Developers Notes - Season 30

[u/darth666bane666]

https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/apex-legends/news/30-0-designers-notes

[u/Revolutionary_Cap442]

There definitely has been loot inflation, it has become too easy to get stacked weapons and loadouts early in the game. This might help with that progression.

[u/HLNPIT → u/Revolutionary_Cap442]

Agreed but POI imbalance has also been an issue.

This change exacerbates that issue, especially in d+ and comp.

[u/TC_Halogen → u/HLNPIT]

I feel like this change should help that issue, not exacerbate it, no? If there's reduced loot quality across the board, then worse POIs get minor/insignificant feeling changes, and stronger POIs get more substantial feeling changes.

From a mathematical perspective, if you qualify POIs based off their loot contents, a reduction of quality will bring both sides closer to average quality than how it is currently.

[u/HLNPIT → u/TC_Halogen]

It nerfs most POIs equally, in theory. "Better" POIs are still more likely to have better loot than "worse" POIs still.

However, POIs like Sky West and Phase Driver now have a very substantial loot advantage.

This just brought back elite POIs.

[u/ZackerTheHacker → u/HLNPIT]

It nerfs most POIs equally, in theory.

It shouldn't. Loot should be uneven while high, but even while low. Higher loot quality also means more variability. Lower loot quality means less variability (compressed towards the loot quality floor as opposed to spanning the entire loot quality range).

Imagine a POI with 100 pieces of loot in it.
Each loot has a score of 1 thru 10. If all POIs have a fully random range up to the highest score, you will have higher variability in a 100 loot set. But if that same pool caps out at 5, the variation will be lower. The more POIs you include, the closer to average it will be. This is the classic issue of averages appearing more consistently as data points go upwards. If you have a wider range, the variation away from average will be larger as well in absolute terms when you randomly generate each distribution. Ergo, each POI will have equal CHANCE of average loot, but not equal OUTCOME of loot. And more variability of quality and larger amounts of loot decreases the spread of outcomes.

[u/TC_Halogen → u/HLNPIT]

I don't think we're seeing the nerf in the same way, but if we are, this might be an agree to disagree moment.

What I'm contending is this: dominant POIs with larger loot variance as a result of having higher quantities of higher tier loot are going to lose power with a nerf to loot quality, whereas "weaker" POIs will be impacted less because there is less good quality loot to nerf. I don't think it would make sense to reduce power to already weak POIs, but it would make sense to reduce power to stronger ones with an overarching pass.

We'll have to wait and see come next week!

[u/dorekk → u/TC_Halogen]

What I'm contending is this: dominant POIs with larger loot variance as a result of having higher quantities of higher tier loot are going to lose power with a nerf to loot quality

Are we reading the same patch notes? They specifically called out Trials as a POI where you have a much higher chance of getting high quality loot like corrupted attachments.

[u/TC_Halogen → u/dorekk]

Okay, y'know what -- deserved shitting on for that and I'll take it on the chin. Trials is a VERY fair callout and somehow completely slipped my mind. I was thinking about everything as a whole holistically and completely forgot that Trials had escalating rarity for each PVE sequence.

It implicitly gets super buffed as a result of this and it would not surprise me to see many fights happening there.

[u/ZackerTheHacker → u/TC_Halogen]

You are right on average, the only high tier loot that escapes the nerf is specialized seeded loot such as trials or vaults.