Jumpgate Evolution Dev Talks Class Balance

Hermann Peterscheck recently made a post on the Jumpgate Evolution developer blog about NetDevil's strategy for balancing the various classes of ships in the game. They seem to be taking a different approach from most MMOs in letting the PvP side of the gameplay set the baseline, rather than allowing PvE concerns to override that. From the section titled Combating Combat: "Early on our lead systems designer, Jay Ambrosini, came to the correct conclusion that all of the preliminary balancing was best done in a PvP context. The reasoning is that in PvE, the player needs to feel powerful, but in PvP the fight needs to feel balanced. Once ship classes are balanced in PvP, its not as hard to make the player feel powerful in PvE, but the opposite is not true. We spent many weeks playing just the first class of ship, the light fighter, in teams of 5 or 6 in order to evaluate what it was that made those ships fun to fly and fight. After daily battles, you begin to see what makes those ships work. We also started with the mid level ships as opposed to the low or high level ships. This is primarily because you can find the center point and then work upwards and downwards from there. ... It's very tempting to just throw a bunch of classes of ships together in order to say things like "our game has 15 classes of ships!" but this, we believe, is the wrong direction. People want meaningful and strong choices and not lots of meaningless, empty choices. Currently we plan to have 4-6 classes, but they will each have nearly endless possible configurations within those groups."

Re:scratching head

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see what is hard to understand in TFS. It's standard, basic, gaming vocabulary. I wonder what you're doing in /. gaming section if you don't know theses words.

PvP : Player vs Player. All that relates to fighting between players.

PvE : Player vs Environment. All that relates to the fights between a player (or group of players) and computer-controlled opponents.

Class : A category of avatar that can be played. Each having strengths, weaknesses and powers/abilities. For a fantasy-based game that could be Knight, Wizard, and Healer. Here it's different kind of spaceships.

PS : posting as AC to avoid karma-whoring.

Re:This is not EVE with PvP balancing...

[rokel]

At least know what your talking about before taking time to write that much, okay? If you had taken a bit to actually think you'd have realized that after a point all the extra skill points older players have doesn't mean they are stronger in a ship then you, rather that they can fly MORE ships then you! Of course the knee jerk reaction is to be expected from someone who probably got owned hard. (cry about being over powered) Oh, I almost forgot to mention there are mechanics in game for purchasing older characters with more skill points using in-game currency. Crazy huh? :D