Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[HelBlaiz]

47 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Why would anyone feel like dead weight then if they are participating?  Or should lower level players being sidekicked on team with T4 incarnate 50s expect to be performing on the same level?

Speaking from the perspective of a inv/tw tanker equipped with SOs in a team with IOd out SG mates, including a dark miasma Corruptor who was tankier than I was (or felt like it), I felt like deadweight. Not because I wasn't participating, but because it didn't feel like anyone needed me to tank an alpha or hold aggro.

 

That is less to do with powerset selection than build completion, but it is still an example of participation not being enough to feel relevant or impactful.

 

I'm also not advocating every set being able to clear a map as quickly as Spines (or any other aoe centric set). Spines whole thing is aoe. Another set like Martial Arts would be better for fighting a single tough enemy, while bringing extra crit/parry and mitigation through kb/stun. They excel at different things, and are fun to play for different reasons.

 

But if three people ask for three separate things (what set fights AVs well, what set clears groups fast, what set adds extra protection) and all get the same factually accurate answer (TW has great ST in Rend Armor and Follow Through, TW has good aoe in Arc of Destruction and Whirling Smash, and TW has a parry in Defensive Sweep plus kd in Titan Sweep and Whirling Smash and a stun(?)/kd in Follow Through) something is wrong. Other sets could definitely use a buff as mentioned earlier by Zeraphia, but some are also too good at too many things to let other sets shine.

 

You can decide to play another set for your own reasons despite another set performing better, but it can be a bitter taste to others knowing the set they like is overshadowed by a set that has no real trade off.

[Spaghetti Betty]

I don't think that game balance is too important in an MMO from a player-to-player perspective, but more so a player-to-enemy perspective. There's a lot of powerset combos in this game that just mow down everything in front of them. Seriously, if you renamed the game City of Lawns, I don't think there would be much of a difference.

 

And it's a hard thing to fix. Do you scale back sets like TW or  PSI melee? Do you make the enemies stronger? What about the sets that don't do as well?

 

My philosophy when it comes to game balance is if you have a big gap where some things are wildly more successful than others, you always buff the weak things first.

 

This goes for villain groups too. Some of them are a result of the power creep (Hey guys, we know we turned you into gods and you want harder things to fight so here's a bunch of robots with high s/l resist and shoot you a million times with nrg bullets that also make patches of fire), and I feel like that's where the newer stuff ended up being balanced around. I remember when Vahz were considered difficult, but back then powersets were much more simple. Now sewers are a walk in the (smelly) park.

 

I'd much rather see weaker sets brought up first, and some adjustment to enemy strength as well than I would like to see things get nerfed.

 

Oh but if there's one thing I'd like to see tuned down a little bit is IOs. Holy trinity doesn't exist and all that but absolutely everyone being invincible kinda makes team gameplay a little uninteresting.

 

 

[ZacKing]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Then your prior statement was a lie.

so I'm a liar now?  right.  got it.  No dude, I'm not a liar.  but I get it. some folk just don't like others who disagree with them and feel the overwhelming urge to cancel them. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just now, ZacKing said:

so I'm a liar now?  right.  got it.  No dude, I'm not a liar.  but I get it. some folk just don't like others who disagree with them and feel the overwhelming urge to cancel them. 

Either you care or you don't care. First post, you didn't. Second, you did. Both can't be true. That which isn't true is a lie.

 

It ain't rocket surgery.

[ShardWarrior]

54 minutes ago, HelBlaiz said:

Speaking from the perspective of a inv/tw tanker equipped with SOs in a team with IOd out SG mates, including a dark miasma Corruptor who was tankier than I was (or felt like it), I felt like deadweight. Not because I wasn't participating, but because it didn't feel like anyone needed me to tank an alpha or hold aggro.

 

That is less to do with powerset selection than build completion, but it is still an example of participation not being enough to feel relevant or impactful.

Are you expecting a low performing build to be on par with a fully IOed out build? 

[ZacKing]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Either you care or you don't care. First post, you didn't. Second, you did. Both can't be true. That which isn't true is a lie.

 

It ain't rocket surgery.

LMAO!  nice try but no.  I said I didn't care about inf or merit or whatever gain being the deciding factor in what makes a character fun for me.  but when stuff gets ruined because busy bodies pseudo know it alls want to start dicking with stuff because someone said it does moar dps! on a pylon run or whatever other stupidity, yeah I care. 

[HelBlaiz]

9 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Are you expecting a low performing build to be on par with a fully IOed out build? 

No I gave an example of a time I felt like dead weight.

[Troo]

@Xanatos As is often the case, I agree with much of what you are saying.

 

Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs? You are correct. However, it isn't pointless. It just doesn't need to be the primary focus.

It should definitely be considered in development and a goal for good design. That said, who wants a bunch reskinned homogeneous spreadsheet numbers? /em puke..

 

This topic does spill into power creep, game progression, replayability, roles, feedback loops, gamification..

 

--

 

Nerfs. These should be used in exceptional situations not as tuning instruments.

 

--

 

Define being super. This is going to vary person to person. For me it is Fly, Jump over buildings, or Run so fast that the character is almost hidden. COX nailed that and had us work our way up a little to be able to do those things. Alts just needed to get to level 14..

 

The old developers from live did get it. The game just grew, the game industry morphed, folks came and went with varied visions. And even still.. one heck of a game.

 

--

 

Regarding PVP & Is game balance pointless? This might be answered with another question: If balance is so important, why doesn't pvp use a single ideal build or team?

(at a high level, this is what happens isn't it? there's a meta/fotm and as folks try new things that meta shifts)

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, ZacKing said:

the reward for me is fun, so I could give a hoot who can clear a map faster or earn more inf or whatever faster.  I'm enjoying my character and having a good time.  that's the only metric to be concerned about.  just my 2 cents.  trying to homogenize everything makes a game bland. 

 

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

well yeah, I should care about it because you're looking to tinker with stuff that I think is just fine as it is and like the way it is.  you may wind up making it suck for me. 

 

2 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

LMAO!  nice try but no.  I said I didn't care about inf or merit or whatever gain being the deciding factor in what makes a character fun for me.  but when stuff gets ruined because busy bodies pseudo know it alls want to start dicking with stuff because someone said it does moar dps! on a pylon run or whatever other stupidity, yeah I care. 

 

Nope. Perhaps you should be more careful in what you decide to type. Statement 1: Fun is your reward. You don't care if someone else gets better rewards over time so you don't care if powersets are balanced. Statement 2: You absolutely care about powerset balance because you think I'm capable of screwing up said balance. Statement 3: You insult me because you're annoyed that I called you out on your contradictory statements. If you don't like being called a liar, don't lie. You care. Obviously, since you're so bent out of shape about it. Which is fine. Make a proper argument against correcting bad game design and I'll listen.

[kiramon]

5 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 

 

Nope. Perhaps you should be more careful in what you decide to type. Statement 1: Fun is your reward. You don't care if someone else gets better rewards over time so you don't care if powersets are balanced. Statement 2: You absolutely care about powerset balance because you think I'm capable of screwing up said balance. Statement 3: You insult me because you're annoyed that I called you out on your contradictory statements. If you don't like being called a liar, don't lie. You care. Obviously, since you're so bent out of shape about it. Which is fine. Make a proper argument against correcting bad game design and I'll listen.

This is true. 
 

anyways,

nerfs happen and they should. There are some serious outliers and it’s obvious. Would we prefer we just call them adjustments? Lol

i DONT think direst competitiveness was ever a factor, at least not here. But power sets compete with each other for “which to use” all the time. Armor sets are particularly prominent examples, because a lot of people don’t care about them except they make them “the most strongest” or fix endurance etc. 

 

i tell ya, I pick electric armor 90% of the time just because sappers can ruin my other super stronk toons 😀

[Coyote]

29 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

LMAO!  nice try but no.  I said I didn't care about inf or merit or whatever gain being the deciding factor in what makes a character fun for me.  but when stuff gets ruined because busy bodies pseudo know it alls want to start dicking with stuff because someone said it does moar dps! on a pylon run or whatever other stupidity, yeah I care. 

 

If a balance nerf only lowers the damage of a set by 20%, would that ruin the set for you? And if so, since it's not affecting how the set plays, but how strong the set is, then aren't you using a different measure of the set other than just what is "fun"?
Alternately, you're saying that "being strong = fun for me", and by that definition it's true that a balance adjustment that doesn't affect how a set plays would bother you... but it's also true that in this case, you're obfuscating. Because in this case, what you really care about is that a set is strong, if you define fun by being strong.

[Coyote]

Gotta say, coming a bit late into this thread, but it's looking a lot like:
 

"MMORPGs shouldn't have nerfs" - 2
"Nerfs are good for game balance, game design, fun and long term survivability of the game" - 20+ and counting.

 

Guess I don't need to make real arguments, I can just pull out Sarcasm Blast and have fun with it, while Lumi and Billy the Bubster clear the map (or thread) 😜.  Obviously some game designer needs to nerf their posting 😁

[Lines]

We can all agree that Regen needs to be nerfed though, right?

[Hexquisite]

5 minutes ago, Lines said:

We can all agree that Regen needs to be nerfed though, right?

That’s a given. Pretty sure the code doesn’t accept patches that don’t nerf Regen.

[CFIndustries]

This might seem silly or naïve but:

 

Is the game still balanced against SOs, or is the gold standard IOs now? I feel like alot of forum dwellers here are talking in terms of fully-IO-kitted, or even pretty nice semi-kitted in the lower levels, builds.

 

To me, HC feels like City of Gods in this way and if one is merely on TO/DO/SO their entire 1–50 that they are somehow lacking and not playing correctly.

 

Is the HC expectation that everyone is wealthy and has IOs even well before 50 and that is the basis of balance discussions?

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

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.

 

Actually I find that absolutely matching WHAT this game is. It's a casual friendly game that you play after you come home from a stress job or stress full day of school to de=stress. If I want to play an exhilarating challenge, there are other games (more well built for that) for that.

[Bill Z Bubba]

16 minutes ago, CFIndustries said:

This might seem silly or naïve but:

 

Is the game still balanced against SOs, or is the gold standard IOs now? I feel like alot of forum dwellers here are talking in terms of fully-IO-kitted, or even pretty nice semi-kitted in the lower levels, builds.

 

To me, HC feels like City of Gods in this way and if one is merely on TO/DO/SO their entire 1–50 that they are somehow lacking and not playing correctly.

 

Is the HC expectation that everyone is wealthy and has IOs even well before 50 and that is the basis of balance discussions?

I don't think anyone knows but I do know that variables can be taken into consideration.

 

Test with SOs. Test with Basic IOs. Test again with standardized Set IOs. Do all three and you'll probably get a very good idea where the baselines are.

 

To the "not playing correctly" concept, I don't believe in such a thing. How you decide to build your character and play it is your business and outside of the conversation of powerset and AT balance.

[Twisted Toon]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

If a single powerset combination is outperforming through kill efficiency in 90% of call standard (not AE farming) content, then that gross overefficiency is also overpowered.

 

Flavor is one thing, balance is another. And I was comparing a defender to a scrapper but it might as well have been a defender and a corruptor or a blaster and a sentinel, all ATs that share blast sets that *should* be balanced internally so that we can better judge the balance between archetypes.

 

Flavor should not affect overall reward rates as they so painfully do now. This is not a balanced system.

This is why I think having the ATs as a modifer to a baseline character would be helpful in balancing everything (on the character side)

All the various ATs' modifiers would be able to be easier to balance among each other because the Devs could use a baseline Attack/Defense testing set.

The same could be said for the power-sets. they would be easier to balance among themselves because the Devs would use the basleline character with no AT mods.

Also, you wouldn't have 4 iterations of the same powerset. The AT mods, in conjunction with the powersets chosen, would be what adds the flavor to the character.

A scrapper with Martial Arts and Fiery Armor would play differently than a Tank (or a brute or Stalker) with the same powersets.

 

In case you're wondering how Stalkers would work with this, their Hide would become an inherent power available at level 1, much like Kheldians with their travel powers.

Also, one of the attacks in the melee attack sets would be flagged that when Stalker Hide is active, it gets bonus damage.

Of course, all this would probably be better served in a CoH2, since it would, probably, need 60% of the game to be rebuilt from the ground up.

[DougGraves]

8 hours ago, Xanatos said:

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.

 

The thing is CoH is not incredibly easy.  But many people choose deliberately to play on easy mode.  They choose the best powersets.  They powerlevel past the challenging levels.  They get the incarnate powers and IO sets that make the game incredibly easy.  And they avoid fighting foes that are not easy.

 

Playing at level 50 with IO sets the game is trivially easy.  Playing PI radio mission teams only fighting Council is trivially easy. 

 

But soloing Night Ward with SOs is not trivially easy.  Starting gold side is not trivially easy.  Heck, starting red side is not trivially easy.

 

But the fact that you can play the game and make it trivially easy shows that there is massive room to dramatically nerf the best powersets and still leave the game trivially easy to play.  The argument that the game is easy is an argument in favor of nerfs. 

[Troo]

@DougGraves maybe we're thinking of it differently.

 

I do think COX is easy at it's core and by design. It's fun. Costume, powers, a progression system, and a way to make those powers more effective. We can jump in and play with folks at any level.

 

- on top of that -

 

There is a whole mess of nuance, time sinks, and shabang that are for the most part optional.

 

Is there challenging content, yes! Regardless of how strong there is something in the game that can be challenging. (top end kinda unfinished though)

 

I've not seen a slew of folks soloing the Tree of Thorns Respecification Trial

Edited September 18, 2020 by Troo

[Hexquisite]

21 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

But soloing Night Ward with SOs is not trivially easy.  Starting gold side is not trivially easy.  Heck, starting red side is not trivially easy.

Can confirm. Did this in my psi melee/invuln brute, with only SOs and a handful of resistance IOs. Final Midnighter mission killed me seven times before I finally beat the AV by sheer attrition and dumb luck.

 

Anyone claiming the game is too easy is, more than likely, power leveling past the mid-twenties, where, no matter what AT or power set I’ve played, I am always running out of endurance. The mid-twenties are what make or break a character for me, with some being just so tough to get through a single fight, much less a whole mission, that I end up setting them aside. Teaming can help with that, but only so much. 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Hexquisite
Spelling, because typing with gloves on n a phone is hard.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, CFIndustries said:

This might seem silly or naïve but:

 

Is the game still balanced against SOs, or is the gold standard IOs now? I feel like alot of forum dwellers here are talking in terms of fully-IO-kitted, or even pretty nice semi-kitted in the lower levels, builds.

 

All of the content that was on the original servers was balanced around SOs.  The changes and additions made since the HC team started their server... I don't know.

 

BUT, my experiences leveling characters over the last couple of months (i started with absolutely nothing, a functionally new player, when i bought this laptop), coupled with my experiences on the original servers and what I know about the game, suggest to me that the SO balance point has not moved.  SOs are still the gold standard, and IOs, at any level, even frankenslotted and common IOs, put us well above that standard.  The goalpost is still where it was, but the much greater availability and accessibility of IO sets, for those who make use of them, gives the impression of the goalpost falling over and disappearing into an oubliette.  IOs open up so much freedom with builds, even if it's just allowing us to improve powers more efficiently while spending fewer slots.

 

It used to take months, up to a year, to fully kit out a build with IOs and set bonuses.  It can be done in a day now, by someone starting fresh and just leveling for the first time.  That changes perspectives, creates the impression of ease where it didn't exist before, and probably wouldn't exist today if set IOs were more difficult to acquire, the merit system were more restricted, etc.

 

1 hour ago, CFIndustries said:

Is the HC expectation that everyone is wealthy and has IOs even well before 50 and that is the basis of balance discussions?

 

For me, no, though I do believe everyone can be wealthy and have IOs from level 10 onward, based on having done just that on my first (and every subsequent) character.  Balance isn't what IOs can do, it's what Set/Set can do, and can't do, in normal content.

 

Balanced is my TA/Dark being capable of leveling without leaning on inspirations just to survive every mission.  Slotted with DOs or IOs doesn't matter because the game provides options like the difficulty settings to adjust the balance for my personal experience.

 

Unbalanced is my TA/Dark not bringing anywhere near as much to a team as a Rad/* or Storm/*, despite being the same level and providing similar tools.  There are no tools in place to address that.  Even IOs don't really address it.  The imbalance isn't caused by what type of enhancements are slotted, but by the stats for TA's powers.  Even with fantastic IO set bonuses and Hasten, TA has a lot of powers with recharge times which prohibit them from being used on every spawn, and the powers themselves have sufficiently low debuff strength that the player needs to use multiple powers on every spawn to provide half of the mitigation that other sets provide.  The concert of power inavailability, and the necessity to use every power, creates a set at odds with itself.  It's not balanced, in comparison to other sets or even within itself.

 

That's where I'm coming from in a discussion about balance.  It's not what enhancements do, but what the powers do, what the sets do and what players can do.  IOs can change some aspects of balance management by allowing under-performing sets or combinations to do well, but they don't change the powers themselves, and that's where balance should be targeted, whether it's for idle conversation on the forums, or under the scrutiny of whoever's got Castle's hat now.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Luminara
changed "any" to "anywhere". find it yourself!

[MTeague]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

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.

What's with this newfangled P2W vendor and prestige powers?

In my day, you ran out of END and brawled!  And then the Vahzilok puked on us and we died, and Doc Vahz made more minions out of our body parts.

And we *liked* it that way!  We liked right fine....

 

Though, nothing I come up with will ever touch the grandmasters ...

 

 

[Coyote]

To elaborate on what Luminara said:

There is the question of game balance P v E. This has a lot of ability to modify that balance with better builds, more expensive enhancements, the difficulty slider, etc, so that it does a good job of hiding any actual imbalance.

 

Then, there is the question of game balance set v set, and AT v AT. This cannot really be modified with builds (while in some cases IOs help weaker sets get closer to the average... they may also help some stronger sets get further from the baseline, also). And the difficulty slider wouldn't change the imbalance. And since the OP started with a discussion of nerfs as in specific powers/sets, it seems that this is the type of balance being discussed. Not "is the game easy or hard", but "how important is it to balance sets".

[TJBC]

I think what we all want is a game where we all feel useful regardless of our power sets.