Friday, November 5, 2010

About Balancing

1)
Problem: Players die too fast in PvP
Solution: Increase health of players

2)
Problem: Players have too much health for PvE
Solution: Increase PvE mob damage

3)
Problem: Healers are too weak in PvE
Solution: Make healers more powerful

4)
Problem: Healers are too strong in PvP
Solution: Increase player dps

1)
Problem: Players die too fast in PvP ... ... ...

4 comments:

  1. 1)
    Problem: Players die too fast in PvP
    Solution: Decrease DPS of players.


    2)
    Problem: Mobs have too much health for PvE
    Solution: Decrease PvE mob health

    3)
    Problem: Healers are too strong in PvE
    Solution: Make healers weaker


    4)
    Problem: Healers are too weak in PvP
    Solution: Working as intended. Just as tanking is not important in PvP, allow healing to be less important in PvP.

    In fact, remind me again why we must have healers in-game at all?

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  2. "In fact, remind me again why we must have healers in-game at all? "

    it's certainly one way to get rid of a dilemma in MMOs, especially those with pve and pvp parts like WoW has. I would argue however that bringing in all the 'classic rpg archetypes' adds depth to a game and also, part of the issue in WoW is not only healers being powerful but all the different roles being very 'narrowly' designed and powerful in their functions. i've never played another MMO where the DPS were only focused on maximizing pewpew the way they are in WoW - this is all part of the issue.

    if there was more variety in every class's jobs and responsibilities, you would have less emphasis on a set ability and thus also less balancing problems. in AoC for example healing is a lot weaker and also less needed, healers are therefore also the CCers of the game and adding dps. I'm all for such models where players are encouraged to play their toons in various ways and less forced into one tunnel alone. you could make the DPS also primary cleaners to take some focus off their otherwise mob-centric playstyle, etc. etc.

    but that would require you to start from scratch and design a game in entirely different ways. WoW's balancing issues imo come from these narrow focused jobs/classes. there's hybrids but in essence our hybrids arent played like hybrids either - most of the time it comes down to choosing one spec and playing that as a pure spec really.

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  3. In fact, the 'hybrids' in WOW are not hybrids at all, not in the sense of 'ok at multiple roles instead of good at only one'.
    Originally the hybrid classes (druid, paladin, shaman) were not as good as the specialist classes (warrior, mage, etc) and the priest's dps spec was inferior to mages and warlocks

    However Blizzard found that players would always go with the specialist over the hybrid because the specialist was better at his particular role.

    Their current solution is to make any role of any class roughly equal to any other class in that role. And so hybrid classes are now really specialist classes that can change their specialty at trainers.

    Wow has no hybrids now, only classes that can be several types of specialists, but never at the same time.

    Back to the original topic, maybe Blizzard should give everybody an additional (set of) talent tree(s) for PVP, and your spec switches to that when you turn on PVP. That way they could balance PVP capabilities separately from PVE ones.

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  4. What I'd like to see as an alternative to healing is more defensive magic something along the lines of:
    A. Spell A blocks X percent of all incoming damage for Y duration.
    B. Spell B reduces ALL incoming damage by X per attack for Y duration.
    C. Spell C gives ablative armor of X for Y duration.

    Having different kinds of defensive spells (in addition to or instead of healing) would be more tactically interesting since different ones would be appropriate in different situations but it would also not be predicated on the AI acting like a moron and it would be a great way to break up /assist trains as a PvP tactic.

    For tanking I'd like to see something like 4ed D&D defenders which would be more "attack me and only me or X bad thing happens to you" instead of being based on making the AI act like an idiot.

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