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Respeccing Cost and Game Balance
Recently I was wondering what the respeccing cost would be. I think I read somewhere that it was gonna be low. If that is the case, good, because since Rift allows such huge character customizability, people are going to respec often trying different builds. Then someone reminded me of game balance and that some builds are going to be OP, but then there was a statement from the Rift team saying that the players will balance it themselves, meaning if a powerful build comes up other players will make another build that will counter that build. Powerful builds are going to become popular and those counter builds as well and their counter builds and so on and so forth. If respeccing cost are low wouldn't Rift become a Rock Paper Scissors game of builds going in circles with people spending their whole time respeccing?
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PVP and customization always means FOTM. I don't trust that thing about the game balancing itself. Remember when economists were saying the market would regulate itself before the crisis?
I ll be on a PVE server I guess anyway.
PvP balanacing leads to PvE nerfing in most games so I actually like the stance they are taking on PvP balance. PvP dueling balance in general doesn't happen w/o adding more vanilla to the game.
Rise above hate.
Ignore fan boys.
If you are mainly all about PvP and on a PvP server then you can have 4 different overpowered builds saved and tap a button to switch between them out of combat. Also I am hoping the game will be all about group and higher pvp which means there will be need for all classes and mixes of classes. Balance will be player based. A bunch of pet classes roll in and send pets on everyone while nuking. A bunch of stealth rogues come up and double or triple gank people from the shadows. A group of inquisitors and justicars are running around stealing life and energy from people and close combat aoe healing eachother. A group of chloromancers and Champions and chloromancers killing targets with close up damage and nukes that heal the party. A group of Warlocks and assasins running around picking targets and finish them off one by one or tackle several targets with damage over time poisons and spells.
These were just a few powerful combinations of pure classes grouped together that would make for some crazy PvP.I didn't even go into the multiple tree spec builds. Those should prove to be a ton of fun and add more survivability in many situations. If any single class or even 2 people ran into a group like these they would take a dirt nap. But if people organize into groups based on complimenting skillsets then they become an OP force to the delt with. I am very excited about the PvP aspect of this game. It has alot of potential to be great. Rock paper scissors only applies 1v1.
That's like saying spiting your face always results in cutting off one's nose.
PvP balance only leads to PvE nerfing if the company is lazy or doesn't care. It's possible to balance PvP and not screw PvE. But it takes extra time, attention and funds from the game company. With profits the bottom line so much these days, instead they just make the easy, quick fix across the board that borks everything else. Why? Because the player base is going to whine, but they'll still play the game, for the most part.
Here's one of the easiest things way to balance PvP without ruining PvE. Now, I know this sounds like I'm a genius, because so few games actually seem willing to do it, despite it being so effing simple: instead of changing the ability, change the outcome of the ability when used against other players.
I know, right. I'm revolutionizing the industry EQ in '99 style!
But really, why can't more games figure this easy solution out, and instead just nerf an ability and think they actually fixed anything.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Here's something to think about as a consequence of soul-role swapping in the field. You have to be out of combat. This is going to encourage players in the open world to attack other players primarily when they're engaged in combat with a mob, so they can't switch to their pvp build.
Now personally, I don't care. I love open world pvp, so this has always been a smart strategy in my book. Most people, even on open world pvp servers, still whine about this sort of thing. But Rift--alleged to be designed for pvp from the group up--has a mechanic that is going to practically make it manditory you engage an enemy while they're still fighting a mob, if you can. It will be more than a dirty tactic (or smart, depending on your perspective), but potetially a matter of survival and expected, making the pvp in Rift, in the eyes of many, too ganker-based and not 'honorable' enough.
And how is just letting the community figure out balance not just a cop-out, so Trion can save dev time/resources (read as: money) by not working on balance themselves? What ARE they putting their dev time/resources into, because it sure aint class balance, crafting, combat, unique individual starting areas...
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Ultima Online did this by creating two different rule sets. One for PvE and one for PvP. That way the PvE could be over the top and a character could see crazy damage and all that, but the PvP was a bit more drawn out and crazy and made you really crunch numbers and think outside the box to be effective within the PvP caps set by the game. It worked and worked well.
I have to agree, it's possible to make pvp and pve work in different ways.
In Lineage 2, players had a separate bar of hit points called "combat points". In pve these points were ignored. In pvp they acted as an extra layer of hit points.
I don't see why having abilitties work differently against players vs against mobs is so impossible.
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Not sure where you are going with this one. Open world PvP tactics have always included trying to achieve the upper hand in a battle by almost any means. World of Warcraft had these mechanics in it as well. You learned to watch your back, your groups back, the sky above you.....if you were fighting a creature you usually had enuff time to realize the incomming threat and start a chain of actions to defend against it, mitigate it, kill it, or flee from it.
Basically having the ability to attack or be attacked while engaged with PvE adds more depth to a game like this and should never be nerfed or changed.
The problem with "balance" doesn't come from PvP at all... it is all driven by insane requirements for PvE. What I mean by this is that... in order to makeup for pitiful AI.. designers just add gobs and gobs of HP and damage to mobs. Thus.. to be effective against these mobs... the players need to deal and heal ridiculous amounts of damage.
For once... instead of gaining a "challenge" by making a boss have 1000 times the HP of a normal character.. I would rather they make the boss smart. You know.. instead of sitting on his throne while we "pull" the 20 guards in his throneroom in 2's and 3's.. maybe he could look up and see us.. and then call for his guards to attack.
To me... that is really the source of any PvE/PvP balancing issues...
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I hope they don't want to balance out all classes. They only should try to balance groups. And i mean balance in some kind of complicated rock, paper, sword.....
Yeah, I agree. Oldschool pvpers, or people that like 'real' pvp, appreciate the aspect one can get jumped at any time and want this dept present in an open world pvp game.
Most of the pvp audience these days (see, they aren't even pvpers, they're a pvp audience!) have warped visions of 'fair' fights and 'honorable' kills. This is the demographic that is encouraging games like Rift to have pvp designed from the beginning. They aren't doing it for people like me who loved EQ's Sullon Zek server where there were no rules against corpse or bind camping.
PvP has become a business decision, a selling point. The people they're selling pvp to can, do and will complain about being 'ganked' anytime they're killed and it's not a fair, full hp/mana fight. And Rift's very soul-swapping designed will highly encourage people to engage others in a way that many in the pvp audience these days consider 'unfair' and 'ganking' (bless their ignorant hearts).
Conclusion: Rift is catering to casual pvpers, but including mechanics that will highly encourage hardcore pvp tactics.
I like both hardcore pvp tactics AND forum whining from casual pvpers, so I'm okay with it... but that doesn't mean it's the best thing for the game or those that don't like either of these things. :P
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Yup. The source of the issue, I agree.
Solutions outside of simply nerfing abilities are plentiful, though. It's just nerfing an ability is the easiest thing to do (in the short term). Easier than you describe. Easier than designing mobs around avoidance, or with invuln abilities, or with a system where the type and timing of your attacks mean more than sheering pouring on dps.
EQ had a simple, yet elegant system for pvp balancing, which wasn't always balanced, but was often unbalanced in a fair way, if that makes sense. As in everyone couldn't defeat everyone, but wizards couldn't always go around one shotting people either. They simply reduced spell damage against other players (by what, 33% at one point?). It made things more fair for melee. And also, resists actually mattered! I know, amazing thought these days, but if you had a lot of resist gear, those 'overpowered' spells became less so.
Of course, nowadays every class has dozens of different damage abilities, so resist gear is harder to impliment. But still, how hard is it to just reduce all damage abilities, lower CC times, and raise resist rates when used on other PCs? From there, balance the issues that find loopholes and remain overpowered.
Instead, that ability that does .005% damage to a raid mob, gets nerfed across the board because it can one shot a naked caster. /boggle
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In a well-developed game that has it's foundation in massively-multiplayer game-play that encourages team/group-play, as oposed to solo-play, and rewards tema/group play that benefits from a symbiotic relationship between roles, balance becomes more illusionary.
Lets hope Rift leans greater in the direction of a team/group massively-multiplayer game-play environment as opposed to a solo-pvp environment, which I believe to be fail.