Balance dogma VS accessibility dogma. Which one produces more decline?

[Cryomancer]

Balance is completely opposite to variety. Pick a racing game for eg, if the game has only one car and zero options, the game is 100% balanced. However, if the game has almost every car produced from a ford model T to a modern Ferrari, unless you make the differences just cosmetic, the game will gonna be extremely unbalanced. Imagine in VtMB, the devs din't had included the Nosferatu clan which is the hardest clan nor the Tremere which is arguably the strongest clan. How the game would be better? Removing nosferatu or making his deformity curse cosmetic only with zero impact on the gameplay, would made the clan far more balanced but would't make any sense considering clan lore.

Almost all examples of nonsensical mechanics aka ludonarrative dissonance are thanks to "balance" dogma. Might determining how deadly an arquebus is and how effective your healing spells are on Pillars? Thanks balance. Monks needing a big and sharp axe which they dimaterialize in combat animation to punch on D3? Thanks balance. The Oblivion level scaling? Thanks balance.

Balance and accessibility are the main reason to the "decline". And the decline only happens with games. I mean, is not as if the new version of AutoCAD or photoshop had less features than a 10 yo version BUT with RPG's, you can see the decline on the number of spells on the most iconic bioware game from different eras

• BG2 had over 300 spells and many spells can produce "N" results. Wish for eg, can produce 37 different things
• DA:O around 90 spells.
• DA:I around 20 spells.

And is not only the number of spells. The dialogs are extremely more limited. The amount of classes and depth of mechanics too. Balance is like equality in "politics". More equality means that everyone will be eqqualy poor, uneducated and suffer eqqualy. There no way to have eqquality or balance without appealing to the lowest common denominator and forcing the lowest common denominator into everyone. Accessibility is a similar case.

If everyone, including a game journalist can play your game, your game can't have depth. Any game with the bare minimum of depth will receive massive criticism from this people, like the famous "I can't hit a insect swarm with an axe, 0/10". Devs like Vincke which made the most accessible TT rpg said some times even believe that spell slots aren't intuitive for people. I saw ZERO PEOPLE complaining about it. Dark Souls uses it. And hell, Pokemon, a Children's portable game has "move slots" where a pokemon can have 4 active moves and can use X moves per rest. Eg - Blaziken can use 5 fire blast and to recharge, rest in pokemon center.

Hell, this plague of appealing to the lowest common denominator and underestimate the playarbase exists outside of rpg market. EA was concerned that people would't recognize a WW1 game. Yes, they believe that FPS fans would't recognize WW1 ( https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlefield-1-ea-was-concerned-kids-didnt-know-ww1/1100-6440385/ )

Both dogmas DESTROYED the mmo market, nuked 99% of the SP market and almost ruined the TT market. Can you imagine a mmo where you need to think? Had to deal with consequences like losing a level after dying in a game with lv cap = 15 and slow leveling? Where the combat is not a eternal mindless spam of the same rotation over and over? That was Dark Sun Online : Crimson Sands.

• We will never have another mmo like Dark Sun Online : Crimson Sands. Only wow clones.
• We will get few good SP RPG's like PFKM per decade.
• And TT RPG's are being destroyed by both. D&D 4e, then PF2e...

Accessibility also takes out "features" from RPG's. No more stats on TES? No more levitation? Mark/Recall? No more polearms? Is all because "we need to appeal to a wide audience". Faggout 4 with zero options to chose what ammo to use when new vegas allowed you to use slugs, dragon breath and flechette on your 12 gauge shotgun is also thanks to accessibility.

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4e was the "balance above everything else" edition. And 5e is the "accessibility above everything else". IMO 5e is less awful than 4e. But both editions are trash if compared to glorious 2e and 3.5e.

 

[Sweeper]

This is a tough one.
I'm gonna give the edge to balance faggotry, but only because I hate Sawyer so Goddamn fucking much.

• We will get few good SP RPG's like PFKM per decade.

"good"
More like fucking cum in your pants amazing.

 

[Butter]

The thing with "balance" is that there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to balance various elements of the game. The problem when the designer tries to do it in a streamlined way with no exceptions. Might increasing gun damage in Pillars is retarded, but the alternative is to code guns as an exception and then buff them in some other way, like giving them DR penetration. The system is easier to understand when there are no exceptions, but it's less interesting.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Accessibility can be done right, but it's a very fragile thing. You never ever want to simplify things to the point that you start to actively erase any complexity or theorizing. Accessibility is good if you think of it like... I want to make my game accessible to those people that want to actually play my game and respect the rules laid down but make the systems easy to grasp that they can get into it but always make it so they have more to learn and better themselves on the knowledge of. I don't want my game accessible to the point a girly-girl who only played 2 hours of Candy Crush can jump in and begin slaying dragons by hour three.

Balance in an RPG is terrifying and I genuinely think it creates a homogenized game if you don't 'balance your balancefagging.' I've looked back at tons of games I've loved and not even RPGs but fighting games as well and it strikes me that me and many many others out there enjoy games that have fucking stupid imbalance. Why? Because those are games where you are much more likely to find fun and crazy shit instead of the Josh Sawyer Presents style of sapping the entertainment value out of. If you can create twelve skeletons instead of only four, then who gives a fuck? That's fun, it makes you want to try it, it ups the replay value. Balance in an RPG too often conflicts with removing choices and options which is the bane of player creativity. Overall, I say to balance things in an RPG if it will truly better the game as a whole and not come at the cost of smothering things.

Accessibility/Balance are only as decline as you make them when you're in control of making the game, but I've had way worse experiences with "balanced" games than ones that don't handcuff me and let me go wild.

This post is too serious so fuck niggaz, I'm prime fresh, feel? dabsdabs

 

[rusty_shackleford]

accessibility

fuck colorblind people

 

[JarlFrank]

Depends on how it's done. Accessibility can be done well if applied to, say, interfaces. Dwarf Fortress with a proper mouse interface would be a lot more accessible than it is now, without changing a single gameplay feature.

I don't think levitation and mark&recall were removed for acessibility reasons S0rcererV1ct0r, those were removed because Bethesda are lazy and retarded and couldn't find a way to implement levitation with the new way cities worked (as split-off indoor game world cells rather than part of the overworld). The games did remove a lot of features both for the sake of accessibility and balance though... and also add some features that are shit, like the quest compass. And in turn they removed detailed descriptions on how to get to places, so you HAVE to use the compass if you wanna find your quest goals.

Daggerfall and Morrowind had a great layered equipment system where you could wear clothes below armor, armor was split into many parts (left gauntlet, right gauntlet, left pauldron, right pauldron, greaves, cuirass...), but that layered system was removed under the excuse of balance reasons. Why? Because Bethesda claimed characters got too overpowered when enchanting every piece of clothing and armor with constant effects due to the high amount of equipment slots. Now you can't wear clothes and armor together anymore, and armor slots were radically reduced (in Skyrim, they combined both pauldrons, the cuirass, and the greaves into a single armor slot!). But building up your enchantment skill and filling high tier soul gems with Golden Saint souls to put constant effect spells on all your items of clothing was a big part of Morrowind's fun. You had to work to get yourself that overpowered, but you could do it if you wanted to. Now you can't anymore because equipment has been dumbed down for the sake of balance.

Balance is often in direct opposition to experimentation and wealth of player options. Balance is all about nerfing or straight up removing overpowered options and buffing underpowered options until everything is equal. But the true fun of a single player RPG is experimenting with different builds and trying to see what works and what doesn't. And of course trying to break the game. I don't abuse alchemy in a normal Morrowind playthrough, but I appreciate the fact that if I wanna abuse it, I can, and suddenly all my stats are at 6 million. In Arcanum, wizards are more powerful than tech guys, but it's fun to play both of them because they play so differently. Variety is the spice of games, not samey balance.

 

[Horvatii]

Whatchu call balance and accessibility is actually """streamlining""" and has nothing to do with balance or accessability...
There are so many incoherent comparisons and unwarranted inferences, you might as well be a 12 year old crying on the steam forums.
Another retarded post like that and you go into the iggy bin.

 

[Shadenuat]

balance is only autistically important in multiplayer. for single player you just need to make all things fun somehow but not necessarily equal.

 

[undecaf]

Both are fine tools in the right hands, but accessibility is, for me, the one that most easily contaminates and corrodes everything it touches.

 

[Infinitron]

"Accessibility" here just seems to mean "easy games". That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

 

[FranticDistortion]

Some good balance is important in single player games, cause you don't want player to figure out the best build 1 hour into the game.

Why do you say accessibilty, instead of difficulty/complexity is beyond me.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

yeah and fuck those people

 

[rusty_shackleford]

cause you don't want player to figure out the best build 1 hour into the game.

It should be at 50 hours.
Games should be as arcane, convoluted, and obfuscated as possible.

 

[pidstuff]

"Accessibility" here just seems to mean "easy games". That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

That's one thing I dislike with game journalists. Instead of pushing for accessibility so that things like colorblind settings become a standard, they're pushing for the 'accessibility' easy mode. There's so many other games out there to play if a person can't beat harder games.

 

[Butter]

"Accessibility" here just seems to mean "easy games". That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

That's one thing I dislike with game journalists. Instead of pushing for accessibility so that things like colorblind settings become a standard, they're pushing for the 'accessibility' easy mode. There's so many other games out there to play if a person can't beat harder games.

That's because they don't give a shit about colorblind people. They do give a shit about making games easy because their job requires them to play games and they can't appear knowledgeable or credible when discussing games that stomped them. They use the term "accessibility" because everyone would laugh if they were honest and said "I suck at games but I also chose a job that requires me to play them. Please cater to me."

 

[Sharpedge]

Both can be done right, but I am more inclined to dislike accessibility than I am to dislike balance. There can be many good reasons to balance a game, the problem comes in when a developer decides they need to sacrifice depth in order to make their system easier to balance. Accessibility the line can be a lot more grey than that and the argument that making the game easier is making it more accessible is one that can easily be made. I think that often, its perfectly fine for a game to not be accessible to a particular audience. Just because there might be some blind and deaf gamers out there does not mean every game needs to be playable for them, especially if it means sacrificing the core audience for that type of game.

 

[lobsterfrogman]

"Those who sacrifice precious balance for temporary fun, deserve neither and will lose both" - Josh Washington

 

[Ol' Willy]

Accessibility, translation: making a game as retardedly easy as possible, so even a complete brainlet can play it.
Balance, translation: nerfing some shit and upping other shit so all options are viable and roughly equal, thus killing all the "fun".

 

[Rafidur]

I'm perfectly fine with a game journo difficulty level - these people can't appreciate it anyway.

What I am not fine with is when they removed the harder difficulties (see Vindictus for example), leaving the game easy enough to be completed by a puppy having a seizure on the keyboard. Why are these fuckers doing this? Do they want to avoid game journo tier players to have their feelings hurt by a difficulty they can't complete? Maybe the people making executive decisions don't understand games at all and only understand the joy of crushing things and watching numbers go up?

 

[fantadomat]

Accessibility means cut content,while balance is just autism. Accessibility is the worst.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

"Accessibility" here just seems to mean "easy games". That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

Devs use accessibility as an excuse to streamline games, it's pretty disgusting how they hide from criticism behind disabled people. You say that you disagree with making games more simple, they will accuse you of hating disabled people. Those devs are nothing but scums.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Balance is like equality in "politics". More equality means that everyone will be eqqualy poor, uneducated and suffer eqqualy. There no way to have eqquality or balance without appealing to the lowest common denominator and forcing the lowest common denominator into everyone

I am surprised by you optimism in believing that the best people get to the top. In reality it's the worst of humankind that gets to the top. The more cynical the person is the more likely they are to succeed. The more moral the person is, the more likely they are to fail. Compare EA to Troika.

 

[mondblut]

"Accessibility" here just seems to mean "easy games". That term is usually used in reference to creating colorblind-friendly user interfaces and stuff like that.

Well, there is accessibility to colorblind people, and then there is accessibility to dumb people.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

accessibility

I just want to add that accessibility functions in smartphones (which are obligatory by US law "Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990") create real welcoming hellgates for the malware infiltration.

 

[Tyranicon]

It should be at 50 hours.
Games should be as arcane, convoluted, and obfuscated as possible.

I like the way you think.

That's one thing I dislike with game journalists. Instead of pushing for accessibility so that things like colorblind settings become a standard, they're pushing for the 'accessibility' easy mode. There's so many other games out there to play if a person can't beat harder games.

Only one thing you hate? Most game journos are just failed writers/real journalists with a passing interest in video games. They can be completely disregarded.