Why should they be balanced, you ask? Well, because no one wants to be the loser that gets trounced every day by the "bullies". Do you want to get your ass handed to you every day? Or would you rather be the one doing the killing? Thus, you extinguish variety with this overpowered ability of one class over another. Everyone now wants to be *the* number one class and no one will pick anything different.

What "bonuses" do you mean? Is this like some RTS where you get additional gold gathering ability or something? It doesn't work like that in MMORPGs, where you can just hang back without fear unless you are in a group. Now you just open up a huge can of worms with your inability to fight and whatnot... For every problem you think you can fix with unbalancing classes, you will only create more problems for yourself as a developer.

Because most games have pvp, very few games are all that sucsessfull without it... A good example of this is vanguard or so iv heard

When you do a game with strictly PVE and you have a guy who is a walking tank with dmg reduction and kind of low dps in PVE this is considered just fine and if you are good at it will get you a spot in ground right away

Or if you some mage class which just spams debuffs and has very little offensive capabilitys but can make the boss have less armor dmg crowd controll ect this is encouraged also in group based PVE.

However a majority of the games that do well in todays market have PVP in them and every 1 likes to be able to put up a fight.... And unfortunatly most games dont go for the RPS effect they go for if you skilled and gear right you can kill every one....

Now when a rouge goes and 3-4 shots a caster with suprise attacks every time this will eventually lead to large numbers of casters who will all band together after getting killed by the rouge so many times so fast and many of these players are low intelligence when it comes to things like this and do not quite understand how hard it is to balance a game perfecrly and say "We pay you should listen to us or we will quit" or something along those lines.... and after 50% of the casters start to complain the devs will eventually get around to doing something about it because few choose to ignore them.

From here devs have 2 choices Buff the caster or nerf the rouge if they buff them to much then other classes might complain that the mages kill them in 3-4 shots perhaps the rouge will complain that they can no longer kill any one... these ignorant patterns of those who do not understand the complexity of "Balance" will continue to complain about just because they are pro at there class so they should be able to kill every one else and never die because the other plays are not pro

Originally posted by Quirhid

The class balance is very important because MMORPGs are based upon the basic principle of rock, paper, scissors - like all good games are. The paper indeed has to beat the rock. And if it doesn't or does it poorly, rock becomes overpowered. Why would you ever choose paper if it does nothing?! Surely you choose rock, because nothing beats it! You like losing? Challenge should come from something where the developer has seen effort, not lack of it.

This is not only a concern in PvP if the PvE mobs have classes too. If you give up the R.P.S. altogether, you'll end up having something other than a RPG because character building is all about these choices. You can forget about the party dynamics also because they too are based on R.P.S.

To give up something that's hard or seemingly impossible is stupid. We wouldn't have ever gone to the moon with that attitude. Shame on you!

Holy smokes, try thinking out of the box.   Maybe a big part of how stale all these MMOs are getting is because of this Warrior -> Rogue -> Caster -> Warrior cycle that no one seems to even want to try and figure out a solution for; they just accept it as the way its supposed to be.

Originally posted by donaldduck

I've never understood why people get so mad at the balance of classes in an MMO.

Classes don't NEED to be balanced. A mage should get killed if a warrior with a huge axe manages to hack at him a couple of times - that mage should keep out of the way or face the consequences- same goes with a healer.

Why can't some classes be harder to play than others? why can't some classes be easier to kill than others?

As long as MMO devs try to balance classes they'll just never win, as one class will always be complaining about being underpowered in relation to another.

So why not simply put up a disclaimer on the character creation screen that 'xxxx class is harder to play well' or 'xxxx class is recommended for advanced players'

You could then give out bonuses in other ways to stop everyone choosing the easiest class - more XP/money whatever.

There's some people that, if they don't know, you just can't tell 'em.

Not only does he not understand game balance, he doesn't understand economics.

If you give each class their own roles you don't need to balance them against eachother.

Healer is suppose to be support for instance and not a killing machine. He is support for those that are killing machines. This gives a strategy for the rogue class.

Rogues should not be killing warriors. Their roles could be to sneak in the back and kill healers and mages.

Mages should be dealing death from afar plain and simple

Etc etc etc.

My giving classes roles they excell at you don't have to balance 1 vs 1. I find that notion completely retarded. In Shadowbane you had a scout class which sole purpose were to uncover thieves and assassins excelling in not only to uncover but also killing them. This playstyle could and should be across the board. Pick a class for yourself depending on what you want to kill.

Classes dont even need to exist.

The only real reason they still do, is becuase the MMO industry is full of dinosaur dev programers who give themselves the title of "game designer".

Originally posted by tkobo

Classes dont even need to exist.

The only real reason they still do, is becuase the MMO industry is full of dinosaur dev programers who give themselves the title of "game designer".

Weird comment.

They do and they don't. There are gamers including myself that loves classes and there are gamers like you that doesn't. A market for both.

Claiming that the world doesn't need classes in a MMO a bit ....uhm

The worse thing about "balance" is the steps that the game designers will take to see it preserved.  All too often, character customization, advancement options and recognized world lore gets compromised in the pursuit of balance.  Games that focus on balancing things to perfection compromise their design principles trying to pursue statistical equality on some abstract spreadsheet. 

The more that balance becomes emphasized the more rigidly the designers will have to force players into conformity.  World of Warcraft is the perfect example of how balance castrates a game.  You have 10 million players online basically all trying to be the same... get the highest rated gear; find the spec that puts out the most damage.  The game world has blade masters, demon hunters and storm lords, but players are still forced to choose from your stock in trade selection of standard Dungeons and Dragons/Everquest characters.   Blood elf paladins.  The removal of racials. World of Warcraft is "balance" gone completely bananas.  

I'd rather see open ended advancement options, flexible character creation, and wide variety of classes and specializations over nine boring classes that aren't going to end up being balanced anyways.

 My humble opinion tries to put oneself in the developers shoes. Why would a developer spend the time and effort to create a playable avatar that isn't fun to play? Fun, to us, is overcoming challenges thrown at us with flair, style, cool factor, etc. If the game you designed denies the avatar to do this, then you have wasted your time and money.  Now the whole PvP thing demands some kind of environment where the player skill/ knowledge should trump the stats and profession abilities. This is where the balancing act is required.

The game really boils down to number crunching. Calculations and calculations. Most games get tested throught the wazoo to determine (in PvP) if avatar A pits up againast avatar B then it should be roughly equal in outcomes. However, player knowledge and skill should be the final say in how things really play out. As it should be.

No game designer wants any of his creations to be inferior and therefore not played. You won't pay to play long if the only enjoyable avatar is a particular class or set of skills, etc. 

Also realize that an MMO game is always growing. Expansions!  Usually means more difficult challenges and these have to be dealt with as well. 

Originally posted by tkobo

Classes dont even need to exist.

The only real reason they still do, is becuase the MMO industry is full of dinosaur dev programers who give themselves the title of "game designer".

Pretty much.  Even worse is that MMOs have been around for so long now, that the "new blood" of designers could conceivably never have even played anything but MMORPGs.  And with the complete lack of innovation we have seen in this genre (a genre so stagnated that "Public Quests" get the OMG! COOL! stamp of approval) if games have to start cannabilizing themselves (by and large every game has been feasting on the carcass of Everquest for a good ten years now) the future isn't looking too bright.

The problem in many current games is the e-peen stroking kiddies who want balance for duelling purpose. I always hope that devs wont listen to the PVP crybabies.

I like balance in the metagame. Based around group vs group or groupbased PVE.

Even though I like to solo, I always look at it as a nice bonus if I can handle PVE or PVP well solo. Not as a right. Because to be honest, I think that most games lack the need of skill to controll your character. The challenge is there in group tactics with encounters. So for me that is where the balancing should be done.

Originally posted by fansede

 My humble opinion tries to put oneself in the developers shoes. Why would a developer spend the time and effort to create a playable avatar that isn't fun to play? Fun, to us, is overcoming challenges thrown at us with flair, style, cool factor, etc. If the game you designed denies the avatar to do this, then you have wasted your time and money.  Now the whole PvP thing demands some kind of environment where the player skill/ knowledge should trump the stats and profession abilities. This is where the balancing act is required.

The game really boils down to number crunching. Calculations and calculations. Most games get tested throught the wazoo to determine (in PvP) if avatar A pits up againast avatar B then it should be roughly equal in outcomes. However, player knowledge and skill should be the final say in how things really play out. As it should be.

No game designer wants any of his creations to be inferior and therefore not played. You won't pay to play long if the only enjoyable avatar is a particular class or set of skills, etc. 

Also realize that an MMO game is always growing. Expansions!  Usually means more difficult challenges and these have to be dealt with as well. 

 

Well yeah, that's all well and good to say, but in the end, why does it always seem to come down to whichever side can gut out the other team's healers faster?   Once you get enough people involved it becomes less a factor of if Class A and Class B are equally balanced as opposed to which side organizes faster and better.  I don't play a massively multiplayer online game to engage in 3v3 arena matches.

If you want PvP where every person is on even ground, then play an FPS.  That's where skill, reflex, and the ability to survive in a twitch game atmosphere come into play.

As unbalanced as MMO PvP may be, nothing changes the fact that you just run around in circles around the person you're trying to kill while pressing the numbers 1-8 keys.  And most of the time it's not even that complicated.

Originally posted by red_cruiser

Originally posted by tkobo

Classes dont even need to exist.

The only real reason they still do, is becuase the MMO industry is full of dinosaur dev programers who give themselves the title of "game designer".

 

Pretty much.  Even worse is that MMOs have been around for so long now, that the "new blood" of designers could conceivably never have even played anything but MMORPGs.  And with the complete lack of innovation we have seen in this genre (a genre so stagnated that "Public Quests" get the OMG! COOL! stamp of approval) if games have to start cannabilizing themselves (by and large every game has been feasting on the carcass of Everquest for a good ten years now) the future isn't looking too bright.

Lets see what EQ 10 years ago had different than MMO's today

1. Slow leveling

2. death penalty

3. Tons of  buffs that actually made a difference in downtime

4. Huge amounts of timesinks and downtime

5. No instances bottlenecking advancement and gaining equipment

6. Raid mobs on long respawn timers

7. Specialized classes and only a few hybrids

8. No mounts

9. No maps

10. No quest indicators

11. Power Levelling

12. Zones

The list goes on.

Todays MMO's has completely rewritten how a MMO should be. You don't have to look further than instances. Nothing is like how it was back in the days of EQ. It's bearly recognizable. The only few things that remains the same is the fact you still have to kill mobs. You still have options to explore dungeons but now you can do it in solitude with a small group. As for classes. We have more hybrids now catering to making every group setup work. You are no longer dependable on an enchanter to CC or a cleric to heal. You have several classes able to furfill those roles perfectly.

If you are going to play a D&D style MMO then clerics druids etc belongs in that lore. If you want to move away from all that then start playing star trek/star wars type of MMO's..something more scifi based or other genres in general within the MMO realm

The real problem is you need a game that caters to what you want to play. It doesn't make you more right about how the MMO scene should be like.

The focus of both developers and players has changed somewhat over the years.

They're not concerned with playing the game anymore - They are only thinking about winning it. Just too bad that no one actually realized this yet.

Originally posted by red_cruiser

Originally posted by Quirhid

The class balance is very important because MMORPGs are based upon the basic principle of rock, paper, scissors - like all good games are. The paper indeed has to beat the rock. And if it doesn't or does it poorly, rock becomes overpowered. Why would you ever choose paper if it does nothing?! Surely you choose rock, because nothing beats it! You like losing? Challenge should come from something where the developer has seen effort, not lack of it.

This is not only a concern in PvP if the PvE mobs have classes too. If you give up the R.P.S. altogether, you'll end up having something other than a RPG because character building is all about these choices. You can forget about the party dynamics also because they too are based on R.P.S.

To give up something that's hard or seemingly impossible is stupid. We wouldn't have ever gone to the moon with that attitude. Shame on you!

 

Holy smokes, try thinking out of the box.   Maybe a big part of how stale all these MMOs are getting is because of this Warrior -> Rogue -> Caster -> Warrior cycle that no one seems to even want to try and figure out a solution for; they just accept it as the way its supposed to be.

So you'd just give up all classes and specialization. Where's the RPG in that? I know I don't want to be the same exact guy who walks by.

Even FPS' have R.P.S.! Snipers beat everything else in long range, assault rifles in middle range, shotguns and smgs in short range. If shotguns worked both in short AND long range wouldn't that be overpowering? Sure we could all play with the same exact gun, but I ask again - where's the RPG in that?

I like Magic the Gathering and I like that there's good amount of R.P.S. in it. I like D&D too where some characters do things better than others. It's full of choices, possibilities and customization. I like MMOs where you can work together with you team to achieve something and where someone cannot be instantly replaced by another. Everyone has their own job and speciality.

Few games don't use R.P.S. at all. If you're tired of it completely, I'd recommed you play Quake Live and stick to arena so everyone has the same weapons as you do. Or some FPS instagib, racing games where everyone has the same exact car, Mario or any other platformer. Pure skill, no strategy, no builds, no decks, no random chance, no planning... just you and now.

My personal opinion is however that if you give up R.P.S. you really dumb down the game. Sure I like other games as well but I enjoy it more when I have to use the gray matter between my ears.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by red_cruiser

Originally posted by Quirhid

The class balance is very important because MMORPGs are based upon the basic principle of rock, paper, scissors - like all good games are. The paper indeed has to beat the rock. And if it doesn't or does it poorly, rock becomes overpowered. Why would you ever choose paper if it does nothing?! Surely you choose rock, because nothing beats it! You like losing? Challenge should come from something where the developer has seen effort, not lack of it.

This is not only a concern in PvP if the PvE mobs have classes too. If you give up the R.P.S. altogether, you'll end up having something other than a RPG because character building is all about these choices. You can forget about the party dynamics also because they too are based on R.P.S.

To give up something that's hard or seemingly impossible is stupid. We wouldn't have ever gone to the moon with that attitude. Shame on you!

 

Holy smokes, try thinking out of the box.   Maybe a big part of how stale all these MMOs are getting is because of this Warrior -> Rogue -> Caster -> Warrior cycle that no one seems to even want to try and figure out a solution for; they just accept it as the way its supposed to be.

 

So you'd just give up all classes and specialization. Where's the RPG in that? I know I don't want to be the same exact guy who walks by.

Even FPS' have R.P.S.! Snipers beat everything else in long range, assault rifles in middle range, shotguns and smgs in short range. If shotguns worked both in short AND long range wouldn't that be overpowering? Sure we could all play with the same exact gun, but I ask again - where's the RPG in that?

I like Magic the Gathering and I like that there's good amount of R.P.S. in it. I like D&D too where some characters do things better than others. It's full of choices, possibilities and customization. I like MMOs where you can work together with you team to achieve something and where someone cannot be instantly replaced by another. Everyone has their own job and speciality.

Few games don't use R.P.S. at all. If you're tired of it completely, I'd recommed you play Quake Live and stick to arena so everyone has the same weapons as you do. Or some FPS instagib, racing games where everyone has the same exact car, Mario or any other platformer. Pure skill, no strategy, no builds, no decks, no random chance, no planning... just you and now.

My personal opinion is however that if you give up R.P.S. you really dumb down the game. Sure I like other games as well but I enjoy it more when I have to use the gray matter between my ears.

I completely agree. The problem isn't classes. The problem is half finished buggy products and steep PC requirements. I see more complaints about games not delivering what they promised or that they are buggy to the point of it being game breaking then i do about tank, healer, dps'er. Most people don't mind playing class oriented MMO's if they are done right. These sandbox fanatics are a hoot. They think they hold the answer to everybodys problem with the genre. Failing to realize that just like the rest of us...It's just a personal preference. Not the end all be all answer.

Originally posted by Miner-2049er

Classes DON'T NEED to be balanced.

It's ridiculous if a healer archetype can toe to toe with a same level warrior / barbarian. It's just wrong.

 

Unfortunately the RPG has been lost to the Solo -Questers and hardcore PvPers that macro, hack or just play the easiest FOTM class.

In some sports you get a handicap if you're really good. Why is it that PvPers never ever consider the same route.

If another player managed to beat me in PvP with vendor gear or similar then he or she would actually get genuine respect.

All the really great PvPers should flock to a weaker class so they can show their genuine skill, but it's not going to happen.

 

 

This obsession with balance has killed the variety in classes, but the fights are still very rarely fair so why bother.

 

 

 

 

this is sadly the truth of multiplayer RPG games and its what is destroying the games.

honestly classes do not NEED to be balanced as persay equal to eachother, they just need to have a ROLE. a healer should not be able to go solo questing (maybe except the undead) and a warrior or Rogue should not be able to heal themselves other than basic first aid bandages. wizzards should remain squishies, have a bit more selfhealing than wariors or rogues but never as much as healers.

i mean if you make an MMORPG that take roles into consideration and give XP acording to the roles, say a healer would get xp proportional to the amount of heal points they do to other players etc.... and make classes depend on eachother then it would be a "balanced" game

you might say what if i just want to log in for a few minutes because i dont have time to get a party and blablablabla, i say go play oblivion or fable or any other single player game that are specifically made to solo quest.

MMORPGs are made to be played as a community and such the best balanced system is not where every one is equal but where every one has a role to play (hence Massively Multiplayer Online ROLE Playing Game)

Originally posted by red_cruiser

Originally posted by fansede

 My humble opinion tries to put oneself in the developers shoes. Why would a developer spend the time and effort to create a playable avatar that isn't fun to play? Fun, to us, is overcoming challenges thrown at us with flair, style, cool factor, etc. If the game you designed denies the avatar to do this, then you have wasted your time and money.  Now the whole PvP thing demands some kind of environment where the player skill/ knowledge should trump the stats and profession abilities. This is where the balancing act is required.

The game really boils down to number crunching. Calculations and calculations. Most games get tested throught the wazoo to determine (in PvP) if avatar A pits up againast avatar B then it should be roughly equal in outcomes. However, player knowledge and skill should be the final say in how things really play out. As it should be.

No game designer wants any of his creations to be inferior and therefore not played. You won't pay to play long if the only enjoyable avatar is a particular class or set of skills, etc. 

Also realize that an MMO game is always growing. Expansions!  Usually means more difficult challenges and these have to be dealt with as well. 

 

 

Well yeah, that's all well and good to say, but in the end, why does it always seem to come down to whichever side can gut out the other team's healers faster?   Once you get enough people involved it becomes less a factor of if Class A and Class B are equally balanced as opposed to which side organizes faster and better.  I don't play a massively multiplayer online game to engage in 3v3 arena matches.

Taking out the healer is a sound tactic in group situations in most games. Not sure how this fits in this class balance discussion. If you are asking about this because you desire that everyone be able to self heal, then your real question should be why have classes at all. The debate of MMO games should be  based on Skill sets vs. professions are legion. 

If we are talking why developers have to balance playable toons at all, I state it is a necessary evil to keep players enjoying the game.

Taking out the healer is a sound tactic in group situations in most games. Not sure how this fits in this class balance discussion. If you are asking about this because you desire that everyone be able to self heal, then your real question should be why have classes at all. The debate of MMO games should be  based on Skill sets vs. professions are legion. 

Healers ar Force Multipliers.  In the right setup a healer is worth multiple DPSers.