What are all your opinions regarding a flavor of the month class design vs a rock paper scissors design, where one class may have a slight advantage over another class but be at a disadvantage vs another.
I've never really been a fan of a flavor of the month style class design personally. I can see how an argument can be made for it, how it encourages players to play new classes but at the same point I think it takes away from player identity.
I think a rock paper scissors style of class design can lead to interesting team make ups and stratagies to playing in a PvP environment.
--Cascc
I'm against "flavor of the month" and cookie cutter class builds. I like playing unusual things.
I was so mad. SO MAD. Like, "Flames, on the side of my face" mad when EQ2 simplified their attributes down for each class. I had a rocking 2-hander, caster Shadowknight who was all about the intelligence and spells, baby. She was a great DPSer and off-tank. When they changed the stats to be specific to classes (Strength and Stamina only for fighters), she became useless until I had time to get her "proper" stats back up to par.
I worked my butt off in Star Wars the Old Republic so I could have a Pureblood Jedi and Chiss Trooper back before you could just buy the race packs.
Let me make unusual combinations (within the lore), let me "break" my character. Though, maybe not to the extreme as Path of Exiles lets you break your character. LOL!
Maybe I am missing something here but to me flavor of the month has little to do with class balance and a lot more to do with frequent changes. Granted the changes may occur in an effort to rebalance classes but this is far from always true.
I prefer not having many changes in how classes play - especially changes driven by people complaining on the forums. People *always* complain and always say their class needs improvement. Occasionally they may even believe it - often they do not but are pushing for the result they want.
To me the ideal rate of change in how a class plays is rarely. Not every month or every 6 months. This doesn't mean that some changes are bad but I am referring to significant changes that have a major impact on whether one class plays better than other classes. I am definitely not referring to bug fixes or corrections when it turns out that a class is significantly too strong or significantly too weak to do what the developers intended but this should be done relativewly quickly after the class is rolled out or after a new ability is added that doesn't work as intended or has unexpected consequences.
Turning from FoTM to class balance - three things seem obvious.
One - classes at least within the same role should be reasonably comparable. No tank class should be clearly better than the other tank classes at almost everything that is important to a tank. Few people will play the other tank classes and the time and effort spent on them will have been wasted.
Two - balance does not mean equality - how boring if each class is the same as the others. Why have more than one tank class if so? Ideally each class should be better at some tanky things and worse at others. Failing this, each class should play very differently even if each class can do the same things - let them do the same things in very different ways.
Three - even in a group-focused game there is a role for solo play. Some classes should and will be better at it than others but all classes should have at least a minimal ability to solo effectively. By this I mean solo in landscape not in dungeons - I would prefer no class in the game to be able to solo in a dungeon designed for groups unless very highly leveled compared to the dungeon.
Pure classes over hybrids any day of the month.
Throwing monthly design changes at classes intentionally is lazy designing for a system that was probably built terribly from the start. Its also a nightmare for players who enjoy getting to know their class well. How would you like waking up once a month to find your entire house completely re-arranged forcing you to relearn where everything is? Yuuuuuck.
Cascc said: What are all your opinions regarding a flavor of the month class design vs a rock paper scissors design, where one class may have a slight advantage over another class but be at a disadvantage vs another. ...
I've always felt that if the lead combat balance dev just kept the public design goals up to date, and then balanced according to them, there would be less antagonism between devs and players regarding class balance.
Something like: It is our expectation that, by damage type, these classes, at each tier level, with similar quality gear, should produce the most damage of that type over the course of a 1 minute fight against an even-level non-boss group-intended target.
Fire: Wizard, Cold: Druid, Magic: Enchanter, Poison: Shaman, Disease: Direlord, Piercing: Rogue, Slashing: Ranger, Blunt: Monk. (just random examples, put down your righteous indignation / class envy)
Similar for each of the quaternity roles or primary combat factors, would be ideal. (threat, heal, incapacitation, mitigation, avoidance, etc)
Then, in addition to server side metrics, if players can produce logs that contradict these design goals, designers have the information they need to make adjustments, if those logs demonstrate the current design goals aren't being met.
However, it would also be really nice if the intended design goals regarding the disparity between classes in damage would also be public information. For example, if Summoners are intended to produce 80% of the fire damage of a wizard, well, that would be good to know before lighting the pitchforks and heading to the forums.
It's been my experience that the lack of clarity regarding these design goals is often the source of player-dev antagonism, over the years. So far, I've yet to see an MMO that even keeps their web site up to date, never mind something like this, so it's a bit of a dream, although trivial to do, in practice.
But for real, changing these things, and not updating the web site, and not notifying/acknowledging it publicly? That's.. just... bad.
Matauris said:Is your question asking if we prefer one class being OP or classes being balanced, with each having pro's and con's?
What I meant by "Flavor of the Month" was where classes are regularly tweeked to the point where a certain class(es) have a slight (hopefully not major) advantage over most other classes.
What I meant by "Rock Paper Scissors" was a balancing/design philosophy where through a class's toolset and mechanics has a minor inherant advantage over another, while simotaniously being at a minor disadvantage to another class. This is not to say that a skilled player can't over come a class disadvantage and shine.
I've played several different MMOs over the years and have found that these two philosophies are, in my opinion, what I see most commonly. The best example of both of these philosophies I can think of might be Old School WoW and Modern Wow. Modern WoW seems to be a game that generally revolves around a Flavor of the Month philosophy, where some classes tend to out perform others. Old school WoW circa Burning Crusade era, seems to have followed a Flavor of the Month philosophy but it also had a noticible Rock Paper Scissor feel to it as well. An example of this would be in PvP where Rogues tended to have an small advantage over Mages but also being slightly disadvantaged against warriors.
--Cascc
Balance happens. But...
FotM classes/builds occur because the producers continuously change things in an effort to balance top-end builds. They always use a balance/design philosophy but this typically results in FotM. The problem is simple but pervasive:
Balancing is done with the best-geared, maxed-out classes in mind.
Balance at that tier rarely works just a half-step down from that and is an huge mess just 1 step down, e.g. level 50 end-game-geared versus level 49 with best available gear. Though balance can be difficult to achieve (if not impossible) using only the top-end builds as the metric is a huge mistake. It divides the game into the Haves vs. the Have-Nots where the latter gets totally screwed every time. It seems fair on the surface, and really it is, since it rewards those who put in the most time and effort (and in some cases, money) more than those who don't. But it leaves the vast majority of the game in a very bad state because the balance isn't linearly represented from 1-50, only at 50+raid gear.
Worse, this situation can convert a happy player into a pissed off player when their class gets nerfed hard just because 1 player of that class, with the best gear available, does "too much damage". Instead of capping or tapering the dps output at that highest level they do things like reduce the damage bonus of your abilities across the board or some other equally shortsighted measure.
In the end, in a PvE game, balance should only be considered as a corrective measure in group situations and include a whole range of levels and gear. Start the game off with a reasonable balance, watch how things progress and buff/nerf only rarely, and then only mildly. Repetitive nerfs against the same classes week after week can turn your biggest fans against you quicker than you might think.
But again, FotM is a side effect, not a driving philosophy.
((However, it would also be really nice if the intended design goals regarding the disparity between classes in damage would also be public information. For example, if Summoners are intended to produce 80% of the fire damage of a wizard, well, that would be good to know before lighting the pitchforks and heading to the forums.))
This is an excellent observation and probably worthy of a separate thread to highlight it.
Asking VR to maintain this type of information precisely would not be reasonable given that the game will have many changes and the balance will inevitably change depending on gear and level and spec (if choices are given). Nor is that your suggestion. But a general *official* summary of the roles of the classes going further than the usual "tank" or "healer" or "damage" or "crowd control" may prove useful and that *is* your suggestion. Useful not just in reducing the use of pitchforks but in helping us to choose classes.
Thus - deliberately oversimplifying:
Class X - intended for the player that enjoys doing more ranged damage than other classes, assuming equivilent gear and levels. Ranged damage will generally be somewhat lower than melee damage to reflect the additional difficulties and challenges in getting into melee range under many circumstances.
Class Y - intended for the player that enjoys doing more melee damage than other classes, assuming equivilent gear and levels. Melee damge will generally be somewhat more than ranged damage to reflect the additional difficulties and challenges in getting into melee range under many circumstances.
Class Z - intended to do damage to enemies but also to have more diverse abilities than other classes which focus on dealing damage such as the ability to do some healing, crowd control, and provide strong buffs. Damage dealt will be distinctly lower than that dealt by more "pure" damage classes in order to reflect the greater variety of the abilities of this class."
I'll stop there - this isn't the purpose of this thread but I couldn't resist responding to and amplifying the comment about developer-provided information.
No game will ever release their intentions for class balance because it would greatly affect class selection. If someone is deciding between wizard and magician and learns that a wizard is 15% more dps... they might learn towards that class. (Despite what you think people make selections based upon performing at endgame, which is why people switch to fotm classes).
Also... class balance very rarely (if ever) completely changes how a class plays. I played a holy paladin in WoW for 10 years and not once did the class change so drastically I had to "learn" how to play it again. People get upset about class balance because it typically results in a nerf to their class at some point. Class balance is an integral part of the game and is one of the things EQ struggled at (more so with their tanks and healers).
They might not do it officially, but they do, vaguely. The class pages, via their existence and details give an indication of role. It varies, by game, from vague to specific. In some cases, references to damage give a very strong indication that, at the time of writing, at least, that class was meant to be "the best" at it's role. Or, as dorotea mentioned, the intended role for that class.
Over time, however, after many many balance passes, patches, and expansions, the original class pages remain, new players make decisions based on them, and then are rightly surprised and indignant when reality does not meet the public information available, outside the game.
As a developer myself, I love very specific requirements. I iterate with my clients regularly to get just that. For me, being as specific as possible on deliverables is a necessary requirement due to the nature of contract language and setting client expectations. Yet, in this case, I think Joppas life would be better, not worse, if he simply updated the intended roles and hierarchy of class positioning, at least annually, if not quarterly. That way, paying customers get to make an informed decision at all times. If it's public, your designers always have an out, too. "Look, it says this here... Look here... You're not supposed to be doing the most fire damage, Summoners. Back up." Summoners back up. "Sorry, Rangers, you're the master of slashing damage, not Piercing. That's Rogues. Now hush and let me work." Rangers hush.
I mean, people always want more transparency right? This would be that. And as for precedence, all the damage values for spells are defined, ahead of time, for all classes, roles, players and NPCs, in DnD and Pathfinder, for example. No issues there. Expectations set. Happy players.