Homogenization(Balance) is NOT more important than immersion, variety and satisfying development

[Harthwain]

There is a difference between noobs not knowing the inner workings of a game and a game designer putting useless skills in it that inexperienced players take, because they aren't experienced yet. The problem with the former is the player. The problem with the latter latter is the skill or how it was made - useless skills have no place and should either be removed or changed. It has nothing to do with balance though.

 

[Cryomancer]

The need for "balance" comes from players selecting the "wrong" class for a noob a getting powned by the game. Then they think they need balance, while in reality what they need is just a label (easy, medium, hard, or beginner, normal, pro) in the classes descriptions. Then the game isn't "unbalanced" anymore (a negative), you just select a difficulty level that in addition changes your playstyle (a big positive). It's all psychological.

I i wanna make a technocractic high technological focused ELF on Arcanum, i will have a really hard time and it makes perfectly sense.

As longs the easiness and difficulty can be logically understood by the player without much reading, i don't see a problem with unbalances.

 

[Serious_Business]

This whole issue is undoubtedly inherited from the more multiplayer, community-based gaming of today. You didn't get balance patches in old games because they didn't exactly work on patches beyond making those that fixed the bugs ; now you have patches that fix the gameplay. This isn't inherently a problem, it can mean incremental development, but obviously it changes how games are thought of. Obviously balances patches mean taking multiplayer dynamics into a single player game ; this is probably the influence of some kind of World of warcraft gaming that is creeping up even in games without cooldowns. Abusing a game of course is all the fun in old games - it makes you feel like you're working against the system, and a good system can't predict all possible input combinations from the player. It has a kind of old pen and paper flair to it, to the point that gamers can at least project themselves into the designers' perspective, by figuring out how the engine and coding work - at least superficially. You could say, then, that "immersive gaming" is what stops this mechanics, code-based approach to systems ; thus I contradicted the initial point about the opposition between balance and immersion ; and so I am a master of dialectics, suck my dick baby

 

[Cryomancer]

This whole issue is undoubtedly inherited from the more multiplayer, community-based gaming of today. You didn't get balance patches in old games because they didn't exactly work on patches beyond making those that fixed the bugs ; now you have patches that fix the gameplay. This isn't inherently a problem, it can mean incremental development, but obviously it changes how games are thought of. Obviously balances patches mean taking multiplayer dynamics into a single player game ; this is probably the influence of some kind of World of warcraft gaming that is creeping up even in games without cooldowns. Abusing a game of course is all the fun in old games - it makes you feel like you're working against the system, and a good system can't predict all possible input combinations from the player. It has a kind of old pen and paper flair to it, to the point that gamers can at least project themselves into the designers' perspective, by figuring out how the engine and coding work - at least superficially. You could say, then, that "immersive gaming" is what stops this mechanics, code-based approach to systems ; thus I contradicted the initial point about the opposition between balance and immersion ; and so I am a master of dialectics, suck my dick baby

Diablo 2 had SHORT cooldowns on few CPU/GPU intensive skills more due HW limitation than anything else .

One of my runs on Pathfinder Kingmaker was as a Silver Dragon Sorcerer and i din't picked a single fire based spell for it. Doesn't matter if Fire Snake is amazing, i din't picked. Had a hard time vs undeads but was very fun and engaging exactly because makes sense that such magician would have a harder time vs undead than my cleric. On ToEE i also did a no roll run and putted a 7 into my Sorcerer DEX, so i could't even use ranged touch spells without a great missing chance.

 

[Tygrende]

You didn't get balance patches in old games because they didn't exactly work on patches beyond making those that fixed the bugs ; now you have patches that fix the gameplay.

To be fair I think this in particular has more to do with how easy it is to pump out patches in the current era of almost exclusively digital distribution via Steam/GOG/etc.

 

[Momock]

Not only is it a problem of people selecting the wrong difficulty, but also a lack of mastery of the mechanics itself. I think for you to have "fun" you have to spend time learning the mechanics first and knowing all of your options, which can then lead to make the decisions that you want so there won't be any doubt of whether you think you lost due to lack of knowledge on your part or because of bad strategy. Then again you would have to slowly introduce additional mechanics and new enemies to keep the game fresh.

Well, you just have to label "beginner" the characters/classes that are easy to master, and when the player will get bored he'll choose a "pro" one. This way you won't have to learn the most complex mechanics in your first playthrough unless you want.

You can also apply this to classless systems, like, taking the example from S0rcererV1ct0r: if you make an elf with willpower + magic skills the game labels it as "easy" while if you combine opposite things like high magic elf + techno skills the game will label it "hard". Or preferably a bar will fill up (empty=hard/inneficient; full=easy/efficient) based on how many optimal synergies there are between your skills and atributes. The more there are the more it fills. This way you can't complain that you didn't know that your character was crap.

 

[Cryomancer]

You can also apply this to classless systems, like, taking the example from S0rcererV1ct0r: if you make an elf with willpower + magic skills the game labels it as "easy" while if you combine opposite things like high magic elf + techno skills the game will label it "hard". Or preferably a bar will fill up (empty=hard/inneficient; full=easy/efficient) based on how many optimal synergies there are between your skills and atributes. The more there are the more it fills. This way you can't complain that you didn't know that your character was crap.

But that is threat the player like a idiot. If the game says that magic and technology are the opposites, one is the application of natural law and the other is the negation and that a race has a strong inclination towards magic, is pretty obvious that goes against the tendencies would be very hard if not near impossible. On M&M VI, you can make a Elf "Knight" but this is not optimal and makes sense.

 

[Momock]

But that is threat the player like a idiot.

Yes. I was assuming that the "muh balance" crowd were idiots who complained because their shit build didn't work (as well as other builds, therefore: the game is unbalanced).

So you have to spell them that their build is crap (in a diplomatic way: it's for "pros" or "advanced players").

 

[Papa Môlé]

If you can make a worthless build why even allow that in the game though? Almost all build choices are about using meta-game knowledge since it's impossible to predict with complete accuracy what challenges the game will throw at you. All the designer is doing by having bad skill, feat, etc. choices is trying to get your to read their mind and making it harder or impossible to complete the game if you don't. Video games aren't like tabletop where you can negotiate with the dungeon master or find a use for obscure builds outside of the planned narrative.

 

[Fishy]

If you can make a worthless build why even allow that in the game though?

Because it's fun? It's an extra way for players to challenge themselves should they want to and it makes for a more interesting difficulty than a button adding +300% enemy HP. Plus you can't see everything when developing the game, and silly sounding combos might turn up to be viable or great alternatives with a few item/spells/whatever synergy.

Obviously you want to provide some context, it shouldn't be a complete blind guess. I'd say you want a combination of intuitive stuff (ex: no need to tell the player that a dwarven wizard or orcish courtesan might run into issues) and direct information at party creation time (ex: having stuff like beginner/intermediate/advanced tags below each classes).

 

[Butter]

The easiest way to prevent bad builds is to have all character progression on rails like a shitty Final Fantasy game. If you have complexity + choice, it's virtually guaranteed that bad builds will exist.