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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."
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.
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Wish I'd read this beforehand...
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On the AOE3 boards, ES_DeathShrimp posted this:
I feel pretty safe saying that AOE3 has a lot more depth than AOM. In fact, it is probably something of a risk. There are so many different combos of civs, strategies, techs (even not including the HC), and maps, that there is the potential for some insane strategies that we weren't able to come up with during testing.
If anything, the design of AOE3 is just going to mandate more patches than we've been able to do before. That doesn't mean it will be buggier -- just that the depth can lead to a lot of unforseen strategies and balance issues.
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/displa
And this is a game that according to them is tested every day. The problem, IMO, is that even though creators play the game every day, they don't play as everyone else does, so while you may have 50 people playing, they're all playing the same style.
Compare this to 50,000 people who are going to play different ways. These people are going to come up with different strategies then the creators, strategies that they might easily not have thought of.
One idea is that there should be more mass testing of games before their full release. They do the same thing with movies, Serenity has been pre-shown 2 times now, with a third time coming up the 23rd (anyone with tickets to Boston, please, reply), and the reviews for it are great. Of course, these reviews are from diehard fans....
The only problem with massive testing is that people can easily copy the game and spread it that way.
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.
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I've played COH, Galaxies, Dark Age, EverQuest, and Ultima Online and the problem is epidemic. All of them have issues where the designers plan to have a perfect team that fit a certain play style. If you're play style doesn't match their idea of what you should be doing, it's an unbalanced game.
Maybe they should concentrate on adaptive power's/abilities, a few solo powers (just strong enough that as a solo character you can heal yourself enough not to always die and attack with something that will kill things after a decent time), but generally things that can add to or stack with other classes powers.
Using COH for an example, have the fire controller be able to boost a fire tanks abilities if they are grouped, where the damage is doubled or regeneration is quicker or something. So that alone a character is barely playable, but in a group the dynamics become more interesting. Or heck, have an ice controller in the same team have adverse effects on enemies, like lengthen effects or add ice burn damage by increasing temperature extremes the bad guys face.
Actually, just have the powers/abilities be more realistic. Arrows act more arrows instead of hits with arrow graphics, punches like punches, fire bolts like fire bolts, etc...
That would make me play more and love what I play, even if the graphics are less that state of the art. Fixing things like line of sight or having the power sets coherent instead of artificially balanced.
Game Developers, there is no need to arbitrarily add "extra" things to balance characters. Fire characters should take cold damage at a higher level that isn't "nerf"-ing the character types it's making them more meaningful. And yes, it's ok that one type of archer race is a much better archer than another race, inequalities happen in real life all the time. Consistency is what players really wish for, not balanced classes.
This isn't a license to make uber-classes that can take out anything; they should all have fatal vulnerabilities. They should have reasons to team up. Characters that use mostly physical attacks should have issues attacking things that aren't physical, and hitting a rock monster or robot with your fist should do almost as much damage to you as to the monster if there aren't any powers that help.
But in closing, the biggest issue is developers trying to balance characters, instead of improving them. In PVP, a tank should crush a controller, but only when the controller's control of the tank fails. This is due to the nature of the classes, not to an unbalanced game. Don't look at how character A. got crushed in seconds in a fight, look at why. Then fix it only if why doesn't fit with the world of the game.
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Here's a crazy idea, having been immersed in the world of SpamAssassin lately. What about some kind of bayesian or other statistical algorithm to automatically adjust certain parameters of the game? Given the number of combinations and permutations inherent in a complex game, it's difficult to determine ahead of time how all those interactions will play out and whether a certain combination of things will lead to a player having a huge advantage over another player who does the same things, but with perhaps a different class.
So set the system up so that you define boundaries for each character. If it turns out that a certain combination of things exceeds the predetermined boundaries, automatically adjust some attributes so that it's within the expected range again. I haven't thought through how this would be implemented, but some kind of adjustable constraints system based on expected damage/whatever would likely be better than the crude and broad hand-tweaking that goes on. And if the system does micro-adjustments throughout the game, players would likely not even notice it happening... so everyone's happy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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