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Jumpgate Evolution Dev Talks Class Balance

Posted by Soulskill on from the check-out-my-+1-laser dept.

Hermann Peterscheck recently made a post on the Jumpgate Evolution developer blog about NetDevil's strategy for balancing the various classes of ships in the game. They seem to be taking a different approach from most MMOs in letting the PvP side of the gameplay set the baseline, rather than allowing PvE concerns to override that. From the section titled Combating Combat: "Early on our lead systems designer, Jay Ambrosini, came to the correct conclusion that all of the preliminary balancing was best done in a PvP context. The reasoning is that in PvE, the player needs to feel powerful, but in PvP the fight needs to feel balanced. Once ship classes are balanced in PvP, its not as hard to make the player feel powerful in PvE, but the opposite is not true. We spent many weeks playing just the first class of ship, the light fighter, in teams of 5 or 6 in order to evaluate what it was that made those ships fun to fly and fight. After daily battles, you begin to see what makes those ships work. We also started with the mid level ships as opposed to the low or high level ships. This is primarily because you can find the center point and then work upwards and downwards from there. ... It's very tempting to just throw a bunch of classes of ships together in order to say things like "our game has 15 classes of ships!" but this, we believe, is the wrong direction. People want meaningful and strong choices and not lots of meaningless, empty choices. Currently we plan to have 4-6 classes, but they will each have nearly endless possible configurations within those groups."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    who cares that much about gaming, anyway?

  2. and you're modded "Offtopic" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    How Ironic.

  3. Re:Jumpgate is its own game, but . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    All those words LOOK like English, but make absolutely no sense... a life.... get one.

  4. Re:scratching head by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    From the post you are replying to:

    Class : A category of avatar that can be played. Each having strengths, weaknesses and powers/abilities. For a fantasy-based game that could be Knight, Wizard, and Healer. Here it's different kind of spaceships.

    To which you replied:

    Except class in this instance refers, as in Eve, to the class of ship; e.g frigate, destroyer, battleship, omfg big bloody ship run...

    did you not bother to read the comment, or are you just a fucking idiot?