Perfect Imbalence vs Balance (nerfing)
“Perfect Imbalance” is a terrible definition to what they are describing. What they are talking about is “Asymmetrical Balance.”
Likewise whether a game is based around Symmetrical Balance or Asymmetrical Balance by themselves do not lead to boring and generic or exciting and unique game play.
Chess is symmetrically balanced (well mostly), yet saying that it has boring and generic gameplay would be an insult to every chess grandmaster out there.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is asymmetrically balanced, yet to say that the game has exciting and unique gameplay that people must pay to watch high level tournament play is a bit excessive.
“Perfect Imbalance” is a terrible definition to what they are describing. What they are talking about is “Asymmetrical Balance.”
Likewise whether a game is based around Symmetrical Balance or Asymmetrical Balance by themselves do not lead to boring and generic or exciting and unique game play.
Chess is symmetrically balanced (well mostly), yet saying that it has boring and generic gameplay would be an insult to every chess grandmaster out there.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is asymmetrically balanced, yet to say that the game has exciting and unique gameplay that people must pay to watch high level tournament play is a bit excessive.
A symmetrically balanced game do not make a good mmo. There to predictable with no surprises when playing.
Not necessarily
As long as there is imperfect information and that the game is designed so that there isn’t a dominant strategy, but a variety of strategies with their strengths and weaknesses then you could still have a successful game with surprises.
Think of an online shooter where every avatar is essentially identical (like the older Halos). The map is for the most part symmetrical, but the design of the map itself offers a choice where you can go for a stronger weapon, but put yourself in a positional disadvantage or instead go for an area with a positional advantage, but are forced to use your default weapons.
As long the options are relatively balanced and there isn’t a flat out dominant strategy and you don’t know what the other team is going to do then the design of the map itself will create situations where players are forced to face each other with fair imbalances.
Now, yes, it would be a terrible idea for an MMO to have symmetrically based characters since you can’t really have character development with a bunch of the exact same avatars running around. Character development sorta goes hand in hand with assymetrical balance.
Not necessarily
As long as there is imperfect information and that the game is designed so that there isn’t a dominant strategy, but a variety of strategies with their strengths and weaknesses then you could still have a successful game with surprises.
You are describing “perfect imbalance” that is in the video.
Balancing the game to appease everyone by NERFing is the problem. It’s impossible for Anet to appease everyone though balancing. People will always complain about something.
Classes should instead play off each others weaknesses.
Anet just needs to make sure some classes are not too weak against anther class. By buffing it’s weaknesses some.
You are describing “perfect imbalance” that is in the video.
Supersun said it better then the video did. +1
You are describing “perfect imbalance” that is in the video.
Supersun said it better then the video did. +1
But he thought he was talking about balance. When it sounded more like Imbalance.
But he thought he was talking about balance. When it sounded more like Imbalance.
“Perfect Imbalance” is a terrible definition to what they are describing. What they are talking about is “Asymmetrical Balance.”
Not necessarily
As long as there is imperfect information and that the game is designed so that there isn’t a dominant strategy, but a variety of strategies with their strengths and weaknesses then you could still have a successful game with surprises.
You are describing “perfect imbalance” that is in the video.
Sorta
The issue with chess isn’t that it is symmetrically balanced like the video claimed. It’s that it’s symmetrically balanced with perfect information.
When both players have every piece of information at any given time then it becomes possible though a lot of trial and error or mathematical calculations to determine more ideal strategies over others, and since you can always see every piece of your opponents you can see and react to whatever counter strategy he may try to employ with your own counter strategy that could have very well been planned out ahead of time.
Symmetrically balanced games with perfect information can always be solved.
If Chess no longer had its perfect information for example if we added a “Fog of War” to Chess where you could only see enemy pieces if they were directly next to one of your pieces then this would radically change the game so that it would be impossible for your opponent to know your strategy and impossible for you to know your opponent’s counter strategy (ignore any gamebreaking implications, this is just an example).
Now that still doesn’t stop a game from having a dominant strategy like their example in starcraft where it turned into a fast-paced action game. Just because that Terran, Zerg, and Protoss are perfectly balanced against each other doesn’t mean a whole lot if the options within each race are atrociously balanced. If there’s only one viable build and way to play Terran and only one viable build and way to play Zerg the then obviously most of the strategy is drained out of the game since as long as you have half decent scouting you should know exactly what the opponent is planning to do.
That’s the real issue with Guild Wars 2 class balance at the moment. It doesn’t matter how well all the classes are balanced against each other when there are some classes that within the class just have flat out dominant builds (like Shatter Mesmer vs everything else in PvP).