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Balance? Screw Balance. I Care About Fun.
By Cameron Sorden | June 4, 2008
I was just reading Michael’s interview with Warhammer Senior Designer Dan Enright, and one quote from him in particular jumped out at me as being so amazingly true, simple, and obvious that it boggles my mind that I’ve never been able to put the same sentiment (which I’ve definitely had) into words. From Dan:
“I’m not going to pick on any games in particular but I think that some of the games out there actually make decisions with all good intentions, thinking they’re the right decisions for the current market, or they’re trying to grab everyone in the current market instead of pockets of the current market, and they make decisions that actually remove some of the market. One example of that is you see a lot of the modern games have an extreme symmetry, as far as balance and fairness and layout of the world, which actually drains a lot of character out of the game. One of the strong high concept aspects of EverQuest, I think, actually were those intentional imbalances - the Iksar have high innate amour and can swim at run speed. Someone comes up and says ‘well, isn’t that an imbalance in PvP” or whatever, but it’s really like “sure, in some situations, but we don’t care.’ it actually added a lot more character to the game.”
Yes. Brilliant. Thank you. Balance is great. Balance is necessary to make a game with a strong PvP background work. But balance kills flavor and character. I’m reminded of the episode of the Fairly OddParents where Timmy wishes that everyone was the same so that people would stop making fun of his quirks (or something). Everyone in the world turned into pink, boring blobs with no defining characteristics or unique attributes.
I don’t really need my game to be fair. MMOGs aren’t sports (or they don’t need to be). They just need to be fun, and having unique classes with wildly different gameplay styles or zones which have things that seem like exploits built into the zone (like dropping to the bottom of UBRS using the ledges) are really entertaining for players. Who cares that you’re bypassing content or that PvP is wildly unbalanced? I’m still not sold on this whole PvP craze. It seems like all it does it cause whining, griefing, and problems in games that are just fine as PvE-centric games (EverQuest and WoW).
I’d rather have diversity and cool, unique things about my character than perfect balance.
Topics: Random |
June 4th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
couldnt have said it better
June 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am
PVP will never be balanced as long as you have:
- a class
- a role
- a level mechanic
- gear upgrades
Trying to create balance by screwing with the classes is futile, and yes, it can lead to lack of diversity or uniqueness.
Instead of screwing around with the classes and crap, focus on the mechanics of PVP and modify that instead of the classes.
Consider how you’d discourage higher levels from abusing lower levels too much in various areas of the game world. Or even preventing someone at the higher levels from creaming someone over and over.
Keep classes fun, but don’t let the PVP be FFA without some means of protecting a player from abuse (unless it is supposed to be a complete FFA server).
June 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am
My biggest beef in the WoW beta was when Blizzard removed the unique racial and class abilities like Paladins doing extra damage to Undead Horde players, the Tauren plains running ability, and so on. They then came in with a symmetrical racial bonus system that still ended up being horribly out of balance and stunk of lack of planning. On top of still being horrible, it was bland and lost all uniqueness of the original system. To this day, Trolls still have horrible racial abilities
June 5th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Undead nonfearable, nonsheepable–but susceptible to shackle… Those were the days.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
The Warhammer team gives me more reasons to respect them all the time. Balance of power is definitely overrated… and not only in MMOs (but especially in MMOs).
June 6th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
[...] Sorden at Random Battle isn’t convinced (yet) about PvP but thinks the Mythic designers understand a few things about [...]
June 8th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I sooo agree. It’s one of my peeves about EQ2. Classes are so balanced that they become a bit sterile. The imbalance is what made classes fun in EQ1. People will always complain about another class having too much of this or that. Ah who cares. Just have fun.