Ay
03-03-2005, 09:41 PM
<DIV><BR>This has been bothering me for a while. I love these MMO's but the rebalancing game has to stop. The rebalancing game is a game started by Sony and continued by Sony, for reasons i'm not sure of but i'll take a few guesses. Why do i think like this? Because class balancing IS indeed possible! It's not hard to imagine how it can be done, and i'll talk a little about that too. Most of this stuff probably isnt being said for the first time, but it needs to be repeated. </DIV> <DIV>First of all, continual drastic changes in someones character/class can justifably ruin peoples game experience.<BR>Because:<BR>1. People love thier characters<BR>2. MOst people only have time to focus on one character<BR>3. A simple nerf can render a class totally insignificant, most of us have seen it happen over and over.<BR>4. Because you want us to keep paying.. it takes a LONG time to level a character! So when you nerf it, it hurts a little.</DIV> <DIV>Why Can't SOE just balance the classes from the begining? THEY CAN! I am not going to believe that programmers who are intelligent enough to create a game as pretty and as full of content as EQ2 can't come up with simple balance elements in a game with each class having unique useful roles to play. These roles can be outlined so no one is SURPRISED at what their character brings to the table. Notice, Sony did try to outline the usefulness of the classes, but got most of them wrong, and then had to change them, and is continually changing them. </DIV> <DIV>There are a few possible reasons why people have to continually suffer rebalancing and nerfs in these games - with SOE being the REBALANCE KING, IMO.<BR>1. Gross oversights by the Devs.<BR>2. Making abilites before deciding class role, not after<BR>3. Lack of actually DECIDING what the classes should be like<BR>4. Not realizing that class balance is the most imporant aspect to a MMO<BR>5. Don't you realize that changing one class changes all classes??<BR>6. Nerfing is good for business</DIV> <DIV><BR>1- Gross oversights by the Devs<BR> I dont know of anyone who wouldnt call the fact that FIGHTER-DPS > ROGUE-DPS > MAGE-DPS when it should have been MAGE-DPS > ROGUE-DPS > FIGHTER-DPS a GROSS OVERSIGHT. In general mages had worse DPS than any other class except priest. How in the world, could mages had such bad DPS when they sacrifice all their defensive capabilites for offensive? I hope a WHOLE TEAM of programmers were fired for such a m0ronic oversight. It almost seems that SOE didnt ever do ANY DPS calculations on simulations before the game came out! DPS, whats that? Did they really not understand that damage per second is what matters.. not damage per hit? Please.. fire someone!</DIV> <DIV>2- Making abilites before deciding class role, not after<BR> With the mage issue, and many many other issues it seems the route of a lot of the problem is that they just threw together some spells for a class.. and then those spells/abilites defined that class. It is IMPOSSIBLE to balance a game like that! YOu first need to decide which role a class is to play and then create the abilites around that role within those parameters!! It's really not a hard concept. This is a sheer lack of organizational skills and lack of forethought.</DIV> <DIV>3- Lack of actually DECIDING what the classes should be like<BR> This goes along with point 2 a lot, but here's what I mean. Balancing classes means making it so each class can bring something to a group. If a class is missing something then ideally he should bring something else! A mage has no defense but has massive offence. A fighter has the most defense but the least offense. Utilities play a role as well. Charting out what you want these classes to be like, in an EXACT way is something that SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE. If you charted that out, then you COULD make the abilites AROUND the role you charted, and not the other way around. First, decide what characteristics are important to a class, then decide how those charactersics will vary between the subclasses. Here is a simple chart, as an example, that could have been used for Fighers. The point here is not that this is how the chart should be, the POINT is that YOU should have DECIDED what the chart looks like yourself and then built the classes AROUND THAT CHART you made. </DIV> <DIV><BR> FIGHTERS: *All numbers are relative percents*</DIV> <DIV> Guardian Bezerker Paladin Shadow Knight Monk Bruiser<BR> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR> Dmg per Second 75 80 85 90 95 100 <BR> DMG Mitigation 100 95 90 85 80 75<BR> Taunt Ability 100 100 100 100 100 100<BR> Utility Factor 0 20 40 60 80 100</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> SOE, got tons of stuff wrong here. First of all, when the game came out.. why wouldnt every fighter be a bezerker? Bezerkers had sweet damage mitigation and had more Friggn DPS than any class in the game and sacrificed almost nothing to get that. I am seriously not saying that Bezerkers should be in the spot in the above chart all i'm saying is that ITS SIMPLE for sony to put them in a spot in a CHART THEY MAKE and then relay to us the role that is! This way we dont waste 6 months leveling up a character that will be changed into something totally different after they realized they messed up so bad. <BR> In my little chart i tried to make it so everyone has a perk. That's how you balance stuff. Guardians and Bezerkers are the best in defense(ie vanguard), but get no utility and the lowest DPS in the game. Pallys and shadows would be pretty good at almost everything, but not the best. Monks Bruisers would specialize in DPS, but should have some high utility abilites for gruops to compensate for them not being the best Main Tanks. IMO, the best main tank fighter ability is DMG mitigation. Unfortunately, when the game first came out SONY completely made fighters think they could have their cake and eat it too when they introduced the insanely high DPS Bezerker who has amazing dmg mitigation too. This made lots of wanna-be DPSers start playing a Tank.. now they're in some sort of limbo world of having to play a role they didnt want to play at first. Poor Bastids, Tanks arent traditionally for DPS, and it makes sense that they should not be. So anyway, tanks who sacrifice dmg mitigation should be rewarded well with DPS AND UTILITY FACTOR.. IMO.<BR> Utility factor includes things like Heals, Wards, Invis, Evacs, teleports, summoning food, breath underwater, speed spells, life taps, certain buffs, etc etc. Any subclass that strays from the decidedly most important characteristic for that class should gain more utility to compensate. </DIV> <DIV> DPS - is TESTABLE.. and should have been tested before release<BR> DMG MITIGATION - is TESTABLE.. and should have been tested before release<BR> Taunt Ability - is TESTABLE.. and should have been tested before release<BR> Utility Factor - is more subjective, harder to test.. but most rebalancing issues so far have not even been with this factor, they've been with things that could have been EASILY TESTED for.</DIV> <DIV> Anyway, the only ohter way to balance the Fighter classes w/out a chart much like the above is to do something like this: <BR> Guardian Bezerker Paladin Shadow Knight Monk Bruiser<BR> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR> Dmg per Second 100 100 100 100 100 100 <BR> DMG Mitigation 100 100 100 100 100 100<BR> Taunt Ability 100 100 100 100 100 100<BR> Utility Factor 100 100 100 100 100 100</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> This is possible, but would take WAAAY more altering of the game than the first chart. The way this is possible is to do the different abilities in different ways. And guess what, it is all testable. However, i think most agree that this sort of chart is not too cool. Why wouldn't you just have a single class instead of 6 subclasses if you were going to do this. If they thought they could pull of something like this with the game that they released than this is an even bigger oversight than the Fighter DPS > MAGE DPS when the game first came out.</DIV> <DIV><BR>4 - Not realizing that class balance is the most imporant aspect of an MMO<BR> Well.. it is. Please focus on it more, unless it is your intention to keep up the rebalancing game. Please hire people who can do it right. Please stop wasting countless hours year after year of customers who's roles in the game have been changed so drastically that they either quit or make an alt. </DIV> <DIV><BR>5- Don't you realize that changing one class changes all classes??<BR> I am not sure if the Devs have a single thinker on thier team. But, any decently intelligent person can tell you that if you change one class drastically, you are changing the role of all of them, especially subclasses! True class balance is an impossibility, but decent balance is more than possible. So far, from SOE games, its been nothing but HORRID class balance. If you get it right from the beginning, it could save a lot of grief.. but i guess it's too late for that now. Let the year upon year of REBALANCING BEGIN!</DIV> <DIV>6. Nerfing is good for business<BR> I have to ask myself why drastic nerfing and rebalancing has been a constant for all SOE games. One thing i know is that a company rarely does something for long unless it's profitable. At first it may seem that nerfing would [Removed for Content] people off, causing mass EQ2 exoduses etc. But most of us know they all come back to the game. What is it that we always say "They always come back". How true. I wouldnt be surprised if SOE had a statistic showing how many of these peeps come back to the game, starting new characters, for another 6 mo's of payments to sony. I've seen people cancel their account, then come back 1-2 wks later.<BR> I am not sure if this is some sort of master plan, but businesses have done things like this forever. That's why most of our products are consumable when they could be made to last longer (ie lightbulbs). Anyway, i just want to say that SOE has made an awesome game here with more content than i've ever seen i a game. Please STOP the REBALANCING GAME, and continue the CONTENT GAME. There is more content than a single character can see on his track to level 50, and that is sweet. That is how people will want to make more characters and keep shelling out the big bucks. I am more than happy to continue paying for a game like this if the rebalancing routine doesnt continue. It's an old technique Sony, please stop it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>