Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Xanatos]

Was watching this video on balance in fighting games:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY&list=PLWIbhIYLOq-T7XwgHe2y2hBE8Zr_yeODi&index=14

 

And I agreed with most of it. Yeah, the obvious counter-argument is: "it's easier to nerf one thing than buff everything else". But I still feel a lot of the points made in that video are forgotten by a lot of nerf-happy game developers. Mainly: that the focus of balancing the game should be to make it more fun to play for everyone. (l'balance pour l'balance = developer vanity.)

 

Yesterday's Flame war PVP Thread got me thinking about how this applies here. PVE in City of Heroes isn't competitive. It's co-op. Not only that, but it's incredibly easy. The thing about PVE in City of Heroes I love the most is that I can take any powerset, any pool powers, roll my face across the keyboard, and still play just fine. It's perfect for a casual gamer like me. It requires none of the twitchy/strategic "gamer skills" that games like Dark Souls/Tekken/League of Legends/Counterstrike/etc require. PVE in City of Heroes is a really deep character-building tool, with a chat client attached. It's a great way to express an idea for a character/style of play, and then play alongside other people doing the same.

 

This is why I think game balancing, nerfs especially, are so detrimental. They limit player expression. Either by making someone's RP character concept weaker, or making a non-roleplayer's unique playstyle weaker. I have never understood why PVE-focused MMORPG developers make their games less fun with nerfs, because I've never understood why game balance matters in an uncompetitive PVE environment.

 

I think this is one thing the old developers from live didn't really -get-. (And one thing the Homecoming team -do- get) This is a superhero game. Don't make people feel weaker today than they did yesterday.

 

The key word in the above sentence is "feel". One of the things that really resonated in the video I linked above was the example of the Ryu dragon-punch nerf: it was a nerf, but it didn't feel like one because it gave Ryu players more freedom. That's what game developers should be aiming for when balancing IMO: trading. If you're gonna nerf one thing in a powerset, buff something else. It makes the nerf sting less, and also ensures the "overall power" of the character hasn't decreased, so players don't feel that you are "taking their character away from them". If you can't find something else to buff, then really consider whether the nerf is necessary.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Xanatos

[Lines]

Ooh, interesting thread!

 

There's a very tiny factor of 'competition' to consider, which is that a character that can single-handedly tear down 4x8 groups in a very short amount of time might be removing the chance for their teammates to play the game. Using the word competition very loosely there, as a sort of passive, natural state rather than players actively trying to outdo each other.

 

A hypothetical OP set that could obliterate enemies faster than the other 7 members of the team combined would need to be nerfed against that factor. But I don't think we're in that situation - some might disagree.

 

However, I've always held that balancing against that factor doesn't necessarily need to be alterations to the characters themselves, but to the ways that the game can fight back.

 

I think it's good to have generally well balanced formulae between powersets, so that the huge variety of options all feel really good to play in the context of other players. But there are more sets that need to be buffed up to that balance than those that could be nerfed down.

[Dreamboat]

I don't have anything to add re: MMO game balance but walk forward un-FADCable fierce DP makes me feel like the biggest big big boy in the world

[Omega-202]

23 minutes ago, Lines said:

Ooh, interesting thread!

 

There's a very tiny factor of 'competition' to consider, which is that a character that can single-handedly tear down 4x8 groups in a very short amount of time might be removing the chance for their teammates to play the game. Using the word competition very loosely there, as a sort of passive, natural state rather than players actively trying to outdo each other.

 

A hypothetical OP set that could obliterate enemies faster than the other 7 members of the team combined would need to be nerfed against that factor. But I don't think we're in that situation - some might disagree.

While I agree that the balance isn't that bad yet, I really don't see this hypothetical as being catastrophic.  As it is, on a lot of min level TFs, everyone splits off in different directions and handles objectives independently.  

 

And I don't see that as much of an issue in the grand scheme of a superhero game.  The Avengers don't usually fight huddled in a ball together.  Flash and Batman never stick with the rest of the Justice League and Superman doesn't need to.  It doesn't mean that they're not still part of a team, it just means that everyone performs to their level to contribute to the achievement of the end goal, whatever that is.  

[Lines]

1 minute ago, Omega-202 said:

While I agree that the balance isn't that bad yet, I really don't see this hypothetical as being catastrophic.  As it is, on a lot of min level TFs, everyone splits off in different directions and handles objectives independently.  

In my eyes, that would work really well if there were regularly separate objectives for the team to manage, sort of in the manner of the Summer Blockbuster. Usually, though, it's just the one glowy, named boss or hostage that everyone barrels towards in a ball of destruction.

 

That's something I'd categorise as the game being better at fighting back. I'd love to see stuff like that regardless of balance. Big ask, though.

[Omega-202]

3 minutes ago, Lines said:

In my eyes, that would work really well if there were regularly separate objectives for the team to manage, sort of in the manner of the Summer Blockbuster. Usually, though, it's just the one glowy, named boss or hostage that everyone barrels towards in a ball of destruction.

 

That's something I'd categorise as the game being better at fighting back. I'd love to see stuff like that regardless of balance. Big ask, though.

True, there are too few missions like that.  Some of the later developed content is better about this.  The Longbow base assault in the LRSF is one of my favorites for this reason.  3-4 people go for the bombs, the rest hit the fliers, reconvene inside to take on Crimson.  That mission feels like a real comicbook scenario.

[Luminara]

53 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

the focus of balancing the game should be to make it more fun to play for everyone.

 

The focus of balancing a game is to ensure that everyone can have fun regardless of how they approach it, not to ensure that the game itself is fun, or more fun.  This is a notable and worthwhile distinction.  An MMORPG has to be fun for players in every class, not the one class which over-performs in every aspect.  It has to have content which is equally challenging for all classes, and equally rewarding in accordance to the challenge.  When there's an imbalance, players naturally gravitate to the over-performing class.  This leaves fewer players in the under-performing classes, which makes the content even more difficult for them, which, in turn, drives them to either move to the over-performing class or leave to find a more balanced game.  Additionally, if the game is "too easy" with the over-performing class, there's a risk of high turnover as players leave in search of something more challenging.

 

Sometimes balance adjustments are always necessary.  I'm not a fan of nerfing, I think every development team should start with content which is too difficult for everyone, then adjust it downwards until they achieve a good middle ground, and all classes should be designed to be under-powered from the outset, and adjusted incrementally until a good balance is achieved with them, too.  But every new bit of content added, every improvement to classes, means an adjustment may be necessary later.  MMORPGs aren't static, despite the appearance of being so.  They continue to grow and change over time, and, objectively, nerfs are part of that cycle.  If the game isn't balanced, people who aren't playing the over-performing class aren't having fun, people playing the over-performing class are becoming bored, and the game suffers.  A nerf can be a good thing for the health of a game, even if it's unpleasant to experience it on your favorite <whatever>.

[Andreah]

There are enough tools in CoH, even a poor build can be made viable in some way. You can do crazy for slotting, or use the right temp powers, or use the incarnate boosts to shore up a weakness. In worst case, you buddy up with someone whose poor build complements your won, and together you slap faces and kick butts. Does this mean it's balanced? I don't know, but it does leave room for creativity without being crippled. Are some build way over the top? Yes, and in more than one way. Over the top survivable? Over the top dps? Over the top support? Over the top tactical coolness? Sure, and even in more than one category. It's fun and leaves room for creativity unlike other games, since there's not one obvious best build each for a handful of narrow roles. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Lines said:

I think it's good to have generally well balanced formulae between powersets

As do I. I see no reason for a game, arguably an art form, to lack balanced beauty within the underlying math.

 

If this means a poorly designed set needs to be nerfed or buffed, it should be done, purely for balance's own sake regardless of player feelings.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Blastit]

The point of game balance in an MMO is so that people can pick whichever theme they like most and not eat shit for it. If the wizard and the knight both contribute to a team "well enough" then nobody is going to feel left out just because they play what they want to play, particularly in a time-intensive genre like MMOs. "Uncompetitive", sure, but just because nobody is getting ranked it doesn't mean that they aren't getting anything for their victories. If one class is much stronger than another then that class can get more resources quicker. This is a concern in MMOs because there is usually an economy of sorts in which you can purchase new gear, new toys, pets, mounts and so on.

[Eldyem]

11 minutes ago, Blastit said:

The point of game balance in an MMO is so that people can pick whichever theme they like most and not eat shit for it. If the wizard and the knight both contribute to a team "well enough" then nobody is going to feel left out just because they play what they want to play, particularly in a time-intensive genre like MMOs. "Uncompetitive", sure, but just because nobody is getting ranked it doesn't mean that they aren't getting anything for their victories. If one class is much stronger than another then that class can get more resources quicker. This is a concern in MMOs because there is usually an economy of sorts in which you can purchase new gear, new toys, pets, mounts and so on.

It's also a concern because "well enough" is a variable concept that is in constant flux as part of the notes on difficulty Luminara made. The truth is that (enough) people don't want to always win even when they're doing poorly so MMOs have to have the ability to fail, as group-oriented games failure has to be based on the group working together, and someone not contributing as much as other people - such as by playing a "bad" class - ultimately punishes other players. I want to be able to lose. I don't want to lose.

The goal of many MMOs is to ultimately get class balance right such that the majority of content is beatable by the majority of players playing the majority of classes without classes ultimately being identical and while still providing, at the very least, the illusion of skill mattering (unless, of course, the game actually makes skill matter). Applied to City of Heroes, nerfs become warranted when a powerset, IO, or whatever else begins to negatively impact even the thin illusion of skill that the game is wrapped in. Threatening this illusion threatens the core structure of City of Heroes being a game, but as a concept simply mirroring an already subjective standard, this illusion is placed on different levels for everyone and perhaps doesn't even exist at all for individuals who are playing for reasons outside of gameplay per se.

Applied very broadly, MMO devs are largely in the business of making money. Nerfing outliers makes them money. Dozens, if not hundreds, of MMO devs are not working together to not make money out of some divine principle of MMO development that is wholly unrelated to the ability to make money - they are doing so because nerfs, at the end of the day, contribute to maintaining healthy playerbases which in turn pulls in more players which in turn generates revenue.

[nihilii]

Very few people actually enjoy unbalanced games. Think of how long you can play a video game with invulnerability cheats before you get bored. Challenge, or the illusion thereof, makes the virtual worlds go around.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Xanatos said:

PVE in City of Heroes isn't competitive. It's co-op. Not only that, but it's incredibly easy. 

 

 

I think this is one thing the old developers from live didn't really -get-. (And one thing the Homecoming team -do- get) This is a superhero game. Don't make people feel weaker today than they did yesterday.

 

Selective quoting, to be sure, but I wanted to observe that the reason PvE is incredibly easy is because the devs, both on Live and on HC, have continually worked to make the game easier.  I presume that was because there has been overwhelming desire from the player base to make it easier.  

 

This continues to this day.  The Suggestions and Feedback forum is full of ideas to make the game even easier.

 

My personal stance is that this is absolutely ridiculous.  If I had my druthers, sufficient programming knowledge, and the willingness to do so, I'd nerf most aspects of this game from orbit.  But I don't and I'm lazy, so instead I'll sit on my porch and shake my cane at these kids today.

 

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

balanced beauty within the underlying math

 

My good nipple just went erect.

[jubakumbi]

IMO, the only problem with balance in games are those that think any negative adjustment is a nerf because of some emotional attachment to numbers never going down or something, the whole idea of 'nerf' is really just silly, it sounds just like 12 year olds on a playground fighting over kick-ball rules to me.

 

I see negative adjustments taken as some irrational personal affront by so many gamers it's sad, it's like they invest thier personal self-worth in numbers they cannot control in a game.

Never negatively adjusting things just to cater to people that 'cannot handle reality' is no way to run a game, IMO.

 

I see no reason to stop balancing game numbers, up and down, to keep games fresh and fun.

You cannot please all of the people all of the time and to try to do so is sheer folly.

[Xanatos]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

If the game isn't balanced, people who aren't playing the over-performing class aren't having fun, people playing the over-performing class are becoming bored, and the game suffers.

While this makes sense theoretically, in reality this is not the case.

 

To use City of Heroes as an example...

 

I, and plenty of players like me, have fun playing non-OP sets. (I.e. powersets that aren't Titan Weapons, Bio Armour, Fire Blast, etc). On the other end of the spectrum, plenty of people play the aforementioned OP sets every day and are not growing bored of them. (Evidence: How active the playerbase is, and how many of them play the OP sets. (See the player stats thread.)

 

This game isn't challenging. It is incorrect to think that players require challenge in order to stay engaged with it. What players have always required from City of Heroes is their sense of competency being reinforced. This is why min/max TW/Bio players will do hami raids every day, or do TFs over and over;  doing so isn't challenging, it merely reinforces that they are competent at the game. To reiterate what I said before - the superhero game makes them feel super.

 

While I agree that a PVE-foocused MMORPG should have some form of baseline balance at release, that's not what's being contested here. What I'm contesting is the idea that further balance tweaks should be pursued beyond this baseline at the expense of player happiness. (I've yet to see a compelling argument in favour of this; And I'm actively looking for one, because you should always test your own beliefs.) My opening post already mentioned that City of Heroes is "balanced enough" to make anything viable, and the context I gave was that balance tweaks -not- at the expense of player happiness are fine.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Xanatos

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

My opening post already mentioned that City of Heroes is "balanced enough" to make anything viable, and the context I gave was that balance -not- at the expense of player happiness is fine.

Therein lay the rub. Many of us do NOT consider the game "balanced enough." I often make the statement that it's barely balanced at all.

The binary nature of mez, the very fact that so many DO gravitate to a few specific sets simply due to their OPness, the vast chasm of difference between reward gains for a solo emp/nrg def and a tw/bio scrapper, and the list goes on and on.

 

It should not be this way and any movement toward balance, toward a sane and logical mathematical foundation is welcome by a great many of us. If that means outliers get nerfed, so be it.

[Rathulfr]

23 minutes ago, Luminara said:

My good nipple just went erect.

Is it bad that this comment made me slightly aroused?

(edit) Also: "good nipple"?  Do you also have a "bad nipple"?

Edited September 18, 2020 by Rathulfr

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Rathulfr said:

Is it bad that this comment made me slightly aroused?

(edit) Also: "good nipple"?  Do you also have a "bad nipple"?

And is the bad one on the left?

[Lines]

12 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

What I'm contesting is the idea that further balance tweaks should be pursued beyond this baseline at the expense of player happiness. (I've yet to see a compelling argument in favour of this; And I'm actively looking for one, because you should always test your own beliefs.) My opening post already mentioned that City of Heroes is "balanced enough" to make anything viable, and the context I gave was that balance -not- at the expense of player happiness is fine.

I think this is an extremely difficult metric to define and even harder to measure. Maybe even too abstract to be useful?

 

Say we had the hypothetical clearly-way-too-OP-set and some people loved it, but it gets nerfed down to a baseline. Of course you'll have voices rise up against the nerf, but what you won't have are people explicitly stating they're more content because the game has no longer been made overwhelmingly trivial by other players. People don't tend to express positive sentiments as verbosely as negative sentiments (edit: I think the world would be a better place if they did). There's no way of knowing whether the change that has been made has affected more people for the better. Even less so from the players' perspective.

 

Having said that, I don't think every nerf has been good (looking at you, EM), nor do I think every buff has been good (looking at you, incarnate powers).

Edited September 18, 2020 by Lines

[ShardWarrior]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

The binary nature of mez, the very fact that so many DO gravitate to a few specific sets simply due to their OPness, the vast chasm of difference between reward gains for a solo emp/nrg def and a tw/bio scrapper, and the list goes on and on.

Are people gravitating toward builds because they are overpowered or simply because they are more efficient?  As an example, I can farm on any number of my tankers or brutes or scrappers with no issues.  However, some are simply more time efficient due to them being more AoE centric.  I am not sure trying to compare the ability to solo between a defender and scrapper is a good measure either.  They play different roles. 

[Rathulfr]

4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

And is the bad one on the left?

Now I want to see a villain named "Bad Nipple".  Too bad I'm working now, or else I'd roll one myself.  Which AT/powerset?

(edit) Water Blast springs to mind.  I'm thinking Water/Pain Corruptor...

Edited September 18, 2020 by Rathulfr

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Are people gravitating toward builds because they are overpowered or simply because they are more efficient?  As an example, I can farm on any number of my tankers or brutes or scrappers with no issues.  However, some are simply more time efficient due to them being more AoE centric.  I am not sure trying to compare the ability to solo between a defender and scrapper is a good measure either.  They play different roles. 

Efficiency in farming shouldn't be used as a metric for game balance.

 

Why should differing roles have such a huge impact on reward gains? Or perhaps a better point should be that soloability should never be used as a metric for game balance except that this is exactly how we balance powersets within archetypes. It's why EM was nerfed and is about to get buffed. It's why claws was buffed and may be getting nerfed. It's why spines should be buffed and it's why TW should get nerfed.

[kiramon]

Funny even small balance issues cause “why play this when you can play that” arguments all over this forum. Just check corruptor vs defender boards, or scrapper “why play a scrapper” posts.

 

balance exists so things don’t eclipse others, to an extent. Yes some people like playing the under dog. Some like a challenge. But if it gets too out of hand it’s not good for the health of the game.

 

using WOW as an example — try playing a feral

druid in m20+. And I don’t mean you can’t do it. But try even getting into a group without being in a premade.  

 

[ShardWarrior]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Efficiency in farming shouldn't be used as a metric for game balance.

I was not suggesting it should be.  I was simply pointing out that certain builds and power combos are more efficient.  Remove the word "farm" and they will still clear maps much more efficiently than others.  At least to me, that does not make them overpowered per se, just more efficient.

 

14 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Why should differing roles have such a huge impact on reward gains? Or perhaps a better point should be that soloability should never be used as a metric for game balance except that this is exactly how we balance powersets within archetypes. It's why EM was nerfed and is about to get buffed. It's why claws was buffed and may be getting nerfed. It's why spines should be buffed and it's why TW should get nerfed.

Personally, I do think different roles/ATs should experience the game differently.  That is a big part of the uniqueness they have and provides flavor for differing tastes in style of play.  Measuring the ability to solo between powersets within an archetype was not what you posted.  You were comparing a scrapper to a defender.