Slashdot Mirror
The Lost Art of Class Balancing
GamePro has a look at the delicate touch needed when balancing classes in a Massive title. From the article: "Bad class balancing has been an endemic problem to MMORPGs--unfortunately especially in games where PvP is a major component. Dark Age of Camelot tanked the usability of the original classes with the emergence of Vampiirs in the ill-reputed Catacombs expansion. Users were incensed when Creature Handlers ruled the universe in Star Wars Galaxies--then angered even more when the class was beat down with the nerf bat in subsequent patches."
It's just a matter of a little going a long, long, long way. Changes that seem to resolve an immediate problem can have drastic effects long term. Look at it from a gameplay mechanic instead of a balance mechanic. When the level cap is raised in World of Warcraft, it most likely will be five levels, to a maximum of 65. Perhaps it will be more, but that remains to be seen. Level 65 doesn't make much difference for one person in many situations; most NPCs at the current max level, 60, will just be soloable by most players without uber gear. Large encounters, however, will be completely changed. Players will be able to kill Onyxia and Ragnaros (a big bad nasty dragon and a big bad nasty lava giant, respectively) quickly and easily if they plan ahead and execute well.
It's this kind of ripple effect - where one small change suddenly becomes very drastic when multiplied by larger numbers - that makes class balance so difficult. After all, it's easier to multiply by 1.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I stopped playing CoH for about 4 months so I could concentrate on school last semester and couldn't believe that when I got back characters that had previously been really weak seemed invincible and characters that had been really strong were dropping like flies. And to make matters worse, about a week into my renewed subscription they went and changed everything all over again.
I wouldn't even be upset if they made the characters so specialized that they had trouble running solo missions, but I'd at least like my character class to be used in a manner that is in-line with their description.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
I've been told that I'm quite the geek, but after reading the blurb for the article and not understanding a single sentence, I feel like Brad Pitt.
Ladies, here I come!
Nerf Shamans!! (or rogues, if that's your thing)
and realize that no game is perfect, and while many could be a hell of a lot better, designers are usually under a deadline, and while they may want to create a nice, balanced game, they can't. The only way for them to balance it out, is to later release patchs, which, if they haven't been properly tested, may just make things worse.
So the article talks about imbalances in Wow and SWG, and says that when an imbalance arises, the devs either make every class equal (and then complain that is boring) or nerf the powerful class. This is all true and pretty much states the obvious. When has a PvP MMORPG been successfully balanced? How does one go about achieving that? As much as it seems to have to do with design, in order to make all the character classes interesting, they wind up giving everybody so many skills that some combination winds up being more powerful than any other, and that's where all the power gamers drift. (Otherwise they make all the classes equal, and as pointed out, that's boring.) I don't know that true balance can ever be achieved in an MMORPG.
On a side note, as a player of SWG, those guys are way screwed on the balance issue. They are stuck with a prominent Jedi class that by design is supposed to be 1.5 x stronger than the other classes. They've really got their work cut out for them...
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
I'm not positive, but quite sure it's Will of the Forsaken.
Isn't it great to hear someone complain about something when they really don't know what they're talking about. Basically, the thread devolves to another paladins suck, nerf shaman message. Why not leave other classes alone and fix the broken ones? No sense in dragging the working classes down to the crap level.
There is no real solution for this in MMORPGs. Some classes/people will always suffer. It's just too complex and too close to real societies...
The main problem is in games that involve both PvP and PvE. I play PvE almost exclusively in any game that gives the choice. In WoW, both my Warlock and Mage are specced 100% for PvE. I really enjoy how they make each class useful in a group, and you benefit from each class in a different way.
When it comes to PvP that is terrible. In PvP, the healing classes are almost always terrible in every game. The alternative is that you get priests that are Shadow Specced (WoW) or Smite Priests (DAoC) and they are nearly useless when you need a healer on a raid.
For PvP only, every class has to be an even match. That means the developers can't give really good abilities to some classes that would greatly help against mobs. Look at how badly fear and seduction are nerfed in WoW. They were handy in PvE, were overpowered in PvP, they got nerfed for PvP, now they suck for PvE. That is the cycle that happens in every game as PvP begins to overshadow the PvE.
I would be for different rules on PvP vs. PvE servers. I hate when the population cries about an ability because they can't figure out how to beat it, and a class gets taken out in PvE over it.
/. ++
The trick to class balancing is making sure that there isn't an uber-class in the first place. There will be issues that pop up, when new base classes are introduced in expansions, as well. Consider that it is an expansion, and that the set of classes up until then have been balanced over time, while the new class has had minimal balancing.
The way to balance shouldn't be to "nerf," but to increase the power of other classes to the point where the overpowered class is not an issue. Sure, there will be envy complaints, but at least they would be the wounded victimized complaints that appear after the nerf has been applied.
Introducing new classes after the release should only be on the order of "hero classes." This increases variety, and requires the original balanced classes to be played until a specific level. After that level, a hero class can be chosen, and though they may be unbalanced, they don't affect gameplay from the beginning.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Oh class balance oh class balance, wherefore art thou class balance?
"Wherefore" != "Where" - it means "Why".
Romeo, Romeo WHY art thou Romeo (Why is the person I love a member of a rival family?)
http://www.gankcentral.com/classcompare.aspx
Note that of the classes named, only the Rogue, Warrior, and Hunter actually stand out to any degree. Warriors seem to be doing ok again, so scratch one issue. Rogues aren't easy to get into instances, so scratch two. And with the introduction of BG, I've seen a lot of hunter 3.
I can't open the link at work, but rogues are definitely taken for instances.
With Improved Sap, they add to the crowd control, they do more damage than anything, and they unlock all of those nice chests that we usually run past.
In Molten Core, of the 40 people we had the top 4 damage dealers were our rogues. Our top rogue had almost 50% more damage than the next person on the list.
Anyone that passes over a rogue is missing out.
/. ++
I think there is something to be said for classless play. Then again, so did the french and that resulted in a REIGN OF TERROR and then Ultima Online, yikes!
World of Warcraft does have some pretty bad class balance issues, and just some gimped classes. Some examples of blizzards incompentency:
1. As mentioned, Paladins were reworked two weeks before release the class had it's whole combat system changed (Read nerfed). While the class is described to this day as a 'melee based hybrid' it puts out less damage per second than any other class (including priests). It also has no long ranged attack, and only one stun. On the healing side of it, the Paladin in the fourth best healer in the game, behind Priests, Druids and Shamans. What it all adds up to is a class that is poor at PvP. Instead of keeping an eye on the paladin since they were changed 2 weeks before launch, blizzard has chosen to ignore them.
2. Warlocks, along with having to deal with Will of the Forsaken going through their only decent crowd control spell (fear) also have to put up with farming soul shards to PvP. Basically, a warlock must PvE for a good 20-30 minutes to PvP for an hour since they need soul shards to preform some of their better spells/abilities. No other class has to put up with this sort of thing. To top it off, the shards are not stackable, meaning each one takes up one spot in your inventory, thus limiting other things a warlock could take for PvP from his or her bank.
3. Hunters have some kind of "Dead Zone" inbetween Melee range and their ranged attacks where from what I understand they can be attack but they can not attack others. Since hunter is one of the few classes I don't play, I'm taking the word of the 1000 hunters whining about it on the forums.
4. All of the racial traits for one faction (The horde) vastly overpower those of the other (alliance).
5. Instead of improving classes, Blizzard has shown that they would rather swing the nerf bat. This is the wrong way to go about balancing a MMO.
A friend of mine while I was attending university was a developer for Linley's Dungeon Crawl (http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/), a roguelike.
He was ALWAYS talking about game balance. From what I recall, most of his time was spent either fixing bugs, rewriting chunks of code (because the codebase was Ugly(tm) C++), or fixing imbalances introduced when other developers added "cool new spells".
I'm an on-and-off, but avid player of dungeon crawl, mostly due to the influence of my friend. I must say that after a while, you really, REALLY start to appreciate the fact that every character class, every profession, has something to offer. It doesn't necessarily have to be that every class is as good as the other - it just needs to be unique, and not useless compared to the other classes.
But yeah, I think balance is a lost art. Aside from my friend's obsession with it, I have heard nary a mention of it elsewhere, except for maybe a few odd posts on slashdot when MMORPG articles are posted.
-Laxitive
Mythic software (maker of daoc) wasn't nerfing class but adding counter attacks to a overpowered skill (purge for mez, ...) so poepel dont feel bad with there class and people with new skill feel beter, just marketign move imo.
About class balancing, I doubt it can realy be done imho RPG game are unbalanced by nature because class are difference healer and support class are not supposed to kill someone by design while mage are not supposed to last long with cloth armor, so looking for 1vs1 battle is stupid. People should look as group vs group battle. But then number of opposite enemie is more an issue imo.
BTW I had great fun playing my rejuv cleric on daoc pvp server, saving poeple life is moer fun than kill someone ^^
In a PvP situation you must do one of two things to fix this. Either you make everyone more or less equal in the areas of rate of damage delivered and amount of damage that can be taken before death, or you throw out the idea of one-on-one class balance and structure the game to be RvR then balance that.
DAoC tried to do this, but they didn't do a very good job of preventing the one-on-one encounters and they had three realms to balance against each other. They also suffered from the problem that this article brings up that something in testing simply didn't work and they missed all these glaring holes which later had to be patched up with buffs and nerfs.
Class balance is only getting worse. The casual gamer is making solo play more and more the norm in these games, and to sell the game for a longer period of time, class differentiation is key, which causes classes to be very different in their approaches to the PvE environment.
Can there be balance in an MMORPG? Yes, but it will be very tough. I don't think it is desierable though. Casual gamers want a lot of variety that they just don't get from the big social game. Hardcore PvP gamers want the ability to ruin somebody's day and it doesn't work if they might get their day ruined a third of the time.
I think that after this wave of casual-friendly games has run its course that we will see a new type of unbalanced game, but maybe... just maybe they will do it right.
Funky Zealot seems to be suggesting that the key is beta-testing. This may be right...could it be that perhaps developers are making the primary use of beta testing the detection of technical problems, rather than gameplay issues evolving from class problems?
What Blizzard did with the paladin class really seems inexplicable--not any particular changes per se but the fact that they made such overwhelming changes without giving beta ample time to check the effect of the revisions.
I suppose it is all pretty easily explained by the financial forces at work: it's a definite problem if you start selling the game and it doesn't work, but working out class balance issues is seen as something you can live with and work out over time.
The original classes were fairly well-balanced until you got past about level 50, then a few classes really took off. The clearest defining factor in what characters were successful, however, was the skill point allocation, not the classes themsevles. This can't really be said for the two classes introduced later by the expansion (Assassin and Druid) which seem to always be considerably weaker at the same level. The key was that all classes were still Fun To Play even when every patch seemed to nerf whatever skill was hot at the moment (which was undoubtably the one you just pumped 20 points into).
I know it is probably 'teh kiddie' for some of you, but if you are willing to look past the family aspect of the game, you'll find the the Pokémon series of games are wonderfully deep and balanced.
You can't have balanced classes and have PvP and PvE. You have to make each character unique and bring something different to a group when you fight together. This does not lend itself to being even in PvP because some classes will be designed to be in a support role. It is more important that every class feels like it brings something special and useful to a group. One on one PvP is over-rated. There will always be one "best" class for it. Group PvP makes things much more interesting...and as long as you are a good player, you should be able to play any class and contribute significantly. If you can't, then there really is a class imbalance.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Balancing character classes in a MMORPG is a quest the designers are doomed to fail, IMHO, but I really believe it is a goal that should not be sought after at all.
When character balance is usually brought up in a discussion about a game, two factors are used typically to demonstrate imbalance: Solo questing abilities and PVP abilities. If any class has an advantage in either of the two mentioned activites, the game is considered imbalanced. In the name of balance, all character classes are given the same strengths and weaknesses and all classes become warriors differentiated only in their method of kill. However, to me, a healer should not be able to PVP or solo fight as well as a combat class, and in a face-to-face battle, a rouge should lose to a warrior.
Character classes should define your role within the game. For example healers should exist to heal combatants and have only minor combat skill (and should level through using their main skill -- healing, not through the antithesis of that -- killing). In one on one PVP the Healer might be useless, but any large scale raid would simillarly be weaker by the absense of a healer in their party. By modelling the game this way, all balance issues become trivial and the game play would become much richer with a greater variety of play types.
The only issue with "nerfing" a class is player complaints. That's a valid issue, but from a design perspective there is no problem with reducing the power of an overpowered class.
Constantly upscaling power causes mudflation, which reduces the impact of player driven self advancement due to an overall "world advancement".
---
I support spreading santorum
There are so many competing concerns in the design of any game that I doubt that any MMORPG can ever be perfectly balanced.
Casual players who maybe play 10 to 15 hours a week, versus hard-core gamers that play 60 hours a week is hard to balance out. Even at the same levels, the hard-core gamers has huge advantages in experience and helping friends, typically. A class could be perfectly balanced in theory but if more popular among hard-core players it may seem to be unbalanced.
Also, with all the skills, classes, abilities, etc that games have to keep it interesting for hard-core players, the different possible combinations become neraly astronomical. Beta testing just cannot review all these combos and when the hard-core players (who probably know the game better than the developers do after 6 months) find all the little min-maxing tweaks that makes their avatars over-whelming, there is no way you can blame it on the developer for not realizing this ahead of time.
I think the answer might be to have hidden variables in the game that can adjust things ever so slightly (+-5%, say) and let the success/failure rate of those playing the class automatically adjust this hiden nerf variable down or up without a visible patch.
The hardcore players will burn through all the newest games and move on; there is no point in trying to balance a game for that 2% of gamers. The design should be for the casual plaeyrs who will stick with the game far longer while the hard-core have moved on long ago.
But MMORPGS are fun whether totally balanced or not if you just want an immersive escape instead of an alternate ego to justify your miserey in real life, lol.
Is having all the classes balanced really that essential? I don't think so. I believe it is important to have most classes well balanced, but having one or two classes that are "weaker" isn't such a bad thing. I personally like a challenge of playing a slightly weaker class. When you beat an opponent with the weaker class, there is a greater since of accomplishment.
I'll agree that playing against the overpowered class can be frustrating, but it just forces me to do something out of the ordinary to win. People complain about Shamans being overpowered. I agree, they have some advantages, but they aren't big enough to ruin the game. I have a 60 Warrior and I have killed shamans lots of times. Granted, in a duel, I'll only win about 35% of the time, but those wins sure do feel good.
The problems with the Paladin, Warlock, and Hunter classes is that people are trying to use the class incorrectly. These three classes are very passive/solo classes. Yet people wonder why they don't do well in group settings. This is because the class is meant to be more solo friendly. Problem is, everyone wants every class to be how THEY want it. This is impossible, since some like to solo, some like PvE, some like PvP. If people are so worried about being the best, then simply play the class that suits your needs.
The only valid complaint people can have I think is that they have already put tons of time into their class and don't want to go back. Well, guess what, people of been complaining about the same stuff since launch. It's the players fault for not doing a little research on a class before putting tons of time into it. I hope they don't nerf any of the classes. I don't want to lose that extra since of accomplishment when I kill a shaman and I enjoy PvE with my Warlock when I get burnt out playing with my warrior.
I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so...you're stuck with this.
As has been pointed out in TFA and some other posts, the problem of class balance shows up when a PvE turns into PvP. EQ, SWG, WoW, DAoC, CoH, et al were designed as PvE games from the start, with class skills designed to mesh together to fight large groups that just stand around and take damage.
Guild Wars was built from the ground up to be a small team (4v4-8v8v8v8) PvP game, and the classes were designed as such. There is nothing coming close to an uber build GW, there is always an easy counter to a technique. Rangers and Mesmers stop heals and damage spikes from Elementalist and Monks, Warriors hunt down the Rangers/Mesmers, Eles and Warriors damage the Warriors while the Monks try to keep everyone alive.
Once the PvP was balanced out the same classes were put into the PvE game against enemey MOBs that have the same skills as the players.
The problem of class balance in other games shows up when a charater spec for PvE is shoehorned into a PvP role where many of their skills end up being either useless or far too powerful.
Add in Arenanet's commitment to eleminating the grind in any from and weekly patches to cut down on farming and exploits of the PvE game while maintaining an even playing field in PvP and you have a winner.
A good PvP game can be a good PvE game as well, but a PvE game can never do PvP fairly.
Now go join my guild, The Lazy Eights [LZY], in game name Sinderalla Ocool.
"I'm not high, just stupid" --JY
I am a warlock, just putting that out there.
The fact of the matter is that WoW is innovative. Simple classes, a clean interface (or a dirty one if you want it), What is essentially a battelfield mode cleanly executed. It is a marvel of a game.
And it will never last.
Why?
Because of this issue. The fact is that this is the one area where Blizzard has not chosen to break with tradition. To swing the nerf bat is too simple a solution to a complex problem. The devs over at blizzard have clearly lost sight of the fact that the more frustrating an MMORPG is, the less people are going to want to play it.
As it stands right now, the vast majority of players in WoW are rogues, or on the horde side Shaman. This is only going to get worse as other classes are ignored, then blizzard like the idiots at SWG are going to nerf the most popular classes in a bid to remain legitimate to users like myself, and presto the user base evaporates. Next come stupid commercialls featuring "real people" who play SW^h^h^h I mean WoW.
All MMO games follow the same curve, and its unfortunate since one of the posters here was correct in stating that the best way to bring down an overpowered class is to give a counter skill to an underpowered one.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
That is the key - class balance changes need to be taken carefully. Sweeping changes in a single update are poor form, balance changes should be gradual and monitored for effect. It is far better to make frequent, small tweaks in the direction of balance than to make one large update.
The biggest offenders are new expansions, and the resulting mudflation. These are typically lightly tested at the endgame level of play, and are released to live games to cause havoc. An current example would be Blackwing Lair for WoW, which is not being publically tested. This limits testing to the dev team, which is too small a test set to find all serious issues. Major post-launch changes are inevitable. Daoc's ToA expansion also comes to mind as falling into the same trap.
1. Make small, incremental changes, and measure the effects for a few weeks before determining if they've solved any problems.
2. Don't listen to the loudest and most frequent complainsers. It's the guy who never says anything and then one day pens a detialed analysis of your classes who is most likely to have some good insight.
3. Play your classes yourself and understand what your players are bitching about.
4. Understanding that somebody is ALWAYS going to be bitching about class balance, and just beacuse people are still bitching doesn't mean it's not well-balanced.
5. Classes and zones you design early on tend to be much less powerful (and the zones much more difficult) than those that are designed late in the process. Your early classes tend to be moderately powerful with strong checks and balances in their best abilities. The later work tends to be moderately powerful but without the checks and balances. Just look at Warlocks in WoW, compared with Paladins or Shamans. Look at any game, really, and how many of the add-on classes or races were MUCH MUCH better than the stock stuff? They have to be. If they're not any better, nobody buys the expansion to play them.
6. That leads me to my next point - you want to keep classes balanced, look at races. In a perfect game, you'd have 1 race. Barring that, races with minor stat variations and a few tricks, but no major differences are key.
7. Design the game (the mechanics, the zones, the quests, etc) with your classes in mind and then DO NOT ADD CLASSES. The new classes invariably will rip through the "old world" and only be challenged in the new zones designed with that class in mind. I think my #1 advice to any MMORPG is to never add additional classes beyond your starting crop. I'm sure people will point out countless examples of this being done successfully, but I think it's a major disaster waiting to happen most of the time.
8. Even better than all this - DON'T HAVE CLASSES in the first place.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
As a rogue, all I have to say is that he should be putting up his freakin paranoia pet and dotting folks and casting hellfire on a whim. rogues would stay away from him. I certainly would. It's that whole thing: would I rather kill the easy target or the hard target. with his paranoia pet and random pbae attacks I'd rather go for the shaman over near him. Also I'm not sure why he keeps saying shaman rule the BG: I rarely think twice before killing a shaman. easy target.
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
How is it a lost art, when it's never been done before?
The balancing force should be the PLAYER. The real world isn't balanced for our enjoyment, yet people thrive in it. This is due to intelligence and creativity. As long as sufficiency flexibility, and the ability to act creatively is provided to the players, they will balance the game all by themselves.
There are some game aspects (in poorly designed games) which are out-and-out unfair, which usually involve making some usually-limited resource unlimited to a particular class of players, but as long as these gross imbalances are corrected, the smaller things will all work themselves out. In fact, having a few things off-kilter can lead to fantastically creative solutions to basic problems which are far more fun to play out than if the answer had been simply, "Make sure you get weapon XYZ, that will balance you again class Foo."
Although there are a great number of Shamans floating around in WoW there are certainly more Mages then one initially expects on the horde side as proven by BG. There are a number of rogues for the Alliance but all in all at least on my server the classes are pretty evenly mixed for Alliance. As far as Blizzard need ing to swing the nerf bat on any clas I think it's ridiculous. There are ways to beat every other class in the game in PvP if you take the time to learn what works and pay attention to what the other player does. Watch for a warrior to change stance, a hunter to lay traps, interrupt a mage, druid or priest from casting, fear a palladin, dot a rogue to keep them from vanishing, break down the totems of a Shaman, if a hunter hits really hard at range then get within their melee range; if opposite then stay at range and hit with everything you have when they die the pet goes poof, for a warlock pay attention to what pet they have out. It's not that hard to beat another class in WoW you just need to know the best way to fight each one. The best way to do it though is to actually work as a team which the game was designed to do. The Alliance would win more often if they worked together instead of whining abouut which class is more over powered and not taking the time to figure out all the nice tactics that you already have to go up against every class out there. The game is meant to be a challenge for the single player, that's why you have guilds, that's why you have raids. Take the time to talk to someone who has a different character then you and they'll tell you what the weakness for thier class is. Even Shamen say that their toons suck and some other class needs to get nerfed because they are overpowered. A little bit of patience can go a long way in this game.
"If it makes me giggle for longer then 15 seconds I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it."
The solution to class balance is to have no classes. Instead have a large array of abilities that can be combined arbitrarily. Or even better, eliminate character statistics entirely and base gameplay on player skill. However since this isn't what the market leaders (WoW and EQ do) no other company would dare to break the mold.
For great justice.
Thing is, Rogues being uber in PvP and useless in PvE hurts everyone. Why not make the rogue lose their share of PvP encounters and make them useful in PVE at the same time? (Not a rogue, but a paladin)
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Rock-Paper-Scissors
from a log file from one of the players (who was playing a Scissors class) that was talking to a GM....
Player Scissors: Na I dont have a problem at all with the Paper class but the Rock class Deffentily needs a nerf/
It's that simple.
A long long time ago there was a game system called Chivalry and Sorcery, whose greatest contribution to the gaming world was an essay called 'The Ecology of Monsters'. This is required reading for anyone who is going to do game design (along with 'Drop the Rock').
What it comes down to is this: If your creature/character is all powerful, then why hasn't it taken over the eco-system/world and killed off everything else? All Monsters/Races/Classes MUST have an Achillies heel. They MUST have weak spots, they MUST be able to be killed. They must have some natural enemy.
In WOW we have Shamans who are really over powered. Compared to the Alliance side actually, all of the Horde is more powerful (which according to rumor is because all the dev's play Horde and not Alliance - why am I not surprised?). The way to have really balanced the game out would be to make Shamans and Paladins equally powerful as group leaders (but in subtlely different ways) and then make one of the weaker classes the bane of these more powerful characters. That would of course encourage folks to play those less powerful classes.
And of course the REAL answer to these problems is to make your DM's actually DM!! That's what they're being paid for right? TO WORK? The DM's in WOW are spectators and stink. When there is a terrible imbalance in the game the DM's are supposed to go out there and deal with it in real time. That's their job! Every good gamer knows that. A multitude of game mechanic sins can easily be handled by a good DM who gets out there and 'Deus Ex Machina's a little balance into the game.
There will probably never be a perfect MMORPG, but that doesn't bother me. I'm there for the game, to have fun, not to rape the rules. Adults have all learned that life isn't fair so they don't mind games that aren't exactly 'balanced', as long as the games are fun!. And that is far more important than 'Balance' will ever be.
The author of the article sounds just a wee bit too whiny to me, making a peristant effort to pick on rogues, obviously he plays a caster type (warlock perhaps?), if he just knew how to play his class he could stop being a baby. I have a lv 47 rogue and warlocks my level always whip my ass, I have a mage too....and guess what?...I dont play him like a rogue. I think blizzard has done a damn fine job with classes in wow, the hunters need a bit more work and shamans need ultra mega nerf bat but hey,..nothings perfect. On a sidenote about classes in general, there is no such thing as perfection, perfect balance cannot be found in an online realm of 800,000 nerds playing fantasy characters, so get over it and make the best of your pay to play experience. /bow
1) Shadow Priests are excellent in PvP, but FAR from useless in PvE. It's ignorant for you to assume that because they can nuke well that they are no longer capable healers. In fact, all "Solo PvP Specs" are quite viable in group PvE, just not min/maxed for the task. On the other hand, a character that is min/maxed for PvE is usually quite gimped in PvP.
2) The other healers in WoW are all excellent PvP classes: Druid, Shaman and Paladin. They all have strengths in both PvP and PvE.
3) As others have stated, the Fear and Seduction nerfs ONLY applied to PvP- not PvE.
WoW is extremely well balanced- both in PvP and PvE. With some small exceptions, every class has a rock>scissors>paper counter with a system that allows exceptional player skill to overcome that pecking order.
1. Paladins have the best survivability of any class in the game. Unfortunately for them, WoW is a game that doesn't penalize dying at all. Three months ago Paladins were widely considered the most overpowered class in the game, until a bug fix significantly impacted the reliability of their DPS. Since then they're still capable of some of the highest burst damage in the game if they get lucky and everything Procs and Crits at the same time, but that's rare.
Your little side comment about Priests is a bad comparison, because Shadow Priests are indeed a DPS class, a tradeoff being made for Priests' low survivability.
2. Warlocks can get soulshards in PvP as of last weeks patch. Blizzard has stated that they are analyzing the idea of having a shard bag or stackable shards.
3. The hunter dead zone only means they can't use their ranged abilities in melee combat. They're still capable of using their melee abilities and pet DPS and are the best equipped class for kiting and keeping other classes outside of their "dead zone". From another point of view, all melee classes have a "dead zone" outside of their melee range.
4. Stoneform, Shadowmeld and Perception are all exquisitely useful abilities, depending on the situation. Escape Artist should be instant and WoTF and Warstomp need longer cooldowns, but other than that the Horde/Alliance racial abilities are very well balanced.
5. You're obviously ignoring the huge improvements made to the Druid and Warrior classes over the past few months. Mages have gotten several lesser improvements, and hunters and warlocks are still in the process of major improvements.
There may be problems with WoW in terms of balance, but you are way off the mark on just about everything.
As a regular reader of the WoW official forums who plays both horde and alliance regularly, the author of this article stinks of alliance paladin bias.
Right now, the Paladin community is all in a tizzy because the ubermensch boyscout characters they thought they were creating have turned out to be an incredibly average class.
WoW is a game that has no penalty for death, and rewards fast numerous kills heavily- like many competitive video games. Paladins are realizing that their ability to survive a nuclear holocaust means very little when it takes them an eon to kill even soft targets.
Before the recent PvP additions to WoW (Battlegrounds and the Honor System), Paladins were very much considered overpowered in PvP- when the game wasn't about who "wins" but who "doesn't lose". They were (and still are) the only class capable of reliably soloing multiple elite mobs.
They were (and still are) the class that has so many built in luxuries and advantages, that they scoff at having to use trade skills and items to make up for their class deficiencies. Why should they have to use a Swiftness Potion or a Net Gun to over come their lack of range or speed? It's not as if warriors have to use healing potions and first aid to overcome their lack of healing.
I find the whining paladins humorous and pathetic. WoW is extremely well balanced. There are a few bad matchups here and there, but Paladins are far from gimped- no matter how much whining they do on the forums or in a periodical as respected as GamePro. Tch.
Paladins ability to live forever in PvP makes them the absolute best healers. They will almost always be the "last man standing", whereas Druids, Shamans, and especially Priests tend to go down early in a group battle.
Paladins may not be great at killing- but they have a very important role in PvP: keeping others alive. It's just a pity that 90% of paladins signed up to be uber hammer wielding destroyers.
Of course, WoW should give more CP to healers. There's really not enough incentive to be a healer in PvP.
And about the Shadow/Holy Priests debate. I play a priest, and I can tell you: the holy tree is overrated for healing. There are only maybe two or three talents in the whole tree that have a real effect on instance healing- and they can all fit easily into a Shadow Priest's build.
"Group Leaders" is a disgusting fantasy that too many paladins bought into when creating their characters, and now they're realizing that they're no better off in PvP than your run of the mill warrior.
Shamans are well rounded and don't have an obvious achillies heel, but they're certainly beatable by every class in the game. There's no fictional "I win" button that Shamans have- they just have a broad range of situational tactics that aren't well understood by most of the people they fight.
No one of their attacks or heals or abilities is especially overpowered, but the fact that they have easy access to a diverse range makes them formidable opponents in PvP.
Your assertion that "Horde is more powerful because Blizz plays Horde" is without factual basis, and flies in the face of the facts that the horde population is outnumbered 2:1 on most servers and that the Alliance has more content available to them.
Now, I know there are a lot of people who don't like FFXI for whatever reason. But the game design gives the player some of the most flexible design I've seen in a popular MMO. A single character can not only play every job in the game, but can combine any job with any other job for some very interesting mixing of abilities/traits. This allows the player to configure their character for different situations like PvE, PvP, farming, soloing, different balancing of parties...etc.
Distract the player with PvP priority. Many MMOs take the FPS style of PvP. Of course this will be unbalanced and somewhat frustrating to be the underdog class. Camelot distracted the player with an objective (multiple keeps/relics) that caused players to band together for a greater goal which helped to avoid 1 on 1 encounters. FFXI has Ballista which seems like a brutal team based PvP rugby. Again, unusual combinations of jobs/skills and use of items (such as poisoning yourself to break sleep spells) create a dynamic environment.
Aside from an occasional balancing mistake (CoH: Device blasters with the original smoke grenade = ~100% reduction in enemy accuracy)it seems like many MMORPGs are trying to adopt designs that don't scale to the size of MMOs today. From the sound of it, WoW is suffering from the similar class issues as DAoC. Let the player customize the skill combinations. Please stop creating MMOs with such rigid characters.
On a side note, how much fun would StarCraft be if you had to choose a single unit for the entire game?
While a good idea in theory, taunt in pvp won't happen in WoW.
-Rogues and Druids lose their combo points when a new target is selected.
-Blizzard has consistently followed a doctrine of nerfing abilities that "take control away from the player" in PvP- Polymorph, Fear, Seduce, stuns, you name it... taunt will never be added for WoW in PVP.
Warriors are excellent defenders in group PvP- they're the "rock" to rogues "scissors". As long as a caster isn't tearing chunks off a warriors HP, they last a long time and virtually insure that the leather wearers don't come anywhere near the cloth wearers.
My comment to 6) and 8):
While it is not an MMORPG, the WW2 shooter Day Of Defeat has classes without being unbalanced overall. Each of the classes is superior in some situations and inferior in others. Actually, the game would lose in variety and tactical depth without classes. As it is, the Scissor-Paper-Stone character enhances gameplay.
A little, simplified overview over DOD classes:
-Rifleman: A good allround class, best at medium range combat
-Sniper: superior at long ranges. A must have on maps like "Charlie" (D-Day) with its wide beach, but even there other classes are necessary for the assault too. Really weak in close combat.
-Machine gunner: Devastating when deployed, but highly vulnerable on the move and while setting up his gun. At long range, frequently picked off by snipers. At short range, he has difficulties in runnning from hand grenades because picking up the gun takes more time for him.
-Submachine gunner: the best class for storming buildings, but has difficulty hitting things at a distance.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Dwarves being a rarity has nothing to do with their relative power. Stoneform is one of the best racial abilities in the game for a rogue (bye bye DoT's, hello Vanish!), and fear ward is awesome for dwarf priests.
And yet dwarf priests and rogues are some of the rarest race/class combos in the game.
Your idea to have Undead-affecting abilities work in game was tried in beta and found to be VASTLY overpowered. It's just such a bad idea to make a whole race vulnerable to abilities meant solely for PvE.
Many games have gone "classless", but the fact of the matter is that when players have different roles to fulfill there will always be a friction due mostly to the "grass is greener" effect.
Guess which WoW class the author plays? A technical article outlining some of the design reasons class imbalance occurs and some of the solutions would have been interesting. This is just some GamePro schmo taking advantage of having a short article to write to whine about paladins.
Any article that talks about character balance in MMOs without talking at least about broken-by-generalization and broken-by-specilization is kinda not even a little interesting to anybody who's understanding of the issue exceeds 'OMG meh cl4ss haz bene nurf3d!!!11!!!'.
The need for perfect balance could be reduced by making every player unique. In early RPGs this was done by generating random attributes for each avatar at the beginning. But predictably people kept generating new avatars until they got the stats they wanted. After that, people tend to learn what combinations of class-race-armour-weapons-skills work best and stick to them.
I would like to see some random variety introduced when it is too late to go back and start again. In EQ, you visited your guild masters every few levels. Suppose those masters gave you a random gift that made you different from every other member of your class. Maybe a ranger gets one spell that usually only enchanters have. Or he gets a weapon that only he, and no other ranger, can use. The gifts would be random, and given as you level up. Maybe your level 5 gift wasn't so good, but your level 15 gift rocks.
It would be up to you, and you alone, to figure out how to best use the gifts. The effect of uber-classes would still be there, but it would be muddied somewhat by the players who make best use of their particular gifts.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
wherefore something?
therefore something!
If you are claiming Shaman are over powered you are:
1. Alliance
2. Do not understand PvP
3. Lazy
To help you in your retarded state, read this and all of your questions/fears will be answered/assuaged. Since I know you're lazy (and might not read the link), answer me this: Why are no shaman at the top of the PVP honor rankings anywhere if they're so overpowered? PWN3D!!!!!
This article contains a statement of a position and no supporting arguments or evidence.
I'm very disappointed that this made it to slashdot games. Where is the logical analysis to back up the arguments?
Also as a side comment to people claiming horde is more powerful than alliance -- they should be. The WOW player ecology depends on a blanace in the number of horde and alliance players. Giving advantages to the horde is a sensible way to try and counteract the fact that more people play alliance.
I play alliance (level 60 gnome warrior). I do PvP. I am aware of the fact that other races make much better warriors than gnomes (alliance or horde). Honestly it doesn't make that big a difference. Taurens with their hit points and war stomps have an advantage over me, but skill, gear, and teamwork are much bigger factors. I happily grants horde players their tiny tiny racial abilities advantage. Meanwhile the horde as a whole faces a very large disadvantage in their lower populations, meaning the alliance are able to constantly zerg them in pvp (except for ctf), and are much better able to mobilize in PVE to gain powerful items that more than make up for these tiny racial abilities.
---
I support spreading santorum
usually, there is one area in which a class outshines all others, for example in Everquest:
Clerics:Rezzing, Druids:Travel, Shamans: Debuffing
Wizards:Burst damage, Enchanters:Crowd Control, Magicians:Pets, Necromancers:damage-over-time spells
Warriors:Taking hits, Rogues:Traps/Sneak, Monk:Melee damage
Bards:mana regen, Rangers:Archery/Tracking, Paladins:Undead slaying, Shadowknights:Holding aggro
Then they added Beastlords and Berzerkers... since they didn't want to displace any existing class, Beastlords ended up a jack-of-all-trades; while they tried (and failed) to add a new reation based combat system around when they introduced 'zerkers (iirc)
the problem comes in that people want to pick the best characters for the situation; If there are no undead in the area, why have a Pally? mosters dying fast, so why have a Necro?
the next problem was balancing a group with a shaman that can cut a monsters damage output by 75%, with one without. or one with a cleric, who can heal 10000 hp in a shot, vs. other healers that can't do more than 1000. In order for content to be a challange to a group with a Shaman AND and Cleric the monsters have to be able to rip through groups that lack them in a couple seconds, making a Cleric and a Shaman almost mandatory for grouping in most players eyes.
(I have 3 accounts, my Mage, then a Cleric and a Shaman set up on hotkeys to Heal and Slow)
my thought for a design...
First, decide on the 'ideal' group size, I think 5 is a good number.
then come up with a adventuring system that requires that number of distict abilities.
Healing, Melee Damage, Magic Damage, Melee Protection, Magic Protection.
then, create classes that each can fill MOST jobs, instead of a few.
Heal, MeleeD, MagicD:
Heal, MeleeD, MeleeP: Paladin type
Heal, MeleeD, MagicP: Ranger type
Heal, MagicD, MeleeP: Shaman type
Heal, MagicD, MagicP: Druid type
Heal, MeleeP, MagicP: Cleric Type
MeleeD, MagicD, MeleeP: Shadowknight type
MeleeD, MagicD, MagicP:
MeleeD, MeleeP, MagicP:
MagicD, MeleeP, MagicP:
well, obviously they don't all correlate to EQ classes, as that's the point. Everyone with a base ability should have the same level of power, just with different 'flavor'; which will lead to some situational advantages, but if, for example, the particular types of magic damage available to a druid-type class are ineffective in an area, he'd still be able to fully function as a Healer and protector vs. magic.
What I'll never understand about hunters is why they always make up arguments about "effective range" without once mentioning that their pet is effective at any range.
Rogues are indeed not a non-issue, since Hunters are able to detect stealth, eliminate stealth with a flare, and prevent stealth with a Hunter's Mark or a DoT sting. Using those tools, as well as your other range-keeping abilities, Hunters are well equipped to keep rogues out of striking distance.
Balancing classes with MMO's. Balancing life and MMO's is very very difficult, especially classwork.
But thats another story for another time, as I'm sure everyone else here will let me know that they have no problem blancing their time.
Damn MMOs! Damn them to hell! I want my life back..
Ok, ok, I feel better now. Thank you all for the therapy.
True in one-on-one PVP, there can pretty much be no balance but it also depends on the kind of PVP is implemented. If you get a slow paced PVP such as yeah, one-on-one fights don't matter much cause other team members/players (assuming you have some teamwork going on) will generally be able to react and respond quickly and effectively enough to a bumrush against support class players. If you get a FAST paced PVP, one-on-one fights DO matter. Set up your macros well and you catch a target unprepared (read: casting a spell), you can usually take him out with just one macro.
Just look at FPSs. In Quake 3, a good player can single-handedly dominate a CTF match even though he uses the same weapons, armor and limitations as the other players. While in Unreal Tournament or Doom 3, due to the slower movement even a newbie can take out the number one player on the server just by ambushing them with a weaker weapon.
My favorite roguelike. Not for balance reasons, although every class I've played has been fun, but for some earthy quality that I can't quite pin down.
Play Command HQ online
Day of Defeat is one of the best FPS games I've played.
FPS classes are a little different, though, because skill on the part of the player makes so much difference. For example, I suck with the sniper and submachine gun for some reason, but rarely miss with the lee enfield.
Are the Day of defeat servers still full these days?
Agreed
Every single game I've been in, has basically bungled horribly through class balance, making seemingly random changes and then waiting to see the result. COH, yes, too. Horrible balance issues and swings. And if you hate the changes to your character so far, you'll probably hate Issue 5, already known affectionately as The Nerf.
The problem IMHO is the strong dichotomy between creative types and some of us "accountant types", for lack of a better name.
The creative guys are able to come up with _interesting_ ideas like "I know, let's have a hero that fights with a bent spork and catches bullets with his toes". That's what makes a comic book or a game _interesting_. It's what gives you unique characters, missions, story arcs, etc.
Us accountant types however, then just come, put all those "Spork Thrust", "Spork Slash" and "Toe Wiggle" powers in a big spreadsheet and run a min-max simulation through them. We calculate _exact_ damage-per-second, damage-per-endurance and such, and invariably it turns out that the game is utterly unbalanced and there's some utterly ludicrious winning combination.
The problem is that the two groups are distinct groups. In fact they're pretty much natural enemies. The creative types usually throw a fit and call you a "numberchaser" or such if you even mention soiling their grand vision with such profane maths. (Try even mentioning numbers on some MUDs and you'll see what I mean.) And conversely us maths types treat those designers as the antichrist when they do those broad-sweeping random balance changes, and cause everyone's characters to bounce randomly between uber-slayer-of-everything-in-god-mode and utter-total-wimp.
That dichotomy is what's really the problem. Most balance issues could be foreseen and corrected before release, by simply running the same simulations and maths. The _massive_ kinds of balance problems some games have shouldn't have even made it into testing, much less be there after a year of being live.
There is nothing utterly unforeseeable about most of those min-maxed combination. It's not like "but you can't know what arcane non-obvious thing the players will abuse." You can. Maths is where it's at, because that's what the players will use to find those uber-combos. And the devs could do the exact same maths before the game is released.
But, alas, it would need some of the creative types to put down the crack pipe, get over the ego trip, and let their grand vision be run through a spreadsheet. Not that I expect it to happen any time soon.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, DOD is still going strong. Exclusively on Steam, however (you can open the necessary Steam account with the CD key from Half-Life 1). WON has been shut down.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I don't see how balancing is a problem at all. I wish everyone would just ignore completely the relative strengths and weaknesses of a class when choosing it, and just choose a class because it suits their personality or whatever. Basically choose ideologically if you know what i mean. But instead the "pro" (wow they're soooo cool!) players go off and all choose a class that in general may be better than others in whatever situation and the people who loose to them start crying because all everyone wants to be is the winner, the boy on top of the sandcatle. I remember when i first started playing online games I had great fun ever when loosing, which happened most of the time and still does, though I win sometimes (!), because I loved saying "well at least i fought hard and it was such an epic battle and what glory!" etc. I won sometimes and obviously felt great about those. But i was shocked the way nearly everyone else, with the exception of a few magnificent people, were all like "omg we're loosing lets surrender" or "this is so shit I'm joining their team". I really cannot understand how winning is the only way people get enjoyment out of the games. And i think, so what if an enemy mage/kingdom/team is really powerful, we'll go out there and throw ourselves into battle and not give up and give it our all. And we'll do loads of damage and the enemy will certainly have been worse off than they were before they faced our brave onslaught. And we'd tell tales of the battle and talk all day and night with our friends and it would be such fun!
Alas most people are but little boys who have to be on the winning team.
This guy are sick.
How do you think the _players_ found those uber-clases/builds/whatever? No, seriously.
Ever looked on the forums for some character building advice? What did you see? Some dps (damage per second) calculations. "Take class X, turn on power Y, chain the attacks A, B, C, D and B again. It causes 75.13 damage per second, 15.39 damage per endurance/mana/whatever point, and leaves you with 0.35 seconds before A recharges again."
Which leads to advice like "take katana instead of broadsword because it does x% higher dps" or "don't bother taking power Z, because stacking X and Y and these enhancements/armours/whatever already puts you at the damage reduction cap." That's all just maths, nothing horribly surprising or utterly unforeseen.
So what's keeping the designers from running the same kind of maths? I can write a program in less than half an hour that calculates all possible attack chains, and their outcome. Why can't the devs ask a team member to do that?
Other stuff it's so bloody obvious you don't even need a program to see it coming. E.g., if turning on powers X, Y and Z gives a tank in COH a whole 90% damage reduction and 95% avoidance, how do you balance that against classes who get 0% in either?
If the tank has, say, 1000 HP and 90% damage reduction, to do a measly 50 HP damage to the tank (i.e., a bare scratch that will heal in 1 second), an enemy would have to have 500 HP attacks. If it even hits at all. Oops, some of the other classes have less than 500 HP at that level, and get 0% damage resistance. They'll get killed in one shot by that enemy.
You don't need a complex simulation to see it coming. But you do need to apply some elementary arithmetic and calculate that, oops, those powers stack all the way up to the 90% damage cap. That's what's missing.
And once you found that out, the sane way would be to address the problem, instead of bungling randomly through addressing symptoms. But what happens more often in practice is precisely never stopping to see the big problem, and do the maths. No, they'll just sweep a few _symptoms_ under the carpet in this fix. E.g., you can bet that what someone will _really_ see as a "fix" is "I know, let's actually increase the damage from those enemies to 1000 HP per hit, that'll give those tanks _some_ damage." Oops, now it really one-shots _everyone_ else, whereas previously it only one-shot blasters and controllers.
Cue an endless stream of half-arsed quick-and-dirty "fixes" that try to address individual _symptoms_, including those of previous "fixes", instead of even trying to see (and simulate) the big picture.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now I'll aggree with you that some people _do_ take it all to ridiculous obsessive extremes, but balance _is_ a problem for everyone else too. You don't have to be an 3l337 kiddie, obsessed with xp and levels, to nevertheless find it a tad harder to just play a concept character for purely ideological/personality/style reason.
If you think that you can just play your concept character, whatever that may be and no matter how weak, just for creativity sake... you must be thinking single player games. Because in a MMO you'll get booted from 90% of the groups if you deviate too much from the norm.
E.g., try making a character with only the "Brawl" attack in COH. Quite the nice "normal human" concept, right? Well, yes, and some people will even congratulate you... right until you try joining their group. Then it's "WTH! We need some real firepower!" time, and you get booted out of the group.
E.g., try making a (D&D) "paladin" concept character in CoH. Give up some of your attacks to take pool powers such as healing. Aid Other makes a nice Lay On Hands substitute, right? Take the Leadership pool too for a nice "Protection From Evil 10' Radius" substitute too. Take some taunt power from the Presence instead of an attack too, while you're at it, because a noble champion would challenge opponents to one-on one fight, plus it opens the path towards Fear later, which lets you RP "Turn Undead". Nice, well fleshed, concept. Right?
Now try joining a group with that build. I can tell you first hand what happens, because I was in a group with someone with that kind of build. It also was an insanely difficult task force mission.
(Which incidentally is the crux of the problem: any game with instanced missions raises their difficulty with the number of people in the team. So letting sub-optimal characters join your group leads to repeated group-wipes. Which leads to anger, and anger leads to the dark side.;)
Anyway, what happened were complaints from the other group members, starting with "Why the heck is that scrapper healing instead of attacking?" and quickly escalating into "Screw this, call me when you get a real fighter." At which point almost everyone left the group, making it impossible to finish the task-force for those of us that remained. (The D&D Paladin build included.)
That's the whole problem: it's not easy to stick to ideologies and moral high grounds when you're compared to other people every day, and kicked out of teams because you don't measure up to them. Or when even the people who don't discriminate against you, still can't really play with you any more, because you're still level 20 while they got to level 40 in half the time and with half the effort.
What do you do then? Get them to power-level you to their level? Now there goes your self respect out the window, and any respect you had got from other players too. Ask them to come hang out with you in areas where they're not getting any xp? Yeah, they will for a while, but it's not exactly morale-raising.
So after a while people kiss their noble ideals goodbye, bury their lovingly fleshed-out concept builds 6 ft deep, and go roll a Flavor Of The Month uber-character like everyone else. Can you really blame them?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
that the linked article's author is a paladin...
The thing I like about WoW is that, hey, you want to play the healbot? Really crazy, but you can actually play a priest that isn't totally dependent on a group to level. Contrast this with a controller from CoH.
The lead design is such a genius that he believes players pick classes like Defender and Controller because they enjoy not being able to play the game. Yes, it's an MMO, and yes, you SHOULD be better off in teams. But tanks, scrappers, and blasters weren't nearly as broken without groupmates.
What's the point in giving a class (Controllers) their solo skill (summonable pet that acts as a sort of inflateable teammate to go with their teammate amplifcation/support abilities) at level 32... in a game with 50 levels?
Brilliant design. While you're at it, have you considered the problem of asprin bottles? Let's make a cap to prevent children from getting access to medicine they can't possibly make informed decisions about such that only children can open it.
Looks like EQ will be doing this again. See today's article.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
No real classes, but your stats affect skill training time (skills train even when you are offline), so certain character choices mean you will take a lot longer to train combat skills then to train industrial skills.
The great thing is that nerfs generally only affect one out of a single races ten plus decent ships, and there are four races.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion