that's not the case... or you guys are doing such insane amounts of damage it's outpacing my ability to draw aggro from heal-spamming.

But at the same time, since several players are building around self-destructive strategies, I think it's all the more important I survive to get off heals.

Bahamut likely wouldn't join a boss rematch, so you could consider that a measuring stick for how well the team would do without a dedicated healer. :V

Also, giving him a Body Press equivalent is really just a safety precaution in case, god forbid, he was somehow one of the only front-liners left standing and the boss wasn't near death.

 

[Negrek]

I mean. I would describe this situation as sabotage, but not necessarily active sabotage. So I dunno. Basically, it was bad enough to warrant a serious private discussion about how to deal with it—a discussion that included a TR mod—as well as how to handle the slight increase in difficulty that it entailed.

I’m not sure where this situation falls, really. To me, sabotage is sabotage regardless of intent or activity, and solving it should be pertinent either way. But if this is the final ruling, and I’m in a position where I simply need to accept it, then I will do so without complaint. You won’t hear another public statement from me about Quiet regarding Fusion or any specific users.

I don't know what's going on with this situation, so I don't know whether there's been any final ruling or what the overall status is. But whether it's been put to bed or not, I'm not sure what good would be accomplished by dragging it into the announcements thread.

If there is something that does get decided privately and isn't to your taste, then yeah, I would tend to say that it's on you to deal with the disappointment and not try to relitigate the issue. But if you think that there was a problem with how something was handled behind the scenes, or with the general process of getting interpersonal issues resolved in the RP, please do let me know.

But this also means that players who are more involved will, inevitably, have a higher level of influence on what the team does. These players are trusted by the playerbase to make big decisions, hence the comparison to a hierarchy where a “top” exists.

This does inevitably happen in any situation where some people are naturally more willing/able to be involved with a particular aspect of . It's not inherently a bad thing. What I don't like to see is the suggestion that people who do have a fair amount of sway in the group's actions would use it to punish other players for one reason or another.

“Top”… yeah, I can see how that would give the wrong idea. Maybe something like “the strategists” or “power gamers,” as Namo tends to put it.

That might be the best way to go.

 

[windskull]

Owen's Perceive

I can't remember who in the thread suggested it (and I'm too tired to look back right now lol) but I think the idea of adding a straw poll up, maybe around the time the boss is revealed, would be a good way to approach it.

The battle schedule

I'm definitely for trying out the extended schedule (which I think we're doing for the rematch, so that works well). My one concern is that some people might struggle to participate in discussion every other turn, but I think that stems more from my chaotic schedule than anything anyone else has said and I know I'm not the norm so. It's probably a generally unfounded concern.

For challenges, I'm neutral on the boost. I know there are periods where I blaze through the challenges in days and other periods where I struggle to get much of anything done. But that's something that varries from person to person anyways, and I'm cool with going with the crowd on that.

Status effects

I'll sort of echo what Goat said in regards to the status adjustment. That's fine if whatthat's what the balance team decides to do, but if that's the case I'd appreciate if I was given the option to retroactively modify my custom moves that deal with status, since it was built with the old system in mind. I may not end up changing it at all, but I'd appreciate having the option to.

A confession about this last fight

I feel like this has already been talked to death, but I'll go ahead and reiterate my thoughts here.

My general frustration probably partially came from the fact that I have limited time to participate right now, and having a scenario where I kind of felt railroaded into only one or two options was kind of frustrating.

I think the rest of the frustration came from the fact that the aegis mechanic felt like it was built around a generally more balanced team. But... the team really isn't balanced, because team comp definitely wasn't the primary thought on people's minds when they picked their characters. Sure, you can tweak a character into a different role, but, for example, there's only so far I could take a character that's high physical DPS like a weavile and reclass him into something else. I've done some tweaking here and there recently - integrating some support/hexing attributes into his toolkit (see assist and his shadow move, for the most obvious examples). But some things, like making him a magic build, for example, just isn't feasible. And that's true of several players, I think. But I also recognize I"m not diving the deepest into the meta, and my experiences aren't universal.

But all that to say that, yeah, while I want to see how we fare on the true 8/10 difficulty, I think reducing back to 7/10 was probably the best call. Because while there are definitely players that enjoy the harder difficulty, there are just as many that would prefer 7/10 for various reasons. Whether it be the balance of challenge and fun, or perhaps the time commitment necessary for that next jump.

 

[Namohysip]

Sorry for taking so long on this! Been very busy. Time to actually reply to it all with my decisions on all that was said...

I'm not much involved in other stuff, but if the round time gets increased, I would definitely like the challenges to increase along with them.

I think I'm going to end up doing this. Round 7 is already geared to be 4 weeks long and that will probably be the case going forward. I don't think I can increase BLEC thresholds or anything like that, but I might keep the original cutoff date the same or similar in an effort to give me and the volunteers time to get awards in before the campaign ends. Tie things up in a neat little bow. I'm still feeling it out, but since it involves actual prizes, I do need to seriously consider how deadlines operate.

just let enemies be statused more than one time. Let that be the big change to go along with the smaller multiplier. Broaden the curve by increasing the number of occurrences that things are statused, but decreasing the multiplier on damage.

Alright, after a lot of consideration, I've decided to go for something like this. Status effects will be more difficult to proc each time that specific status is achieved, but they can be triggered multiple times. The effect will be halved from what it originally was. So, instead of halving defenses or offenses, they're brought down by a quarter.

The main concern with repeatable status effects is the ability to repeatedly lessen an opponent's action counts. That is something that I and the rest of the balance team are very keen about. So, for now, we are going to have the status effects behave such that the thresholds of the enemy will rise by 50% from the base, linearly, each time a status effect activates. For example, with Rayquaza, if he is frozen once, it will be at 400, but the second time will require 600.

If this growth seems to be too low, we will be raising it to 2x to keep things balanced.

As an aside, I am also buffing the Hex support skill. This was actually unrelated to the discussions here, and just something I'd been considering for a while. No refunds on this one, but Hex is now more appropriately strong.

(Stealth update: Rank Z Supports can now be looked at!)

I think the idea of adding a straw poll up, maybe around the time the boss is revealed, would be a good way to approach it.

I'm thinking of going for this as well. Only issue is this may get more complex when Owen gets future upgrades and can start to see more things, too, y'know? I'll figure it out...

for Round 7's boss fight we switch difficulty back to 7/10. I

I'm going to see how people feel when this mock rematch fight happens. It's going to be at 8/10 but there are no true stakes nor points to spend. If it seems too hard, 7/10 will probably be the way the campaign goes for a while. If it seems that the schedule adjustment (and the wakeup call that was the actual previous fight) was enough to make 8/10 manageable, perhaps it will stay! It all depends on the reception of this rematch.

Everyone will have a loadout of items that I'll help coordinate for the fight and more or less give an example of what things all look like. This is because the format of the battle is different thanks to scheduling, and I'm wondering if that will help things going forward for higher and more complex difficulties or not.

There is one thing that I think I want to say on behalf of myself, my game philosophy, and the balance team that I think is being lost in the debate.

As I said very early on, when I outlined the difficulties, I essentially said that the standard difficulty of 5/10 / Normal would essentially mean that so long as everyone on the front did their challenges, the battle would be a breeze to go through and there wouldn't be any real threats. If the difficulty gets higher, to what I'd call "Hard" such as 7/10, then everyone doing their challenges would still make a victory pretty certain, but not without some clever strategies. As we enter the highest difficulties, though, team synergy, adaptability, layout, and so on will become more relevant, and that is where this comes into play for 8/10.

Yes, you were told not to worry about what Pokemon you brought for the beginning of the campaign. However, that was with the caveat that the customization options you are given later would make up for the intentional fun versus forethought decision made at the start. For the most part, this is true, and we have seen some unorthodox builds that were being done to decent success. A dps-tank Litwick, a Necrozma that's nearly unkillable defense wise, an evade-heal-dps Absol, and an aggro-management Zangoose. There are a lot of pieces here that shows the potential behind customizations. There is a lot of challenge behind making character-based customs that are also strategically viable, and while I've seen most players have no trouble, I also sympathize with the ones that have trouble making it work.

I and the balance team are not against finding ways to make things work if you ask, and there are tons of players who would like to help you do the same! And if this 8/10 battle goes well, these mid-tier moves will become your ticket into really shaping your build to handle more than just one role. While he could have said it with more tact, I do agree with Goat that higher difficulties will require adaptability. Feeling shut down due to one option being blocked, even temporarily, might be too soon. After all, there were still other potential options to take, even if they were not as obvious. When I make these battles, I do make sure victory can be feasibly achieved, assuming everyone did their challenges.

On the other side, if you do not want to strategize at this level, but most of the other players do, that's what Support is for. There is no shame in taking a back seat, enjoying the roleplay side of things only, and lend a more distant hand to those who want to really challenge the gameplay side of things. This is under the assumption that 8/10 is the majority preference. I might make a poll when this is over. Front Lines is a valued position, but one man's treasure is another's trash. Not everyone has the time, patience, or interest to be present for every single turn and optimize every little thing about their build, and they just want to be called when needed and save the day as Support.

Anyway, ramble over. Keep this in mind--self-synergy and team-synergy--during this fight, as well as future fights, and I'll see how the battle goes. Right now I'm leaning toward 7/10 being the sweet spot for the campaign as a whole, but I've been proven wrong before. I also know, however, to set aside my tendency for hard difficulties when in a group setting where I'm not the only person experiencing the game.

See you at the fight! The exact time on my Friday night will be announced later when I sort out personal scheduling details.

 

[Namohysip]

Hey all, sorry for the short notice, but the rematch battle will begin TODAY!

Specifically in about 11 and a half hours from this post.

Note that you will have the same moves as before and the same stats as before (so, if you leveled up at all from that last fight, they didn't happen yet, and I'm using your round 6 stats.) Your items will be either the same or better than your last loadout. All Supports can use their skill once. In general, no points will be spent for this fight in any way.

The starting circumstances are exactly the same: Rayquaza and Shield, with the former conjuring a Meteor and the latter with 5 Protects, if you want to plan early while I get the walkup set up.

The lineup for Front Lines ended up being...
Astrid
Brisa
Cabot
Celeste
Curio
Dave
Icetales
Nip
Saltriv
Shiron
Starr
Vix

Translation: Same as before, but with one less Bahamut and instead an Icetales and Saltriv.

 

[TheGOAT]

Howdy everyone. On discord last weekend, a lengthy discussion occurred in which the state of team strategy came up. I was swamped with irl family stuff and didn’t get many opportunities to acknowledge some of the points brought up, but now that I’ve had time to think on it, I’m here to offer what I’ve got.

It’s no secret that most turns in recent battles have been unraveling in the same way: the 'powergamers' come up with a plan for everyone to follow which leads to what is perceived as the most optimal outcome. The most basic example of this is organizing everyone’s characters together to where they, as a group, deal the most damage to the enemy. Or, if we need an enemy statused, then the team will utilize anyone capable of applying the desired status in the most efficient way. Stuff like that.

In terms of winning battles and contributing to the collective team initiative, it’s great! In terms of having fun and keeping morale high? I’m not so sure. Only a handful of players submit their actions themselves (and even those are often in accordance with a predetermined team-wide plan), which tends to leave a handful of units left over. If you are cool with your character being used for whatever they’re most useful for, that’s perfectly fine. But for those who want to have more influence over what happens in battle while remaining comfortable with the time and effort spent, I’d like to help find a compromise.

The most basic solution to this is some sort of autobattle. Namo has advertised this a few times, and I’m now here to endorse it. With autobattle, you can specify exactly what you want your character to do on certain turns or under certain circumstances, and also specify which circumstances you’d be willing to allow changes in case you aren’t present.

An autobattle list might look something like this.

Astrid Autobattle
• Start by using Psych Up to copy Speed, then Magic.
• Use Radiant Iceberg once on anything with a threshold of 300 or more. Don’t do this more than once.
• Always use Sheer Cold if an enemy is staggered. Freeze them first if it makes sense to.
• If HP or stamina goes below 40%, use a Sitrus Berry/Max Elixir.
• If a big hit is projected to be on its way, use Aurora Veil.
• If Astrid has a spare action and there don’t seem to be any better alternatives, then Recurve an Aurora Veil as well.

Writing out a to-do list—especially one that specifies circumstantial actions and how they should be prioritized—would help tremendously in communicating what you want your build to do. The list doesn’t have to be as in-depth as the above, it just needs to be reasonably applicable to the battle. It needs to be something that active strategists can read and find the best way to put to action, essentially. Otherwise, when the turn is due in half an hour and like six characters don’t have any actions or insight to what they should be doing in that situation... they kinda become robots for a turn.

I’m aware that this might sacrifice a bit of optimal gameplay, but I believe that the roster and playerbase will be healthier in the long run if everyone feels like they can reasonably attempt their strats regardless. Afaik we’re remaining at 7/10 difficulty—with 10/10 being the one designed for near perfect gameplay—so we can certainly afford to take some creative liberties with our actions and even make misplays here and there without suffering critical consequences.

Also! I’ve been needing to design and re-calibrate my damage calc sheet lately, and it’s kind of a mess, so instead I’ve decided to create a brand new one. It will be on Google Sheets and anyone will be able to hop on and use it. I’ll try to make it as user-friendly as possible, starting with having a row/column exclusive to each FL character. When I have it ready, I’ll post a link in the discord chat and a link here as well. (y)

 

[Namohysip]

Hey all, thanks for your patience! And thank you Goat for the pointer to autobattles and the various things related to that. I have a few small announcements to make after the fight.

First off, good job on doing so well! I hope this fight has shown you the value of those niche items as well as having a proper loadout. Though some foresight also contributed to your good play, as well as, potentially, the fact that you guys were in general more coordinated due to the extra time. The new battle schedule will stay! And for now, I'm also going to try to keep the difficulty at 7/10 to see how you guys do before once again trying for 8/10, or if 7/10 is the true sweet spot even with the new timeline and schedule.

Anyway, with that out of the way... Front Lines! As usual, those with a 4 or higher in their Front Line preference value are excluded. I am also as usual excluding Owen and less active players. Owen is open to enter at any time.

Front Line priority:
1. Shiron
2. Brisa
3.. Bahamut
4, 5, 6: Astrid, Cabot, Owen
7, 8: Saltriv, Icetales
9: Nip
10: Dave

--

Inactive / withdrawn for this round for now:
Jaro, Mellow, Cynthian, Owen, Zane, Starr, Curio, Celeste, Vix

--


By the way, I noticed that there was a high demand for people who wanted a clarification or feedback session on the rules of Blacklight, both in terms of what isn't clear on the master rules list, and other potential improvements that could be made. There are a few of these, and I was wondering if anybody would be interested in a voice chat session on discord to discuss this rapidly, openly, and with live edits to the sheet and master rules! I think it would be a very convenient way to get all issues done right-then so everyone's closer to the same page. Let me know what you think! I can do it as early as tomorrow or tonight, or both!

 

[Namohysip]

By the way, I'd like to toss out a small advertisement for the review volunteering for Blacklight. We're starting to get into the triple review prizes for a few of them, and if we want to get those done in a timely manner, we may need some help from others who are frequent reviewers or otherwise available to volunteer reviews! Just be sure to contact me f you're interested. Each review will give you an extra BLEC point to your own prize meters!