All in all, the only valid balance path is to make all classes about equally capable of functioning in 1v1, and let the groups and zergs sort themselves out.
Guild Wars, the MMO with the best PvP balance, doesn't do this -- the balance is fundamentally about group (at least 4v4) combat, and nobody even cares about 1v1 balance except for characters built to "split" off from the main group in Guild vs. Guild fights. And cripshot rangers are the best at that, but nobody cares since that's not as important.
This is helped by the fact that there is no PvP other than environments of 4v4 or 8v8.
It's because all the classes are actually, truly different. In WoW, too many of the classes are reasonable substitutes for one another, since most skills are so vanilla: "this does damage", "this does damage + DoT", "this just does a DoT", etc. In Guild Wars there is no vanillaness, since most skills have more subtle effects not related to moving the health bars up and down. These sorts of utility effects -- buffs and debuffs of all sorts -- are much stronger than in WoW, and their interplay is where all the strategic richness comes from.
Here's a smattering of skills that you might see run in an organized Guild vs. Guild match, for instance. Numbers are approximate.
Diversion: for 6 seconds, the next skill an enemy uses takes 60 extra seconds to recycle Energy Surge: An enemy loses 9 energy, and then that enemy and anyone near him take 10 damage per point lost Blinding Surge: deal 50 damage to an enemy, and that enemy and anyone next to him is blind for 6 seconds Ward vs Foes: Make a region on the ground that lasts for 18 seconds and makes enemies move at half speed. Draw Conditions: Effects like blind/bleed/cripple are moved from another ally to you. Used to pull Blind off of warriors. Protective Spirit: For 20 seconds, damage to target ally is capped at 10% of their max health. Reversal of Fortune: For 8 seconds, the next time an ally gets hit, up to 80 of that damage is converted into healing. Bull's Strike: Make a melee swing that knocks down the target if it is moving. Faintheartedness: Apply a hex that does a long-lasting DoT and reduces target's attack rate by half.
Very few of these are generic, and the skills offered by one class are so radically different than those offered by another that you can't really do direct comparisons.
There are still balance problems in GW, but they're far more subtle, and only really show up in a few circumstances. As an example for the non-players, there's a PvP environment called Heroes' Ascent, which generally turns into a giant clusterfuck. As such AoE is strong, and balanced teams have to watch positioning very closely lest they get blown out by Elementalists' AoE spells. But one class -- rangers -- has as a class feature very high armor against elemental damage. So teams run ranger primaries built to duplicate other melee classes, and shrug off all the AoE.
These problems really have only gotten bad after the decline of sanity among the devteam, but throughout much of the history of GW all of the classes (and even most specs from each class) sees play in organized PvP.
I am a grad student in a physics department at a major university.
The grad students have access to a lot of machines around the building as workstations, and they're all named things like lagrange, maxwell, gauss, etc. (Bohr, newton, faraday, and the like are servers.)
Individual professors get to call theirs whatever they want -- my advisor's two are klingon and romulan.
It's certainly okay when it's, say, a Senator. Our legal system seems to think it's okay when it's Michael Jackson.
The police, as public servants who wield a great deal of power in a rather unique way (the sanctioned use of violence), probably fall somewhere in between senators and Joe Schmoe.
It must be very sad to be so paranoid of the entire world.
Yes -- I am so enamored with living as a citizen of the entire world, rather than just a tiny little piece of it -- that it's worth the very remote risk of terrorism.
It's not about this import or that import -- it's whether or not we're going to cower in a dark little cave of fear or not.
The Russians have enough submarine-launched ballistic missiles to kill hundreds of millions of Americans. These lasers have a fairly short range (a few hundreds of miles at most). Are we really going to blanket the entire globe with these flying ABM lasers in the hopes that, if all those subs surface and launch, we'll catch enough of those missiles to seriously affect the outcome of a nuclear war?
They've also got ICBM launchers in the interior of Russia, and somehow I doubt a big flying brick like a 747 would survive a few minutes during wartime over Russian airspace.
The USA has a trillion dollar trade deficit. Every year the USA buys more junk than it can possibly afford, made all over the world. Look at what the good will this has gotten us. Nothing. Germany and Japan and South Korea and China dump all their junk on the USA, and take our market for granted, but what have they done for us lately?
They've made better products at lower prices than we are able to do ourselves. The Japanese can make a car, put it on a boat, pay for the boat, pay US import duties, and STILL sell a better product at a lower price than Ford. (Same with the South Koreans, I think.) Japanese and (especially) German scientists contribute to our wellbeing by the advancement of knowledge.
The Germans did us an even bigger favor. Y'know how a really good friend tries to stop a drunk buddy from hurting himself? "Hey, bud, you're drunk -- that's probably a bad idea." That was the Germans during the Iraq war -- they tried to warn the USA (metaphorically drunk with a corrupt/incompetent administration) that we were about to do something stupid. Not our fault that we didn't listen. That's more of a contribution than the Brits made... they got into the car with Dubya drunk at the wheel, not tried to take away his keys.
One week two years ago, our guest colloquium speaker at the physics department where I work was an ABM expert. He pointed out that the chemical laser for this project is so huge that it doesn't even (yet) fit on a 747, let alone a UAV (which is powered by an engine about the same size as the one in a Honda Civic).
The cost of the Iraq war has been projected to be in the $2 trillion range. This was money completely pissed away. How come nobody worried about the cost of that?
We (the USA) spends $600 billion on the military every year. The summary quotes the cost of a Martian mission at $80 billion. Going to Mars would be easily the most important accomplishment of mankind in its decade, probably in its century... and you're really telling me that a fucking 1% cut in the US's military budget for a dozen years isn't worth it?
And don't tell me about the "necessity of national defense", when the US military expenditures dwarf those of any other country. Cut the US military budget by half, and we're *still* drastically outspending the Chinese (and Russians, and whoever else) -- and over ten years you wind up with an extra three trillion dollars, which pays for a lot of rockets/health care/clean power/tax cuts/whatever you're fond of.
So don't tell me the US can't afford a space program.
The problem is that for each person who actually votes on the issues, there are three who vote based on some combination of:
--who their pastor/minister tells them to vote for, or who shares their religion or ethnicity --who "seems more patriotic" --who invokes the Fear of Terrorism more forcefully --who promises their local district, or their particular profession, more goodies --who looks better on TV and has more polished campaign ads
A populace easily swayed by emotional appeals isn't compatible with the democratic ideal of "free and fair elections produce the best governance."
The old Honda Insight did get over 70mpg, but Honda discontinued them because they couldn't sell enough of the things to Americans who wanted a bigger car (IIRC).
Slashdot Mirror
All in all, the only valid balance path is to make all classes about equally capable of functioning in 1v1, and let the groups and zergs sort themselves out.
Guild Wars, the MMO with the best PvP balance, doesn't do this -- the balance is fundamentally about group (at least 4v4) combat, and nobody even cares about 1v1 balance except for characters built to "split" off from the main group in Guild vs. Guild fights. And cripshot rangers are the best at that, but nobody cares since that's not as important.
This is helped by the fact that there is no PvP other than environments of 4v4 or 8v8.
So why is GW better?
It's because all the classes are actually, truly different. In WoW, too many of the classes are reasonable substitutes for one another, since most skills are so vanilla: "this does damage", "this does damage + DoT", "this just does a DoT", etc. In Guild Wars there is no vanillaness, since most skills have more subtle effects not related to moving the health bars up and down. These sorts of utility effects -- buffs and debuffs of all sorts -- are much stronger than in WoW, and their interplay is where all the strategic richness comes from.
Here's a smattering of skills that you might see run in an organized Guild vs. Guild match, for instance. Numbers are approximate.
Diversion: for 6 seconds, the next skill an enemy uses takes 60 extra seconds to recycle
Energy Surge: An enemy loses 9 energy, and then that enemy and anyone near him take 10 damage per point lost
Blinding Surge: deal 50 damage to an enemy, and that enemy and anyone next to him is blind for 6 seconds
Ward vs Foes: Make a region on the ground that lasts for 18 seconds and makes enemies move at half speed.
Draw Conditions: Effects like blind/bleed/cripple are moved from another ally to you. Used to pull Blind off of warriors.
Protective Spirit: For 20 seconds, damage to target ally is capped at 10% of their max health.
Reversal of Fortune: For 8 seconds, the next time an ally gets hit, up to 80 of that damage is converted into healing.
Bull's Strike: Make a melee swing that knocks down the target if it is moving.
Faintheartedness: Apply a hex that does a long-lasting DoT and reduces target's attack rate by half.
Very few of these are generic, and the skills offered by one class are so radically different than those offered by another that you can't really do direct comparisons.
There are still balance problems in GW, but they're far more subtle, and only really show up in a few circumstances. As an example for the non-players, there's a PvP environment called Heroes' Ascent, which generally turns into a giant clusterfuck. As such AoE is strong, and balanced teams have to watch positioning very closely lest they get blown out by Elementalists' AoE spells. But one class -- rangers -- has as a class feature very high armor against elemental damage. So teams run ranger primaries built to duplicate other melee classes, and shrug off all the AoE.
These problems really have only gotten bad after the decline of sanity among the devteam, but throughout much of the history of GW all of the classes (and even most specs from each class) sees play in organized PvP.
I am a grad student in a physics department at a major university.
The grad students have access to a lot of machines around the building as workstations, and they're all named things like lagrange, maxwell, gauss, etc. (Bohr, newton, faraday, and the like are servers.)
Individual professors get to call theirs whatever they want -- my advisor's two are klingon and romulan.
The first causes delusions of grandeur, the second causes impaired judgment?
Sounds about accurate to me.
I thought the Right was against a fundamental right to privacy, that being the grounds for the hated Roe v. Wade?
It's certainly okay when it's, say, a Senator. Our legal system seems to think it's okay when it's Michael Jackson.
The police, as public servants who wield a great deal of power in a rather unique way (the sanctioned use of violence), probably fall somewhere in between senators and Joe Schmoe.
So formally charge her and prove it in court, or release her.
It must be very sad to be so paranoid of the entire world.
Yes -- I am so enamored with living as a citizen of the entire world, rather than just a tiny little piece of it -- that it's worth the very remote risk of terrorism.
It's not about this import or that import -- it's whether or not we're going to cower in a dark little cave of fear or not.
Come to Tucson. The weather's better, the landscape is prettier, the people are saner, and there's none of this sort of bullshit.
There is a little island of sanity in Arizona. :)
So if I am hanging around on the street with my camera and take your picture, I've stolen your picture?
(This is legal by US law, btw)
You don't have to board and inspect any ship.
You have to board and inspect *every* ship.
The Russians have enough submarine-launched ballistic missiles to kill hundreds of millions of Americans. These lasers have a fairly short range (a few hundreds of miles at most). Are we really going to blanket the entire globe with these flying ABM lasers in the hopes that, if all those subs surface and launch, we'll catch enough of those missiles to seriously affect the outcome of a nuclear war?
They've also got ICBM launchers in the interior of Russia, and somehow I doubt a big flying brick like a 747 would survive a few minutes during wartime over Russian airspace.
You really think that a system like this is going to make a war with Russia all candy-coated and friendly?
If the missiles start flying as you put it, we are all fucked, lasers or not.
The "current and future situation" meaning a massive federal debt and crumbling infrastructure?
An anti-radiation missile that probably cost ten times more than what the jammers cost.
They've made better products at lower prices than we are able to do ourselves. The Japanese can make a car, put it on a boat, pay for the boat, pay US import duties, and STILL sell a better product at a lower price than Ford. (Same with the South Koreans, I think.) Japanese and (especially) German scientists contribute to our wellbeing by the advancement of knowledge.
The Germans did us an even bigger favor. Y'know how a really good friend tries to stop a drunk buddy from hurting himself? "Hey, bud, you're drunk -- that's probably a bad idea." That was the Germans during the Iraq war -- they tried to warn the USA (metaphorically drunk with a corrupt/incompetent administration) that we were about to do something stupid. Not our fault that we didn't listen. That's more of a contribution than the Brits made... they got into the car with Dubya drunk at the wheel, not tried to take away his keys.
Last I heard they haven't figured out how to make the real laser fit on the plane yet. (That was last year, though.)
The atmospheric issues are caused by the high power of the real laser, I believe -- a low-power version won't suffer from them as badly.
Except not.
One week two years ago, our guest colloquium speaker at the physics department where I work was an ABM expert. He pointed out that the chemical laser for this project is so huge that it doesn't even (yet) fit on a 747, let alone a UAV (which is powered by an engine about the same size as the one in a Honda Civic).
The problems inherent in laser propulsion and fusion are drastically different than the problems in making a practical ABM laser.
The cost of the Iraq war has been projected to be in the $2 trillion range. This was money completely pissed away. How come nobody worried about the cost of that?
We (the USA) spends $600 billion on the military every year. The summary quotes the cost of a Martian mission at $80 billion. Going to Mars would be easily the most important accomplishment of mankind in its decade, probably in its century... and you're really telling me that a fucking 1% cut in the US's military budget for a dozen years isn't worth it?
And don't tell me about the "necessity of national defense", when the US military expenditures dwarf those of any other country. Cut the US military budget by half, and we're *still* drastically outspending the Chinese (and Russians, and whoever else) -- and over ten years you wind up with an extra three trillion dollars, which pays for a lot of rockets/health care/clean power/tax cuts/whatever you're fond of.
So don't tell me the US can't afford a space program.
Depends on what machine you're talking about.
The login nodes at ranger.tacc.utexas.edu? They probably need to be checked pretty carefully (which might wind up being a royal pain for the users).
My eeepc? Probably not such a big deal. Patch it, and if it starts acting funny, then get worried.
The problem is that for each person who actually votes on the issues, there are three who vote based on some combination of:
--who their pastor/minister tells them to vote for, or who shares their religion or ethnicity
--who "seems more patriotic"
--who invokes the Fear of Terrorism more forcefully
--who promises their local district, or their particular profession, more goodies
--who looks better on TV and has more polished campaign ads
A populace easily swayed by emotional appeals isn't compatible with the democratic ideal of "free and fair elections produce the best governance."
The old Honda Insight did get over 70mpg, but Honda discontinued them because they couldn't sell enough of the things to Americans who wanted a bigger car (IIRC).
I expect any car I buy these days to live longer than 150000 miles.