Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Hyperstrike]

In short.  Game balance *IS* important, even in MMOs.

But, over time, with enough resources, and a good understanding of the systems in play, one can judiciously min-max themselves up to (or around) the limits of the game balance.

This is NOT a "bad" thing.  ANY game you play long enough, you're going to learn enough of it that you can compensate for limits imposed by game balance mechanics.

How would you rather start a fire?  By spinning a stick in a pile of kindling until it lights?
Or do you want to use a lighter and some lighter fluid?

How do you want to build a wall?  Pile and mortar a bunch of rocks over a couple weeks?  Or just pour concrete in one day?

In both cases, the RIGHT answer is "it depends".

[cranebump]

All I'll say on that subject is this--and this is simply an observation, not an indictment against fast-tracking or min-maxing -- If you play the game without the P2W stuff, it is more than sufficiently balanced in terms of challenge. I rediscovered this while playing a new character in "Classic Challenge" mode. Other than REALLY missing travel at lower levels, it has proven to be a revelation, since my newbie is running without 8-hours of bought buffs, plus DfB buffs, plus Sands/Staff, grenades, or whatever else I might buy off the bat (not to mention using jet pack to gather Atlas exploration (and Galaxy Echo), resulting in 10 early merits I can cash in.

 

That said, not everyone wants that mode of play. And that's fine. What's not quite as fine would be for me to trash the game's inherent challenge/balance, which I've mitigated with all my widgets. You can create your own form of "balance," and that's cool.

Edited December 17, 2020 by cranebump

[darrall123]

Nerfing is not the answer. Devs from live made the incarnate system for a reason.  What i hate is after months of getting a scrapper TW to the point he can stay alive in a fight his dmg gets nerfed . I'm like WTH?! I may as well of made a freaking tank  at least he could live long enough to take the dmg with those slow ass animations. You guys are gonna nerf the piss out this game and make it only good enough for people sitting in a retirement home. Most people that leave ask me where's the new content? can we focus on making the game harder and keep the powers where they are? After all there is a zone made up of lvl 54 enemies. last time i checked i couldn't get my toon higher than 51.  New content New powers not Debuffing and nerfs. for all that debuff fire aura, they wont because what fire aura lacks in def/res abilities it makes up for it in dps.  It seems to me TW should have gotten that same nod.  That isn't easy sitting in a mob of killers with a toon that has low HP and a super slow animation. 

Lastly i want to say on Cake Server i can level 10 GMS with one toon simultaneously.  Now that is overpowered!!! HC  worried about small differences in an AT and what there doing is slicing peas, so what if i can kill a GM/Av with a TW it isn't at an OP rate. Damn add a +5 +6 +7 difficulty so people like me wont have to spend months building a toon just to be nerfed later.

Edited January 2, 2021 by darrall123

[Coyote]

Not quite UniqueDragon level, but a fair effort.

 

And... it took months to get a TW scrapper to the point where he can stay alive in a fight? What's his secondary, Tissue Paper Armor?

My TW Brute only dies to every other Lieutenant, but at least he's /Regen, so I have an excuse 😝

[Galaxy Brain]

As others have eloquently put, balance does indeed matter even in a co-op game like this in order to keep everything fun. I like this anecdote in particular:

 

On 12/16/2020 at 11:32 PM, Hyperstrike said:

But, over time, with enough resources, and a good understanding of the systems in play, one can judiciously min-max themselves up to (or around) the limits of the game balance.

This is NOT a "bad" thing.  ANY game you play long enough, you're going to learn enough of it that you can compensate for limits imposed by game balance mechanics.

How would you rather start a fire?  By spinning a stick in a pile of kindling until it lights?
Or do you want to use a lighter and some lighter fluid?

How do you want to build a wall?  Pile and mortar a bunch of rocks over a couple weeks?  Or just pour concrete in one day?

 

These are great comparisons of two different ways to solve the same problem but with different efficiency. In a single player game, the Mortar and Rocks are your lvl 1 gear you get from killing rats, and the Concrete is the high lvl gear from killing bright purple accursed rats from the 9th layer of heck. In that game the balance of the lvl 1 gear vs the high lvl gear is a moot point as you are expected to use the high lvl gear as you progress. If there is a particular high lvl gear that is broken and stomps everything, there is nothing stopping you from using that nor any guilt felt by the lvl 1 weapons for doing so.

 

In a multiplayer game, if your friends all have low / mid level gear and you have the Prestige Concrete you're gonna outshine them pretty hard. In this example, they can all be expected to get that concrete too though at some point but at the moment it can be frustrating for them to be "Stuck" and unable to perform as well as you do with better gear no matter their skill. 

 

What sucks is when you are stuck with Rocks while somebody else has the Concrete. Say, Assault Rifle vs Fire Blast. No amount of slotting or player skill is going to make up the raw difference in effect between those two sets without Dev intervention for a variety of factors. Anything that is advisable to the AR character (get good, slot X, take Y pools) could also be done by the Fire character making it a moot point, and its not like the AR character can just swap to fire stats like changing gear or skills in other games. You're stuck with the rocks unless you reroll, and playing with other people who essentially do "your job" way better and you simply cannot match / compete it ruins the fun. 

 

When the fun is impacted is when Balance needs to be addressed, which is why we saw TW brought in (and side graded with a huge buff to endurance), and EM brought up. Other such changes will be necessary for the sets that are lagging behind or outclassed in order to preserve the fun.

 

 

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

As others have eloquently put, balance does indeed matter even in a co-op game like this in order to keep everything fun. I like this anecdote in particular:

 

 

These are great comparisons of two different ways to solve the same problem but with different efficiency. In a single player game, the Mortar and Rocks are your lvl 1 gear you get from killing rats, and the Concrete is the high lvl gear from killing bright purple accursed rats from the 9th layer of heck. In that game the balance of the lvl 1 gear vs the high lvl gear is a moot point as you are expected to use the high lvl gear as you progress. If there is a particular high lvl gear that is broken and stomps everything, there is nothing stopping you from using that nor any guilt felt by the lvl 1 weapons for doing so.

 

In a multiplayer game, if your friends all have low / mid level gear and you have the Prestige Concrete you're gonna outshine them pretty hard. In this example, they can all be expected to get that concrete too though at some point but at the moment it can be frustrating for them to be "Stuck" and unable to perform as well as you do with better gear no matter their skill. 

 

What sucks is when you are stuck with Rocks while somebody else has the Concrete. Say, Assault Rifle vs Fire Blast. No amount of slotting or player skill is going to make up the raw difference in effect between those two sets without Dev intervention for a variety of factors. Anything that is advisable to the AR character (get good, slot X, take Y pools) could also be done by the Fire character making it a moot point, and its not like the AR character can just swap to fire stats like changing gear or skills in other games. You're stuck with the rocks unless you reroll, and playing with other people who essentially do "your job" way better and you simply cannot match / compete it ruins the fun. 

 

When the fun is impacted is when Balance needs to be addressed, which is why we saw TW brought in (and side graded with a huge buff to endurance), and EM brought up. Other such changes will be necessary for the sets that are lagging behind or outclassed in order to preserve the fun.

 

 

I'm okay with set by set balance. I'm not okay with whole nerfs that don't take the time to recognize what that does on set by set and power by power basis.

 

Thankfully the HC devs seem to recognize that careful balance is better than wanton, unresearched nerfs. 

[Uruare]

MMO Balance:  The guarantee that things are going to be changed that almost nobody agrees with because the changes are predicated on a tiny number of select individuals' ideas about what balance even is and looks like in execution.

Different demographics of players exist no matter how one chooses to define a demographic.    Why are you here? What experience is it that you desire in playing here?   What is detrimental to your sought-after experiences?   What is enhancing to your pursuit of those experiences?

 

Player 1 might be here looking for top-tier self-imposed challenges and actively engage in trying to play the powersets on AT's that are widely considered to be the worst because they want to see if they can make them shine.

 

Player 2 might be here looking for deeply committed group involvement that includes non-stop teaming and embedding themselves in every scrap of the social experience that they can find.

 

Player 3 might be here because they want something superhero'ish to do in their freetime and they prefer to do so while soloing and not feeling beholden to anyone else's schedules or opinions.

 

Player 4 might be here to roleplay and they couldn't care less about levels or powers or AT's, but they might care very much about the costume creator and whatever they feel inhibits RP in some way.

 

Player 5 might be here because they want to dive facefirst into PVP and try to make a server-wide name for themselves as the l337e$t l337 that ever l337ed.

 

Player 6 might be a moving-goalpost hybrid of players 1 through 6 on any given day of a month and be perfectly content doing a little bit of everything and caring occasionally about whatever affects their desired experience with a given thing right now, but probably won't care so much in fifteen minutes when they roll out Alt #727865.

 

In these fabricated demographics that never the less seem entirely plausible to me, you're going to find differences of opinion on balance within each demographic.

 

If there are 10,000 Player 1's, you're going to find just about that many opinions about what balance is and means as is pertinent to the Player 1 subset of common goals and sought-after experiences.  There will be conflict between these opinions within a demographic that shares broad motivations, nevermind between demographics that don't share motivations any less broadly than 'I'm here to have a good time'.

 

Everyone is ostensibly here to have a good time.  What is 'a good time'?   What is the correct/right/proper good time to try to be having? 

 

Who gets to decide what sort of good time will be favored and which kinds will be neglected or rejected?

 

'Game Balance' is a cheerful pair of words that sound so meaningful, so chunky-salsa and so rich with importance.

 

In fact, they mean nearly nothing what so ever between any two people tossing the words around.  There is nearly no shared basis of acceptance from one person to the next about what 'Game Balance' is, looks like, how it should be done, why it should be done, if it should be done; imagine a vector for conflict and it's there, and its probably just as common as a lot of other vectors of conflict germane to the topic.

 

Moreover, probably a solid 50% or more of everyone out of all the demographics will have strong feelings and opinions about 'Game Balance' as they perceive it applying to their sought-after experience.   Only the people that really don't care about the quality of their perceived experience in what they spend their time doing here will be ambivalent of opinion, though there will always be a genuflective element that will seek to agree with the perceived authorities no matter what they're doing or why they're doing it, just as there will always be a defiant element that will reactively disagree with whatever the perceived authorities are doing no matter what it is or why they're doing it.

 

Irrational as both are, the strongest opinions are sometimes sourced in the camps of the genuflective and the arbitrarily defiant.   Players with these characteristics in particular will not be moved or persuaded by graphs or charts or reasoned-out argumentation, because neither their sycophantism nor their bullwarked defiance in either case are going to be derived from analysis of data or by logical assessments.   It will be derived based on feelings that may have little or even nothing to do with the subject material in question, and might derive from seemingly unrelated RL beliefs in everything from religion to politics to social activism to economics.

 

And that is how a discussion about 'game balance' can quickly turn into an argument between people that are all using the same language per the linguistics, but that might have nearly no shared comprehension of what anyone other than themselves even means when they refer to 'Game Balance'.

 

All of this is collectively why I regard game design as a necessary tyranny.    The developers need to single out an overall experience that they're going to focus all efforts towards and that will cater to a certain set of playstyles and sought-after experiences.

 

Why?  Because someone has to make the hard decisions, and you literally cannot please everyone, not even some of the time.  You have to pick the demographics you are going to make the thing for and you need to stay consistent with that.

 

It's like building a house.  You'd think that 'everyone' would agree on what  'a nice house' is and looks like and has for amenities, but you'd be dead wrong.    Try to build a house that makes everyone happy and you don't have much of a house anymore - you have a complete mess that is guaranteed to have something that will piss everyone off no matter who they are or what they want in a house.

 

Same thing with game design; figure out who you're making the game for and make the game for them, their playstyle, their sought-after experiences and their ideas about challenge, reward and accomplishment.

 

You try to make an Everything Game that is Everything For Everyone and you're going to wind up with a completely bizarre mess of a game that has extreme identity issues about what sort of game its even trying to be.

 

It's a nice dream to imagine that 'something for everyone' is an achievable goal in a game like this, but it just isn't, and the conflict that will arise between demographics that all want to think of this as 'Their Game' will be nonstop and furious on into eternity no matter what you do if you try to make the game for Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, Player 4, Player 5 and Player 6 all at once.    

 

Trying to make an Everything Pizza is how you make it disgusting for everyone and ensure that nobody wants to partake of it at all, and 'Game Balance' is, from my point of view, a literal discussion about the recipe for your pizza.

 

So, whatever 'Game Balance' winds up being as time goes by, at least be consistent and have a focused objective about who the game is for underscoring it, or we'll all just be taken for a ride on yet another aimless wander through the valley of It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.