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Why is balance so important to people?
Sainthood
Member Posts: 104
After reading posts about Aion is see there are balance issues with this game. Why is it that every game people complain about balance issues? I for one think a melee class should be able to get in a casters face and own them very fast. I also think that a caster from a distance should be able to melt a melee players face off. Now is that balance?
I remember when rangers in Age of Conan could kill anything from a distance and do it very fast. Then the forums were full of players crying oh they are over powered. I cant even get close to them to kill them. Then they nerf the crap out of them. World of Warcraps death knight came into the game and dominated everything. Now they are just average at best. Why is is that we need to balance everything? Why cant a melee be dominate in hand to hand and a caster be dominate in casting? What good is a ranger if you take there range away from them and let a melee get close enough to own them?
I never understand people and there complaining about classes being overpowered. Learn to play your toon and you might be very surprised how bad ass they can be.
Comments
Depends if its really overpowered classes or PERCEIVED imbalances. Sometimes its legitimate, like Archers back in early DAOC one shotting squishies from stealth. Or Healers mezzing huge numbers of players, so you just sat there for a minute twiddling your thumbs until you died, since there was no ability to break it.
Or its just perceived imbalance like Shaman in the early WOW days, where most Alliance players didn't actually understand that there were different Shaman builds and not EVERY one had EVERY abilitiy/spell. Mass ignorance led to lots of stupid comflict.
Balance is important because otherwise 90% of the player-base would be playing Rangers or Death Knights. Wich is pretty stupid if you ask me.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
People complain because, well that's what people do...
As to why game companies like Blizzard attempt to achieve balance? I don't think they do really. Balance is a handy name that allows them cover to "fix" minor (and sometimes major) complaints. I think all developers really try to do is cycle the "Flavor of the Month" class to keep class populations balanced out. Just about every class in WoW has had its day at one point or another. Early game shadow priests come to mind.
Having been in AoC beta, I'll refer you to my first sentence...
This. This is sig worthy material.
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"Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it," Double Fine President Tim Schafer said. "Oh great, now Beyonce is going to sue me too."
I do agree with what you say but does balance mean we need to let a melee class atleast get up into melee range when fighting a caster? I guess i always looked at it like this if you are melee and charge the caster you should own him. Just like if you are a caster and root a melee player you should burn his face off. I dont agree with giving everyone a fair chance at a fight. It reminds me of the old Civil War days when you all lined up in a row and one side fired their weapon and you either killed someone or you didnt but it was now the other sides turn to fire back at you and you just took turns until someone won.
I can see your point in a PvE game, but in games where players compete with each other, balance is pretty important.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Here's why balance is important: how often have you seen posts for any MMO along the lines of "What class/build levels the fastest?"
It's human nature to take the path of least resistance. And to be honest, people want their characters to feel powerful. If you had one "best" class, one that wasn't balanced with other classes, most people would play that class. Also, people hate feeling their character is "gimped". So, if you (as a developer) want to encourage people to try all classes, you have to make an effort to balance them.
The difficulty come from deciding how to balance that. Should all classes be able to kill mobs at (roughly) the same rate? Then how do make them different enough?
And then there's the whole issue with PvP. If class A can consistant pwn class B, not many would play class B. So, class A gets nerfed and people complain.
IMO, I think it is utterly and thoroughly impossible to make an MMO truly balanced in both PvE and PvP. And furthermore, I think to try to do so lessens the game. What many developers do is have powers and abilities work differently in PvP than they do in PvE. Although this, too, leads to complaints. "Why can't my power X work like it does in PvE?"
I'd love to see a developer largely ignore balance. I think it could work. Let's say you have a mage (or any ranged-type) attacker that does huge amounts of damage but is very fraglie. The typical glass cannon. He can drop mobs very fast, but is very likely to be overwhelmed if close combat occurs. Then you compare this to a tough brute of a class who takes longer to kill, but is much more durable. This differences have to more than slight, they have to be pronounced.
And for PvP, change almost nothing. As long as the classes are fun, I think the players will find their own sense of balance without dev interference.
I think you're missing the point of what people are talking about when they talk about "Balance".
They totally expect a melee character to be able to kick the crap out of a magic user in hand to hand, just as they expect the magic user to be able to rain down hell upon the melee character from a distance. That is precisely the balance they seek.
Each class should have its advantages and disadvantages. The mages disadvantage in melee due to no weapons and no armor is balanced by his ability to cause mass damage while standing back at a safe distance.
Well people like to be able to pick any class/skills they want and be able to play and keep up with everyone else, without haveing to change their class/build.
I actually think you could balance PvE and PvP, as long as they do not play differently. The issue is most games use different rules for the two, like aggro in PvE and nothing in PvP. But if the game were made to be played the same in PvE and PvP, and AI was better so you couldn't do things like pulls, then balance between the two would be more possible.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Simple answer... Because of the PvP part of a game.
Simple solution... Get the PvP out of the games. (I'm talking about MMORPG'S here)
I don't want to start a war, but seriously RPG's aren't ment to be pvp, never been and never will be. It's counter productive to the genre and unbalanced by nature. If you absolutly want to put it in a game, keep it in arena & never balance the classes for that style of play unless it brings positive change for the PvE too.
World PvP in MMORPG'S attract (generalisation) mostly people that don't want a fair fight, ever. They want to feel good by build virtual empire, or be part of one, using faulty game mechanics & then shoot to the world they are the best... yeah right.
I wouldn't mind a good PvP game, but it needs to be balance & made almost exclusively for that purpose. A game that use the player skills with very little progression, kinda like an FPS. You can add some PvE element in there like a completly optional storyline, roaming PvE mobs for some added chalenge & randomness in a fight, but it should all stay minimally rewarded.
Ok, I'll stop there... I'm kinda derailling the thread.
Keep in mind that's just my opinion.
It is very simple. If some class dominate yours, you are going to bitch and moan. That is just human nature. Everyone wants to be on top.
So in my perspective, i would love to have my mage to be over power but that won't sit well with people playing the other 9 classes. No single player wants balance and he wants HIS class to be over power. However, if the game is not balance, you will have a lot of unhappy players.
well in pvp balance is a major issue or can be and in pvp games you see the most crying about another class.sometimes they are legitimit reasons tho but often its the player sucking at their class and refusing to try and adapt when playing against class B. as for pvp i remember in WoW when locks could chain fear you nonstop if they wanted they could fear you till you logged thats why disminishing returns was added.
that said i have alos played PVE games where a class was rediculusly over powered, Necromancers in EQOA. Necromancers endgame pets could out dmg any class in the game, the caster also had dots on top of that, and they had the ability to transfer their HP to another player like a heal (blood pact) but if the player maxed out their arcane resisntance it would take less HP from them but gave the same amount to the other player. like say it did 1400 dmg to the nec and gave 1400 heal, but with max AR it only did around 200 hp but still gave 1400. wich honestly never made sense that it could be resisted but meh. eventually every other class was a Necromancer, guilds started leaving out the actual healer classes for raids to take Necromancers because they could stack heal better AND do more dmg than anyone else.
SO even if you liked one of the other classes better people wouldn't want to play with your class when the Nec was so much better at everything. So you either had to conform make a Necromancer or stand around looking for group for hours and hours and not get to play. and the Necromancers "Power Stats" was stamina and intellect.so all the player had to do was dump all their points into those 2 stats and have a TON of mana and TON of HP so could even tank casters in Elephant Graveyard because of their insane HP and the fact that everything in that zone used arcane based nukes.
so eventually after we all got sick of it and most of the player base quit the game they finally decided to balance the classes and fixed the necromancers and the other classes the game is alot better now but its a little to late. the player base is good on one server the rest are ghost towns.
PVE can be just as unbalanced as PVP. for instance in dark age of camelot during the dark dark day of before TOA in the time of focus pulling. With a mana enchanter and a few healers you could kill practically ANYTHING in the game, and im not kididng as long as the pet was buffed and it had lots of small heals the mob would beat itself to death on the focus shield before falling over dead.
it effectivly spelled the death knell of the primary tank for holding agro, effectivly all that anyone needed was 1x druid 1xmana enchanter 1xpower regen (bard or mentalist)
That was classed as unbalanced and that was just pve. The same was said of the animist that when grouped with druid with a font of power could kill the dragon in under 30 seconds.
Balance is important because if you have no balance then the game your playing becomes one sided, you end up with people rolling classes that are in effect easy mode. The mana chanter isnt as overpowered as it used to be, the focus shield started to spread agro around the group. the animist got gutted to the point of why bother.
The reason it comes up in PVP more than PVE is that pvp is against other people and when they die they complain and normally a lot. noone likes to die in computer games and if you have just been claw spammed into the ground by some vampir who was fully powered after the last person he just killed them what you going to do about it. "too the forums"
... and why is it not?
If you have a spell extremely powerful in a game, MMO or not, the player will not use others, ever (maybe once just to see if they're as powerful as the one he's using all the time). Here's what comes next: people whining about the combat being boring, too easy, game is dumbed down and so on. For MMORPGs, almost everyone ends playing a certain class/using the same skill/spell. PvP centric games are even worse, endless drama.
But I find it funny to talk about balance when it comes to WoW, for example. The role of classes is often blurry so you cannot argue one is better than another one, you can just throw the argument "this class was made to be superior in this specific role".
A jack of all trades master of none situation.
Yeah, I agree that PvE can be unbalanced too, thats for sure, but there's a lot less QQ'ing about it & tis way easier to fix. The devs just need to get their fingers out of their *** imo.
A solely PvE game that can't be balanced after a while is just pure bad job from the devs. As for a PvP game, every tweaks can have a lot more unforseen impacts on the gameplay resulting in more tweating. Hence the ever turning "flavor of the month" amster wheel.
No it is NOT. In WOW, the roles are very well defined. DPS, tanking & healing. There is some utilities but people pay less attention to that.
And you can CERTAINLY measure DPS and healing (recount will do) and even blizzard has stated that their goals is to "balance" dps with the pure dps class a tad higher. People have been QQing & arguing about DPS (and healing i suppose although i follow that less) PvE balance for ages with both in-game data and theorycraft.
DPS measurement, theory and optimization, for WOW, is a highly evolved science. In fact, there are programs that allows you to see any character's dps (as long as it can be pulled from wowarmory) in many different situations.
In this regard, you can easily compared between the DPS between say an arcane mage, and a ret pally.
Balance is important in class based games, because when you add in the PvP aspect to the game everyone wants equal footing, even though people should know better. Lets use WOW for an example(shudder) a Paladin class should be able to mutilate destroy and mame any and all undead extreamly fast, that is what they are Paladins are supposed to be the holeyest of the holey and undead the evilist of the evil and they should cancel out. One on one the Paladin should ALWAYS dominate the battle, two on one again the Paladin should continue to dominate, three on one now the Paladin should be able to win but not if the undead are orginized, and four on one should be a real challenge but most likely the Paladin will lose. Is this fair? Most are going to say no, also people whine and complain that Paladins are only on Alliance side and poof now hord has them as well, what a shame. To me the Deathknight should have being an evil paladin not the god it was on release.
Now the one place where Balance means something different is in Classless games. Take EVE, Asherons Call for examples, both are skill based, no classes. If you want to PvP you get the skills you think you will need in EVE, in AC you get the gear and raise the proper skills. In this type of system what you need to balance is weapons to each other vs magic(in AC's case). What you get is a PvP system that I think is 10x better then WOW has ever had.
One game that went out on a limb for balance, meaning they didn't balance there classes to all other classes was WAR, at least not in the begining. In war your tanks were tanks they held the front line and took as much damage as they could hoping a healer would keep them alive, while the ranged guys take out the opposing forces. If one tank got through the line they had the power to destroy healers or mages up close, but tank on tank was like two rocks banging together. This is the way a true class PvP system should work.
So why is it important, well simply put most classes wouldn't get played if they can't compete, so balance them so they can compete.
Keeping up with the jonses.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Balance is extremely important. Without balance games are shallow, and players' decisions don't matter.
The player's ability to directly interact with a game is the reason he's there, instead of watching a movie or reading a book. The only games which get away with having fewer player decisions are those which more closely resemble movies/books (Final Fantasy, for example.) Those games can be quite fun, despite limited interactivity; I enjoy them, but tend to play them a lot less than games where interaction matters a lot.
In games without the strong movie/book-like narrative and atmosphere, your interaction has to matter or there's nothing left to make the game fun. If your decisions are all overshadowed by some lurking balance issue, you may as well not play the game at all.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
the problem is that until an mmo is released which gives access to all types of abilities then you will never get true balance the only thing a company can do is keep classes at least balanced vs other classes but not against others.
gobble gobble, ignorance and bad information is funny.
As long as you have a stats based game you cannot have the 'balance' your thinking of, humans don't think in stats, they don't think in numbers, when they want to blast an enemy with a fireball they want to blast an enemy with a fireball, they don't want to do 'x amount of fire damage' so in the end you are always going to have a bunch of people including me going "Why the hell hasn't that guy even flinched after I just shot him in the arm and the head?"
Also, this whole level based system as well as skill based is from the classic D&D it was designed for going up against monsters and NPCs not against other players, the players were their to supplement each others' weaknesses not to fight each other. This is why games like Everquest and Pre-Cu SWG were awesome, you had the stats suited for things like crafting and going up against tough NPCs which were perfectly suited for that kind of system because it was either in a controlled environment or the opposing side could play by the rules.
As long as MMORPGs keep trying to use a PvE model for PvP then there will always be an imbalance, the game engine and combat mechanics has to be properly designed and actually started off in mind for PvP for it to work.
Please do your research, all this is out there, I'm tired of seeing people like you as well as other developers making it seem like fun MMO's are impossible to make.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Why can't a stats-based game be balanced?
Do you honestly think a PVP game would be balanced if fireballs were instant kills?
If you played basketball with a friend, would you play to "who gets the first basket" or to a set point value?
Because when you have instant death, that typically takes a large chunk of skill out of combat - a poor player could get a lucky hit in and poof you're dead, rather than being forced into a skillful battle between the players (granted, MMOs typically have a lot of non-skill factors like gear and level which prevent the skilled player from ALWAYS winning.)
If anything is to blame for poor PVP balance it's (a) having varied classes, (b) most games focus on PVE, and (c) many games don't have particularly well-designed abilities for their classes, making it hard for interesting playerskill-rewarding combat to take place. All three of which are good for MMOs to have, but they do make balancing more challenging.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Because when you have instant death, that typically takes a large chunk of skill out of combat - a poor player could get a lucky hit in and poof you're dead"
You need to take a look at reality, in a real fight you have to deal with luck and also in a real fight the idea is that you take down the enemy as fast as possible, I find it laughable that people think watching peoples' HP go down while you randomly bash buttons is skill. Its obvious they haven't even seen a real fight in progress nevermind watching two people spar with each other.
You can't have a stats based game dictating a battle, its impossible, you'd either have to be a real genious person that can put EVERY possible situation or you have the computer do it, why do you think there are situations where a small person can take down a huge muscular steroid-junkie? Unless you go at the game with that kind of thinking in a stats based environment then you stand no chance of creating a fair game for players.
Also, whats your definition of fair? Is it simply that you have to be the best? Which is frankly what I see a lot of on these forums everywhere when people make these complaints, or is it that you genuinely want to be challenged if the person uses clever tactics against you?
On the original Age of Chivalry before the patches came and butchered everything the balance for me was brilliant, you could go down in one or two hits if you weren't careful just like in real life and if you were skilled enough using the right tactics as well you could take down several opponents coming at you. And then updates came in that basically turned the game into exactly what your describing where people had more health and weapons had different damage values etc. to be honest, even while it was reasonably fun, it was an utter nightmare, certain classes were more powerful than the other so no matter what the class going against it did they ended up dying and that class would always win, so now everyone decided to pick that class because they realized it was the only one that worked and the whole balance of the game was ruined.
Unless you have someone really genuinely clever working on the balance you do not make it more complex than necessary, it just doesn't work, pure and simple.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
So are you trying to say the NBA (basketball) would be vastly improved if teams played "first to score wins"?
Are you trying to say that Mages (small people) never take down Warriors (large, muscular steroid-junkies) in WOW? Personally my mage had a pretty damn solid win ratio against Warriors. Despite the fact that my Mage's Strength stat is 1/900th of the warrior's, victory was not only possible -- it was very likely.
"Fair" to me in a PVP game is that the most skilled player wins. Skill meaning all of the controls-manipulation that goes into playing a character well. MMOs tend to water this down with gear, levels, and similar mechanics, so that the unskilled player has methods for circumventing his lack of skill.
So yes, in PVP if a person attacks me with clever tactics I expect to lose or at least have a tough fight on my hands. Clever tactics might include getting the first shot off on me - yes, that should net an advantage, but that single strike shouldn't decide the fight. A warrior charging my mage after I wasted frost nova and/or blink on other targets would be a great example of a player skillfully taking advantage of known weaknesses of my class.
The same should be true of PVE mobs to a degree - they should employ abilities that reward me for using clever tactics against them and reacting to their ability use.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Actually what you mentioned IS balance. Both classes have an equal chance to win. One through one means and the other through another means. Classes having counter classes are okay too as long as that class also has as the countered class also has an equal number of classes THEY counter.
Let's use your Aion example. Spiritmasters aren't balanced. They have no particular purpose in (group) PvE that a Sorceror can't top, in fact a Spiritmaster with poor pet control could be a hinderance to your group. This just isn't a fun way to design a class. In PvP they have a lot more usable tools but are still at a disadvantage when a character takes flight because they lose their pets. If you were going off usefulness in group situations there is pretty much no point in playing a Spiritmaster. Additionally their gear doesn't scale as well as a Sorceror (they get much less benefit from magic power and such) forcing them to stack stats that really shouldn't be on a caster like HP.
AoC had some of the worst programming and design choices of any MMO. Great concepts, but poor implementation. Guardians for instant were the most resilient and hardest to kill class in the game, yet they had so many options to scale damage by % (not just a set amount) that they could stack ridiculous damage. When Guardians first started full gem stacking they could buff their damage % by something close to 250% and literally deal 30-40k in a single round of attacks (about 8X someone's max HP if I recall). Being killed in a single shot by someone just isn't fun, especially when they are the hardest class in the game to kill. AoC's poor design didn't just apply to unbalanced classes but unbalanced gear too. Nearly all stats were useless compared to sheer +damage. Even a healer would stack +damage for PvP. Stacking stamina actually had a negative effect on many classes because running was based on a % of your stamina, so you'd get less return from stamina regening effects. It's as if AoC designers and programmers didn't pass 8th grade math.
Finally WoW has been making some really poor balance choices especially lately. At one point in time shamans were pretty much the top of the PvP food chain (and good at PvE too to boot). Each expansion they get nerfed considerably. Now shamans in each spec can do nothing that other classes/specs cannot do better (except Heroism and totem buffs, if it weren't for those you wouldn't need shamans). Group heal? Nope, holy priests are superior. Single target healing? Not even close to paladins. Melee DPS? No contest between them and other classes. Ranged DPS? Elemental is awful. Don't get me started on how bad shamans are in WoW in PvP. PvP has turned into who can kill who the fastest and many classes can't even survive stunlocks in 1v1 without stacking resilience gear (and even with resilence gear and a trinket if your class can't rely solely on instant cast spells be prepared to be locked down permentantly while a rogue sits there and laughs in your face). Think to yourself is it really fun not being able to actually PLAY my class. Have no chance at all... Sit there and watch as my character is absolutely helpless to do anything?
What if we applied poor balance to other games. Let's make a FPS where one player will always have an automatic gun that deals instant killing splash damage (that doesn't damage him/her/it either) while another player has to score headshots to deal 1% damage to the player's health with an inaccurate weapon that has a 5 second recharge time. Does that sound like any fun?