Balance

[Seed22]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2-director-says-balance-is-a-myth-and-devs-shouldnt-spend-more-than-5-percent-of-their-time-on-it-if-you-balance-out-all-the-chaos-youve-made-an-uninteresting-game/
 

It’s almost crazy that this article was brought to my attention in a discord I’m in. A bit serendipitous when it comes to CoH, especially in regard to this upcoming page and prior pages.

 

Helldivers 2 lead talks about game balance and its’ role in game design. Frankly I agree with his take.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Snarky]

i think they should not have nerfed Brutes 3 times for "balance"

[Skyhawke]

In my experience, "balance" usually means "Hey, they figured out a new meta...time to kibosh that mess!" I bought Diablo IV at launch, played it through, got into the endgame and every time I blinked they'd nerfed the fun stuff harder and harder. Now, I kinda get that in an ongoing game meant to nickel and dime (ugh...live service games...) players, but I've never, EVER understood it in either a single player game or something like what we play here in COH land. If it's fun, and your players are enjoying it, who gives a crap about balance? Even in the Diablo example, if you make the game itself fun and interesting and not rely on people constantly having to reinvent the wheel to keep your playerbase, I think you'd be amazed at how many people continue to play. (even if they're not playing to your vision...Jack)

[Skyhawke]

2 minutes ago, Snarky said:

i think they should not have nerfed Brutes 3 times for "balance"

 

Because I can only "react emoji" once on a post: ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[mistagoat]

I put tons of hours into Borderlands 3 and I was constantly having to rebuild my characters to keep up with nerfs in the name of balance. It's what ultimately made me stop playing. Every time I fired up the game I had to research what had been nerfed and come up with a new build before I could actually play the game. It just became a chore...

Edited Thursday at 12:45 PM by mistagoat

[TheMoneyMaker]

the only balance in the game should be between powersets within an AT. Don't try to balance ATs against each other as that's like comparing apples to lava.

[jprewitt73]

37 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

the only balance in the game should be between powersets within an AT. Don't try to balance ATs against each other as that's like comparing apples to lava.

 

 

[Ulysses Dare]

I think that take is wrong. Yes, you want your game to be fun and interesting but balance is a part of that. If the game is too easy, or soul-crushingly difficult, that's a problem. If one particular class/archetype/build dominates play, or is utterly useless, that's a problem. Balance can be hard to define—and even if you could you'd never get it 100% right—but leaving it to chance certainly isn't doing yourself any favors.

[Seed22]

My mindset with CoH, since that's the game played here, is to balance it like MH Wilds.

 

Now you may be thinking: "They're very different games!"(if folks even know what MH wilds is). And you'd be right.

 

When I say balance like wilds, I mean don't focus entirely on numbers, overcome biases against certain sets, and anchor your changes in relation to the gameplay loop, while also seeking to cultivate an engaging and satisfying loop. 

 

CoH does not currently do this. They balance by...well I'm not sure but there's for sure a detachment somewhere in the process. As i describe CoH right now to friends, I say it's pretty miasmic and dreary in changes to powers.

[Scarlet Shocker]

Reading this thread made me lose mine!

[Latex]

A lot of examples here are PVE games, Helldivers 2 is PVE, MH:W is PVE, I don't think balance is as important in some PVE games.

- Helldivers Dev is off the mark though, the lack of balance hit that game hard and they lost a lot of players because of the way they balanced.
- In a game like Marvel Rivals the game will live or die (exactly like Overwatch did) off balance, if your favourite Hero is statistically garbage you are going to lose more games than you win, this means annoying/letting down your 5 teammates, whether they're friends or randos.
- Same for a game like Path of Exile 1 and 2 where meta's form and the game turns stagnant because it's utterly figured out.

It's impossible to balance some things. But if you have a meta form and allow it to dominate the game then your game has an issue that will eat away at it's gameplay. City of Heroes is no different, thing is in this game it's hard to gauge what is truly by the numbers mathematically meta because it has as many variations in builds as Path of Exile, there is without a doubt some meta picks in COH; Kinetics, Ice Debuffing, Sonic -RES, Fire Brute Farming. It also doesn't have the tools like other games do; World of Warcraft's combat log tech/parse calculators are able to define the best played and most minmaxed characters and groups in the world, this is a metric that might get you recruited into an esports team or earn you fame in 'World First' races.

Should meta builds be nerfed? Some argue buffing everything else makes more sense but then you end up in a situation like Diablo 3 ended up in where Blizzards ethos was the only ever buff which lead to making the game a total circus. I think it's better to spread out the access to the defining characteristics of a meta powersets so there are other picks equally as good or better in situations the other isn't. e.g. give a couple other powersets it's own riff on Fulcrum Shift for examples sake- not a copy/paste, more something that mathematically ends up just as powerful, being able to reliably hit damage cap from a single powerset is kind of absurd, more powersets should be able to compete with that. I think good example is what they did with Fire Armor on Homecoming they nerfed it in farming but improved how it feels and leant in on what makes Fire Armor a pick for those that want it, not sure on the broader community consensus on the Fire Armor nerf, but I'm loving my character with the fire changes, I don't bother with farming though but it is still the best 'all out offense' powerset.

- Try as hard as they might, they'll always be a meta in every single game, it is impossible to balance.
- Ignoring the meta will turn the game stagnant with very little flexibility for optimal builds.
- The perfectly balanced game is one where the meta is hard to make out because powers/skills/weapons/whatever are more focused on user skill and when it is inevitably figured out the margin between S+ tier and D tier is 5% difference to the point user skill can actually make a D tier power/skill/weapon/character S+ tier with good game knowledge. This enables two playstyles, the real meta player who puts in the extra mile to be 5% better than everyone else not playing that powers/skills/weapons/whatever and the D tier which is only 5-10% behind but doesn't have to put in anywhere near the effort to be 'almost as good'.

 

Edited Thursday at 09:38 PM by Latex

[Troo]

 

"Balance is a myth. Fun first, balance later," he said

 

I like the statement above and agree that fun should trump balance within reason. Not every power set needs to be same same.

 

It is understood balance later could equal nerfs

[MoonSheep]

i definitely agere that seeking to make sure each and every power is 'balanced' is a one way street to creating a bland grey mush of a game. with regard to CoH, i think the 'balance' efforts are largely futile and a bit pointless given the following point - one i've raised a few times and isn't overly popular as people have been given their sugar fix and understandably don't want to have it taken away

 

the game has never recovered from the introduction of recipes and IOs. they fundementally broke the game dynamics and there hasn't been a clear fix on how to resolve it. do i love IOs? hell yeah, but they weren't right for CoH

 

when you read patch notes and see the recharge of a power being reduced by 0.3 seconds, or damage being increased by 8% is completely dwarfed by builds being able to provide an extra 70% +recharge in their builds, set bonuses providing an extra +20% def or more and so on

 

archetypes in modern CoH are largely irrelevant - every AT has one purpose: deal damage. previously, every role (at least on heroside) had a task to play. a defender would provide support or debuff, a tank would be able to take the aggro - but often not forever, a controller gave some breathing room to the chaos and so on

 

with this in mind, i agree with a quote in the article that it's not worth spending more than 5% of available time on 'balance'. unfortunately, from my perspective, the HC developers seem  spend a considerable amount of time on 'balance' changes which largely go unnoticed, other than the changes to mastery sets which were ruined across the board for no real reason

 

..and yet in nearly 6 years haven't made any adjustments to regen, what happened to the balance agenda? 🤷‍♂️

[golstat2003]

14 hours ago, Troo said:

 

"Balance is a myth. Fun first, balance later," he said

 

I like the statement above and agree that fun should trump balance within reason. Not every power set needs to be same same.

 

It is understood balance later could equal nerfs

Define fun. And who’s definition of fun should developers go with if every single player (or even every other player) has a different definition?

Edited Friday at 12:31 PM by golstat2003

[Skyhawke]

Balance Regen. 

[Captain Fabulous]

I think balance is much more important in an MMO than it is in a single player game. And FAR more important in PvP games. The problem with ignoring balance in an MMO is that so many players seek out the most efficient AT and builds, and if they are demonstrable better it ultimately leads to the exclusion of everything else. Part of the dev team's job is to ensure every AT with any combination of powersets will have a place at the table. No one wants to be told "Oh, you're an SS Brute? Sorry, gotta be Titan Weapon, otherwise you'll just slow us down" when joining a team or TF.

How a dev team balances and what they consider to be fun is of course open to interpretation. I don't always agree with what the dev team here does, but I understand why they do it, and have never once believed they actively seek to make the game less fun. There are only two devs of this game that did this, Jack and Castle. And they are long gone.

[Captain Fabulous]

17 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

Balance Regen. 

Patience, grasshopper.

[tidge]

I am most reminded of (this variant of) the Pareto principle: You can get 80% of what you want with 20% of the (total) effort.

 

In practical terms, this means: You'll never get 100% of what you want without enormous effort. Ultimately I agree that "spending 100% of your time on _____" is wasteful, otherwise we'd all have been playing City of Titans.

[FFTMime]

Remember when Regen got nerfed 3 times in the span of less than a year in COH's first year as an MMO? Remember Statesman being caught faking evidence against regen to justify his hate against the set with a replay so obviously tampered with that it was embarassing? Remember him deleting the post and never posting on the forum again after he was caught?

Anyway, I have never seen a MMO where chasing this phantom entity of 'balance' has worked out. Nor have I ever seen a MMO praised for it's balance. Nor played for it. Granted, yes, to a point things must be attended to. Sets can't really be doing something it's archetype isn't supposed to be, but the larger issue is one simple question. How many people are playing it? That should tell you a lot about what needs to change than taking out your microscope to see if sets are completing missions 30 seconds too fast.

Also tidge is right. Diminishing returns on effort spent on balancing is worth minding. This is a MMO. Most of the way there is fine. If this were a proper PVP game, you'd be more bothered. 

[battlewraith]

18 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I think balance is much more important in an MMO than it is in a single player game. And FAR more important in PvP games. The problem with ignoring balance in an MMO is that so many players seek out the most efficient AT and builds, and if they are demonstrable better it ultimately leads to the exclusion of everything else. Part of the dev team's job is to ensure every AT with any combination of powersets will have a place at the table. No one wants to be told "Oh, you're an SS Brute? Sorry, gotta be Titan Weapon, otherwise you'll just slow us down" when joining a team or TF.

 

I think that kind of sums up the problem though. "Every AT with any combination of powersets will have a place at the table" in practical terms means a bland sameness to the game. There will still be favorites, but the end goal is to make characters broadly interchangeable. And the things that might make a specific set or build stand out get nerfed into mediocrity so that nobody else feels insecure that their character 's performance in general.

 

An example of this mindset, for me is impale. Back in the early days, impale had a long range like a sniper. It was a cool little feature that I liked about the set. Then at some point the devs nerfed the range "to bring it in line with other ranged attacks blah blah blah," Why? It's not like impale was a super damaging power that was upsetting game balance. It just fell prey to this impulse to put everything into neat little predictable boxes. 

 

I has hoped early on that the different sets would be given different zones or TFs or somewhere that they would shine, Instead they went with the assumption that the entire game is one table(except for pvp) where anything should perform at the same level in any context.

 

 

[Doc_Scorpion]

38 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

I think that kind of sums up the problem though. "Every AT with any combination of powersets will have a place at the table" in practical terms means a bland sameness to the game.

It certainly didn't so back in the OG days and to a large extent it's not doing so now. 

What does lead to bland sameness is your desire that "every set has a specific place to shine".   "We're doing Synapse? Better grab my fire blaster"  "There's a team in FF? I'm screwed because I don't have an appropriate level Earth troller."  Etc... etc...  Rock, paper, scissors is not really fun in the long run.  People keep coming back to this game in a large part because it isn't rock, paper, scissors.  They can (with few exceptions) play whatever toon they want, wherever they want, whenever they want.  Balance empowers players and brings life and diversity to the game.
 

 

1 hour ago, FFTMime said:

Anyway, I have never seen a MMO where chasing this phantom entity of 'balance' has worked out. Nor have I ever seen a MMO praised for it's balance.

That's because good balance is like your car running normally - it's invisible.  It's not causing problems, and you can't see problems that aren't there.  Unbalance on the other hand...  Like Titan Weapons before the changes or the current state of Regen, is immediately obvious to anyone paying even a modicum of attention to what's going on around them.

[Black Zot]

On 3/20/2025 at 9:04 AM, Seed22 said:

Helldivers 2 lead talks about game balance and its’ role in game design. Frankly I agree with his take.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

I think the Helldivers franchise and its dev team isn't a great reference point to use WRT game balance.

[battlewraith]

17 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It certainly didn't so back in the OG days and to a large extent it's not doing so now. 

What does lead to bland sameness is your desire that "every set has a specific place to shine".   "We're doing Synapse? Better grab my fire blaster"  "There's a team in FF? I'm screwed because I don't have an appropriate level Earth troller."  Etc... etc...  Rock, paper, scissors is not really fun in the long run.  People keep coming back to this game in a large part because it isn't rock, paper, scissors.  They can (with few exceptions) play whatever toon they want, wherever they want, whenever they want.  Balance empowers players and brings life and diversity to the game.

 

I know plenty of people that left the game because it was the same old thing. The people that moved on, for whatever reason, far exceeded those that stayed. But by your logic, making things more or less generically useful is a huge win because there's a population that keeps on playing. It's a myopic assumption. And even if it does point to some factor that is integral to the game's success, it doesn't follow that everything has to be either rock, paper, scissors or blandly generically useful. 

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, FFTMime said:

Anyway, I have never seen a MMO where chasing this phantom entity of 'balance' has worked out. Nor have I ever seen a MMO praised for it's balance. Nor played for it. Granted, yes, to a point things must be attended to. Sets can't really be doing something it's archetype isn't supposed to be, but the larger issue is one simple question. How many people are playing it? That should tell you a lot about what needs to change than taking out your microscope to see if sets are completing missions 30 seconds too fast.

 

Back in the day I had a dm/inv scrapper and it was badass, I could herd all of the wolves on that one AV map and bring them all over to the corner where the blasters would nuke them. If you were one of the people waiting, you'd see this writhing carpet of wolves approaching. People want fun. They want something epic. And they will always seek out the option that is different, the one that allows them to outperform in a cool way. 

 

Under those circumstances, you expect the cool thing to be nerfed. Even things that are just somewhat overperforming get nerfed. When that happens, the fun experience is gone. Nobody gets anything positive out of it--people just don't have a reason to be jealous of other players. But that type of player just thinks perfect balance is wonderful. Unfortunately, I think they are the easiest to please.

[Troo]

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Define fun.

 

little kids jumping around inside an inflatable bouncy house

 

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

And who’s definition of fun should developers go with if every single player (or even every other player) has a different definition?

 

since you are not doing the development it will likely someone else's definition.

 

I support creating new power sets rather than drastically revamping power sets people play. (to me this seems fair to the players and the devs) 

I can support minor tweaks to existing power sets based on clear evidence that something is amiss, lacking, or overpowered.

 

if folks want to participate, make some suggestions.