Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] Crowfall: Throwing Everything Off Balance
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Balance is a funny concept, both in games and all over real life. Nothing is really ever fair and true balance is not only impossible, but it's also boring. And in the past, even when game companies worked so diligently to balance every class against the others, there was still an illusion of imbalance.
Read more of Shawn Schuster's Crowfall: Throwing Everything Off Balance.
)
Comments
Developers can joke about balance and how people act on forums but players notice all bad shit that developers put into the game and while forums produce lots of noise developers can't get cocky and forget to pickup the signal when something is out of balance.
There is a fallacy about "if everything is op nothing is op" since if everything is OP combat tends to be broken.
If balance has never been achieved how do we know balance is boring? I understand the premise, but I doubt any person asking for balance wishes to normalize a game until everything is the same. I think "balance is boring" is a silly cop out, especially when these devs want to put leader boards and all types of thing to insite competition.
People who wish for balance desire that player overall skill, reaction and decisions to be the deciding factors in victory.
I don't think evenly matched competition makes for boredom. I think it's exciting and creates respect for the smaller details.
Now what Crowfall is doing is ignoring 1v1 balance and focuing on GROUP balance which I 100% support and applaud. Let's see how it works out.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Going for unbalanced classes with points of strength and weakness is fine, as long as each one has roughly equivalent chances to be both great and weak. Having one generally 'go-to' combination defeats that design.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
DAoC had multitudes of unique classes and races. Things were never "balanced". DAoC stands as the best game I have played to date. Sure I complained about the damn Smite Clerics, stealth minstrels and the BoneDancers with their armies.... It made me identify with my realm more.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I'm in the "all the classes being balanced to be all-around soloers makes them all boring" camp. what makes the game fun for me is learning to overcome the weaknesses in a class. EQ2's 10,000 classes and the various rounds of tweaks and nerfs made it such that over time a class might be favored, then fall out of favor and "suck" then come back into favor later, etc. Whenever a class became the FOTM I'd swap to an alt that was now "disfavoured" and learn to make it work. And then surprise people with just what the class could do after all. Very satisfying to turn a weakness into a strength. Or to be understimated becuz "Oh that's a weak class" -- oh yeah? Watch THIS!
I don't think it's a cop out so much as an acknowledgement of history. Every game that has tried to create balance has made classes more and more bland and more and more homogenous and yet in the end the community still retains a perception of imbalance.
i agree but most of trouble in game, every time when a new game or new game launch (always hackers sometime be there) mostly every game and not just for wizard101 & pirate101 etc. gaming or online gaming.
Well he is 100% correct in that as long as each class fulfills a ROLE "rpg game ya go figure".then objective is complete.
However wtf are they talking about when saying balance as in Rock/paper/scissors,that is anything but balanced,that is the perfect system that says you can still have a role but IF and i say IF you really feel the need to have pvp,your class has it's ups and downs,that is way it has to be,you can never have one o/p build that ruins the entire integrity of the pvp.
I think it proves more what i have been saying a long long time,pvp doesn't work it is way too tough to make sure every class has it's place in pvp.Sure you can satisfy your one claim,for example that healer does a nice job in a group keeping everyone buffed and alive but if it can't beat a single class in pvp,then you failed the game design and the players.
Point is ,does he really know what he is talking about or doing a pre cursor before complaints start rolling in about class design?That is the jest i get here,he feels afraid that once pvp sets in,there will be some severe fails and doesn't want to deal with it.
That is also why i ALWAYS mention that game designs NEED to be really thought out well.I do NOT agree in ANY type of pick from here or there type class designs,to me that is a cop out,basically saying,ok if your build doesn't work ,it;'s not our fault you had your chance to pick.Instead YOU the designer ,create classes with set spells and abilities.You know why,simple there is not one single player who can predict the future,so what they THINK might be great and working great for the first month,might be a complete fail as he mentions himself "at end game".
This is also another reason why you have TESTING phases,they are not suppose to be for marketing or a pat on the back to those who gave you free money,you are suppose to be getting as many people as you can to test your design...flaws.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I want to second this. Some of the really unbalancing things can be fun as well. DAoC had too many classes to ever achieve a true balance, and since no two bolt wizard types were truly the same across the three realms, well it made things more mysterious (at first) and fun (the entire time).
I also love a good rock/paper/scissors balance type, as long as a rock can fly through paper or scissors cut up a rock if the player is just more skilled.
WoW's constant attempts at making things more balanced really took away a lot of the flavor of the original game. Yes, some of the changes were needed and did provide quality of life to certain classes, but I also feel they attempt to achieve a "balance" the wrong way. They could have created pve fights with more randomized encounter mechanics where certain classes could shine. If it was randomized each pull, then you would have to ensure that you had a better variety of classes to deal with various mechanics, or just learn to play more skillfully if you didn't have the class that could make things easier.
This is also where PvP can really shine. Certain classes will always be most powerful, but that one sorta weak class with a person who is godlike at playing will tend to decimate all, and truly surprise the hell out of people too.
fuck the balance, that just make people whining when they cant win every one.
should be; warrior>thief>mage and so on.
This person at least gets it.
If 90% of your gameplay design is pvp, then each class needs needs a equivalent amount of ways to shine in that content.
For example, if all the good pvp content is solo pvp, and one class is the best at solo pvp by an outstanding margin, the other classes may as well not exist for players interested in competing on even footing.
This is even worse than having homegenous classes since the false choice means you now effectively have just one class. The others end up as trash/noob traps.
Two main solutions to that:
1) Make every class just as good at solo pvp (potentially undesireable especially if lack of effort is applied in making them good in different ways)
2) Add more content that the other classes CAN be good at to equal it out.
The natural order of life is to seek balance and normalization. You can say "balance is boring" and give some non-existant example of how a developer tried to and made things bland, but the fact is players will seek and create this balance whether the dev takes the time to do it or not. Their job is to create the illusion of uniqueness while keeping the game normalized on THEIR terms.
What people fail to address is who the hell is having fun when something is unbalanced? Obviously the person luckily on the OP side of the equation. The people on the receiving end not so much.
"I keep getting 2 shot by an assassin who has perma stealth with no counter, this is awesome. I love it" -Said NO ONE EVER
If a developer doesn't take the steps to balance things, they are in fact wasting their own man hours and money. Why make 25 classes when only 3 are clearly dominating and thus being utilized by the majority of the player base?
I really hope ArtCraft understands this and handles things accordingly.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I never liked the idea of nerfing classes/skills to the ground by developers to make each class/spec "balanced". I've never seen a game who does this have long lasting enjoyable pvp. There's always "fotm" builds or classes as one way to play is always op for a period of time. Of course there a certain extremes where things aren't working as intended and need to be adjusted. I love the idea of buffing classes/specs rather than nerfing another.
I prefer it when developers accept certain specs/classes each have different areas they are better at than other specs/classes and allow for the players to create their own ways to be competitive. For example, a tanky class/spec have more survivability and being able to sustain much longer but does less damage and a rogue spec/class having burst dmg but being squishy as hell and having little sustainability.
ESO is the biggest example that comes to mind where the attempt to balance pvp by the developer has hindered pvp and even helped to make it one of the worst "could of been" mmo's for pvpers recently.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
And boring.
Team based PVP works and is extremely popular (1 game > all PVE games combined).
Problem I see from many is the view of designing around the individual, be it soloing in the world or as a soloer standing next to a bunch other soloers.
When team dynamics and roles are not optional, but the core design, things should work differently and an individual being overly weak/strong shouldn't be as crazy as the solo design.
From the sound of it, each archetype will be unique as possible and with size and what not actually mattering, balance won't exist at all. No 2 foot tall gnomes "tanking" or anything of that sort.
Hopefully with over a year of testing, we'll have a pretty good idea of how things will work at launch and ACE will provide enough info for new players that picking a 7 foot tall beastly character won't be confused with picking a 4 foot tall rodent when it comes to what each can do.
I heard groups work well for that...
Got killed many times in DAoC by stealthers camping choke points. Sucked, but I was alone and in the open.
If my group happened to find one and roll over them, didn't feel bad for them, nor did I feel OP.
Problem is so many games design around 1 vs 1 gameplay even within a group that it is hard to look outside of that context.
If everyone is rolling around in 5, 10, 20+ member groups, toss in a way to detect stealth or a magical barrier that absorbs the first attack, being 2 shot becomes much less of an issue.
If someone literally has no counter ever, that is simply crap design. Someone taking advantage of their strengths and another's weaknesses is as intended in my book.
Looking at what ACE has planned, a strength could be tunneling under walls to open doors or cause havoc during a siege. Which has nothing to do with 1 vs 1. Remove the solo mentality and it is a totally different experience.
fun fact is that the rock,paper,scisssors means exactly this, that there is no balance and every role relies on the other in order to be safe and fullfil its actions.. i dunno am i so dump ?
That is the point of R/P/S. It is balanced in that you lose against some builds and win against others. No build always dominates or loses. You can skew the odds by picking your fights.
Totally agree with the dev, sick of all the whining kids always wanting every class to balance, it should definitely be about group balance and not individual players, this is a mmo, so people should be by default looking to group up.
I for one hope they stick to their guns and not bow to the very vocal minority
Agreed. I think that the idea of "balance" has changed over time. Might just be me, but I always took it to mean that all classes were viable, in some way. That didn't necessarily mean that every class would output the same damage, or in the same way, but it meant that every class had a purpose. If only devs could spend more time developing and less time balancing classes, we'd probably have much cooler games.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
General value of classes/builds should be balanced. If some classes/builds have little use, are always low in demand and require lots of work they are poorly designed. All viable builds should have some roles to fulfil, preferably more than one, be in reasonable demand and require appropriate time and efforts to level/gear.
If your character completely depends on guild/alts in leveling and gearing its better be worthwhile, for example by being borderline overpowered in some narrow field of end-game activity.
Time and efforts also require some balancing. if some class/build is 10% better at tanking than another but requires 3x more time to level and gear, that's poor design. It better have some extra value (unique buff) or it should be rebalanced to 30% better tank for 2x more investments.
At same time no class/build should be absolutely irreplaceable. Your uber-healing priest and super-fat paladin disconnected when party was mobtraining at some distant map? Well, just use secondary weak healer and agile scout for tanking, you'll need to slow down, gather smaller packs and farm less effectively but still at acceptable level.
You came to castle siege with extra damage dealers but without debuffers? Such poor preparations should weaken your team but not render completely powerless. Lets say properly aimed focus-fire with all these damagers can work if performed at right time and can get you chance to win siege.
Old asian subscription-based MMOs were pretty good at that, probably because idea of "everybody should be equal" is not that popular in Korea.