Paul's Blog update - Reaction to hot words

[illukar]

The original piece is not so much unclear as it's easy to miss that he's talking about making changes to balance _after_ release. He basically says that you balance before release, do the best job you can at it, and then stop fooling around with class power. He also appears to be mainly talking about imbalances due to exploits.

Getting it right the first time is at least a nice thing to aim for.

[checkthis5000]

I never understood why people argued so much about what he said. I found it perfectly clear. I think he hit the nail on the head with this blog.

I enjoyed his comments on balance, and I think they were very clear, but I guess I'm in the minority.

Anyway, kudos to him for actually looking into why people weren't getting what he said instead of just muddling things up even more by trying to re-explain something a hundred times.

I'm really glad he's just dropping it and not talking about it anymore. A very good response IMO.

[Nerror]

In the original interview he did a very poor job at getting his point across.

Now imagine that one of the classes is too powerful. Well, it’s just too powerful. Let’s say you figured it out. Let’s say you’ve got logging software, let’s say you’ve done lots of analysis. Now we’ll say that the first class, we’ll just call them Class A is … I dunno … twenty percent too powerful. We figured it out, we can prove it, our designers can prove it on their crazy abacuses.

and

It’s like racing games, right? So what if the red car is faster? So what? Let them drive the faster car! What do you care? What bloody business is it of you?

That's a pretty bad analogy, because in a racing game, the faster car will always win, other things being equal, and no one would choose the slower car if that means they lose 99% of the time.

No matter how you look at it, that doesn't say the same as this:

I also rambled on about how it was ok to have careers that where more powerful than others. Again allow me to clarify, by that I meant a career can be the best at something. Now obviously it will also be bad at certain other things. That's not balance that's just good design sense.

In the first two quotes he wasn't talking about being good at something at the cost of being bad at other things, it was just 20% better overall. No wonder people got upset that he suggested they shouldn't balance that.

Anyway, probably a good decision of him to let it lie. He messed up initially, and there's no need to keep rehashing the same clarifications of what he really meant. Unless you happen to have 5 minutes to kill like I do right now.

[Ruinx]

Paul definately screwed up, and did a piss-poor job of explaining his point, and now he's making an excuse for himself, in my opinion.

I mean, I like Paul, I think he's the best spokesperson WAR can have, and if the game is a big success, he will be very significantly responsible for that, due to the awesome publicity he generates. He doesn't really seem to think before he talks, though (something I can empathise with) and whilst this means that he seems much more honest than 99% of game interviewees, it means he can say silly things.

The car analogy was just crap. I'm sorry, it was. No Paul, it's not that you "can't say balance", that's an excuse you're using. The problem is that balance is an issue touchy enough that you can't make crummy comparisons and vague-yet-apparently-broad statements about it without pissing people off. Perhaps that means Paul can't talk about balance, though, because he's probably not able to do that.

For me, his comments really brought into question whether he's played an MMORPG for more than a few minutes, at all, because it sounded like he was talking about something he'd never experienced, but had heard other people speak about with passion.

His update did clarify it, but it was pretty damned silly analogy in the first place, and the apology/excuse thing only makes me think less of him. Either apologise, or excuse it, don't try and do both, they're mutually exclusive in this case.

[checkthis5000]

Originally Posted by Ruinx

Paul definately screwed up, and did a piss-poor job of explaining his point, and now he's making an excuse for himself, in my opinion.

I mean, I like Paul, I think he's the best spokesperson WAR can have, and if the game is a big success, he will be very significantly responsible for that, due to the awesome publicity he generates. He doesn't really seem to think before he talks, though (something I can empathise with) and whilst this means that he seems much more honest than 99% of game interviewees, it means he can say silly things.

The car analogy was just crap. I'm sorry, it was. No Paul, it's not that you "can't say balance", that's an excuse you're using. The problem is that balance is an issue touchy enough that you can't make crummy comparisons and vague-yet-apparently-broad statements about it without pissing people off. Perhaps that means Paul can't talk about balance, though, because he's probably not able to do that.

For me, his comments really brought into question whether he's played an MMORPG for more than a few minutes, at all, because it sounded like he was talking about something he'd never experienced, but had heard other people speak about with passion.

His update did clarify it, but it was pretty damned silly analogy in the first place, and the apology/excuse thing only makes me think less of him. Either apologise, or excuse it, don't try and do both, they're mutually exclusive in this case.

No offense, but I think this is exactly what he was talking about. You're so hung up on the red car analogy that you missed the point.

That point being (as I understood it) that most balance issues sort themselves out, and developers constantly swinging the nerf bat just because a minority of people have "figured out that X is more powerful than Y" isn't going to do anything except cause more nerf bat swinging.

This has proven itself time and time again in my experience. The point that *I think* he was making was that no matter what you do, players will always find a "best" class, and if you change the "best" class then they'll find another "best" class.

What I took from the silly red car analogy was that he was comparing one attribute, speed, of one car to the rest of the available cars. We all know that in a racing game, speed is only one of many attributes that a car can have. So what I took from it was that people make such a big deal about one class having an attribute that's better than all the others, when they could just as easily pick a different class and find out what's better about that class than all the others.

Agreed it was a piss-poor analogy, but I think the reason it was such is because he was expecting more people to get the underlying point and not go, "Wait a second he doesn't care if the red car is the fastest, oh my god that's going to break the game!!!1"

[Randell44]

Originally Posted by checkthis5000

No offense, but I think this is exactly what he was talking about. You're so hung up on the red car analogy that you missed the point.

That point being (as I understood it) that most balance issues sort themselves out, and developers constantly swinging the nerf bat just because a minority of people have "figured out that X is more powerful than Y" isn't going to do anything except cause more nerf bat swinging.

This has proven itself time and time again in my experience. The point that *I think* he was making was that no matter what you do, players will always find a "best" class, and if you change the "best" class then they'll find another "best" class.

What I took from the silly red car analogy was that he was comparing one attribute, speed, of one car to the rest of the available cars. We all know that in a racing game, speed is only one of many attributes that a car can have. So what I took from it was that people make such a big deal about one class having an attribute that's better than all the others, when they could just as easily pick a different class and find out what's better about that class than all the others.

Agreed it was a piss-poor analogy, but I think the reason it was such is because he was expecting more people to get the underlying point and not go, "Wait a second he doesn't care if the red car is the fastest, oh my god that's going to break the game!!!1"

Which is exactly what he said when he clarified. I don't think he really doesn't care about balance. I think he was speaking Paulese and he knew exactly what he meant and didn't stop to think that we wouldn't.

The same way if you just started talking about one of your favorite things to someone else you would say it in ways they would not understand.



An interesting experiment I learned in school:

Get some lego's or some connex or something to build with and sit at a table with someone else. Put a big piece of cardboard between you so niether can see what the other is doing.

Now one person builds something and tells the other how to do it, without the other being able to see what your doing. Your gonna end up with different results no matter how clear you try to be because you think differently. Normally the results are pretty startlingly different.


Now imagine instead of taking careful effort to try and make sure the other person understands you rattle off a general description from your point of view.



THAT is the equivalent of what happened here.

[Mbj]

Folks,

Actually, it's all very simple and boils down to a number of simple observations/rules that I have been preaching for longer than I care to think about:

1) Humans are flawed, we make mistakes.

2) No Living (a game that is still being updated) MMORPG will ever be released bug-free either in terms of simple bugs or more complex game design errors due to the complexity of designing/implementing/testing systems that tens of thousands of people then can interact with/break/breakdown better than the developer (due to the amount of time/effort that a "group mind" can bring to bear on a system/game).

3) As a subset of MMORPG, RvR/PVP MMORPGs are tougher to balance because players care more than NPCs (and when the NPCs really start caring, we'll all in trouble) if the player they are fighting has a 0..00001 advantage over him when they shouldn't and the players will raise holy heck about it. FYI, this is one reason Imperator was going to be a pure PvE game.

4) All players want to be uber and some (a very small subset) will lie to the developers about problems and hide things from the developer in order to keep an advantage they have discovered. This applies to all stages of the game's life from Beta to death.

4) A Living MMORPG like WAR will get constant updates, expansions and just new stuff to help grow the game's subscriber base and to keep current players happy. This new stuff, when 1-4 are then factored in, that the new stuff itself is likely to have inherent problems/issues. Also means any problems that were not resolved or addressed by the new stuff can be made worse by the new stuff.

Thus, I do not believe any Living MMORPG will ever be truly and fairly balanced, ever and it is our job as developers to try to do our best to balance the game even when players scream NERF! FYI, I hate that word with every fiber in my being. If you want a real simple way to look at it:

Creating a MMORPG is hard, balancing one (especially a successful one) makes creating it look like child's play by comparison.


Mark

[Vervayne]

Balancing sides has got to be the toughest job for an MMO, especially a Realm-based one. Why do you think certain other MMOs went with a predominantly instance-based PvP system? ...Because it takes the heat off of the population issues (or was supposed to).

After playing DAoC for 3+ years, I'm with Mark on this one. There will never be perfect balance. Its just not possible without making each side a perfect mirror of the other, which is boring. And even if you make cookie-cutter classes on all sides, you'll still end up with imbalance!

There's so many player trends, FOTM classes, etc. throughout MMO lifetimes, its really ridiculous to even think all sides will be equal at all times.

And besides, there's only one source for fair and balanced........ Fox News! (just kidding, no political debates plz )

[Wyrmtongue]

Easier than balancing an RVR based MMO?
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/bilder/balance.jpg

[Bulwyf]

Mark said it and frankly I think anyone who has played a MMO for more than a few months should hit upon the same realization: the game(s) will never be properly balanaced. At best you can hope for a semblance of balance amongst both sides among the majority of races and classes. There will always be at least one or two classes who for whatever reason enjoy their time in the sun...until (mostly in pvp MMOs) enough complains cause the nerf hammer to come swinging.

It is the cycle of balance. If large numbers of players are swarming to roll "X" and "Y" has nothing but a few bitter diehards playing then eventually "X" is going to get nerfed (toned down if Mark would prefer that term lol) and "Y" will be reworked to make it more appealing.

I am hoping that by keeping the number of classes per race small and in very clear roles that Mythic is using a template to make balance for pve/pvp much easier. If say the Chaos Chosen is doing 15% more melee damage than the "melee damage" class in the Marauder then naturally Mythic is going to have an easier time to adjust either class to make sure the Marauder stays on top. Contrast that with say five different melee hybrid classes all clamoring over their DPS or roles in groups. It is much, much harder to balance that than by sticking to clearly defined class roles and balancing around that.

[Rondaror]

Interesting to see that for a game that is not even released a heated balance discussion pops up.

I'm with Mark on this. Perfect balance in a RvR/PvP game doesn't exist. You may get balance on 1vs1 laboratory situations, but at the moment it comes to group vs group the interaction of different talents/abilities of each class can multiply or just add and create a balance problem through group composition only. On top you have balance issues just through terrain and through the way of doing RvR (sieging or running around, defense or offense etc.)

Especially if there are a lot of supporting utilities (CC, buffs, debuffs, speed, etc) the danger of imbalances grow the more utility you have them in the game.
The more different classes, the bigger the threat of having classes that are "uber". But more diversity of classes means more fun as well.

I personally didn't take Paul's blog too serious. He brought a bad analogy, but everyone should know that he is not a designer nor his background was MMORPG's before WAR....and you have to take all he says with a boatload of salt.

[Kinthral]

Another thought came to me: isn't this technically his personal blog, not EA Mythic's official stance (yes, it may be a publicity stunt, but it sounds all Paul to me - unless you're pulling out raw info as opposed to opinions/thoughts/ideas). Comments about Paul or his views are acceptable, but I'm not liking that some people on the blog were posting comments saying this affected their opinion of the game, just because one developer posted their personal take on a genre-wide issue that won't ever be solved in a RvR/PvP-inclusive game. If saying "we're going to do our best to solve this unsolvable problem" isn't good enough for those people, good riddance in my opinion; those are probably the same people crying over every minuscule change in other games. And if WAR isn't going to be balanced perfectly, what game don't we know about that you're playing that is balanced.

[Ravanos]

Originally Posted by Kinthral

Another thought came to me: isn't this technically his personal blog, not EA Mythic's official stance (yes, it may be a publicity stunt, but it sounds all Paul to me - unless you're pulling out raw info as opposed to opinions/thoughts/ideas). Comments about Paul or his views are acceptable, but I'm not liking that some people on the blog were posting comments saying this affected their opinion of the game, just because one developer posted their personal take on a genre-wide issue that won't ever be solved in a RvR/PvP-inclusive game. If saying "we're going to do our best to solve this unsolvable problem" isn't good enough for those people, good riddance in my opinion; those are probably the same people crying over every minuscule change in other games. And if WAR isn't going to be balanced perfectly, what game don't we know about that you're playing that is balanced.

QFT

I have always said and will always said that balance is a myth ... it's nearly the same thing as a Unicorn or the lochness monster. NO game will ever be perfectly balanced, unless of course you have one class with one set of gear and one skill ... then you might have a balanced game ... a crappy game as well but a balanced one.

And Paul is right the percieved "best" class will always be played more, if it is nerfed then the next percieved best class will be played. Look at Zerkers in DAOC when they were nerfed Savages were played more.

I really don't see what the outrage over this is ... I think its people trying to find a reason not to like the game.

[parabola]

I think part of the problem of balancing MMOs is that it tends to be especially harder if you need to balance PvE and PvP. WoW has this problem cause there are an equal ammount of people who enjoy PvE and PvP (It seemed that way at least) and because they had to balance both, you had people crying nerf everytime you go to balance one thing in PvE when it becomes overpowered in PvP.

One of the other problems specifically in WoW that i noticed when it came to balance is that creating classes are are quite different between realms/factions just leads to a lot of issues. Thats why they made Paladins and Shaman playable to both sides.

Not only that but no one is ever happy. Everyone wants to be the best class and the best of their class and if anyone finds ANYTHING that another class can do that they deem overpowered (basically if you can use a cookie cutter tactic to beat someone) they'll cry nerf. Constant nerfing all the time doesn't really work either. If you nerf something, another skill/item will become the most powerful and then people will cry nerf for that too. Nerfing is an endless cycle and when it starts its hard to stop it. While nerfing I guess is necessary (hate that word too by the way, but its easily understood by people) no one will ever be satisfied by it. You cant satisfy that many people 100%, its just not possible. And the more people you have playing the game, the more cries of nerf and the harder it is to balance. I fully agree it is impossible to perfectly balance a class based MMO for this reason alone.

The way to fix that though is try damn hard to allow a skilled player to have the tools to deal with "cookie cutter/cheapo" tactics reguardless. Which a lot of MMOs do try to do, but i'm not sure if its ever been perfect, nor if it will ever be. Someone will find something that works to their advantage that is hard to defend against.

Such is the way of MMOs and here we are playing them anyways.

[Randell44]

Frankly i think thigs were merely an overeaction to Pauls word's. I'm not saying Paul did good in his intial statement however he left the door far too wide open. But he then explained what he meant.


I highly doubt most people even bothered to read the explanation as like Paul said they had already made up thier minds.





It' s just a rediculous happenstance.