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mmorpgs should NOT be balanced
preston326
Member UncommonPosts: 115
Hi, I see recurring complaint amongst mmorpg players which is that [insert mmorpg name] is unbalanced. Of course I understand why this is an issue to some players (PvP comes to mind first) but I think that mmorpgs should NOT be balanced. I know it's very unpopular opinion but there's why I think so.
When people say balanced they usually mean equal to or as good as other classes/races but that completely takes away all the flavour from playing mmoRPG. Mmorpgs are supposed to be living, breathing and diverse worlds where people can adventure and discover. By making everyone the same we just make that world completely bland and sterile. RPG games no longer have that RPG flavour when healer is dishing out almost the same damage as your two-handed warrior. If you make conscious chose to be caster why would you expect to have close range survivability on par with warior’s? If you chose to go with cleric class why do you expect is’s dps tree to be as strong as rogues?
That really battles me and only reason I can come up with is our “entitlement complex” which is seeping into video games. Yes, you are entitled to be threated equality well as other people IRL but that doesn’t mean you are entitles to do equal dps as other classes. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s the only reason I can come up with.
Another thing that people mean when they say balanced is that given class should perform equality well as other class in solo content or 1v1 battles. Which again is utter nonsense! Mmorpgs are not build (well they weren’t back in the day) for solo content or 1v1 battles. They are built for people playing together. Classes should have weaknesses that are compensated by your party/raid members’ strengths. Isn’t its boring when everyone in the raid are dishing same amount of damage while also self-healing as if they were clerics?
Maybe my views are very old fashioned and outdated but I really miss the days when it was acceptable to have some classes faction-locked or when I would be awesome at healing but suck at dps as Priest. Adventuring with your party felt so much more interesting… What do you guys think about this? Am I the only one who doesn’t like all classes being the same?
Comments
Your views aren't old fashioned or outdated, they're just bad design for today's audience.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well this part of your post is pretty inflammatory and flat out wrong. Wanting class balance has nothing to do with entitlement, it has everything to do with good game design. If you have a mmo with 10 different classes, only 1 is good at tanking, only 1 is good at healing and one is far and away the best dps then you create a 3 class game. Now if all classes had the ability to specialize in any role and all performed each role at a more or less equal capacity, but each class/role had some specialized niche, then you would have a 10 class game.
Additionally, I wouldn't say that your views are out dated or even old fashioned, but rather they stem from a narrow point of view and one that lacks at looking at the bigger picture.
Great, let's have a OP Mage in every game, that can take out a group of 10 non mage players. This would be SO much better.
No really. I prefer 1 v 1 . I don't like to play with group, if i am going to be useless. If i can't kill at least 5 players alone, then there is no point to be part of a good group because i wont be able to contribute at all.
it kind of depends of the game for me i guess.. in a game like WoW where classes started out having their own niche it feels kinda meh that they went ahead and made every one of them pretty much the same.
i know why they made the change but i feel that they could have probably gone a different route in making every class wanted.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
People kind of got tired of the whole paradigm that there are maybe 50% of the classes who can solo effectively, and the other 50% can't solo for shit.
50% of classes are super-desired for groups, and 50% are generally passed over.
Today's design is that each and every class should be able to do solo-friendly content solo, and each and every class should have a role in a group setting that is desirable and functional.
This is why they started doing Talent trees and switching specs.
Most players didn't want to only be a healer that could only function in a group, they wanted to also be able to solo a bit and they also wanted to be able to PvP.
Also, players generally frowned upon having the very first choice they made in the game before even playing the game (choosing your class) decide like 90% of what you could do months and even years down the road.
Dual spec is like, the best thing to happen to the MMO genre since broadband internet. I want to tank with a group of my friends? I've got a spec for that. I want to solo a bit and maybe do some PvP? I've got a spec for that too. Amazing.
"Balance" in MMOrpg's, in my opinion, should come through teamwork and group play. There are plenty of single player, or co-op games where no class is better or worse than the next. But the concept of MMORPG is to play in a group.
But hey, I'm "old school", and don't really play all that much anymore, so I could be totally wrong.
You might want to try DAoC you may even like it. Mages can be interuppted by just hitting them or a stealther taking them out in a single combo.
I've seen some interesting replies and on most part people are saying that it is considered to be bad design choice to have very differentiated classes. Which is actually true, nowadays designers (and players) think that classes that are very defined (mainly tank, mainly healer, etc..) are bad design choice. However, I’m saying that in RPG games it is actually good choice because it makes game more alive and makes you rely more on other players.
I guess what I’m arguing is that “holy trinity” was actually good thing for mmorpgs and that it should not be phased out in favour of balanced classes. There has to be imbalance in mmorpgs.
Of course I’m not crazy and agree that MMOFPS, MOBA, MMORTS should be balanced as best as possible but I think that online RPG games are unique in that regard and have to be imbalanced to some extend to make the world feel more real.
The reason 'unbalance' was created in the past was to encourage grouping and IMO games still should have the unbalance for the sake of grouping...
I wouldn't say that, it's about wanting more of a virtual world than a game.
This.
Classes should be balanced around their group role, not around solo play or 1v1 PvP.
If you want to solo, there have been some very high quality CRPG's released recently.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Balance is generally an issue more about PvP than PvE. PvE function is something that's much easier than making it so that there aren't OP PvP classes, I think. Otherwise you end up with an entire populous of a single class, which is ridiculous.
Crazkanuk
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aka, children.
No, MMORPGs should be balanced. Most MMOs today are just games and entertainment. They don't have any higher holy purpose of emulating a virtual world, they're just trying to be profitable for the creators and fun for the players.
If you don't like it, that's your problem, not the problem of people who like playing today's MMOs.
I agree with you OP but in the context that MMO PvP is an old dinosaur that needs to be put down.
As the gaming industry gets older and more popular, more and more niche genres and titles are emerging. There are simply better genres out there for competitive players looking for a human challenge. MOBAs, OCGs, and Survival games have just blown up over the last few years to go along with the classic FPS titles.
If I was to ask an objective non-bias gamer what the best player vs player titles are out there, how long do you think it would be before that player got to an MMO? LoL, Dota2, CSGO, SC2, HS, DayZ, H1Z1, WoT, Smite, HotS, and those are just PC titles.
The only true form of PvP that MMOs do better than any other is the DAoC massive war-style battle arena but really do they do it better than the other genres or have the other genres just not tried to emulate it yet? Really we've only had 1 attempt at a massive war style game outside of classic MMOs and that was PlanetSide. Perhaps, the technology isn't there yet because both GW2 and ESO have massive lag issues with their grand style conquest.
That's my opinion anyway. I think MMOs would be a lot better off if they dropped PvP entirely and focused on PvE.
The argument of balanced or not only applies to pvp.For PVE it is msot certainly better when classes are not balanced,that is how you achive the ROLE in a ROLE playing game.
However in a pvp setting,it is only logical that all players have a fair chance and the biggest deciding factors are defense and healing.No way can you have a fair pvp game unless you remove roles and just allow every player to be a jack of all trades master of none.To me non speculation or non role classes means boring,everyone is basically identical with a different face/skin and i believe players WANT to be different from one another.
Once you go for balance you need to also dumb down abilities,you can't give a player 1500 healing when the other guy takes 8 hits to achieve that kind fo damage,but you most certainly can do it with a PVE design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I agree with this. Maybe separate pvp that doesn't effect pve. Most of the nerfing is pvp centered.
A virtual world style MMO still has to be a video game and therefor would need to have video game conventions.
I agree with this post 100%.
When I feel like PvP I play BF, Destiny, Dota2, DayZ, Arma Life, Injustice, and soon Mortal Kombat X. Then when I am logging into mmorpgs I log in to group up with friends and go on adventures and socialize. I haven't logged into an mmo to PvP in over 5 years, I feel there are just so many better options for competitive PvP gameplay.
This is obviously just an opinion based upon my own perception of this genre, and you enjoy pvp in mmorpgs that is fine. I just feel like there are better PvP games/genres and I wish resources were not wasted on PvP in mmorpgs and instead such resources were spent on improving the PvE aspects.
Additionally, a virtual world isn't a world because of class design, a virtual world exists because of system design and environmental design. Combat is just something that you do in a mmo, actually it's what we do the most which is also why so many mmos feel more like games than virtual worlds.
If I could tend to my crops, chop down trees, craft and sell my wares at a marketplace, have an actual job (jobs aren't necessarily classes), and find non-combat solutions to problems. Then we will see a virtual world.
Designers need to open up their world and allow players to immerse themselves in it. Which again, has nothing to do with classes or even class balance as a whole.
Unbalanced existed because the devs had no idea how the community as a whole was going to interact with their game. We see this even still to this day, which is also why so many patches in mmos revolve around changing mechanics for classes.
Additionally, mmo designers (especially back in the early years) had most of their gaming experience in table top games, MUDs and RPGs that they played over the years. Things like having a hybrid tax worked well in small group or single player settings, because game systems were in place to make utility be far more meaningful. You could play a rogue type character in a table top game who completely specializes in stealth mechanics and the ability to pick locks, pick pockets and only actually fight as the very last resort. In those small group settings, you typically had other people around to help support your play style.
Unfortunately in mmos you can't always rely upon other people to be available when you're available. Forced grouping to get anything done is extremely bad, because of varying schedules. Additionally, mmo designers understand that the community doesn't always want to sit around for hours looking for a group. They understand they need to have other things for people to do during times they can't or don't feel like grouping. This is how you get a customer base that will give you money.
There is a reason there has been a shift away from this. Anarchy Online comes to mind. The game was notoriously out of balance. In both PVE and PVP.
The game has 14 professions (Classes) all with amazing design and play style. Some of the most fun and unique class designs in any MMO I've ever played. 14 professions to choose......well unless you want to raid. Then your selection is more like 4. OK, it's a bit of a sliding scale really. Tops are Soldis, Enfos, Crats and Docs. Then there is everyone else who isn't an MP or an Agent. Agents can always go do PVP. And, if you are an MP.....well, you could always re-roll.
I would say that if all classes had the ability to do everything equally as well as each other, you've just created a game with one class and multiple skins.
Horrible idea, I think if the game isn't designed around being either PvE or PvP the mess that comes from trying to do both is doomed from the start.
The bad examples of PvP added to these themepark games as just another ride to grind up has not been going well. Games that are designed around PvP as the main feature set will always be better at it than games that have it as an added feature.