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PVP Balance, Devs FOTM, and the rest of us.
Vercin
Member UncommonPosts: 369
I'm one of those thirty something gamers that started mmorpgs with UO back in 97.
UO had a convoluted honor system where if you even accidently hit something <blue> you lost honor points and became <grey> attackable. People LOVED to exploit that system and so I became one of the people who hunted not the <red> guys as the <red> guys actually seem somewhat honorable but the people who took advantage of those systems. That was the dawning of my pvp experience. I soon discovered I was not nearly as good at this pvp as many of my online friends, but I could stay alive for a long time, and I never backed down froma fight no matter what that persons reputation as a badass in the game was. Sometimes being hard to kill is the sincerest form of F You.
So I have played pretty much all the major mmos and downloaded and regreted many of the F2p.
WOW in my mind has gotten to a pretty good balance in PVP. I think any class can defeat any other class given a good player is behind it. Again I'm not so good but my ICC25 geared protection tank with all the cooldowns poped can still live long enough that I get my gratification.
The thing that really bothers me in a lot of games with PVP is the blatent seesawing of powers. Currently I am playing Champions Online and with the recent patches any melee is outrageous in damage output. Along with the recent patch the Toxic powers have joined those ranks. Now I have some characters with those powers and they do indeed make the game terribly easy. I have however always enjoyed the underdog powers, or class, or whatever have you. You just don't really see much of anyone running around with archery or fire or ice doing much of anything in PVP. Or munitions for that matter. Not unless they are coupled in some weird arrray with...toxic or might or some form of melee.
I just don't understand why devs in these games don't make the honest approach to really come to a balance. Champions is the current one one my mind but its been the same in other mmos. It always seems like there are the "hey that looks fun i ought to try that out", and then there is just the plain outright smash and win. Are these two not intended to play together? Are the developers all int he latter group of mindsight and that is why?
Actually it comes to my mind that there are lots of no mmos or even table top stuff I have played that is that way.
I guess my way of having fun is not punching you in the face and insta winning. So is it just not meant to be to get in a little pvp once in awhile and win, not being the FOTM?
The Stranger: It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid.
Comments
To my knowledge there isn't anything tabletop related that has anything like PvP, at least when we are talking about tabletop RPGs. Wargames are strategy games even if we are talking about fantasy themed ones that have stat/class based units, cause the game on its core, is about the army, its size, its formation and their strategic choices, not some single unit's personality, beliefs/morals and stat development. PvP, the way we know it - ie with the RPG element - started from MUDs. Without the RPG element, one could say that PvP started from chess or maybe much earlier from some other similar game - i cba researching that.
Tabletop RPGs - the original approach to RPGs - not only didn't had anything to do with PvP but also didn't cared at all about anything like "class balance"... Why? Cause these games were all about the company - your friends - that gathered to have fun. Even if you were playing the most retarded/weak class, like D&D 2E Thief for example, you would had a spot in the party like everyone else. We might made fun of your class but hey - that's what friends do.
When MUDs put together PvP with RPGs what they actually did was marrying the progression-based mechanics system from a cooperative game, to competent based gameplay. Not only your class didn't matter in PnP but your level as well. For example if your character dies in a D&D session your DM will typically offer you to roll a new one that will be of the same level, so you can join the party once again. On MUDs there isn't just one party, and every player will typically be playing a character of different power/level. In PvP games, like chess, the most vital rule is to have the two sides being equal and the safer way to do this is to actually make them the same.
Problem is that progression is about not being equal, and classes are about not being the same. And we are wondering why it's not working...? It's like a liberal married to a republican and wondering why their marriage is not going well...
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
On another note, developers claim that they are trying to achieve the impossible task i described above, yet we see sometimes huge and obvious imbalances between their game's classes... imbalances that pretty much everyone admits even the specific class' players... So why is that happening?
The reason i don't particularly believe that they are trying, is that class imbalance and FOTM re-rolling is maybe the finest and most subtle way to resell their content... And, coincidentally, content creation is maybe the most expensive process for a game, while changing some class' ability values is probably the cheapest.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
Battletech
Because class based games are virtually impossible to balance in a 1 v 1 situation as they are built around the group dynamic (and even then 90% of the time the group balance is fucked up).
Furthermore UO, whilst not strictly speaking a pvp game, had open world, ffa pvp. The vast majority of modern mmo's do not and this makes a significant difference in the 'style' of pvp you will encounter.
Try a skill based, open world game such as Darkfall, it's as close as you are going to get to UO'esque pvp.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."