Original post by KulSeran So balance probably is a myth, since people play the MMOs like singleplayer games, and not like team games.
Oh, and I think there can still be balance without teamwork. Players just have to get over the idea that any class can do anything. There were things you couldn't do in Fallout as certain archetypes.
I've never liked the idea of 'balance' in RPGs. I've played PnP RPGs and I hate the idea of the millions of charts and tables you have to plough through to make sure your players have the right amount of equipment for their levels so they can fight the monsters the designers have tailored to those levels. I tended to just give rewards as is, and tailor the games to suit the characters actual strengths that had developed throughout a campaign. This created challenging gameplay, no matter what the players could do.
Which kinda ties in with the article. I have to agree with the idea of creating new challenges rather than penalising players through their classes. By creating new monsters / challenges / rewards, you are not only addressing balance, you are providing more stuff for the players to do! Now that's what I call service. To me balance is the game remaining challenging even after players have created so called 'super-powerful' characters.
Original post by TheOddMan I've never liked the idea of 'balance' in RPGs. I've played PnP RPGs and I hate the idea of the millions of charts and tables you have to plough through to make sure your players have the right amount of equipment for their levels so they can fight the monsters the designers have tailored to those levels. I tended to just give rewards as is, and tailor the games to suit the characters actual strengths that had developed throughout a campaign. This created challenging gameplay, no matter what the players could do.
Which kinda ties in with the article. I have to agree with the idea of creating new challenges rather than penalising players through their classes. By creating new monsters / challenges / rewards, you are not only addressing balance, you are providing more stuff for the players to do! Now that's what I call service. To me balance is the game remaining challenging even after players have created so called 'super-powerful' characters.
The problem then is, what about the "not-so-super-powerful" characters? The reason you can get away with this in a PnP RPG is the GM can do lots of fudging and tailoring. I wonder how much the monthly fees would be to hire a GM for every half-dozen or so people on the server. [wink]
Original post by Anonymous Poster MMORPGS fail because most hardcore nerds are bad at videogames, just like they are bad at other physical challenges.
Calling someone a nerd is no longer an insult. See nerds get into college and get a good job, see how many jocks in your school actually completed college, I say less than half.
All my posts are based on a setting of Medival Fantasy, unless stated in the post otherwise
To some degree, game balance runs counter to player involvement in the game. Games are about providing players with interesting choices, for an rpg this must include choices about character development. For a choice to be meaningful, the various outcomes can not be equal. If it is not possible for a player to make a bad choice, then there is little challenge in selecting a good choice, or set of choices. This does not mean that there can't be many valid paths for the player to take, and some of them should be non-obvious. However if all paths are equally good then there is no opportunity for strategic planning. A game with a wide set of possible character development paths, where not all paths are equal, is going to be deeper than a game with few choices and all of them good.
There are risks with that approach of course. Players need to be given enough information to make good strategic decisions. If the player must make a decision before they have enough information (say at character creation) or if the information on which they base their decision changes (say through the developers rebalancing the game) then the players will be unable to make good decisions and become frustrated.
Also, if the choices are hard enough to make character development challenging, then players should be expected to make incorrect decisions some of the time. The game needs to allow players to recover from bad decisions either by allowing them to change their decision, or by providing them with additional choices that allow them to recover. If the recovery process is too hard (worst case, the player must recreate the character) then the player will be frustrated. This is especially true if the player had incorrect information on which to base the decision or the result of the decision changed.
Finally, there still need to be a sufficient number of good paths that the players feel they have a choice. A few unbalanced paths is worse than a few balanced ones. Also, the best paths should not be obvious. This may be the hardest part as the ability of your players may not be consistent, and development strategies are quickly shared between players. The space of possible development paths needs to be large enough to combat this and allow customization.