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Game Balancing
Anofalye
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 7,433
I am wondering what is the point of view of the devs on this?
Are you going to nerf a LOT, a LITTLE or absolutely NOT and why?
As an achiever, I really find it demoralizing when I work a looong time to progress by 5% or 10% and suddenly see a massive drop of 30% which I can't recover ever, in any form. So, what are you views on game balancing once the game hits the shelves? As a player, I honestly don't care about game balancing, but my personnal progression is all that matter, and yes, I will try to pick whatever class/skill/powers that seem to be the most powerful or convert to it, thereby I am extremely prone to suffer those nerfs, which are supposedly for the greater good, but also have the results of demotivating a helpful player which is always happy to help others, this demotivation is all the greater if I convert to something I wasn't, since all the work to redo stuff right only to see the nerf...such demotivation often lead to cancelling account...anyway, just wondering...
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Comments
It’s unfair to ask the developers to give a definitive stance regarding their position on game alterations. Massively multiplayer online games are updated for a reason: to keep a game fresh, because the community demands it, and/or to correct bugs. Class balancing falls under all of three of these categories. Classes must be constantly updated to ensure that players will continue to play those classes. Community input can drive the way that a class is developer or redeveloped. Balancing issues are essentially bugs and ultimately have to be fixed.
“Nerfing” theoretically occurs with almost every change to any class in any game. If a class is made weaker, by any means, than that class has essentially been nerfed. If a class is made stronger, by any means, than all of the other classes have essentially been nerfed. Nerfing will occur in Hero’s Journey because it is quite literally impossible to balance multiple classes. People will always discover ways to strengthen their class or weaken another.
Unfortunately, the developers can’t please everyone at the same time and people will retaliate to changes by complaining or going so far as to cancel their accounts. “Change is good” sadly doesn’t reign true in every instance.
Nelson K. Thachuk
Stratics Media Group
FINAL FANTASY XI Stratics
Nerfing doesn't always have to be done just because of overpowerment..
Kinda like when Clerics couldn't raise in DR for what.. almost two rl years? (correct me if I'm wrong, but I know I quit a few months after it happened, and came back right around when they were able to again).. A lot of people "walked" (DR permadeath) because they had to depart (with no favors) instead of being raised..
Anyway, I don't know what plans are for any of that. I am pretty sure we would try to be as fair as possible if we needed to though.
HJ-Diviana
Hero's Journey GM
Hero's Journey Official Site
Hero's Hall
I'd expect at least moderate balancing, though hopefully the big bits will be taken care of during beta testing. While you can get away with infrequent balancing in pure PvE games (where people are working together), balance becomes significantly more important when you introduce the competitive element of PvP. It's impossible to prevent players from flocking to "optimum builds," but if you don't at least try to spread those players around a bit by making other classes attractive, a game can begin to seem very limited regardless of how much customization you've included. Using character creation as an analogy, if they had 1000 hair colors but one of those increased combat capabilities by 20%, nearly everyone would be walking around with that hair color. This would essentially make 999 of those options pointless, and it'd make the people who did choose one of them feel de-valued.
I'm sure it's Simutronics' desire to make every class desirable to as many players as possible, and part of doing that is making sure that no individual class (or pair of classes, in the case of dual-classing) is significantly more powerful in terms of game mechanics. I think it's safe to say that, while your desire might be to play the most statistically powerful class, Simu's desire is to make all classes equally powerful (though perhaps in different ways and in different situations) so that your choice is based on which you'd prefer to play, rather than which you feel compelled to play. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. In the many MMOs I've played, character balance has never been a process that was finished, mainly because content is continuously added which can skew the variables. That said, it's in the best interest of every developer to minimize disruption to its playerbase, so I believe you can rest assured that they won't go monkeying around with core game mechanics unless they feel it's necessary.
I realize this post contains a lot of "probablies" and "what ifs," but it's difficult to predict anything but tendencies at this point. Turbine made a point of saying they would never nerf anything in Asheron's Call 1, but would improve underpowered skillsets instead; while they tried their best to do that, situations arose that simply couldn't be predicted. All any game designer can do is announce their intentions, which may be all you're really looking for here. Even so, those intentions can't really be anything other than probablies and what ifs due to the very nature of online gaming, particularly in a game with so many hands (GMs) adding ingredients to the stew.
Pretty much what Jenuviel said. PvE has a bit more lee-way in terms of people getting up in arms about class "A" being better than they are. PvP is a whole othere can of worms though. Any real or precieved advantage brings out the pitchforks. If I had to give advice on how to handle "adjustments" I would say 2 things:
1. Baby steps. Anything done needs to be a small adjustment in either helping a class of decreasing it's power. People tend to be less angry when they are given a small nerf. For one, it doesn't distroy their character, or their play style. Some adjustments might have to be made, but players wont have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to play. And as far as adding power to a class, it's better to add it in increments rather than a sweeping change and then needed to nerf that change.
2. Making another class slightly more powerful goes over better in the overall community than nerfing another.
I think one thing that can help deal with the constant need to re-re-re-re-balance everything in these games is a solid beta test. Most of the game I have seen go live, have done so without nearly adequate beta-testing. City of Heroes, for instance, did NOT beta-test the end game or upper-level content. As a result, the upper-level game is still unbalanced today, and they have spent 2 years nerfing and re-nerfing almost everything because of how it plays (and how unexpectedly it plays) in the upper game.
A word of advice to Simu: let the beta testers play long enough to naturally cap level, etc. COH didn't do that. They took a bunch of inexperienced beta testers who were level 15 or so, and bumped them to 37. These people had not played the intervening 20 levels, and had no idea how to "handle" a level 37 (nor did they have the first clue how to "build" their character for the upper levels). All the things the regular gamer learns by trial-and-error in those 20 levels, the "bumped" beta testers didn't know. When the "bumpees" tested the upper level content, therefore, they found it to be reasonably challenging.
However, when REAL players in the live game got into the upper 30s, they found the game far too easy. They were more experienced, and had built far more effective characters. As a result, the real players plowed through levels 31-40 as if they were nothing... easiest part of the game. This of course is backwards, since the harder part of the game should be the later stages, as you can only get to it with experience (confronting newbs with hard stuff and vets with easy stuff is, on its face, ludicrous, but that's basically what COH was doing, though of course not on purpose).
Had the game been adequately beta-tested, the beta players would've got to the upper levels naturally and could've told the devs during beta, "The game is too easy in the 30s." The devs could have re-designed the upper game before going live, and it would've all been done better. Instead, the game launched, and then a few weeks later the devs found out the upper game was too easy and people were capping level in weeks rather than months. They then started round after round of nerf to the base powers so that they weren't so uber in the upper levels... Which infuriated the players because players hate massive nerfs.
The see-saw roller-coaster pendulum swinging of nerf, buff, nerf, buff to different powersets has continued without abatement for 2 years. And I firmly believe it is all rooted in inadequate beta testing. So, my advice is: beta test, and beta test some more, and when you think it's ready, beta test some more. Most particularly you need a set of players who will get from level 1 to level (MAX, whatever it is), naturally, with ZERO bumping. If you need to, go ahead and (for certain players, say), triple the XP rewards per kill or activity, but do NOT give massive level bumps. Let people build their characters through the natural progression of trial-and-error, and see what happens in the upper game. Only then can you have the game balanced right.
C
Thanks all for the input, still having no idea on what the devs are going to do.
Yes, PvE and PvP concerns are differents, and PvE achievers usually have issues with balancing. Since balancing AFTER release is considered by an achiever as affecting his achievements. Losing 2 months of hardwork on a single patch, this is heartbreaking for any achiever.
How can I put it? Once you start a game, you don't change the rules, you stick with them! If I would try to change the Black Jack game rules after players bet money, those changes would not be welcome. For an achiever, game balancing after the game hits the shelves is alterning the rules during a game, since you are still on the same set (on the same character). In the case of a Black Jack game, a set is a few seconds, maybe a few minutes at most...in the case of a MMO, a set is 1 character, this might means years.
See, in old EQ, past a few early mistakes, they restrain from nerfing as much as possible and change later expension, which is NEW stuff, NEW levels, and NEW zones and they where even nice enough to cater to the minorities. For example, EQ never remove AE hunting, but on later expansions, they put it only in a few zones (like Acrylia if you exclude a few days open by lack of beta in The Grey), peoples where still able to AE hunt, in Acrylia, it was almost necessary to AE in some raiding encounters in that zone (well, it was possible without, but it was sooooo much easier with it). But that zone, Acrylia, was designed with AE as a main purpose and nothing else, from the start (they made quite a few critical mistakes, like the fact it was hard to share the zone with more than 1 group). On Game Balancing, EQ was fine (it was not on many other aspects, but that would be another story). While CoH/CoV are completely failing that aspect (yet succeeding most others).
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Obviously any developer would like their game to be balanced.
Different combinations will have different strengths and weaknesses in different situations. Thats good as it encourages players to bring a combination of classes on missions. I would see a game as balanced if no particular combination is over-powering in most situations.
If a particular combination is over-powering and detracting from the enjoyment of the game for the majority of the players then really it needs to be nerfed. One hopes these would be found in beta testing, but lets be realistic the chances are that something will slip through as lots of beta-testers are just there to have a free play and not really hunting exploits or trying to break the game.
If someones play style is to change to the strongest build and use any exploit then I am sorry but they have to expect to get nerfed. Its not like a single-player game where exploits dont affect anyone else in the game. Unfortunately the nerf-stick doesnt take into account whether people with a particular build are just playing the game or actively using an exploit to the detriment of others.
Unfortunately there are so many people playing a MMO game that any change is likely to upset someone.
And if you found an exploit for black jack that let you win consistently you can bet any casino would shut down your table or ban you so quickly your head would spin. Otherwise they wouldnt blacklist people who are able to count cards.
game" content was tested, I helped test it. I've also helped test
content across all levels in EQ2 and most of the original EQ expansions.
One thing to keep in mind is that no matter how much testing you do of
the content you have a limited number of people in the beta doing
gameplay testing. By the time you get to the final, more open, phases
of beta you're mainly doing server load testing. This is partially
because trying to run 5000 people through every possible phase of your
game would be a logistical nightmare but it's mostly because the people
that sign up for these betas really want nothing more than a chance to
play your game for free for a month or so before release.
Once the game is released you have, hopefully, 10's of thousands of
people hammering that content. Human nature is such that every one of
them is trying to figure out some way to gain an advantage in every
encounter. So you end up with someone finding a way to break an
encounter or use a class ability in ways that no one ever thought of.
Yeah, more intensive beta testing could help reduce these issues,
though you'll never catch them all. Just remember that if you're
selected for the beta and be willing to go off and spend several hours
doing something you don't think is fun just to try and make the game
better
As for letting the beta testers level naturally and experience the game naturally. Most MMO's aim to ship with enough content to keep even the hardcore busy for 6 months to a year. That means that you'd need a beta of 6 months to a year, and that's hoping that everyone testing is willing to spend a lot of time each day playing, to allow that. Even if you were to do that, and there are a lot of reasons you really don't want companies to do that, once the game goes live and you have, hopefully, 10's of thousands playing, instead of the 1 to 5 thousand testers, someone somewhere is going to do something that no one ever thought of trying before and you're going to have to fix it.
By the way, during beta of CoH I did level a character from 30 to 40 the natural way and I didn't find it any easier than I had found leveling from 10 to 20. The difference post release was that you had the pool of knowledge developed by those in the beta and you added to it the knowledge from 10 times as many new players. They developed tactics and builds that made those levels play much easier, hence the need to re-balance the game.
I understand they are designed to take a long time. I still think it's better to, say, tirple XP gain and let people level quickly but naturally through all the levels, than it is to jump people from 15 to 30, skipping the in-between levels. I was not a bumped beta tester, but the ones I knew seemed to be foundering in the 30s and not really sure how to use all those powers to a good effect, compared with what a naturally levelled character would have done. Maybe you were more clever than they were (not a difficult feat
C
So to move that to MMO's...no they shouldn't change the rules without warning but since you're always "in the middle of a hand" in these games they kind of have to adjust them on the fly. They just need to let the players know its coming.
I find your use of EQ as an example of not changing the rules amusing. I'm not sure when you started playing EQ but I remember the early days, as in from launch in 1999, and they did far more than fix broken stuff even before Kunark came out. In fact after Kunark they really started making changes between expansions because Kunark broke so much more than it fixed.
As for your AE example, when I first started playing EQ any wizard that fired off an AE in any of the major hunting areas was asking to get himself and his group killed. Most people didn't even bother buying their AE spells since they were considered useless. It wasn't until you got the wide open outdoor areas of Kunark and Velious that AE's became useful and wizards and druids learned to quad kite using them. Instead of changing the spells or the classes they waited until the next expansion and then created content that all but required an AE group to survive. When that didn't work the eventually nerfed AE's, especially as used by people kiting, all but requiring you to be in melee to hit.
I also find it amusing since I've spoken with the live team at various events and they spend well over half of their time working on balancing the game. This isn't stuff that's going into the next expansion but stuff that's going into the next patch.
The advantage the live players had was that they got to learn from the lessons the beta players had learned as well as all those other live players out there. You also got people sitting down looking at the various skill combos and analyzing them to come up with optimal builds. You don't even need to play the game to do this you just need the data. Just go look at the Character Optimization boards on the D&D forums. People are able to read through the rules, something that is easily known in an MMO, look at the potential skills and what they do, again something easy to find out once the game goes live, and discover the best combination to break a game world. The advantage a D&D DM has over an MMO developer is they can just tell the player in their game sorry not allowed. The MMO developer has to come up with a fix that will hopefully bring the build into line with the rest of the game without telling all those players playing it to re-roll.
I've spent a lot of time beta testing various MMO's and most of them, while not perfect, I felt were ready for release with the understanding that stuff would be tweaked over time. The only exception I can think of was Star Wars: Galaxies and that wasn't because the gameplay was unbalanced but because there just didn't seem to be any point in the game. It had a lot of potential but it wasn't fully developed at release.
I have to say that if you're looking for an MMO to release and not make gameplay or class balance changes except at expansions you really are playing the wrong genre of game. The shear number of players is going to break the game and that has to be adjusted. Heck, people find exploits in Oblivion but that doesn't impact my game so I don't really care if Bethesda patches it or not. The same can't be said of any MMO.
But I think that having a good solid beta that lets players really bang on the game, is more likely to "out" the serious problems ahead of time, than having a more abbreviated beta.
We'll just have to agree to disagree that COH's beta was adequate. I think it was OK for finding the actual programmatic bugs, but it didn't come close to being long or intensive enough to weed out all the power imbalances.
C
Thanks for answering.
I see that we disagree and will meet no agreement.
As to the person finding me 'amusing' over my EQ examples, I play pre-Kunark and post-SoL, thereby I miss there balancing era and it seem that SOE learn a lot about balancing in this era. Since I didn't play the same class in these two period of playing, I didn't feel it as much. Which show something, SOE can learn (maybe not everything however). SOE did change FEAR and alter the FD abilities while I play, and they did it timidly and partially. Pre-kunark they didn't do even 1 nerf in the period of time I was playing, and yes, AE spells where not something I was taking, but it would have been possible to AE hunt effectively IF the 24 level stun (was it 20 and kunark spell?) was there for the chanter, something I don't really know. On the release of Kunark it was possible to AE stun and they never remove it.
Back to the Black Jack, for an achiever, game balancing is changing the rules after the bets are placed, no matter how bad you want to make it sound another way. I invest 2 or 3 months of my time ON THIS CHARACTER, not on another character, not on the game, ON THIS PRECISE CHARACTER, which is like a bet, because the rules are set in such a way. If you change the rules afterward, you destroy my 2 or 3 month investements and purge it into oblivion.
I play MMOs for 1 major reason...achievement is unlike any other game, that is, as long as they don't keep 'nerfing' me. Yes I will try to be the 'strongest' character I can, I play for progression and that mean taking the strongest.
I don't mind whatever the rules are, as long as they don't change in the course of my character life. I still hope you have a LOT of success, but doesn't seem like you will be holding on achievers a lot. An average achiever that you nerf for the greater good will agree, nod, and stop playing. A few will complains, achievers are usually not complainers, as complains usually achieve little. Just as I am seeing in this post.
When you set rules, when you put a system in place, the first thing to do is to respect these rules and change them as little as possible. The more you change them, the more you will likely encounter unhappiness, especially from all the peoples who are achieving stuff. Maybe you don't want any achiever in your game, but that would sound strange to me, as the main reason to accomplish game balancing is for killers-type players and HJ is not appealing to them. Socializer talks a lot about how game balancing matter, but the fact is they don't care much, yet it is something social to discuss this issue and they like game balancing, even if it doesn't really matter to them. Explorer can't care less. So again, it all matter to your basics choices.
I always dislike the word 'balance' and it will never change, I am an achiever after all. If you didn't realize how deeply 'balance' can affect the achievers-type, maybe you should reconsider and studie it. If I work on something for 3 months, I get 10% advancement, no matter how justified your nerf can be, if you remove my progression you remove the very reason why I play your game.
Saying that the majority will benefit and enjoy game balancing is something I find funny and extremely amusing, you will realize that everyone that is not a Killer, all those socialisers you are prolly catering to, they will not like it when the nerf affect THEIR class. Socialisers are very hard to understand, maybe I am wrong about them. Achiervers massively dislike balancing, even those who claims they like it, they are resign and accept it, they are not please about it, it annoy them deep inside and it attack their very motivation to play their character. And you know I am right about achievers, deadly right.
But for me, it is crystal clear, a game that will do game balancing and be changing rules is a game I don't have the patience to play. I want a game that is heavily structured and that I can trust. You give me a toy...IT IS MINE 4 EVER!
I honestly don't mind if the game is perfectly balanced and everything is fair and sweet...or if the game is unfair and unbalanced, as in this case, it is still fair, everyone can choose to play the class they want. But changing the rules in the course of a game is not fair, simply because the peoples INVEST themselves according to some rules that are no longer valid.
An achiever who pick the wrong class because he didn't understand the rules will sigh, then he will start the 'right' class and face all challenges and progress. If the same achiever pick the right class, but then you nerf it and another class become the 'right' class, this achiever loses all trust in you and quit. If you game balance, then at least you should transfer all my progression to the new 'best class' for the 3 weeks following game balancing, and even then I would still slightly be annoyed.
If you would take your logic 1 step further, make 1 server that will experience no game balancing post-release, only 1. You would be surprised. I am sure it population would require expansion compare to the rest of the game who is suffering game balancing. Especially if you allow peoples who are nerfed to move over! I challenge you, open 1 server that will experience no game balancing, only 1 tiny little server! And then witness it glory! (add levels and expansions later on, but not the balancing) (basically a server that is identical to the other, but a NO NERF mod on it) Anyway, the rest of the players would prolly think good riddance over someone leaving because they are nerfed...me I will gladly welcome them and group them to the highest point of glory, killing stuff that wasn't meant to be killed!
In the end, a server that would be accumulating the 'social trash' of the other servers would end up having the nicest, the best and the greatest community, as the players would be happy...and of course we would 'achieve' beyond anyone wildest dream! And the other servers would think they are better off with them gone! Good for them, I will welcome those achievers, all of them, some can show me a LOT of ways to become better and better! And guess what, achievers are naturally kind...having someone who is not performing in the group is additionnal achievement! 
CoH is horrible on this topic, despite the fact I loooove 95% of the game, these never ending nerfs are plainly killing me! CoH beta, I have no idea, but what come AFTER was horrible, the most horrible balancing I ever saw. Yet at least I understand why they did it, they want to cater to the killer-type (and they are failing miserably).
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
You are looking for a blanket guarantee that no changes will be made to class skills abilities etc after release.
IMO you will never get this from any company.
If having a game where the balance is never tweaked is so important then perhaps you should be playing single-player games like oblivion. Where you can guarantee nothing will be altered by not installing any patches.
But in MMO games if something is unbalanced and its effecting people then really thats a bug and it gets fixed.
I wish you luck in finding your game but I honestly think single player games are what you are after.
Why was D&D such a huge success?
There are many reasons. One of these reasons is that no matter where you play it, what form it take, no matter the game, you know what to expect. The games respect the rules. It has 4.5 change of rules over 30 years of existance, all these changes are progressive and spread over time, yet it is always possible to stick to a set of rules. For example, me I play D&D, I never play the 1st edition, I reluctantly join the 2nd, I rush to the 3rd ASAP. But they offer some precise evolution, it was slow. None of my character have to see rules change, they always abide to 1 set of rules, never other.
DDO didn't respect that basic approach and see the reaction they got despite bringing an original and nice game. DDO was not able to respect the D&D rules set, the fact they transfer Cleave for an AE attack doesn't forgive, it remove the trust the player have to see the system they know.
You don't change the rules in the middle of a season as well. In FOOTBAll: If I would say that on a pass interception, you can't run back but the play start back where you catch the ball. That twist can be an acceptable change BEFORE the season start, but not in the middle of it, peoples will think I am shafting a team for another and so on.
Asking that a game is STRUCTURED and respect THEIR rules is only comon sense. Human like stability, especially the achievers type. IMO no server should see GAME BALANCING ever...it should only affect NEW SERVER. But I see that doesn't seem to be what peoples are ready to commit to.
Having PERFECT rules and balance is less important than TRUSTING the game, the system. Changing the rules in the middle of a course, is a complete lack of follow up. Achievers will always have huge issues with game balancing, while killer player see this as a priority. Socialisers will adapt to either, even if they usually prefer balancing as it is 'more fair' (even if to achievers this is completely unfair), finally explorers are not caring much about this whole issue. Note that players may be hybrid types and they may not abide by such generalisation. But achievers are BUILDING something, if you keep destroying their foundation, you just screw their motivation every time.
HJ have many good designs stuff, but I am wondering. See, raiding, despite all it flaws, favor socialisers at the expanse of achievers. Thereby it is logical to say that HJ will have a hard time stealing the socialiser from games like WoW (socialisers may follow eventually, they aren't happy in a world full of socialisers it seems, especially that after an expansion a guild need an achiever or two to figure the stuff for the whole guild, if nobody can fill this role the bunch of socialiser will fail and this will cause the guild to disband). I doesn't see what in HJ could possibly interest a Killer-type, but again I don't know these players much, I avoid them. Achievers on the other hand are starving ATM on the market, HJ seems to cater to achievers-type a LOT. Yet, this view on Game Balancing is questionning me, maybe this is what was feeling 'wrong' about HJ and I wasn't able to pinpoint.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
How does HJ seem to be catering to achievers? I see it in most ways as not catering to achievers, with the 'less tediun, more fun" philosophy. Achievers live for tedium, since their ability to grind for exteneded hours through it is what makes them achievers to begin with. But what you want to is to find a exploit,and then be given a solem oath that it will remain there for the balance of the game?
Wow. That is rediculous. So is your assesment that Raiding is for Socializers, not Achievers. Socializers hate raids, because they can't talk. The have to listen and follow directions of the raid leader, and there can be no idle chit-chat. That kind of thing gets raids wiped out. No socializing to be had in raids, it's all about the massive timesinks that appeal ONLY to acheivers. Everyone else hates that crap.
No, HJ does not look like something that would appeal to acheivers IMO, but not for some of the reasons you state. There is Vangard though, that is ramping up to be one of the ultmate Achiver games, ever.
D&D was a huge success because it was a social game. I played for 10 years with a group of friends - we spent all day playing and socializing.
It was also a co-operative game where you worked together. And although it had a set of rules - those rules werent fixed in stone - they were guidelines. So the DM used the rules they wanted and ignored the ones they didnt want. No-one likes a rules lawyer
As for football - its a team vs team co-operative game. So I would say thats the Guild Wars type game.
I think you are getting over fixated on the possibility of rules changing. Maybe achievers need to relax more and have some fun
.
H.J is not like Star Wars galaxies - I cant see them introducing new versions and obliterating your character or its classes. They may tone done some of your abilites but you shouldnt loose anything you have done.
I, like most gamers, hate nerfs.
But I understand why they are needed from time to time. Here is what I humbly request:
1. I agree that you can never anticipate every possible action and combination, even with careful development and a thorough beta test. No problem. Just please don't intentionally use me as a guinea pig. Try to identify and fix this stuff before launch. It looks to me like HJ is trying, but some companies have treated launch as an extended beta.
2. Free respecs go a long way towards taking the sting out of major nerfs to classes and class skills. A respec is when you can essentially "rebuild" your character from the ground up by selecting different skills, etc. than you did previously. That way, if my choices get nerfed then at least I can make new choices. Of course, that's easier to implement in some games than in others.
3. Nerfs should be necessary. A company loses credability with the players when they simply fiddle with things that really aren't unbalancing anything. If someone is in god mode, or killing stuff 10 levels higher with ease, or farming a boss mob intended as a 20 man encounter, sure, nerf it. But it should be something of that order.
4. Be sensitive to the fact that those of us who enjoy taking our time playing the game don't like it when the first wave of players blows through everything, and then you make the content 5 times harder for the rest of us who come behind them.
If you have to make the game harder, ok, but increase the reward a bit too so we don't have to do 5 times more work than those who went before for the same or less reward.
5. If something is unbalanced in PvP, nerf it in PvP mode only. You can change the damage a player does to another player and leave it alone as to how it affects a mob or NPC (a la EQ). Please don't monkey with the PvE content because of PvP considerations! Compounding this is the fact that PvP boards are constantly calling for nerfs because obviously if you can persuade the gamemaker to render your enemies weaker, they are that much easier to kill. Plus, as we know, every PvP death is because the other guy was overpowered or cheated or the cat jumped onto the keyboard or whatever.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You can't do this in an online game. Game conventions have to be globalized in an MMORPG. If one group doesn't want to deal with encumbrance and another does, someone is going to have to be unhappy. And as a result, when a power is "obviously uber", unlike D&D where the DM can just disallow it, in a MMORPG that means a power just got "nerfed" for the whole game.
We have to realize that changes ARE going to happen. I do agree that we don't want fundamental changes to the whole system. The example of SWG is a good one -- going from 36 profession/skill-based to 9 profession/level-based was just ugly. THAT kind of changing, we hope HJ will not be doing to us. But doing things like adjusting longsword damage from 1-8 to 2-6 or something, is not on the same par with what has been done to SWG, and those kinds of changes, frankly, are to be expected.
As I have said above, I think the need for such changes can be dramatically reduced with good, solid beta testing throughout the levelling range of the characters. However, no amount of beta, nor even years of live play, can ever make any but the most simplistic of games, foolproof, and there will have to be some adjustments and tweaks as the game goes on. One cannot expect this never to happen, and asking for it never to happen is unrealistic.
C
I think its reasonable for anyone to ask that massive changes (aka deleting classes) not occur.
I think this is the exception and not the rule as I dont know any game other than SWG that did wholesale deletion of classes.
Although I hear from a friend that used to play WOW that Blizzard are quite fond of using the nerf stick.
You build a set of rules and give them to a group of testers to test and then once you're fairly satisfied you release them to the world. Shortly after release someone comes up with a Pun-Pun character and you have to adjust your game to fix that.
In a tabletop game no DM in their right mind would allow such a character in their game so why should an MMO allow such a broken character to exist? The difference is, in the tabletop game your DM has to approve your specific character and his combination of skills and feats to make sure it's not going to be overpowering to his world. MMO's can't really do that on a character by character basis so instead if someone finds a broken combination of abilities they have to tweak the entire class.
I guess we could spend some time working on a script that would allow us to go through and notify anyone that created an obviously broken build that their character was broken and forcing them to re-roll but I don't really think that would be a better solution to your issues do you?
So, as someone else said, if you're looking for a game that will allow you to find and exploit a broken class or flaw in the game logic and not fix it until YOU are done with that character perhaps you should be playing single player games. If you really want multi-player for maybe you could find a Neverwinter Nights game being run by a DM but I have to think that they would be just as quick to remove broken characters from their game as any tabletop DM.
On the SW:G front, I have to admit that I thought the changes they made with the NGE or whatever it's called were for the good of the game. They were hoping to make the game more appealing to a wider variety of players and hopefully keep it alive.
What I disagree with is HOW they went about it. They had a core player base that obviously enjoyed the game as it was so they had to know that these new changes were going to drive a large portion of them away...they weren't looking for a more mainstream game they had what they wanted. To not give these folks a decent warning so that they could get all of the ranting and raving out of their system and decide whether or not to stick with the game was, to my view, rude. Since this was a big company, and not the most popular of MMO companies to start with, everyone automatically jumped to the conclusion that they didn't give warning just so they could suck a few extra months of fees out of those players. Personally, I think they did it this way because they knew that it was going to create a storm of publicity and they wanted the new version of the game available to any new players that might be intrigued by what they were hearing. Of course, it would have helped if the intial release hadn't been so buggy - I know I went back to try out the new changes and I have to admit I enjoyed the new gameplay right up until I hit a bug that stopped me from progressing and getting off the first space station - but that's a different issue
Amathe -- I agree with you pretty much on all points. Can't say it any better than you did.
On the SWG front. Was it for the "good of the game?" I guess the jury's still out on that.
However, let's think about what they fundamentally did. They turned a game from a slow, free-form, turn-based RPG, into what amounts to a first-person shooter with a few "iconic" professions and very little build freedom. There's nothing objectively better or worse about each type of game, but clearly, in the main, they are appealing to vastly different audiences. This is tantamount to them keeping the old system but losing their SW license so they take all the "SW" stuff out of it but the system remains the same. Even though this might be in some sense "for the good of the game", it has fundamentally changed the game. It should be self-evident that this will upset the vast majority of current subscribers, because by definition, most current subscribers like the current game -- they'd not be playing it otherwise.
The other problem SWG has is a lack of permanence. They have gone through now FOUR major revamps to their fundamental core combat system in the last 3 years. Players just get used to one, and it is changed into something completely different. There seems no guiding vision, no overall plan. It's like every few months they hatch some new experimental process and 'see if it will work.' I'm sure it's not deliberate, but this is not a way to run a game.
Players like stability -- they like something they can rely on. The GM who changed the rules every couple of play sessions was not popular either, you know, in pen and paper. I can't think of any GMs who were well-liked by the players, if they arbitrarily change the rules in the middle of game-play. ("But I thought lightning-bolt reflected off of walls and things?" "Not anymore. Roll to save or die." Etc.)
C
While I think the changes were the right changes to make to attract a bigger audience to their game I forgot to mention that I also think they were at least a year to late. Having been in the beta for the game I was one of those telling them as loudly as I could that the game they were building wasn't going to appeal to the average - read non-gamer - Star Wars fan. The game after the NGE is a game that would appeal to those fans but isn't a game that was going to appeal to those loyal MMO gamers that liked the way the original game played.
Making that drastic of a change that far into the life of the game was probably a huge mistake. They alienated the people that liked the game as it had been and the last couple of Star Wars movies had done a lot to alienate a large segment of the rabid Star Wars fan segment they tweaked the game to attract. Besides, those rabid fans that had tried the game at launch weren't going to be drawn back no matter what, at least not in number to make up for the existing fans you were going to loose.
So while I can see that they made the changes for the long term good of the game I will also concede that they'd probably have been better served by just scrapping it and starting over under a new name. Unless of course their goal was to drive the number of players down and thus justify shutting down some servers and eventually cancelling the game altogether so they could start over. In which case I'd say their plan worked perfectly
I agree with you.
I'll add another wrinkle while we are on the topic of SWG and NGE. You make a good point -- did they want to appeal to hardcore MMORPG gamers, which the original SWG was designed to do, or to more action-oriented SW fans looking to "play out the movies"? I agree that these are largely two distinct audiences and what appeals to one is unlikely to appeal to the other (except for the small miniority of people who, like me, fall into both camps at once -- we are not typical).
I think that there is another issue besides, "can any one game appeal to both audiences?" (I think SOE has shown that the answer to this is "no.") The other issue is this: Is one of these audiences substantially more or less likely to belong to a long-term, online subscription based-game?
I would argue, the hardcore MMORPG audience, while smaller, has a demonstrated track record of long-term subscription loyalty potential. The generic Star Wars fanbase however, does NOT have that track record. On the contrary, they have a record (if you look at game sales) of bouncing from one Star Wars title to another, picking up whatever the "flavor of the month" Star Wars game is. We know this because look how many SW games come out every year -- and they all sell, but they only sell for a few months and then they're in the bargain bin.
I think appealing to the mass SW audience for a game, is a good idea. But for a MMORPG? It was probably a bad idea. Most SW fans just wanted to hop into the game and play a Jedi... Not spend 6 months building up a character who, after all that time, FINALLY acts like the Jedi they saw in the movies.
To bring us back to HJ, since that is what this forum is about, I think a big, BIG advantage HJ has is that the company has a good, solid background in running decent online games, but the genre is unique and not tied to an "intellectual property" (IP) with a large following. People will come to HJ for the express purpose of playing an MMORPG, not for the purpose of playing, e.g., "a Jedi knight." That'll help a lot.
C
So... no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try, there's always going to be a group of people riding on your back, whining about something.
But it's also the same for the reverse. No matter how much you people whine about nerfs, it's an unchangeable aspect of MMORPGs. Things will always need fixing, especially if new content is being added every few months. If you can't accept this, then just go do something else.