Jumpgate Evolution Dev Talks Class Balance 86
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:PvP balancing (Score:4, Interesting)
Good amount of PvE players got very pissed by this. It made it very hard to get to PvP because all you know about game (1000+ skills and synergies between them) gets thrown out of window, its basically like playing new game.
Typically, PvE felt next to no fallout from PvP based nerfs. PvP builds were quite different from PvE metagame (ironically, "sabway" based builds that steamroll PvE and basically set standart for soloing game were originally used in PvP, their PvE version only because used after they were nerfed in PvP).
That PvP based nerfs did was purging PvE from most ridiculous gamebreakers.
That disconnect that gave PvE was ever increasing power creep and ton of gamebreakers: For example, skill "Shaddow Form" now gives permanent immunity to all spells and attacks. Yep, you are reading right. Players can equip it and two other skills, walk into middle of enemy mob and be unharmed. For as long as he wishes. Yep, ultimate 'tank' that does not require healer. And he is able to kill stuff. He is able to solo equivalent of raid encounters/heroics with absolutelly no danger to him and no skill required.
Without PvP disconnect, it would literally take minutes to be nerfstomped. This is what split gave players: Ridiculous win buttons. People do complain anyway because game with cheats enabled is boring and pointless to play.
It has been done, is out now. (Score:1, Interesting)
There is a game that's managed to balance these things, IMO. It's Vendetta Online:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/
The developers went for an FPS style game rather than a more click-based method of playing and they focused on ship balance so that PvP would be the best experience. Additionally, because it's more skill based, a relatively new player with talent can quickly become competitive with players who have been around for years. No single ship loadout exists for serious PvP.
on the PvE side of things, there are a series of missions available that one can take with different levels of difficulty. I agree with the original summary where if one person wants more challenge to a PvE setting, throw in more things shooting at you. It really is the PvP that's hard to get right.
It can be done and, I think, has been done. (and they're having a 2 week trial key giveaway right now).
***I'm not a dev, but I'm a player of the game***
Re:JGE v EVE (Score:3, Interesting)
PvP in WoW is bad. Not because some OP class beat me, but because it's just bad. Seriously. And, no, I don't know a single person who thought the PvP system was good 4 years ago. PvP in WoW was around before honor.. and it was more fun before honor. WoW managed to turn something that should be fun in and of itself, with no rewards -- PvP -- and twist it into just another gear ladder to climb.
It's a bit like chutes and ladders. Sure, at the top levels of play I bet it's pretty complex and the top players would whip my ass. Sure. That doesn't change the fact that the game itself is not really an accurate meter to measure how good you are at video games. 99% of the trick in WoW is being a certain class and a certain spec and finding friends of certain classes with certain specs. Grats, you just pwned a spreadsheet (that's also why EVE is so damned boring, it's just spreadsheets in space..).