Balancing Gripes In Games
Balancing Gripes In Games by that sweet sophisticated gentleman named Ric!
Ric tilts his head at the over-abundance of re-balancing tweaks in games these days.
Here’s where I start to deviate from the majority opinion, but, lately, I’m getting sick and tired of games needing to re-balance themselves via patching. Now before you say, “So you want things unbalanced?” allow me to emphasize my issue with balance. I’ve seen far too many games where the bulk of the patches involve tweaks such as “X weapon now does slightly less damage” and “Y class now does Z.” I understand, to a degree (which I’ll also elaborate on), why PvP-heavy games need balance-tweaks in order to maintain stability, since there’s the fear that something might be over-powered or broken. But what about in a single-player game? Have you ever thought to yourself, while playing Super Mario Bros., “Damn, that starman is OP, they need to nerf that shit”? Sometimes missing the good ol’ days is more than just the games, but the way we treated them.
I should point out, once again, that patches are a necessity in games, and we probably could have used patching on the old console games; it was part of the reason that I was more of a PC gamer, especially after the internet boom. I always anticipate patches for games I’m actively playing, as I’m sure most players are. However, I’m more interested in two things: bug-fixes (if any) and added content-- even if it’s as simple as adding some new items (i.e. Terraria), giving players new goals to pursue (i.e. Minecraft), or adding a storage bin in a game that didn’t have one initially (i.e. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings). The problem begins when the majority of a released patch involves tweaks to equipment or classes as an attempt to re-balance the game.
I understand when there’s something far out of balance (like a weapon dealing 10 times more damage than everything else, for example) which needs ‘fixing’ more than ‘tweaking’, but why is it necessary to reduce or raise stats by hardly-noticeable values? Even in competitive PvP games, I find these changes puzzling, because the game-play doesn’t feel changed. In fact, you’d probably only notice the difference if you focused specifically on that change. Here’s a funny experiment; how would a player-base react if a handful of stats were altered slightly without informing them? Would most of them even notice the changes? Once they do see the changes, the gaming community will unquestionably form exclaims of “Nerf!” or “Buff!” to whatever they feel is incorrect. It’s the reason why, if you type ‘flavor of the month’ in Google, you’ll see League of Legends appear immediately as a suggestion.
‘Flavor of the month’ (FOTM) is an embarrassing headline for gaming, really. FOTM pertains more to MOBAs, but it has always bothered me. Specific star-players of a game community will either speak openly about what they feel is unbalanced, or people will copy their game-play styles, which leads to an inevitable nerf or buff, depending on the scenario. It’d be like if a movie star said “Tennis shoes suck, wear sneakers instead.” And then a large percentage of the world did—how does one nerf sneakers? Oh never mind … I’ll say this about MOBAs while we’re on that genre. I’d like the developers to add new classes, maps, and content while chilling out on the tweaks, but I know they can’t, because they’ve dug themselves into a proverbial hole of trial-and-error with re-balancing. Re-balancing has changed the psychology in gaming, and a lot of long-time gamers don’t even realize that.
Once upon a time, there were MMORPGs before World of Warcraft (I know, crazy, right?), and these games usually featured a massive cast of class-types, trades, activities, races, etc. I remember seeing 16 classes in EverQuest, 34 professions in Star Wars Galaxies (R.I.P.), and fully-customizable classes in Asheron’s Call. I also remember doing more than just raids and instance-based PvP, but that’s a completely different topic to talk about at another time. If you weren’t around for those days, you’re thinking “How the hell did they keep things balanced?” I’ll tell you how—by not caring. Take Star Wars Galaxies, for example, before SOE violated it by reducing the professions to nine classes, WoW-style. If you wanted to strictly PvP in the old days, you mainly focused your interests in professions such as the Teras Kasi Artist or Commando. Meanwhile, if you were interested in non-PvP activities, you had smuggler, merchant, and dancer to name a few. Now let’s fast forward to the end of 2004.
How many classes does WoW only have? Nine at the start, and a tenth added after its second expansion, and here’s where I really start to shake my head at the balancing concepts, and I’m not just going to talk about WoW. What’s the point of making sure all your classes remain balanced, exactly? Think about it. If a caster, scout, and fighter all have an equal chance against one another, it doesn’t create any tension or fear; sure maybe, you’ll go “Oh, I hate sneakers because they hide” or “I hate healers because they spam heals”, but why not actually design these classes to provoke one another in ways outside of the current rock-paper-scissors BS? I’d like to see warrior classes that can wreck your day if you even enter a reaching position, or sneaking characters that aren’t gankers—they sneak, instead, scouting out the enemy and performing saboteur abilities to mess with them (I’d also like to see sneakers that have to actually use stealthy-techniques like hiding out of sight rather than turning invisible). How about a ranged character who can actually flat-out murder you near-instantly, with the condition that he/she has to actually aim and not just select a target, followed by hotkey-spam? Unbalanced? Find a way to work around it, then. Don’t just scream for nerfs or buffs; don’t just give every melee-class a pull/charge move for that matter, either. If you honestly want to head toward the core truth of current-generation MMORPGs and balance, here’s the truth: They, for the most part, are all based around items and hotkey-spamming, less on actual skill—yes, I said it. For that reason, I’m glad that upcoming games like Tera and Guild Wars 2 are going to bring in a higher emphasis on skill-based game-play rather than lazily clicking hotkeys and waiting on cooldowns. That’s enough ranting about MMORPGs, so let’s take a step away from that, shall we?
I sure do miss Neverwinter Nights, sometimes.
(The following is to be credited to YouTube user Ganzicus):
I’ll admit that discussing balance is a touchy subject, because games should be tweaked, to a degree. There’s always going to be that aspect that seems broken (i.e. a boss that is far harder than intended or hard-to-obtain items being too weak). I just wish developers would chill out on the constant re-balancing of classes in order to satisfy the masses. No one threatened to quit Diablo II because the necromancer was a shitty PvP’er (I thought it was the most fun to play in PvE, actually), and no one stopped playing Halo: Combat Evolved because the pistol was so ridiculous; it was, but that didn’t stop its community from making it Microsoft’s highest-selling title for its time. The unfortunate reality is that we’re so used to re-balancing in games these days, that there’s ultimately no turning back until we start making more games that require skill rather than items or stats. The FPS genre seems to have the least issues with re-balancing because of that. The other shameful truth is that, as we add more content to games that need balance, we end up spending more time re-balancing the new content as it mixes with the old. It’s why WoW can’t add more classes and League of Legends can’t just bring out more maps as quickly as its player-base desires. I can only imagine the headache it would be to make a game completely balanced—it’s the reason why balance is so absurd, because you’ll never perfect it, especially with added content. Just give the players a playground to enjoy, monitor the actual broken aspects, and throw more content—if anyone wants to stop playing a game out of anger with an aspect they feel needs tweaking, then it’s most likely them, not the game.
What do you think of games that constantly re-balance themselves? Leave a comment below!
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