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Post by
Hyperspacerebel
The problem is that is
impossible
to achieve. At the very bottom level, you cannot balance ranged vs. melee in that way. Then going up, each thing that makes a class unique is another thing that cannot be balanced. Take heal reductions. Once that skill exists, you no longer are blanaced no matter what you do; you'll either be overpowered against teams with healers, or underpowered against teams without healers.
It maybe damn near impossible to incorporate into WoW at this point but it is most certainly
not
impossible to do in terms of MMOs in general. I have seen other MMOs that have done it just fine. I stated in my post that I do not expect to ever see this fully realized in WoW but it is
definitely
possible to do in MMOs.
Name a single balanced MMO. Not kinda-balance. Balanced. There are none. Stop and think about any class defining ability, and tell me how it is possible to balance it in all circumstances with all other classes.
Post by
755096
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
755096
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
War Priest one of the most powerful classes when I was playing, and from what I understand they still are to some degree. But even that aside, Warhammer is very much a rock-paper-scissors game. Tanks > melee > ranged > tanks, etc.
Matrix Online was a pretty crappy game, and pvp was one of the worst elements of it according to nearly everyone who played it. Close-fighting classes were particularly painful to play.
And being overpowered is not about being able to completely own a class. It's a number game, and one will always come out somewhat higher than another.
Post by
755096
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
I played Matrix Online for ~6 months. You'll be hard pressed to find any MMO I haven't played (Aion being the biggest exception).
But since you seem to think you're experience is enough to base a universal claim, then why haven't you answered my question? How is is possible to balance any class defining ability in every circumstance?
Post by
755096
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
I don't want you to come up with anything. I want you to explain how balance is possible. It's inherent to the nature of varying classes for there to be imbalance. You give class X a slow, and they excel in every situation where slows are important. You give class Y a healing debuff, and they excel in every situation where there are heals. Balance is impossible unless you give everyone the same abilities.
Post by
Gates
I don't want you to come up with anything. I want you to explain how balance is possible. It's inherent to the nature of varying classes for there to be imbalance. You give class X a slow, and they excel in every situation where slows are important. You give class Y a healing debuff, and they excel in every situation where there are heals. Balance is impossible unless you give everyone the same abilities.
This is getting very off-topic, but I'll have to throw a little input here.
Ever heard of the game Demon's Souls? It is a console game, not an MMO, but its system of PvP could work very well in the end.
Characters in that game are fragile. You don't feel like a badass in that game like you do in every MMO out there. You feel weak. You know that if you get hit, you will likely die.
That type of system could work well in an MMO, but like Maverik said, that MMO is not WoW.
Basically, casters do insane damage, and have crappy physical defense. They can kill a melee in 2 hits from a distance, assuming the melee players don't dodge.
Melee players, who have huge defense, take less damage from melee attacks, but spells are not nullified. But once they are in range, that melee-weak caster is as good as dead.
There is no rock-paper-scissors ideology present in this system. Both types of classes can kill the other, but require different play-styles to work.
The reason WoW's PvP system will never be balanced is because Blizzard has veered far away from the classic DnD rules. The main problems with this are:
1) In DnD rules, the roles for damage dealing has always been mage>rogue>plate wearers.
-Since Blizzard wants everyone to have a fair chance to play, all classes can now pull roughly the same dps. This "solution" leads to problem two.
2) Since all classes can pull the same dps, how do ranged classes regain that superiority over melee classes?
-Well, since all classes can pull the same dps, they need similar survivability. So Blizzard trashed the armor differences between plate and cloth, made stamina values about the same, and gave everyone survivability cooldowns.
The only way a balanced PvP system could ever work in an MMO is to bring the balanced DnD rules back (kinda like how Demon's Souls worked).
This, of course, will never happen in WoW. Blizzard won't reduce paladins, warriors, and DKs into being solely meat-shields (which is all plate wearers were in the DnD universe). And they won't make other classes as squishy as they should be ever again. So don't expect a balanced result, because it won't happen.
And now, I am done with this conversation, because this wall of text is taking up way too much space and is completely off topic.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
You just described one of the most unbalanced systems I've ever heard. If a ranged can 2-shot a melee, than ranged have have a complete unfair advantage in open areas. And conversely, melee have complete unfair advantage in close quarters. I'm astonished that anyone could call that balanced.
Post by
Gates
You just described one of the most unbalanced systems I've ever heard. If a ranged can 2-shot a melee, than ranged have have a complete unfair advantage in open areas. And conversely, melee have complete unfair advantage in close quarters. I'm astonished that anyone could call that balanced.
Obviously you have never played the game, so I can't quite clarify how the system works.
This system would be very functional in an MMO where you can't select the unit you are attacking, so obviously WoW does not apply.
In other words, you have to use skill to dodge and aim attacks. Aiming and dodging are not done for you.
Therefore, the game's PvP system is practically flawless, because, as melee, you are relying on your dodging skills to get up close and strike, while ranged attackers must be aware of their surroundings as they kite you to keep their distance. A system like this that relies on skill instead of an RNG is the perfect PvP system, but very few MMOs want to take that route, since balancing PvE in a similar scenario would be nearly impossible.
And this is my last post out-of-topic here, this argument is pointless.
Post by
26184
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
You just described one of the most unbalanced systems I've ever heard. If a ranged can 2-shot a melee, than ranged have have a complete unfair advantage in open areas. And conversely, melee have complete unfair advantage in close quarters. I'm astonished that anyone could call that balanced.
Obviously you have never played the game, so I can't quite clarify how the system works.
This system would be very functional in an MMO where you can't select the unit you are attacking, so obviously WoW does not apply.
In other words, you have to use skill to dodge and aim attacks. Aiming and dodging are not done for you.
Therefore, the game's PvP system is practically flawless, because, as melee, you are relying on your dodging skills to get up close and strike, while ranged attackers must be aware of their surroundings as they kite you to keep their distance. A system like this that relies on skill instead of an RNG is the perfect PvP system, but very few MMOs want to take that route, since balancing PvE in a similar scenario would be nearly impossible.
And this is my last post out-of-topic here, this argument is pointless.
So either the ranged will never hit the melee coming towards him, or the melee will never be able to catch the ranged. Switching from and RNG element to a skill element doesn't magically balance the game. The mechanics still exist, and the mechanics are controlled by certain rules, and those rules ultimately boil down to a number battle.
I don't need to play the game to understand the basic concept of balance.
Any
difference is an imbalance.
Post by
755096
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
You do need to play the game because you're obviously talking out of your ass and making very bold, generalized statements such as "balancing classes in a MMO is impossible". Don't talk in absolutes, ever. The only absolute guarantee for anything in life is that we're all gonna die someday. Everything else is very possible and up for debate.
Hahahahahahahahahaha....
So you're going to debate the validity of 1 + 1 being 2? There are lots of absolutes, and in a game based on numbers, you're going to find them all over the place. If the net value of a ranged's kiting ability is greater than a melee's ability to reach the ranged in a given circumstance, the ranged is overpowered in those circumstances, and vice versa.
The math involved is extremely simple, especially if you take an easy ability like healing reduction. Let's take a pure dps class with a 25% healing reduction versus a melee class with self-healing abilities, and then later versus a pure dps class without a healing debuff.
In the first fight, the self-healing class will probably have a dps rating of about 7 out of 10 and a healing rating of 3 out of 10, while the healing-debuff class will have a dps rating of 9 out of 10 with the last 1 being made up by the healing debuff. Now tweek the numbers, so that it's as fiar a fight as possible under normal circumstance. Now face off against the pure dps class who would have a higher dps rating to make up for his lack of a healing debuff (otherwise he would have a harder time against healers than the healing-debuff class, and of course that wouldn't be fair). So now we have a 10 out of 10 dps class versus a 9 out of 10 dps class (who happens to have a completely worthless healing debuff). The math dictates that the pure dps is overpowered in this case. But if you then decide to nerf his damage, then he'll be underpowered against the healing class. So then you decide to nerf his damage and give him a stun. The stun might end up being about equal to the healing debuff when facing healers, balancing that aspect out again, but the stun can be used against non-healing classes whereas the healing debuff can't, thus making him overpowered against non-healing classes. And thus continues the vicious cycle that cannot end until everyone has the same abilities.
There, I spelled out what should be self-evident to anyone with at least high school algebra under their belt.
Post by
363599
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
436804
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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