Comments on: MMO Balance vs choice

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:31:46 +0000

I’ll second that I don’t believe balance and variety to be an either-or proposition. Variety does increase the difficulty of balance, but each dev team and game will have their own capacity to handle that design.

It’s a false dichotomy to choose between the two in a vacuum. When applied to a strict budget, though, where there does need to be a choice, I side strongly on the side of variety. Of course, I don’t play PvP either, where indeed, balance would be preferable.

By: Ferrel

Ferrel — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:15:50 +0000

Absolutely, I didn’t want to get into the talent trees too much. I just threw that one liner in there when I wrote it about that making the game “deceptive.” I probably should have explored that more.

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:31:07 +0000

Depends on the game. In a PvP-heavy game, I want balance. In a PvE game, I want variety. WoW and EQ2 are PvE-centric games, so variety wins.

I don’t think the situation is quite as you describe, though, Ferrel. As Siobhann points out, each spec can almost be thought of as a different class. At the most extreme, there’s a lot of difference between a Balance (Boomkin) Druid, a Feral Druid, and a Resto Druid. You can divide the Feral Druid into DPS (Cat) and Tank (Bear) aspects as well. A lot of classes have gotten more diverse as the game has progressed: Retribution Paladins and Fury Warriors used to be punchlines rather than viable specs. Even diverse Druids used to be second-rate healers and mere mana batteries for “real healers” in vanilla WoW raids.

In EQ2, the classes are paired up between “good” and “evil” flavors for the most part. The difference between a Necromancer and a Conjurer is relatively about the same as a Frost Mage vs. an Arcane Mage in WoW. So, really, I think the two games have about the same number of classes. And, the wheel of fortune spins for all classes, and sometimes a class is in high demand and sometimes players are asked politely to wait on the bench while the others go on raids.

From a developer’s point of view, I don’t think there’s really a continuum between balance and choice. Ignoring different types of games, I will admit that adding more classes makes it harder to balance, but not impossible. Some designers may be up to the challenge, and some designers wouldn’t be able to balance 2 classes against each other without one becoming vastly more powerful.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:18:28 +0000

What about more customizable systems? With strict classes the devs atleast know the general direction characters will take, but with systems like in Champions Online they have to take much more into account. Although it does take more effort I prefer the more customizable games so I can create my own class.

By: Ferrel

Ferrel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:45:17 +0000

It means that adding a class doesn’t just “add one” to the equation. You have to take the new class in the consideration of every class it shares abilities with. So, if you have two tanks already you can’t just compare it to the one. You now have to compare it to both of them and vice versus.

I agree on the part about a game’s needs. This is just more of a general “do you want variety or balance” question.

By: evizaer

evizaer — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:13:56 +0000

How is class balancing multiplicative? I have no idea what that actually means in the context of balancing.

Class balancing also has to do with content. If the content actually requires certain capabilities, classes that otherwise would be left out can find a role to fill. Likewise, if your MMO is a standard tank-and-spank game, having 24 classes doesn’t do much more than cloud exactly who is doing what in the holy trinity.

By: Siobhann

Siobhann — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:07:15 +0000

In a way I think Blizzard has created more “classes” in WoW than Sony did with EQ2, but I could be wrong! There are three different spec choices for any class in WoW with 10 base classes. That’s a lot of balancing. I don’t envy the devs at all for this aspect of game mechanics. How do you avoid making classes that are worthless while avoiding making other classes incredibly overpowered? How do you balance hybrid classes against “pure” classes? I agree with you in that this seems like a huge nightmare.