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So You Really Want Balanced Classes?
safespacecadet
Member Posts: 374 Arc User
Hmm. Balance. Let's see. You know, there's a reason why most parties in an mmorpg are built around a tank and healer. Tanks wear heavy armor and clerics or druids or whatever can heal you if you get wounded. Other classes mostly focus on doing damage. However, in real life, getting a sword or a mace whacked in your face (that rhymes) would kill you just as dead as a dagger in the back, an arrow in the eye, or a mage's fireball.
In order to make it so that classes must rely on each other, designers made it so that some classes do less damage than others. It's not realistic at all, but that's the way they decided to do it way back when. Anyway, the thing is, a rogue or a wizard (for example) is not gonna do well exploring dungeons on his or her own unless they are really powerful. Rogues wear leather and wizards wear cloth. They are squishy. One on one, a fighter would pound a thief or a mage into the dirt unless the thief or the mage was a lot more powerful than the fighter. It takes longer to cast a spell than swing a sword or bash you with a shield, sorry. Rogues might overcome equally powerful fighters if they can sneak up on the fighters' and backstab them through plate armor somehow. That's why rogues and mages hide behind paladins or fighters. Monsters are usually stupid, so they go for the most dangerous looking target first. Or the fighter insults their mother, so they get pissed off and attack him or her. Even though it would be smarter and easier to dig their nasty claws into the wizard's soft, pale flesh before he or she has time to cast a troublesome spell. (Which incidentally never harms anyone in their party for some reason.)
So, I could say more, I don't want to write a book. My point is that classes in MMORPGs should focus on being part of balanced teams, in pve or pvp. There's no need for classes to be balanced against each other individually. It's actually not realistic. As long one class is not a god or a demigod in comparison to the others, it's all good. In the hood.
In order to make it so that classes must rely on each other, designers made it so that some classes do less damage than others. It's not realistic at all, but that's the way they decided to do it way back when. Anyway, the thing is, a rogue or a wizard (for example) is not gonna do well exploring dungeons on his or her own unless they are really powerful. Rogues wear leather and wizards wear cloth. They are squishy. One on one, a fighter would pound a thief or a mage into the dirt unless the thief or the mage was a lot more powerful than the fighter. It takes longer to cast a spell than swing a sword or bash you with a shield, sorry. Rogues might overcome equally powerful fighters if they can sneak up on the fighters' and backstab them through plate armor somehow. That's why rogues and mages hide behind paladins or fighters. Monsters are usually stupid, so they go for the most dangerous looking target first. Or the fighter insults their mother, so they get pissed off and attack him or her. Even though it would be smarter and easier to dig their nasty claws into the wizard's soft, pale flesh before he or she has time to cast a troublesome spell. (Which incidentally never harms anyone in their party for some reason.)
So, I could say more, I don't want to write a book. My point is that classes in MMORPGs should focus on being part of balanced teams, in pve or pvp. There's no need for classes to be balanced against each other individually. It's actually not realistic. As long one class is not a god or a demigod in comparison to the others, it's all good. In the hood.
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It's a utility balance in which every class is needed for something special that they can do that no one else can.
I.E. A tank straps on a sword and board and starts the tank and spank
Healers and buffers do Thier thing,and damage classes...yep you guessed it!
Do damage
The problem arises when one damage class does it better than another or A tank or healer is given insane dps
That might make one person in a group setting more wanted than another and the less desirable has trouble finding a group.
As a dps is a glass cannon insane damage but as you put it....squishy
Now imagine a new dps class emerged...and did everything the squishy classes can do ...here's the twist! ...you ready for it....
But imagine they weren't squishy!!!
(I know!! Insane right!!)
But let's just imagine there is ..
So because they offer everything the squishies do but was armored like a tank and had much more survivability...
Who would want the squishies now?
Especially since the new guy offers so much more,and is much better looking to boot!
Now the old squishies are outraged!!
They scream BALANCE!! LET THERE BE EQUALITY!
Now the peaceful world of neverwinter turns to chaos and anarchy!
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Anyway, I don't care whether this or that class is more powerful this month or this year or whatever. But I do want to be able to play a bard in Neverwinter. I think it would be fun. One of my favorite classes. Please can we have bard? That's all I'm asking. I want other people to get the classes they want to play too, like druid, monk, etc. Two years without a new class is too long.
The only way to achieve perfect balance is if every player had the exact same abilities, because then the only thing which matters is the skill of the players. An example of this would be the only truly balanced fighting game in history: Street Fighter 1. You could only play as Ryu and Ken, who had the exact same abilities apart from palette swap. But, that got boring pretty quickly, since you were limited to the same basic attacks and the Dragon Punch + Fireball. Another example would be Rock-Paper-Scissors, which is balanced because all players have the exact same tools available to them, the difference being how you apply the tools.
So, will we ever get any balance?
Never, and I don't think we should try clamoring for "balance", as it ends up ruining the fun factor.
If we'e going to do any type of "balance", I want Modern Warfare 2 style "balance": everything is so good that you're never at a disadvantage for picking anything (well, you could argue that using the MW2 F2000 was disadvantageous...).
If everything is broken, then it means nobody is broken, right? I believe League of Legends does this type of balance. The idea is to aquaint the playerbase with a gamebreaker so the gamebreaker shows up everywhere. Then, the gamebreaker is so prevalent that players get sick of losing to this gamebreaker, so the playerbase develops strategies to counter this gamebreaker.
Otherwise, it makes sense from a financial standpoint. And possibly explains why we have so much stuff that's BoC.
"You know that character you spent 8 months working on! Tossed in the gutter! Now pay up for another character to get back where you are 8 months later exe!"
E.g. an Elementalist (CW) would target a meteor shower on a group of enemies who would then come running at the caster but the Warriors would block their path and engage them in direct combat. Two healers (one prot, one heal) would make sure everyone stayed on their feet.
Rangers could set multiple traps on the floor in anticipation of the rush and Necromancers could turn fallen enemies into minions who would add to the team damage/aggro.
This was a game where all roles were viable.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Every class should be able to do well enough to complete all the solo content unaided.
That's it - that's all that is needed. Now, problems arise for two reasons. First, because of PvP, because some people wanted the classes "balanced" for PvP purposes. For example, originally TRs did massive damage against a single target - fine for PvE purposes, and perfectly logical, but it worked "too well" in PvP and non-TR PvPers whined until the TR damage was toned way down. The problem was that the TR damage was not just toned down in PvP, but their PvE performance was affected as well.Every class should be able to make a meaningful contribution in a group.
The second issue was that many players felt that some classes/builds did too little damage - tanking-focused GFs and healing-focused DCs in particular, and their damage was boosted, narrowing the DPS gap between the classes. Was that fair, considering the other abilities of those classes? Well, there is no agreement on that issue.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
And still managed to maintain a fair balance between pvp and PVE
They can def use other games to figure out why the balance is so out of whack here...
Any up and coming business will use a successful enterprise as framework or model for their own
It just makes business sense
if something has to be blamed to right now, this is lightning enchant and bondings
Seems like classes should be designed for PVE in a game that is mostly PVE. People who play PVP should just figure out how to deal with it. But people are selfish and want everything their way. I would play PVP if it was queued by approximate Item Level. That's all I would need. Though I would play it a lot more if there was a pvp campaign with factions, including scenarios with goals besides just killing each for ten minutes for no reason. I could care less about the boons. Plenty of other boons to get. And they keep making more.
Hmmm this sounds familiar... Oh wait, it's already happened with the intro of the pally. Take a hit and do massive DPS if setup correctly. Oh and guess what? They've already been nerfed to the ground...
As for balance, not gonna happen. How could monetization of the game continue to occur if we didn't have disparity between classes/paths? CW/HR/GF/SW CAN do as much DPS as a tricked out GWF but all of them have either spent time or money or both to get there. Balance the classes too much and you have no incentive for some folks to catch up by paying real money. No money = no more active development.
This game, and most MMOs, are prime examples of capitalism - create and elite "class" and let the money roll in as people try to catch up to what they consider BiS.
you play to new level cap.. get geared, probably do that wiht a few alts.. or spend time in pvp.. then you redo it the next year.
this game decided not really to do that.. or tried it once.. but implemented it pretty poorly and blam.. every mod we get more power.. and all they do is try to slow people down with really boring grind.. adding alot of it recently.. no player ever said.. boy wish we had 15 more hours of trinket grinding this mod.
I for one just take neverwinter for what it is now.. i dont expect it to be anything else.. you guys can continue to do so.. but they do not have the time or the resources to do anything but what they are doing..
if I was part of the problem, when i asked for more harder content.. then shame on me.. because all we mostly got was tons of grinding and it drove away hundreds of players from the game..
What classes in an MMORPG need are specific things that only that they can do, or do well, so that they will be desired for certain activities or for accomplishing certain goals in an easier or more effective way. Different dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp scenarios could even be designed so that you would want to bring along one of a particular class in your party.
Fighters fight, that's what they train for, so it makes sense that they are better at combat. But there are things they can't do as well as priests, rogues, or mages. Or things they can't do at all that the other classes can do.
If you want class balance in a game, trying to make it so that any class can beat another class (of equal level, IL, or whatever) one-on-one is not the way to go about it. It's totally unrealistic anyway.
thats really debatable
"I just thought they needed to be fun and work well together.
What classes in an MMORPG need are specific things that only that they can do, or do well, so that they will be desired for certain activities or for accomplishing certain goals in an easier or more effective way. Different dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp scenarios could even be designed so that you would want to bring along one of a particular class in your party.
If you want class balance in a game, trying to make it so that any class can beat another class (of equal level, IL, or whatever) one-on-one is not the way to go about it. It's totally unrealistic anyway."
Ah, if only that were true.
Your central theme, (classes are specialists not equals) , is actually a reasonable argument ... in content that REQUIRES specialists.
NWO is too far gone for that.
For example, If traps in NWO actually killed, caused meaningful injuries, could not be ignored by VIP and could not be easily avoided, then TRs would be desired in all content for their special skills.
The same could be said about healing (DCs), crowd control (CW)... etc.
NWO "content" requires little or no specialization.
Every class can heal themselves with lifesteal.
Traps don't matter.
Stealth doesn't matter.
Teamwork BARELY matters.
All that matters is mooaaar DPS (directly or indirectly).
To be desired or even tolerated in NWO "content" you are either a Paingiver or buff the Paingivers.
Such insipid "content" perpetuates this despicable culture of DPS competition, hence the constant whining "whaaah, a GF got more DPS then me! Nerf!"
Not saying you are wrong: content requiring the unique skills of a healer, tank, Rogue and DPS would indeed be fun.
Just saying... that ship has sailed.
Even if such a dungeon were released with mod 12, this "community" is so toxic, full of nerf trolls and DPS minded, a "specialist requirement" would be considered a nerf to DPS classes.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.