Guild Wars 2

I would like to share an interesting article.
(Your thoughts….)

http://www.eldergame.com/2010/11/how-to-balance-an-mmo-and-how-to-stop/

“Eventually I realized that balancing for “fairness” was pretty unimportant compared to balancing for “awesome”. You need to get the “fairness” thing in the right ballpark, but players will never be satisfied… however, if they’re all feeling awesome, they won’t quit over it. It’s a lot easier to make sure everybody is awesome, too, as opposed to balanced.

If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end."

Burnfall.9573:

I would like to share an interesting article.
(Your thoughts….)

http://www.eldergame.com/2010/11/how-to-balance-an-mmo-and-how-to-stop/

“Eventually I realized that balancing for “fairness” was pretty unimportant compared to balancing for “awesome”. You need to get the “fairness” thing in the right ballpark, but players will never be satisfied… however, if they’re all feeling awesome, they won’t quit over it. It’s a lot easier to make sure everybody is awesome, too, as opposed to balanced.

If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end."

When I think of MMO PvP, i think this. Balance for fairness, reward very skilled players by making them awesome. I remember back in the early days of WoW when people would 2v1 or 3v1 it was a really cool thing. The fights usually lasted a while and I saw many classes (not all, but not one) do this. It was awesome. In this games current build I haven’t seen many cases of someone be outnumbered and winning. Usually if it is 2v1 (depending on your enemies classes) you’re done for.

Anet employees should never say “balance”. The instant they say balance, it’s all over. People will never stop complaining and they can’t because balance and equality don’t exist. Saying balance promotes players to think “where’s the imbalance?”. In effect: the search for balance is actually the search for imbalance and since no 2 professions have the same traits and skills they will always be imbalanced and unequal. They can’t be equal. But like I said, people can’t stop complaining as long as Anet says they want balance.

Burnfall.9573:

If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end."

The problem is in games with PvP players of Class X don’t have fun if they’re always dominated by Class Y because of reasons beyond their control. Balance is paramount.

Fun read. Thanks for sharing, Burnhall. If Anet’s been operating under some of the principles outlined, it does help shed a bit of light on their patch schedule.

darkace.8925:

Burnfall.9573:

If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end."

The problem is in games with PvP players of Class X don’t have fun if they’re always dominated by Class Y because of reasons beyond their control. Balance is paramount.

That’s not necessary the case. Class X doesn’t mind being Dominated by Class Y, if they are kitten ed good against Class Z which is common in PvP, and reasonably equal with Class W and U. The problem comes when Class X is Dominated by Class Y and Z and stands only a 30% chance against Class W and U.

There is a really good video about Imperfect Balance. In fact my main issue is not that they are Balancing Classes, but they are removing fun things from classes to balance eg. Kit Swap on Engineer. Swirling Winds not blocking Siege etc. Rather than making sure that every class has a selection of fun, slightly overpowered things.

TLDR: I don’t mind imbalance as long as every class has some slightly OP cool things no other class can do, and each class has some classes they are good against.