On Friday, Sakai wrote a lengthy blog post discussing the current issues over the game's balance. His plan is to enact both short-term and long-term adjustments to change any glaring issues that affects the game enjoyment. Sit back and relax and enjoy the PR embedded within this article.
First, as for their long-term goals, they want to balance the power between classes. All classes, skills, and photon arts, will be targeted for possible buffs and nerfs.
All the work and testing required to perform these long-term adjustments are likely to take about half a year. However, they also feel that it’s necessary to perform some short-term adjustments to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.
As of now, they’re seeing a tendency of advanced players leaning towards Gunner and Braver. Specifically, the team recognizes that the power of [Shunka Shunran] and [SRollJABonus] is standing out ahead of the pack. In order to correct this problem, from early March through late April, they’re implementing balance adjustments for existing elements, and improving some classes through newer elements.
Based on these adjustments, they’ll analyze which contents are target for rebalancing in the near future. Due to these findings, there’s a possibility that some nerfs may arrive in a later update.
Now you see, the development team’s policy isn’t to perform nerfs, rather, they’ll generally buff some areas in response to certain areas that stick out. However, this methodology, while addressing some issues, does impose some limitations.
As for the problem with [SrollJABonus] and [Shunka Shunran], after implementing the balance adjustments though late April, if the team only adds buffs to their adjustments, the game’s overall balance will become worse—narrowing the playstyle and diminishing the lifespan of the game. To extend the game's enjoyability they must correct things, even if those corrections turn out to be nerfs.
This seems to be a problem with the development team, when they were working on strengthening Gunner and Braver, they worked on each part at the same time. When they implemented them on different schedules, each part stood away from their intended balance.
Therefore they decided to change up the structure of the development team. From hereon out, under the supervision of the “Balance Adjustments Team,” while having the final balance and DPS in mind, they plan to adjust each skill, class, and PA. The end goal is to make large enough changes to achieve a balance between classes, but this process will take almost half a year to go through. Hopefully, the upcoming changes can create a more stable environment and help make the game more enjoyable for everyone.
