Rallan007
08-10-2005, 10:14 PM
<DIV>Is to have testers play all the classes so they can directly compare for class balance.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You're never going to get all classes perfectly balanced because of the nature of the game, needing healers, tanks and the different ways of inflicting the damage, but over a couple of scenarios you could ascertain whether they are close within reason. By a person playing all of the classes themselves and judging if anything was too easy or too difficult for one or more of the classes would give a more accurate idea of any being underpowered or overpowered and adjustments can be made.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I know you would need to get the feel of the class before if youve never played it, but that shouldnt take long if u examine the knowledge book thoroughly and try out a few sequences. Of course theres more complicated combo's, little tricks and such that familiar players of a particular class perform, but you could get a good idea.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You could set up an assortment of instances with different types of mobs, of each class and different cons, Testers could choose say lvl 15 25 35 45 50 characters and the instance would spawn according to the players lvl, the same could be done with PvP but this is more of a feature with the expansion than to the combat changes here.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I feel this is the only way to get effective class balancing, else its going to be one sided opinions on who might be more or less powerful. </DIV> <DIV>Just as an example from reading the forums there are posts such as;</DIV> <DIV>You play an illusionist and see how you could defeat a mob or how it kicked your butt, read something about what your evil counterpart a coercer gets and imagine they could do it far better and call for a nerf or an improvement to class. This may not be the case at all until youve experianced it for yourself first.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I hope that SoE have testers working on this full time and not relying largely on customers to fill the role of a tester, so when it goes to live servers in whatever state it is at that time, it has been thoroughly researched, tested and played in a comparative and fair manner. As we customers dont have the time resources to lvl and compare all of the classes ourselves and try to give unbiaseds opinions (plus of course if a customer testing, has tried all classes at all lvls there wouldnt be much left in the game for them.)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV>So in summary </DIV> <DIV>For testing for bugs and how the skills work, i feel the testing enviroment and the numbers we have is fine, <STRONG>as long as people are actually testing and reporting</STRONG>, rather than just playing. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But for testing balance u need a team of ppl who are testing every class in the same scenario's and giving there own viewpoints where any power discrepancies may lie. This really does need to be done by Sony and not relying upon us the customers.</DIV></DIV><p>Message Edited by Rallan007 on <span class=date_text>08-10-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:15 AM</span>