What is balance to you guys?

[Luminant]

Like the title says. I would really like to know, in it's entirety what balance is to the community. I'd appreciate my responses to be well thought out aswell.

 

Please refrain from posting things such as "Nerf Ops!" "Nerf Sorc!".

 

I know such a discussion will lead to chaos and massive disagreement but, please attempt to keep it civilized.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Luminant

[Roak]

holding tree pose for 2 minutes

[Almghty_gir]

I am not going to name any classes. i'm not going to name specific abilities or trees.

 

this post is literally about balance as a whole and peoples understanding of it and more importantly "how they THINK it should be done".

 

bear in mind here that everyone's perception of balance is different, and more often than not is clouded by bias (nobody thinks their own class is overpowered, because they always see the flaws more prominantly).

 

let me also start by saying: i do have some small background in this, no i'm not part of some pvp development team, rather i was class lead for disciple of khain in WAR when GOA were in charge of the EU players, and i then moved on to being a core tester when merged into the US. i was privilaged to a lot of inside information, and my opinion held weight with some of the developers of the game (along with some other core testers). and while WAR will always be plagued with percieved AND real balance issues, i can put my hand on my heart and say i was as unbiased as possible, i was even responsible for some very heavy nerfs to my own class... because they were needed, for the good of the game. i also reverse engineered a lot of the combat mechanics, providing the community with a working damage calculator which factored in attacker/defender levels, renown ranks, weapon dps, stats, mitigation etc.

 

for better or worse (as i know some people will see the negative), that is my background knowledge of balance.

 

so let me introduce to you a concept, this isn't rock paper scissors, this isn't a way in which one class should be strong against one and weak against another. i think that's actually a BAD way to balance. instead, balance should revolve around the following theory:

As a class's potential utility and/or survivability go up, their potential damage output should go down.

 

but why is this an important concept? why use this instead of rock paper scissors?

 

well... for a start it would solve a lot of problems, it would introduce some new ones too for sure, but ones which are far more manageable. it would mean there is a lot less of "x class is OP because they kill me non stop", when in reality they were designed to be that way due to rock paper scissors, it would in contrast also stop the "x class is OP because i can never even scratch them!".

 

instead, it would allow both developers and players to understand how and why certain things happen... to know that their class can't put out huge damage because they instead have access to healing/armour/group utility. or to understand that their class can put out a lot of damage but they have little or no access to crowd control, or armour. or that while they can stealth, giving them a great advantage over most people, they only have a couple of seconds window to put a target down before their damage becomes heavily normalised.

 

 

TL;DR

 

you may have any two of the following, but never more:

• healing
  
• utility
  
• survivability
  
• damage
  

 

so there we go. this is MY idea of how balance should work. i'm curious to read other peoples opinions or ideas.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Almghty_gir

[Gwal]

Statistical output and defense advantages based on time spent/luck = Imbalance.

 

The class balance in this game is awesome compared to every other MMO I have played at launch.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Gwal

[Senaleb]

This is balance...

 

[Sabbathius]

In a nutshell - when all else is equal, everyone should have an equal chance of winning against everyone else.

 

That is, take player 1 with class A, and player 2 with class B. If they are of similar skill level, and fought a thousand duels, their win/loss should be at 50/50. That, to me, is balance. Player skill should be more important than class, level or gear.

 

This is usually how it works in FPS games. Where a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. And no matter how leet you are or what gear you have or what level you are, you are still dead. Good example being Battlefield 3. You can be level 50 with all guns, scopes and attachments unlocked. And a level 1 can still blow you away reliably. If he's better than you, he'll blow you away most of the time. You can be an Assault kit and he can be an Engineer, and it still won't matter. That, to me, is balance.

 

Unfortunately in a game like SWTOR, or WoW, or Aion, etc., this is simply not the case.

-A level 1 cannot do anything to a 50. Hell, a bunch of level 30s still can't do anything to a 50.

-A new 50 cannot really do anything to a fully decked out 50 either, due to the idiocy of Expertise.

-Even with both at the same level and with the same gear, some classes are just stronger. Rock-paper-scissors-mushrooms-shotgun.

-And only then, if ALL of the above are equal (equal level, equal gear, same class), does it come down to player skill.

 

In other words, I feel balance in this game is butt-backwards. Like in most other MMOs.

 

The thing that is easiest to obtain - level, overshadows everything.

The thing that is second easiest to obtain - gear, it's just a grind, overshadows all but level.

The thing that is random - class, overshadows the rest.

And only then player skill becomes a deciding factor.

 

All that aside, my view on SWTOR classes is as follows:

 

- Sorcerers, grossly OP and need to be nerfed. But NOT the way you think. The way their force works needs to be reworked. They must be given a much smaller energy pool, so they are forced to choose what to use when, like every other class. Also they must be given a free autoattack. Currently I don't believe they can be fixed by simply nerfing some abilities.

 

-Mercs, damage with Arsenal needs to be toned down. As simple as that. They whine all the time about how fragile they are, despite Powertechs not having their CC (Concussive Missile, default knockback and possible talented knockback) and having identical defenses outside of tank spec which loses a ton of DPS.

 

-Marauders need some quality of life improvements, as do the Assassins, and maybe one CC or short CC immunity added.

 

-Assassins need their bugs fixed. One of the bugguest classes in the game where three abilities I know of don't work like the tooltip says they should. Once that is fixed, we can talk balance.

 

-Juggs need help in PvE, specifically tanking. But in PvP they do OK-ish. Tweaks here and there.

 

-Snipers need to be more streamlined, because they've been consistently the least played class in the game. And lately I don't see them in warzones at all.

[Rhazesx]

Balance is nerfing every class that kills me. I even made a list.

[GregoriusMaximus]

This game is actually pretty balanced as is. I disagree that any class is especially OP; there may be a few that could do with a buff.

[Luminant]

I am not going to name any classes. i'm not going to name specific abilities or trees.

 

this post is literally about balance as a whole and peoples understanding of it and more importantly "how they THINK it should be done".

 

bear in mind here that everyone's perception of balance is different, and more often than not is clouded by bias (nobody thinks their own class is overpowered, because they always see the flaws more prominantly).

 

let me also start by saying: i do have some small background in this, no i'm not part of some pvp development team, rather i was class lead for disciple of khain in WAR when GOA were in charge of the EU players, and i then moved on to being a core tester when merged into the US. i was privilaged to a lot of inside information, and my opinion held weight with some of the developers of the game (along with some other core testers). and while WAR will always be plagued with percieved AND real balance issues, i can put my hand on my heart and say i was as unbiased as possible, i was even responsible for some very heavy nerfs to my own class... because they were needed, for the good of the game. i also reverse engineered a lot of the combat mechanics, providing the community with a working damage calculator which factored in attacker/defender levels, renown ranks, weapon dps, stats, mitigation etc.

 

for better or worse (as i know some people will see the negative), that is my background knowledge of balance.

 

so let me introduce to you a concept, this isn't rock paper scissors, this isn't a way in which one class should be strong against one and weak against another. i think that's actually a BAD way to balance. instead, balance should revolve around the following theory:

As a class's potential utility and/or survivability go up, their potential damage output should go down.

 

but why is this an important concept? why use this instead of rock paper scissors?

 

well... for a start it would solve a lot of problems, it would introduce some new ones too for sure, but ones which are far more manageable. it would mean there is a lot less of "x class is OP because they kill me non stop", when in reality they were designed to be that way due to rock paper scissors, it would in contrast also stop the "x class is OP because i can never even scratch them!".

 

instead, it would allow both developers and players to understand how and why certain things happen... to know that their class can't put out huge damage because they instead have access to healing/armour/group utility. or to understand that their class can put out a lot of damage but they have little or no access to crowd control, or armour. or that while they can stealth, giving them a great advantage over most people, they only have a couple of seconds window to put a target down before their damage becomes heavily normalised.

 

 

TL;DR

 

you may have any two of the following, but never more:

• healing
  
• utility
  
• survivability
  
• damage
  

 

so there we go. this is MY idea of how balance should work. i'm curious to read other peoples opinions or ideas.

 

Your idea is great but in my opinion, Healing, Damage,and Tanking are just the 3 PvP main archetypes.

 

With those 3, all healers should be as equally potent at their job as another aswell as everyone who can do damage and tanking.

 

If those 3 outputs are equivalent at their selective roles all that's left is Utility. Utility serves as the determining factor as to stuns, CC, mobility, stealth,defensive cooldowns,offensive burst cooldowns etc. Utility is what makes classes different and is what would be the only thing tuned in a perfect world.

 

This is just what I think.

 

But beyond all of that, the dev's need a setting in which to balance all of that (3v3,10v10,1v1).

 

That has yet to be determined.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Luminant