Powersets that need review

Originally Posted by Kyriani

You're very likely correct on that assessment but consider that what Rakeeb wants is a global nerf on a scope more far reaching that ED/GDN but with nothing "waiting in the wings" to make up for it. His idea is simply to reduce power.

Originally Posted by EvilGeko

But on the boards, no one acknowledges what each other means. Look at the previous 3 pages of everyone arguing that their definition is right and the other gal/guys definition shows them to be dishonest, mentally deficient, or both. Hence these discussions are meaningless.

The devs take feedback from a lot of people. I acknowledge and agree that the devs should give your feedback more weight than the standard joe because you have the educational and professional background to make learned opinions on game balance. But at the end of the day, they do whatever the heck they want to do anyway and so long as they think it meets their goals, it's 'balanced'.

So for me, I just ask for what I want, explain why and hope for the best. It usually works out.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

If there is a singular problem that posters like Rakeeb amplify, its the artificial tension between game balance and game entertainment value. A lot of people, even sometimes the devs, believe these are mutually exclusive objectives and in wrongly promoting their preferences as objective balance they just make this fallacy harder to dismiss.

Game balance has nothing to do with entertainment value, because game balance should be judged within the context of the entertainment value you're trying to deliver. Saying its harder to make balanced games entertaining or vice versa is like saying its hard to make blue cars fast, because the faster you make them the more red they have to be.

This game has a certain feel, it delivers a certain gameplay and has a certain entertainment value. Anything that purports to "balance" the game while destroying those things isn't meaningful balance. That's the difference between game design and arithmetic.

Can we balance this game, with ugly mechanics and quirky classes? Yes, we can in theory, and in practice we can keep improving even if we never actually get there. In our game, balance is not about the scale damage of blazing bolt. Its about core content, progressional opportunity, and reward earning. If every archetype/powerset combination choice had approximately the same ability to deal with core content, if they all had a similar if not identical opportunity to use the progressional systems of the game (i.e. inventions, incarnate powers), if they all had a similar ability to earn rewards, then it doesn't matter if someone has 21.6% more AoE damage and someone else takes down pylons 18 seconds quicker. That's arithmetic. Meaningful balance is about the experience the game delivers. Sometimes that involves numerical balancing of specific game effects. But always with an eye to the overall big picture of the gameplay we deliver.

Its ok if we all can only take on three things. Its also ok if we all can take on twelve. Three is not a magic number. Ok, it is a magic number, but not for game balance. What matters is what the game intent is. If we intend players to be far more powerful here than in other MMOs, that's fine. Blasters are not in competition with Jedi Knights or Blood Elfs. They are only in competition with Tankers and Stalkers and Dominators and Masterminds. We decide what is "balanced" for this game in terms of our relative capabilities. And then math takes over and tries to deliver on that decision.

But what we care about most here, what we've always cared about most, is not trivial number crunching. That's just a tool to help with the real game design, which is to offer the players fair choices in archetype and powersets. And fair in this case is what I mentioned above: similar ability to run core content, similar ability to use optional progression systems, similar ability to earn rewards.

Are we there yet? Of course not. We don't need posters like Rakeeb to lecture us on that. But we also don't need posters like Rakeeb to tell us the entire game we play is wrong, and we're all wrong for liking it, and if we weren't so wrong we'd see why we should discard eight years of City of Heroes to make City of Rakeeb.

I like City of Heroes. I like it even though its imperfect and I spend a lot of time trying to improve it. I don't want to trade City of Heroes for City of Rakeeb. I don't think I would like City of Rakeeb, even though in many ways it might implement many of the mechanical changes I've advocated for years. Because City of Rakeeb doesn't care about players, it cares about Rakeeb mechanics. It cares about arithmetic more than gameplay. And as surprising as it might be to some people when I say this, it should not be surprising to people who have read my stuff since 2004. I don't care about arithmetic. Numbers to me are just language. They aren't the game any more than English is the game. Often, number are extremely important to defining and describing the game, but numbers don't *decide* the game.

We do that. We the devs and we the players (moreso the former of course, but we have more input here than anywhere else). So anyone that says they don't care what the players think and what the devs think doesn't care about this game. They care about this other thing in their heads that they wish could replace this game.

Originally Posted by BrandX

True. But there's some things I'm not sure about.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Nothing wrong with that either. There's lots of things I'm not sure about also. Anyone who can't say that just doesn't understand the scope of the issues.


Probably the largest single tension point in the design of this game is that it attempts to compromise between structure and conceptual freedom. Unlimited freedom would make this the ultimate superhero Sims, but the reward-based gameplay would fall apart completely. But overly strict structure would remove one of the unique attractions of the game itself. Within that compromise most people are not going to be completely happy with the decisions the devs make one way or the other. But that's not because the devs are foolish or incompetent, its because no decision option exists would make everyone happy. Almost everyone wants some structure and some freedom but no two people will want the exact same structure and freedom in the exact same places.

Few MMOs run into this problem face-first like City of Heroes (and its spiritual cousin Champions Online) does.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Few MMOs run into this problem face-first like City of Heroes (and its spiritual cousin Champions Online) does.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Saying it's harder to make balanced games entertaining or vice versa is like saying it's hard to make blue cars fast, because the faster you make them the more red they have to be.

Originally Posted by Biospark

I would say, OTOH, that most of them DO run into it face first, but choose a much more rigid Archetype structure and "role delineation" to ever be considered in the same breath with the concept of "structural freedom". In fact, most of them move farther and farther away from this as they age.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Every MMO runs into challenges there, but I what I intended to highlight is that CoH has the extra problem of actually wanting to surrender a lot of conceptual freedom to the players that most MMOs don't. WoW doesn't allow players to have their own conceptual definitions of the races or classes. They get to declare those, and then provide as much freedom within them as they feel appropriate. We have archetypes, but even there the devs have tended to let the players "bend" the archetype definitions to a high degree. Our archetypes today are far more the devs deciding what the players were ultimately doing with them, as opposed to being what they were originally intended to be.

In fact what I don't think players fully appreciate is that Arbiter Hawk may be tweaking Blasters in the sense of the powers changes being made, but he's also completely redefined what Blasters even are in City of Heroes in one stroke. It happens in other MMOs to be sure, but not frequently and not with the same latitude it has happened here over time.

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

Are you asking for quantifiable proof?

Originally Posted by Biospark

Yep! Lets hope that they (Hawk, Synapse, and others) never change their stance and approach regarding this. They will keep a happy playerbase IME.

I, for one, was VERY surprised to hear about the upcoming blaster "balance pass". This type of change is unheard of in other MMO games, and certainly not what I was expecting for Blasters. BRAVO!, is all I can say.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

All I meant was that the word isn't meaningless to me or the devs. But I am willing to defer to your expertise in declaring my feedback more important than anyone else's.


"I acknowledge and agree that the devs should give your feedback more weight than the standard joe" - EvilGeko

I'm Arcanaville, and I approve this message.