i'd like to be unfair please!

[Helious]

I have been reading a number of posts on a number of boards recently (yes ... i'm a board *****, no sooner than i have finished with one board i jump into bed with another, i admit it i'm a posting **** (*** i hope this censored cause i'm writing it based upon that assumption )) that have really irked me. I'm a placid, reserved kinda fella as anyone on the strata channel will tell you .... honest .... so when something vex's me i think long and hard before shouting (and if you believe that i have a business proposition which i think you'll be very interested in). However today i feel the need to ask

Can i be unfair please?

Before i start lets make this clear, if you think this post is a rant about you, then stop reading, check your ego at the cloakroom and then continue reading.

I see a lot of calls to make games fairer, balanced and casual gamer friendly. And i firmly believe this approach to gaming is ruining mmo's and rp in general.

So in tradional reverse order let me start with

Casual gamer friendly.

If i was going to make and run an mmo i would make it casual gamer friendly, for one reason and one reason alone (and it's also the best reason in all honesty) ... money. Why limit your game to die hard fans when you can maximise profits by casual gamer inclusivness!!! (TM).

I don't make mmo's (yet) and i don't run an mmo (still time on this one also) and i want my game to be unremittingly complex, time consuming and unplayable unless you suffer from an mmo related Obsesive Compulsive Disorder. I turn my mmo on in the morning when i wake up and i turn it off again when i go to sleep. Okay i might not be infront of the screen 100% of the time and i may at some point actually run out of cash and have to get a job .. again ... but until then i game a good 12-15 hours a day. I want a game that fullfill's my need of a virtual life and the fact that people are trying to destroy that type of game is so

UNFAIR (note this is said with irony)

Balance

Oh balance i hate thee so. Now i'm not talking about fixing, i'm not talking about alterations to make something work as intended, i'm not even talking about that balance in everything is actually bad.

What i am ranting about is when people call for balance when what they really really want is to be less sucky. Sorry, i know that last statement will have gotten some peoples backs up, but the cold harsh light of reality states one thing and one thing clearly ..... some of us are good at some things and others are not. Please deal with you ineffectualness by NOT limiting my effectiveness. To call for that will only casue me to foam at the mouth, say rude words and generally behave like a 13 year old ganker with uber weapon of noob slaying.

You can't balance everything and something are actually designed to be unbalanced .... yes you heard it here first, some things are supposed to be unbalanced.

Now how to explain this to you, ah i have it .... those non online games you have, the one you havn't played in awhile. If you can remember that far back you might be able to remeber that it has difficulty levels, something along the lines of say easy, medium and hard.

Yes, yes i know you like playing on easy cause it's the most balanced, but i like to play it on hard, and sometimes i'll play on medium and i have even been know to enjoy easy as well.

Some classes, some area's, some games, some monsters are inentionally set on the hard setting. Just because you can't play them well (or in some cases at all even ) it dosn't mean they need to be balanced! Leave it alone, some aspects of games are supposed to be challeneging and if your not up for the challenege then ... soz. I know i know it's all quite

UNFAIR

Fair play

Lord oh lord please let there be an especially deep and nasty part of hell reserved for those of us who believe everything should be fair. This is of course my number one pet hate in the whole universe (at least right this second).

Fairness is such a stupid concept in games, really it is, honestly it really really is. Now i'm not saying that in the real world, where that shiny yellow orb exisits, you know beyond the keyboard, that fairness is a bad thing, it isn't and i'm all for it there ... just not here, well not in the games i wanna play.

What does fairness accutally mean helious? Well actually fairness means bland, anadine and generally as interesting as toilet paper.

Now whoa there boy your playing an non-PvP game cause you can't stand being ganked by 13 yr old gankers with 2handed swords of old people slaying. Yes i do see that there may be a little conflict of interest here, however this is a rant and a rant isn't a place for reasonablness.

Fairness? Everyone has a level playing field, everyone has an equal chance to achieve anything, the ulitmate sandbox experience, and also the clarion call for the virtual utopian society! (TM)

You know what i want to say when someone complains that x, y and z can do a, b and c but m, n and o can't do a, b and c (wow loads of letters dude!) TOUGH, deal with it, don't like it go find another game to play and stop trying to force our game to become some ideal utopian 'isn't everything nice, pleaseant and shiny' world.

You know there are times in my life when looking at kittens dosn't make me go awww!, they make me think of microwaves and washing machines and generally nasty things. Sorry for being a human being and not some well adjusted conformist robot.

I want my game to be unfair, i have come here to this virtual other world partly to get away from the real world and all it's rules, regulations and plesantries (as well as getting way from it's lawlessness, lack of control and general nastiness btw). Now all in all my life isn't that bad, so the overwhelming need for me to run away to a nice place isn't there. I actually want to vacation in the slightly unpleseant side of life and i want to do it in such a manner that doing so neither a) causes reprocussions in the real world and b) if i don't like it i can exercise my right to withdraw electricity form the computer.

Please please please don't be fair, it's destorying MY world and that is so

UNFAIR!

[CallakDW]

Wow, for a rant, you actually made a lot of sense....

[Henry Redacre]

Begin Rantola...

I can agree with this.

There seems to be a misconception for people as to what "balance" means. To me, balance doesn't mean "same." What balance means to me is that each race/school combination has an equal *chance* to generally survive in the world as a whole, and play the game.

To me, when people say stuff like "Yeah, but as a Ranger, I can't kill Zombie Ogres!" it's like Rock complaining that it can't beat paper.

"I'm a rock, and paper kills me every time! Thats not fair! Scissors can beat paper, why can't I?"

That's what a lot of the balance whines sounds like to me.

For me, a good challenge when fighting different mobs is to see 1) if you can survive, 2) if you can win, 3) how quickly can you win, 4) how many mobs can you handle at once and 5) whats the *least* amount of schools needed to do it all.

Each of those are all good challenges in and of themselves. Combine them all, or mix and match them, and you'll find there's some fun to be had there. But crying because you can't kill something, and then whining to the Devs to improve your character for you to the point where you can is just.. well, it stops being a game, and just becomes a process of clicking on things without any thought or effort whatsoever.

The concept of a game is a goal or series of goals that are to be achieved within a framework of rules Hopefully, those goals and rules are setup so that there is a challenge in place, and that the process of working towards those goals is either fun, interesting, or both.

Changing the rules so that you can win every time stops being a game, and simply becomes a process. It's like setting up a maze, crying that it has too many turns and dead ends in it, and then asking for a straight path to be drawn from start to finish so the maze can be easily completed.

Thats. Just. Dumb.

Now, I'm also agreeing with Helious there that certain schools do need to be finished. There are other schools that need to be fixed. There are certain schools that need to be both fixed AND finished. Those schools are indeed what I consider to be "broken," and need to be worked on.

However, I don't agree that every individual school should be able to do the same things with the same degree of ease. In fact, I don't think that all the schools should even be able to do the same things, period.

For instance, if a mob is designed to have a high resistance to pierce damage, then sorry, but your Archer/Ranger/Spearman/WhateverPiercingSchool you have is going to and should be eaten and killed by that mob. Lesson there is, stay away from that mob, or get together with someone who plays another adventure school, and figure out a way to work together to beat it. But then on the flipside of that, there should also be mobs that have a high degree of resistance to slash and crush, but are weak against in pierce. This is where your Archer/Ranger/Spearman/WhateverPiercingSchool get to have a heyday. That is what I would consider to be balanced. That is the sort of thing this game is severely lacking. Thats the kind of stuff I'm willing to whine about.

Man, I'd love to be involved in a fight with a mob, happily killing it, laa-dee-daa, and then have something else come up from behind me that I've got no chance of killing. OMFG RUN time! And not just because it's higher level than me and would just win by default, but have it be something that I could probably have a good chance of killing, if I could ever hurt the thing, which I can't, because it's practically impervious to my attacks. For instance, if I'm playing as a Mage, casting fire bolts at a big nasty Flame Golem... uhm.. I shouldn't have any hope whatsoever of even hurting it. It's made of fire! How would fire bolts kill it? Simple. They wouldn't. But hey, if I wanted to go toss those fire bolts at Ice Golems, then hell yeah, I should be tearing them some new holes. Let's make things MORE interesting, not less interesting.

If the Devs actually listened to most of those people that do whine, then they could make it easy on themselves, and have ONE adventure school, and call it done.

Let's see how the whiners would like that.

You can all keep your "balance." I'd much rather have "interesting." Thanks.

[Pharcellus]

I can agree as well, even when I have campaigned hard for "balance" and "fairness", it has always been about the average. IE, for X amount of effort spent somewhere doing something, there should be Y reward. That should apply across all characters/classes/etc. Now, where and what that is should vary, just like you say. There would be no reason to differentiate into different classes/skills if everyone was perfectly effective against everything, everywhere, all the time.

The one exception to this rule is Dragons. No, I am not saying they should be exempt from being involved in the same system, however, they should be able to still spend X effort to attain Y reward, just like everyone else can/should. The problem is, because they are an exotic, and thus play by a different set of rules, they have certain disadvantages that are not "balanced" with other advantages, and there is no way for them to change that. Bipeds, on the other paw, play in a different system where they can be anything anytime anyplace they want. Going out to fight monsters who are strong against magic, but weak against slash melee? No problem! Switch to sword-wielding melee class. Done. Going out to fight a different kind of mob? No problem! Switch to the most effective class against that mob and you own! Even better, take the best abilities from all your other classes that you can along with your strongest class against the opponents in the evening hunt, and it becomes a solo cakewalk.

It's not meant to be a Dragon vs Biped argument all over again; the devs know the multiclassing system has this issue, and have lamented it in the past. At some point, they were to address it by giving Ancients some other "elder game" advancement to compensate for the mismatch. Obviously, that didn't come to pass, but between the lament for the megamulticlassing, which causes them to have to consider all the challenges they put before the players carefully (read: lots of extra time figuring out how to make something a challenge, not just for the MMC chars, but for the single class chars and Dragons as well), and the situation with no elder advancement for Dragon characters, it is something they will have to address at some point down the road.

Ultimately, game "balance" and fairness is an important thing, but in a macrocosmic view. Specific instances of encounters still need to be varied to provide a reason for all the variance the PCs are capable of. However, at the end of the day, when all things are summed up, there should always be a fair level of reward for effort available to all who play, no matter what they play. How they play is a different story, but the game mechanics / system should not grossly favor any one or group over another. If it does, it is broken, and needs to be fixed.

[Helious]

Just for clarification, before i get dragged down into flamers hell that this rant is not about hz but about the mmorpg market as a whole and i assume that

Now, I'm also agreeing with Helious there that certain schools do need to be finished.

Reffers to a different post on a different section of this board (yes yes i'm a posting ***** i'm fully aware of my short comings thank you )

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=16893

Where in a reasoned argument and not a rant i make a counter suggestion to someone elses suggestion (and where i look really really cool and intelligent )

[Pharcellus]

Of course; HZ is just a basis for comparison and examination; an "example", if you will, of what you're talking about.

Most of what we are saying can apply to any game. "Game balance" isn't something to trifle with; it's a very important process which ultimately makes or breaks a game for many people. It is very critical to making sure to do as good a job as possible on it before you ship your game, and make it so that you can quickly fix any oversights before it becomes ingrained behavior by the players.

Guild Wars is an example of a game which took game balance to heart, and is constantly making tweaks and adjustments (though they do tend to knee-jerk balance at times, too) to the game mechanics to flatten out large spikes of imbalances.

[Threxx]

Now, I'm also agreeing with Helious there that certain schools do need to be finished. There are other schools that need to be fixed. There are certain schools that need to be both fixed AND finished. Those schools are indeed what I consider to be "broken," and need to be worked on.

However, I don't agree that every individual school should be able to do the same things with the same degree of ease. In fact, I don't think that all the schools should even be able to do the same things, period.

Reffers to a different post on a different section of this board (yes yes i'm a posting ***** i'm fully aware of my short comings thank you )

Where in a reasoned argument and not a rant i make a counter suggestion to someone elses suggestion (and where i look really really cool and intelligent )

You've got to be kidding me. You vehemently OPPOSED that position the entire thread! I will say no more here...

[Henry Redacre]

Just for clarification, before i get dragged down into flamers hell that this rant is not about hz but about the mmorpg market as a whole...

Ah yeah, very valid point. Just for clarification and all that, you never did mention HZ explicitly in this thread. It was entirely on my shoulders that I sorta put words in your mouth there. My apologies for that. While it may be argued (though it really doesn't need to be, I don't think) that I didn't make a very large jump in the logic there, I still made a jump, and drew my own conclusions. Making the kind of assumption I made there is how unnecessary "forum arguments" usually rear their ugly heads.

Sorry about that Helious!



~ Henry

[gopher65]

There seems to be a misconception for people as to what "balance" means. To me, balance doesn't mean "same." What balance means to me is that each race/school combination has an equal *chance* to generally survive in the world as a whole, and play the game.

To me, when people say stuff like "Yeah, but as a Ranger, I can't kill Zombie Ogres!" it's like Rock complaining that it can't beat paper.

"I'm a rock, and paper kills me every time! Thats not fair! Scissors can beat paper, why can't I?"

That's what a lot of the balance whines sounds like to me.

See, now this makes sense to me. To take the HZ example of this a bit further, Rangers can kill Skulks like crazy (cause skulks have almost 0 armour), but if you put them up against an armoured mob they are all but helpless. I'm totally cool with this. This IS my idea of balance. Some things I can kill with my Ranger, and some with my dragon. That's great. That's how it is suppose to be.

My problem starts to come in when you have a completely unbalanced approach to development. Things like, say, making many many monsters completely impervious to nature damage. A pure ranger does nothing but nature damage unless he chooses to gimp himself or use one of several exploits to change his damage type without gimping himself (like the fact that flame/ice/energy attack stacks with Lightning Arrows, but overrides the damage type. Oops. Little bug there.).

But that's ok, conditionally. That's ok *if* there are also some mobs completely impervious to all types of physical damage, and other mobs completely impervious to all types of Arcane damage. That would be balanced. But exclusively gimping two groups of classes (archer and nature) over and over and over and over again for the entire existence of the game while the other three (dragon, arcane and melee) are left pretty much alone is not balance.