Is game balance pointless in MMORPGs?

[Yomo Kimyata]

36 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

And is the bad one on the left?

How sinister.

33 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

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...

“Sinister Nipple”.  You’re welcome.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

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.

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.

 

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

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. 

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.

[HelBlaiz]

The point of balance is that every option in a game should be valid, as others have mentioned. Different powersets for example shouldn't be objectively better than another, just good in its own way. One is good at single target and brings sustain, another is good at aoe and mitigation, which is better depends on what you want. The issue of balance comes up when one set starts being the mathematically "right" choice for most metrics. The issue with Titan Weapons isn't that it's good at aoe, the issue is it is good at aoe and single target and has good mitigation built into the set (kd and a parry). The only thing it doesn't provide is sustain (Dark Melee's claim to fame). Why play fire melee when TW does everything it does and plays safer? Why play Energy Melee when TW does everything it does and has amazing aoe? Why play spines when TW does everything it does and has good single target?

Edited September 18, 2020 by HelBlaiz
autocorrect

[Luminara]

14 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

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.

 

You're preaching to the pastor of the church in regard to playing less than optimal sets.  7 years of Trick Arrows.  My first level 50 TA before the Issue 7 bug fixes.

 

But that also emphasizes the point I made previously.  There was a time when a lot of the game was challenging.  No difficulty slider.  No guaranteed lieutenants instead of bosses to help solo players with under-performing sets.  No IOs.  What we have today is different from what we had yesterday.  Co* in it's current, modern incarnation isn't an accurate model for balance, because, as you note, every development team who's ever worked on the game has gone the distance to make it easier, because that's what the fans specific to this game wanted.  We do have some over-performing sets, and some under-performing sets, but all sets can solo capably and rapidly, and the people with the over-performing characters aren't lacking challenge, they're either creating challenge for themselves (trying to beat pylon times, or limiting themselves to SOs, or never using the market), or avoiding content which would present a challenge (First/Night Wards).

 

Challenge doesn't necessarily mean bigger bags of hit points, either.  There's more to challenge than hitting and being hit (or soft-capping Defense to avoid being hit).  Challenge in Co* comes in a variety of forms, and what helps keep players coming back is that a surprising amount of it is self-created.  We make many of our own challenges, and we can do that because the developers gave us that option by making the game easier across the board.  And, again, you're correct, Co* is balanced enough, from that perspective.  Nothing under-performs to any degree that makes the game "impossible", so anything we can imagine within the confines of the engine and mechanics, we can do.  One of the biggest reasons players stay here is because they've been able to create characters they love.  They love the way they look, they love the powers, they love, as you said, feeling super.  This is one of the challenges we've made for ourselves, exercising our creativity and watching what we create grow, flourish, become powerful and reveling in that.

 

But that doesn't mean it's truly balanced.  If it were, there wouldn't be under-performing sets, there'd be sets which simply do different things, or do similar things in different ways.  And there wouldn't be over-performing sets, there'd be sets which might excel in one way, but not in others.  We do still, absolutely, have balance issues here, but those balance issues have become less relevant because the game is easy enough for anyone to level anything without struggling.  If a patch were implemented today, and set all content at x4/+8, I guarantee you there'd be a massive outcry.  Not because the game became more difficult, but because it became nearly impossible for players using certain sets, and practically unchanged for players using other sets.  That's not balanced.  Not remotely.  We ignore the lack of balance, but it's still there, and it threatens to come back and bite us on the ass some day.

 

And this is why balance is necessary, even if it means making some players unhappy.  Yes, we have it easy here.  Now.  What happens when we don't have it easy?  If we buff everything that's not performing up to the new standard, the older content becomes even easier, and less appealing.  We already have a sizable portion of players power leveling characters because they're no longer interested in older content.  Do we throw away the older content, replace it all with new content?  That's a few years of development, at minimum.  A decade, at least, with volunteer, unpaid developers working on the game as a side project.  The only reasonable and fair solution, then, is to nerf the over-performers and reduce the difficulty of the content to a point where everyone can experience it equally.

 

Additionally, it's often the case that imbalances aren't evident until new content is delivered.  A previously under-used power may suddenly gain favor with players because it makes that new content so easy that they can roll through it on autopilot.  A class or set which was considered good, but not the best, may have a minor tweak which has an unintended effect, improving it beyond what testing showed (and this is especially applicable in this game, because we all have two sets, up to four pools, a *PP and Incarnate abilities).  When PvP was added to Co*, the developers discovered that there were a lot of ways powers were over-performing, unexpectedly, and had to fix them.  There were a lot of bugs which had never shown up in testing before, because critters can't give feedback.  Every change to a game alters the balance.

 

Balance is equality.  Yes, you are absolutely right, we have equality in abundance right now.  But "now" is ephemeral.  It's not forever.  In any game.  And every game has to have balance to ensure the equality is maintained.  When something is over-performing, it's better to rein it in than to redesign the game from the ground up, to make it equal for everyone, so everyone can enjoy it equally.  If you're not balancing your game, you're doing a disservice to your entire player base, treating some as favored children and others as unwanted orphans.  That's really what's it's all about, trying to treat all players equally, even if it means hurt feelings occasionally.  You can't please all of the people all of the time, not even in video games.

[ShardWarrior]

13 minutes 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.

If that is the only metric you want to use, then I would agree.  Their role and design was to be AoE centric.  However in doing so, they are not the best at single target damage. 

 

15 minutes ago, HelBlaiz said:

Different powersets for example shouldn't be objectively better than another, just good in its own way. One is good at single target and brings sustain, another is good at aoe and mitigation, which is better depends on what you want.

Exactly.

 

16 minutes ago, HelBlaiz said:

Why play fire melee when TW does everything it does and plays safer? Why play Energy Melee when TW does everything it does and has amazing aoe? Why play spines when TW does everything it does and has good single target?

This is not, nor has it ever been, a universal truth for everyone though.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Rathulfr said:

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

 

My left lung collapsed back in '09.  The surgery to stick it back where it was supposed to be left me with nerve damage.  The musculature and nerves on the left side of my abdomen are... wonky now.  Including that region of my chest.

 

59 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

And is the bad one on the left?

 

It is!

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

If that is the only metric you want to use, then I would agree.  Their role and design was to be AoE centric.  However in doing so, they are not the best at single target damage. 

And I'd be fine with that IF a powerset with awesome AoE over a wide range of time was comparable on reward intake with a set that prioritized ST damage. Now I'm biased all to hell and back but I consider claws to be one of the most balanced sets for melee in the game between ST and AoE output. It's not the best or worst at either. If I build a */invul scrapper, where * equals whatever attack set, and run 100 or 200 or 300 DA repeatable missions at x8 and after a given time parity is reached, or at least some semblance of it, then the sets are balanced.

 

If one set lags behind all the others, it needs a buff. If it exceeds all the others, it needs a nerf.

 

And the same *should* be true between archetypes.

 

Run 300 missions with 8 defenders and another 300 with 8 scrappers. Then do the same with 1 defender and 1 scrapper. If defenders can drastically pull ahead of scrappers with 8 of them as a single defender is behind a single scrapper, then there's probably parity. But that's not what we're seeing in game.

[HelBlaiz]

23 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

If that is the only metric you want to use, then I would agree.  Their role and design was to be AoE centric.  However in doing so, they are not the best at single target damage. 

 

Exactly.

 

This is not, nor has it ever been, a universal truth for everyone though.

There is something to be said for flavor and aesthetic appeal. I don't just play TW, I pick what makes an interesting character. I had a dark/energy tanker on live I got to incarnate level despite both sets being less than ideal for my io ignorant ways.

 

That doesn't mean a set should be overshadowed at its core mechanical appeal.

[Luminara]

Something else of importance to note...

 

We are talking about MMORPGs.  Massively Multiplayer.  Not single-player games, multiplayer games.  Games in which people are expected to group up and play together.  When people play together, no-one likes to feel like dead weight, and that's one of the things that occurs when you have over-performing classes or sets.  If you have one class or set capable of soloing the content, and others without the same capability, you have a group with a lot of dead weight, and disgruntled players who don't want to be dead weight.  You can't ignore that, it has to be addressed, and you can't address it by buffing everyone and the content due to time constraints.  You have to nerf.  It's the only feasible option.  Yes, you piss off some players, but you make a lot more happy because they're not standing around with their thumbs in the nether plumbing, feeling useless.  And the unhappy players, if they're intelligent and patient, will understand that balance isn't always achieved by giving everyone a bump, sometimes it has to go the other way.

 

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  Or the one.  Cliche, trite, but true.

[ShardWarrior]

I guess the problem I am having here is that you are trying to apply a singular metric to everyone as the end all be all of what defines a power combo as overpowered or not.  There are a great many people, myself included, who simply do not care what combo can clear a map the fastest.  I make characters and pick power combos because I find them fun, regardless if they are the best combo or not.  To be honest, I could care less if my TW/Nin scrapper clears maps faster than my MA/SR scrapper or my EMP/Fire corrupter.  They are all a whole lot of fun for me and that is the most important metric for me personally.  I really could care less what pylon test results are.  That has no bearing on the characters I create and the AT/power combos I pick.  If what you are saying is really true, all we would be seeing in game is Fire/Spines or TW/whatever.  This is not the case.  Far from it.  I team quite a lot and I see a whole lot of variety in ATs and power combos. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I guess the problem I am having here is that you are trying to apply a singular metric to everyone as the end all be all of what defines a power combo as overpowered or not.  There are a great many people, myself included, who simply do not care what combo can clear a map the fastest.  I make characters and pick power combos because I find them fun, regardless if they are the best combo or not.  To be honest, I could care less if my TW/Nin scrapper clears maps faster than my MA/SR scrapper or my EMP/Fire corrupter.  They are all a whole lot of fun for me and that is the most important metric for me personally.  I really could care less what pylon test results are.  That has no bearing on the characters I create and the AT/power combos I pick.  If what you are saying is really true, all we would be seeing in game is Fire/Spines or TW/whatever.  This is not the case.  Far from it.  I team quite a lot and I see a whole lot of variety in ATs and power combos. 

And I am in no ways stating that you should care. I also play a bunch of characters that I find fun regardless of the multitude of balance issues.

 

The two things are not and should not be related.

 

If you find energy blast fun, and fun is all you care about, why would it suddenly become less fun if it was buffed to be more in line with the other blast sets?

If you find titan weapons fun, and fun is all you care about, why would it suddenly become less fun if it was nerfed to be more in line with the other melee sets?

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Games in which people are expected to group up and play together.  When people play together, no-one likes to feel like dead weight, and that's one of the things that occurs when you have over-performing classes or sets.  If you have one class or set capable of soloing the content, and others without the same capability, you have a group with a lot of dead weight, and disgruntled players who don't want to be dead weight. 

How are you defining "dead weight"?  When I am playing my EMP with my kids and I am more focused on buffs/heals than offense, am I dead weight?  Should I be upset that I am not contributing anything to the overall offense and the kids are "doing all the work"?  Is someone who is level 35 (or any level really) with only SOs joining a team of level 50+ incarnates on an ITF "dead weight" even if they are participating? 

 

There is another aspect to multiplayer games - socializing.  Finding and teaming up with like minded players who enjoy the same play style and pace as you do is an important part too.  If anyone feels like they are not contributing enough or the pace of play is too fast for them, find other people who play like they do and team up. 

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

If you find energy blast fun, and fun is all you care about, why would it suddenly become less fun if it was buffed to be more in line with the other blast sets?

If you find titan weapons fun, and fun is all you care about, why would it suddenly become less fun if it was nerfed to be more in line with the other melee sets?

I just do not see either being necessary. 

[nihilii]

1 hour ago, Xanatos said:

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.)

The difference between OP sets and non-OP sets isn't nearly as huge as it could be.  A TW/bio scrapper is maybe worth 2 normal non-TW and non-bio scrappers. That's big but not to the point the concept player is useless. If there was truly no balance and the ratio would be 10 to 1 rather than 2 to 1, I'd wager you would not find much diversity in scrappers.

 

Case in point: AE farming. While there is a variety of power builds even in that scenario for good players (i.e. blasters, doms...), the difference between a /fire brute and a random build for your average player once you factor both power and ease of use is probably somewhere close to that 10:1 ratio. Sure enough, /fire brutes outnumber just about anything else in AE.

 

So the normal game, being more balanced, sees some variety of builds. And AE, being less balanced, see much less variety of builds. To me this is conclusive evidence balance matters.

 

There's yet another issue: absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. The number of players who quit the game because they're bored is invisible. There is one thing that is sure, player activity has been down compared to one year ago. Which can be for a number of reasons that aren't necessarily (and indeed, likely aren't, at least not solely) "boredom with build diversity".

 

But still, extrapolating from the subset of players who still play the game is a bit like polling your current repeat customers for problems in your store. They might have something to say, but there's probably more info still in all the people who stopped coming.

 

 

[ZacKing]

6 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

And I am in no ways stating that you should care. I also play a bunch of characters that I find fun regardless of the multitude of balance issues.

 

The two things are not and should not be related.

you're kinda suggesting that DPS is the ONLY metric to be worried about.   It isn't.  not by a longshot. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I just do not see either being necessary. 

That's fair. I completely disagree, obviously.

 

1 minute ago, ZacKing said:

you're kinda suggesting that DPS is the ONLY metric to be worried about.   It isn't.  not by a longshot. 

No, I'm suggesting that reward over time is the only metric to be concerned about.

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

How are you defining "dead weight"?

 

I'm not.  You are, as the teammate in question.  If you feel like you're contributing, then you're not likely to label yourself as dead weight.  If you're making certain the floor doesn't go anywhere while one person solos the entire mission, and you aren't assisting because you can't, then you're probably not feeling terribly useful (since the floor doesn't have a tendency to go walkabout).  If I were in that latter situation, I'd feel like dead weight, and not be happy playing that way.  And if that represented the game experience in general, I wouldn't be happy with that game.

[ZacKing]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

No, I'm suggesting that reward over time is the only metric to be concerned about.

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. 

[Zeraphia]

This is my issue when people point so quickly to TW as overpowered, and quite frankly, I will grant it is... but hear me out... the other options truly aren't that much better.

 

Fiery Melee should for all intents and purposes do the highest damage whether in AoE or ST because it literally has no other benefit attached to it. And yet... it is maybe mid-tier once procs are factored in, has horrible mitigations, and honestly not great AoE.

 

EM and Kinetic Melee suffer similar problems with EM obviously suffering more (but will likely have a buff soon) KM is likely to still stay a bottom-tier set and not have any attention shined on it.

 

MA has some nice things going for it with the +def power, but beyond that its single target damage isn't the highest even factoring out TW and has terrible AoE. 

 

Staff is weak damage, has some nice tools but still weaker damage.

 

Electric Melee was once thought of as a great set, but now its horrific ST and LR being duped by Savage's Leap with less than half the recharge makes this set pretty unattractive comparatively.

 

There are still some decent melee options, but there are some serious flaws with the competition that should be addressed first imo. I think people are very quick to point TW as an overperformer (rightfully so) but people do not spend enough time recognizing that a perfect golden apple amongst a garden of some decent apples and fouling brown apples is going to be salient in comparison. 

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, Luminara said:

I'm not.  You are, as the teammate in question.  If you feel like you're contributing, then you're not likely to label yourself as dead weight.

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?

[Bill Z Bubba]

8 minutes 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. 

Fantastic. Then you as well shouldn't care at all about balance conversations or nerfs/buffs. Great. Balance does NOT mean homogenization.

[ZacKing]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Fantastic. Then you as well shouldn't care at all about balance conversations or nerfs/buffs. Great. Balance does NOT mean homogenization.

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. 

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Why would anyone feel like dead weight then if they are participating?

 

Failure to live up to some internal expectation, poor rank on a DPS meter, lack of satisfaction with a class or set which couldn't accomplish the goal of clearing a difficult map solo when seeing first-hand that someone else can?  Why are you asking me how other people determine whether or not their level of contribution is satisfactory?  Isn't that for the person to decide?  Or are you asking me to rate your specific contributions and determine whether or not you're dead weight?  I'm not going to do that.  I wouldn't do that even if we were playing together, because I'm not you, and only you can decide whether what you brought to the party was enough or not.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes 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. 

Then your prior statement was a lie.

[Rathulfr]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

My left lung collapsed back in '09.  The surgery to stick it back where it was supposed to be left me with nerve damage.  The musculature and nerves on the left side of my abdomen are... wonky now.  Including that region of my chest.

 

 

It is!

Ouch!  Sorry to hear that.