The WAH, 2/16/09 - The Class Balance Love/Hate Relationship

[PhoenixRed]

Last week we were introduced to the bevy of changes that are due for WAR's 1.2 patch, with a number of things to address class balance in the game through tweaks, fixes, and changes. And as expected, there was what you could honestly call a cacophony of voices. I call it a cacophony because as those who've been at MMOs for a while know, any kind of class balancing modifications come with it a ridiculously wide array of responses, from joy and happiness to angst and anger. The more classes you introduce, or the more significant the change, the louder these voices get.

It's no surprise that WAR has class balance issues - no MMO that makes a difference between one class or another escapes this kind of conundrum. It's also no surprise that the folks at Mythic are accustomed to dealing with multiple classes - after all, Dark Age of Camelot had three factions and a ton of class balancing to do between them. But regardless of what the developers do, there are many people who have a relationship with class balance akin to dating a crazy person - sure, it hurts and it sucks once in a while, but the really good parts keep you coming back for more, for the rush of excitement if not simple curiosity. Meanwhile, the crazy person may be your affectionate and content lover one minute and a raving lunatic who is ripping up your apartment the next.

Among the dissonance of the community voice has rung a variety of topics on the schizophrenia of WAR's class balance, such as:
-Chosen are largely ignored in patches.
-Swordmasters as opposed to their Black Orc brethren are not appealing to play.
-The Archmage and Shaman's survivability has been reduced to a hybrid class unable to do either damage or healing effectively.
-Bright Wizards in packs are deadly and dot-stacking kills whole sides
-Witch Elves' burst damage is so debilitating that it makes players take a dirt nap for half if not all of a scenario
-Black Orcs and Ironbreakers are generally though of to be the "best" tanks do to ability to absorb damage, yet some of these may be the result of abilities working better than could be intended.

The list goes on. Some of these have been dealt with and some of these have not.

Now whether or not this means the class balance is good or bad for WAR remains to be seen. On one hand, the age-old argument of "if everyone is complaining, the balance is fine" might apply here. After all, you'd be hard pressed to find a class where everything, from the perspective of the players, is just fine. But on the other, the progress of class balance with regards to other elements such as how classes perform in scenarios, in the overall campaign, and even in PvE combat might point to a bunch of problems yet to be solved by the Combat and Careers team.

From the developers' standpoint, communication about addressing these issues causes more harm than good:

Originally Posted by Mythic_Gersh

Folks,

Same thing I told the Shaman, this isn't a post for laying all of your worries and concerns out. Yes I'm reading it but I also read all of the other more detailed issue posts on these boards (and others) so try and keep your comments for improvements focused there.

With that I'm going back to my silent form, generally we devs don't come out of the woodwork b/c we hate you but b/c every time we do it sparks such violent contention that it hurts as much as it helps. As such we find it better to let the community talk about their issues without us there to polarize the conversation.

-Adam

I have to agree on some level - developer posts do polarize the community, because they are dissected, torn apart, and sliced up, and the demands from the masses in response are simply too numerous and too many to be fielded in any proper way. In that respect, not posting as a developer is better than creating a ton of other discussion based upon what could potentially be one or two missed words (like Adam's mistake above about not coming out of the woodwork "b/c we hate you" when he intended to say "not b/c we hate you" - which has been forgiven by the community).

But I do disagree that communication from the developers does more harm than good. The reason why so many people have such a love/hate relationship with the off-their-rocker entity of class balance in WAR is probably because they lack the big picture perspective that only a Combat and Careers person can provide. They are obligated to be the relationship therapist, to try to resolve the insanity of class balance issues and problems with the angst and self-loathing/joy and happy feeling of the players that deal with it. And like any relationship counseling, the opening of communication is key to doing this. I would hazard a guess that most players understand buffs and nerfs only in the context of what it means for their class (and sometimes their side) and not for everything.

If a nerf happens to the overall damage of one class, it needs to be explained in the context of the entire system. If a buff happens to an ability in one archetype that helps all of them, it needs to be shown how overall benefit and not "overpoweredness" happens. This is especially true given the fact that while there are 4 archetypes and "mirror" classes, that the classes are different from one another - moreso in some cases than with others. More frequent updates, highlighting both the progress of internal testing and the gathering of feedback from the community, would certainly be welcome as well. Right now, we really only hear about Combat and Careers updates in terms of patches. It's nice to see them all at once, but there's no explanation of the "means" to get to those patches nor any real idea of how player feedback figures into it. With a healthy, clearly stated disclaimer of "work in progress" and "things can change", more frequent updates from a class balance perspective can only help. Including them on the Herald will remove the element of response on forums and give it a central location to be seen.

In short, players need to understand the relationship they have with class balance - given that they're willing to continue with their relationship with it at all. Developers are the only credible entity that can do this. The problem is that players don't understand it and the developers aren't currently helping to explain it any better. If there's an interest at all in creating less of the mentality of "breaking up" with WAR's class balance (and therefore, the game itself), hopefully, we'll see more "out of the woodwork" posts from the developers, and we'll see more meaningful feedback on classes as a result.

[Kyuubix]

Well it happens...
There so many point of views so many opinions and opportunities for the game but people do take it to a far extent as i did, and i learned the hard way, keep working hard though

[RootedOak]

Strangely enough, my interest in Class Balance is very tame for WAR. While it's still an issue in my mind while I play, my main concerns have to do with RvR gameplay and dynamics.

I can handle being an expendable melee class, but I can't handle being a melee class that has one role. Run the Oil, or sub-par siege weapons. I won't even go into guarding the postern doors.

Ghrond's Sachristy comes to mind. Destruction can mount up and ride straight for their postern door from the warcamp. They will have something like 2 seconds of "RvR flagged" time before they slip through the door(Core Servers).

I now play an ORvR server, so everyone is flagged all the time. This still doesn't resolve my biggest concerns.

[Direlord]

What i would like to see after patchs go live is the reasoning for some of the changes. We did this because... type posts. I don't expect hard numbers from all the data they collection from the game, I know they'll never show that. Just a explaination of the thought process of why something was changed.

Heck even if it was we felt this ability was causing too much damager for it's ap cost, CD, rank you got etc.

Now I would also say i don't expect this for everything as that would make the patch notes way to big and too long to write. However on some of the big changes or more vocal they nerfed our class complaints a little talk of why it was done would help. It might even quiet a very few vocal people. Let's face it though the majority will still complain regardless.

[Aelonrold]

All i ever wanted was my SM to actually look like the awesomesauce models.

[Tozen]

I have two big thoughts about class balance:

#1. For the most part, I think people make a much bigger fuss over class balance than is really necessary. The best example of this I can think of is the Magus, which also happens to be my highest level character. Every week I look over the Magus forums and see complaints like "the only thing a Magus is good for is giving a free kill to the enemy." Seriously... come on. I can admit that if you directly compare the Magus to other ranged archetypes then the class comes up lacking in some areas, but to take that information and extend it to "the Magus is horrible and should never be played" is pretty ridiculous IMHO. Even when Mythic buffs the Magus as I suspect that they will do in the next patch, I strongly doubt that all three Destruction ranged classes are going to be equally strong, simply because that's an almost impossible standard to meet without making them all direct clones with different graphics. The Magus might not end up being on the bottom of the food chain next time around, but some other class will be and the cycle will repeat. At the end of the day, I think that players need to be more concerned about whether or not their class has any glaring, game breaking issues, which is different from "my class is decent but others are better" issues. Which leads me to my second point:

#2. That considered, there are some serious class balance concerns that are extremely important and demand developer feedback/action. I'm not talking about the nit-picky "class X can do 100 more points of damage than mine can under circumstance Y," but rather, "my class is fundamentally broken in a key area." The best example I can think of falls under the category of "healers."
a. The WP (and to a lesser degree the DoK) heal far too much AoE damage for being able to sit in the back line.
b. Conversely, the classes that were designed to sit in the back line and heal cannot heal as well as their melee counterparts.
c. Zealot rituals (and I imagine RP equivalent) are rarely ever used because they are so limited in their effects.
d. Archmages and Shaman are supposed to be able to do damage in addition to healing, but right now they can't really do either well. That's a fundamental problem with their mechanic.

Now, I'm not an actual game developer or anything, but some of these problems seem like they could be easily fixed. Naturally I would expect that any change to overall healing power would have to be monitored closely, but what about the damage issue? That could be practically solved instantly with a simple boost to the damage numbers on their spells or, better yet, a change that would allow the damage spells to be affected by Willpower instead of intelligence. I strongly doubt that it would really mess up balance to give healers a slight damage boost.

Anyways, that is just one example of what I would consider to be a "key issue." It's just my opinion, but nevertheless, I think this is the kind of distinction that needs to be made.

[gorkah]

I agree, we need more "vision" statements from the staff, like AM's are not working how we think, let's change the mechanic, or BO's are stronger than we had intended.

I think having a good "vision" or "mission statement" for the state of each archetype will keep people subbed chasing that dangling carrot

[ldsLurker]

You made some really good points PR. Some people are always going to be about the max/min and want the best they can get. When you're driven by a competitive spirit it can be hard to be impartial. There's also the ego of it all that many players see themselves in their characters and so they want to be the best. I think this is why players take nerfs so harshly, it's not just their character that was reduced in some way, but it feels as though they themselves were diminished!

Another thing I've noticed is if you play a character long enough over time in a game that regularly patches and balances you'll find yourself at different ends of the spectrum. Sometimes you will be over-powered and sometimes you'll be underwhelming. If you go chasing the FoTM classes You can "ride the powerwave of OPness" but that involves a lot of time leveling for something that can be taken away in a single patch. That may be fine for some but it's not for me.

My advice is to play the class you have the most fun with, provide feedback, and don't take changes personally. And remember, no one can buff or nerf your skill except for you.

[Hengall]

Awesome post. But I have to say i'm pretty disappointed with the Chosen Class. This is my second month of WAR and I really enjoyed everything about the class, from the way it looks to the mechanics of it. But seems like it keep getting nerfed, or if not so, left beside. I'm afraid that patch 1.2 will only come to make things even worse for Chosen, so I got tired and decided to reroll something else, which I haven't really decided, b/c I would really love to play Chosen in a fair way. I'll let my chosen rest for a while, waiting for the day someone will look after the class and realize how nerfed it got and how unbalanced it is/will be.

[Aeywyn]

Yes devs have a hard job.

No they cant possibly please everybody because there is a particular section of the community that will argue anything to either attept to get their classes improved or try to drown out calls for nerfs / muddy the water.

What devs interested in class balance can do is analyse the numbers and implement frequent small changes to resolve imbalance. This way nothing becomes overpowered but the classes gradually become equally powerfull.

You cant do this by listening to every single forum post.

But you can at least filter out the 'WE doesnt do enough damage' / 'BO's dont tank enough' white noise to get to the honest issues underneath....

At the moment the game either appears to be or is hugely biased in favour of destruction classes.

Which ever one it is, either the perception needs to be changed or the reality needs to be changed because you cant have a game where a large percentage of one side feels hard done by.

Everybody likes to feel that they have had a fair chance at success in a game and atm if you are a WL, WH, AM, SM that feeling is definately missing.

Mythic have one last chance to keep a lot of Order players from leaving for other games.

This patch and the slayer class in particular better be something that addresses Order's issues for a change or there will be a significant exodus. A whole lot of servers that are currently just about fine in terms of population will become unstable.

How many wake up calls do Mythic need before they realise that there is a huge problem with either the perception or the reality of Order classes?

I hope this game survives and goes on to be successfull but this simply isnt going to happen until they remove the perceived or actual bias from the game.

[Jost]

I think that if the developers were clearer about their intent behind specific changes and their overall idea about how certain abilities/classes/archetypes are supposed to function, players could give more useful feedback.

[Sylf]

If you click my sig, you'll find a really nice AM reply to Adam's post in the OP. Some of us can't wait.

[Akkuma]

You want to see how fantastic of a job Mythic did? /sarcasm

This poll was started 1/29/2009:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/for...d.php?t=242730

This poll was started 2/10/2009:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/for...d.php?t=248768

The facts are pretty apparent, but at least with one class 2x-3x the people are fed up with the class after patch notes than prior to it or the info on Slayers was so fantastic people decided to drop their main. Mythic thinks they are going to solve this by making people wait another 6 weeks while people have gimped classes? I thought they were trying to gain subscribers not lose em.

[Candesious]

Originally Posted by RootedOak

Strangely enough, my interest in Class Balance is very tame for WAR. While it's still an issue in my mind while I play, my main concerns have to do with RvR gameplay and dynamics.

I can handle being an expendable melee class, but I can't handle being a melee class that has one role. Run the Oil, or sub-par siege weapons. I won't even go into guarding the postern doors.

Ghrond's Sachristy comes to mind. Destruction can mount up and ride straight for their postern door from the warcamp. They will have something like 2 seconds of "RvR flagged" time before they slip through the door(Core Servers).

I now play an ORvR server, so everyone is flagged all the time. This still doesn't resolve my biggest concerns.

And stone Claw In Highpass isnt close enough for you?



@Tozen
#2. That considered, there are some serious class balance concerns that are extremely important and demand developer feedback/action. I'm not talking about the nit-picky "class X can do 100 more points of damage than mine can under circumstance Y," but rather, "my class is fundamentally broken in a key area." The best example I can think of falls under the category of "healers."
a. The WP (and to a lesser degree the DoK) heal far too much AoE damage for being able to sit in the back line.
b. Conversely, the classes that were designed to sit in the back line and heal cannot heal as well as their melee counterparts.
c. Zealot rituals (and I imagine RP equivalent) are rarely ever used because they are so limited in their effects.
d. Archmages and Shaman are supposed to be able to do damage in addition to healing, but right now they can't really do either well. That's a fundamental problem with their mechanic.

Agree on this which we all know will cause certain classes to be "Rarely" made or "Rarely" played

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by gorkah

I agree, we need more "vision" statements from the staff, like AM's are not working how we think, let's change the mechanic, or BO's are stronger than we had intended.

I think having a good "vision" or "mission statement" for the state of each archetype will keep people subbed chasing that dangling carrot

I don't know about that. I'm not particularly looking for vision or mission statements since those are typically full of a lot of fluff language and not much concrete detail. You see some of that vision on the main page for WAR anyway.

What I'm looking for is status updates, meat and potatoes - things like identifying a few things from testing and from the community, showing some idea of what is being discussed in order to proceed. Talking about where from the developer standpoint that there are a few imbalances and what is being done.

It doesn't necessarily need to come from Adam - it can go from Adam through the Community team and be posted on the Herald. Such posts are sure to be dissected; however, the more information to hash through, the better.

I'm not in the camp of people declaring that Slayers are some red herring to distract from other class balance issues. This is mostly because the classes certainly have had work done to them since their cut back in July. To imply that more resources are being devoted to the Slayer in an effort to obfuscate real issues is an assumption, one that can't be proven either way. This is the other reason why more frequent, detailed updates between patches are needed from the Combat and Careers team - to allay some of these concerns that the proper priorities have been set for class balance, since it's such a huge and important issue.