211 réponses à ce sujet

[GodlessPaladin]

Let's comb through this tripe that claims to establish a general logical principle.

InvincibleHero wrote...

I have to disagree highly that all things can be balanced. It will never happen in any game.

   Symmetrical games like, say, Basketball are perfectly balanced.  Therefore, your statement is wrong.

You are flat out saying all characters and weapons need to put out the same DPS.

  Who is "you?"  I've never seen any advocate of balance suggest anything like this in 15 years of being involved in discussions about game design.  This is just you arguing against an obviously wrong position you set up yourself instead of refuting any argument people are actually using.

Some abilites cannot be measured in DPS like stasis. Every class can be used with varying effectiveness and players of skill have soloed gold with everyone. Yes some do better than others but that doesn't mean they are broken.

  All of these are moot points we can agree on.  None of them actually support your case that "having everything balanced is a fallacy" and are therefore irrelevant.

Just like the quarian female engineer turret people complained it was too weak. I could care less at the damage it gets brutes and banshees to stop and get whacked easily. That is priceless. That does not get measured in the balance of the ability and people don't look deep at other things either.

  You are simply dealing with a false premise here e.g. that balance only takes into account DPS.  In fact, your assertion is also fallacious because your own statements prove that it is a false premise, since your own assertion is measuring the usefulness of an ability (Sentry Turret) in terms other than DPS (making your claim that such a measurement is impossible self-contradictory).

Try using the pirahna on a level 1 engineer in gold with no mods and see how far that gets. The fact it needs gears or ability synergies with certain classes to make it great does not make it OP.

"It's overpowered only in conjunction with other elements, so it's not overpowered at all ever" is self-contradictory.

"The Geth Infiltrator Krysae build with Disruptor Ammo is overpowered." 
"No it's not, because the Geth Infiltrator is using it."
^--See the problem?  The objection doesn't establish that nothing in the equation of "Geth Infiltrator Krysae Build with Disruptor Ammo" is overpowered.  So your argument here is doing nothing to establish that observing balance issues are a fallacy or anything of the sort.

I think the only adjustment it needs is adding weight.

  Interesting how you suggest a nerf while you're arguing that balancing in general is a fallacy.  Seems like doublethink to me.  Since you suggested that a nerf is necessary (indeed, you used the word "needs"), you are now a nerfer, congratulations.

To balance all is to kill diversity as everything has to be similar to be fair.

  Already addressed this bit.  Two things can be comparably useful without being the same. 

Yes some are obviously weak (destroyer missiles) and some are strong (grenade powers) taken alone but the rest of their powers or overall health/shields speed etc are already taken into account.

  You're not establishing balance as a fallacy here.  All you're doing is alleging that things are already balanced to an acceptable degree. 

And the rest is basically just you repeating yourself and making tinfoil hat accusations about people's supposed shady motives.  Nowhere in here do you establish any argumentational form as fallacious, and I suspect that's because you don't actually know what the word fallacy means.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 09:55 .

[InvincibleHero]

Imp of the Perverse wrote...

I'll admit I didn't read more than the first line of that wall of text, but the reason for balancing is to keep as many things viable as possible. If one or two weapons or builds clearly dominate all others, there'll be pressure to use only those builds, or to kick people from lobbies when they're not using those builds. That prevents people from being able to enjoy the full variety of content.

Wait so people were getting kicked for not being a GI. Every lobby had to be 4 GIs right? No never was.


It is job done then. I've used every character and have never been kicked. I have used unpowered weapons to try them out. I even did poorly with pirahna my first few games. Tinkered with mods and synergized with it better getting a feel for the range. Typhoon I don't get the excitement on that. It seems to take much longer to kill things than many other options. I'll take harrier or saber X any day though if I ever get to X maybe that will change.

[GodlessPaladin]

InvincibleHero wrote...
Sorry you can never balance all things hence it is fallacious.

  I don't think that word means what you think it means.

That is just basic logic.

  In basic logic, they would have explained to you what a fallacy is.

Here, I'll help you.
A fallacy is an "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support.  A fallacy is any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:01 .

[Buckapocka]

I say +1 to OP. People here complain about guns that can kill enemies faster than they gunz. The nerfers have the argument it kills variety, because most people at least on pugs use the best weapons to be effective. In the end only the dps matters because that shows how fast you can kill an enemy. The faster you kill an enemy, the better your chances are to survive. So you take this "ultimate gun" and cry to nerf it, because a lot of people are using it. This gun gets nerfed, and people move on to the next good weapon that can kill things fast and efficiently. The nerfers will coplain about this weapon, and this pattern just continues until everything is just the same weak peashooter, and nobody will play with the game, because enemies are gunning you down with the same guns that worth nothing in your hands.

[mrwizeguy]

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

[Holy-Hamster]

MaltMilchek wrote...

I love that people are arguing over the word 'balance'. Let's all be mature here, we all know what OP is trying to say, whether you agree or not, stop nitpicking the language and being coy.

Why would you keep using a word if it's the wrong one? 

HERP DERP.  Using a word that means something other than what you think it does makes you look stupid and most people aren't going to take you seriously unless you correct it. 

[GodlessPaladin]

mrwizeguy wrote...

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

Nobody is ever going to listen to you guys if you argue like this.  You turn to silly personal attacks against anyone who you view as being a part of the "nerfer" label instead of actually ever presenting a case or addressing what they actually say.

Also, when's the last time you saw me actually suggest a balance change?  I don't even argue for specific changes anymore because there's a huge wall of BS blocking out any serious discussion of how things can be improved.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:17 .

[InvincibleHero]

GodlessPaladin wrote...

InvincibleHero wrote...
Sorry you can never balance all things hence it is fallacious.

  I don't think that word means what you think it means.

That is just basic logic.

  In basic logic, they would have explained to you what a fallacy is.

Here, I'll help you.
A fallacy is an "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support.  A fallacy is any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

You can get it out of any dictionary. Fallacy 1.  A false or mistaken idea. Directly from Meriam Webster's dictionary. The idea that you can balance all things is false. I am going to sleep so the rest will be addressed later.

Can we drop this now ?

[xtorma]

Holy-Hamster wrote...

So you're saying developers shouldn't ever try to balance their game and leave broken guns / weapons and characters as they are? Okay.....

You just argued that no game in entire video game history should ever try to be balanced?

I'm not sure what to say other than....

lol

Maybe they should try to balance before they introduce broken guns into a game. Balance is necessary, yet the constant introduction of unbalanced weapons suggest that it is not that big a priority until people start complaining.

[Asebstos]

Oh.... you guys got me. This is another one of those joke threads right? No way this is serious.

[mrwizeguy]

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

When's the last time you saw me actually suggest a balance change?  I think I've done it all of twice since the game came out months ago.

I am just pointing out basic errors in reasoning.

GodlessPaladin wrote...

Alright, so this is still a work in progress.  Basically, I felt it
would be a fun game design thought exercise to put myself in Eric
Fagnan's shoes and think about how I'd rebalance the game using just
.ini file changes

Dude you have a group and a dedicated thread on this , u trolling me now ?lol

edit : you edited your reply, whats the matter changed your mind?

Modifié par mrwizeguy, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:10 .

[GodlessPaladin]

InvincibleHero wrote.. The idea that you can balance all things is false.

Except it's not.  I already gave an example of a game that was perfectly, 100% balanced, thus falsifying the above statement since assertions of general principles are falsified by even a single counterexample.

That's, to use your words, basic logic.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:20 .

[GodlessPaladin]

mrwizeguy wrote...

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

When's the last time you saw me actually suggest a balance change?  I think I've done it all of twice since the game came out months ago.

I am just pointing out basic errors in reasoning.

GodlessPaladin wrote...

Alright, so this is still a work in progress.  Basically, I felt it
would be a fun game design thought exercise to put myself in Eric
Fagnan's shoes and think about how I'd rebalance the game using just
.ini file changes

Dude you have a group and a dedicated thread on this , u trolling me now ?lol

No, you're the one trolling me and responding to a reasonable argument with a personal attack that has nothing to do with a single thing I talked about in this thread. 

So that's one thread on this forum you've identified.  Where are all the others?  My statement is accurate unless I'm misremembering.  I don't think I suggested any nerfs besides the ones in that thread and on an old thread from months ago.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:18 .

[CitizenThom]

Holy-Hamster wrote...

So you're saying developers shouldn't ever try to balance their game and leave broken guns / weapons and characters as they are? Okay.....

'broken' is in the eyes of the beholder. His point being that variety is more important that having perfect equity... and that perfect equity is impossible, I think is a good one.

[xtorma]

GodlessPaladin wrote...

InvincibleHero wrote.. The idea that you can balance all things is false.

Except it's not.  I already gave an example of a game that was perfectly, 100% balanced.

then why isn't this, or most any other online game balanced?. Basketball , chess , checkers is a mirror, these types of games are not mirrors. You can not achieve symmerty in a game like this and you know it. The argument that this game can be balanced is fallacious, there will never be balance here without a change to the entire system.

That being said, there is no reason not to adjust things that are over or underwhelming, but calling it balance is a joke.

[Grunt_Platform]

Balance is a good thing because it increases the range of viable options. It's theoretically possible because Mass Effect 3 has so many incomparables. And nobody expects 100% balance, but right now we're at the level where many guns just aren't even effective at all on Platinum, and others make it a joke. 

Anyway, to explain the motives for specific calls..

Nerfs- There are just more underpowered guns than overpowered ones, so the overpowered guns stick out more. A lot of nerf calls come people watching a gun do something that they don't feel should be possible. Maybe the gun kills bosses too quick, maybe it's outshining their favorite gun in its role... Or maybe it's genuinely overpowered. If you'd ever played with or as a sniping infiltrator with the Krysae at its full power, you'd know how much it trivialized the game.

Buffs- You don't see quite as many of these because there are just too many guns in needs of buffs and.. people tend to play favorites. Right now sniper rifles are pretty popular to discuss for buffs because.. well. There's two whole challenge levels they're pretty much worthless on.


Also: I wish people would stop saying the Balance All the Things group, and the balance interested folks are all about nerfs. Seriously. There was one serious nerf suggestion that Bioware took, and even that was paired with a proposed buff we're still waiting on (12~15% more damage for all snipers). And Bioware was looking into that one anyway because their data suggested it was necessary, so the suggestion may be responsible for Duration Cloak being viable at all right now. The vast majority of balance discussion is about buffing the weaker options. But people get upset whenever their favorite gun is called underpowered, so you just can't win.

Around the time I actually joined the forums, GodlessPaladin was being called an elitist for saying the N7 Eagle was underpowered and in need of a buff. Now he's being called a nerfer over Tactical Cloak.

Modifié par EvanKester, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:26 .

[Holy-Hamster]

CitizenThom wrote...

Holy-Hamster wrote...

So you're saying developers shouldn't ever try to balance their game and leave broken guns / weapons and characters as they are? Okay.....

'broken' is in the eyes of the beholder. His point being that variety is more important that having perfect equity... and that perfect equity is impossible, I think is a good one.

Variety is good.  But that variety becomes pointless when one weapon is waaaaaaaaaaay better than the others.  Hence the need to balance the game.  It's not that hard to understand.  If X gun does 500 dps per second, and all the rest do 50 then everyone chooses gun X.  You can have all the variety you want between the guns but people will still choose gun X.  

That was my problem with the Krysae (besides being stupidly easy to use).  That was my problem with the pre-nerf falcon.  That's my problem with the Pirahna now.  I'll admit the last change to the krysae may have been a little overboard.  But it did need a nerf the first time, badly.  

No game will ever achieve perfect equality, that's impossible.  However to say that you shouldn't even try and balance things to be "close" is ridiculous and stupid.  

[mrwizeguy]

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

When's the last time you saw me actually suggest a balance change?  I think I've done it all of twice since the game came out months ago.

I am just pointing out basic errors in reasoning.

GodlessPaladin wrote...

Alright, so this is still a work in progress.  Basically, I felt it
would be a fun game design thought exercise to put myself in Eric
Fagnan's shoes and think about how I'd rebalance the game using just
.ini file changes

Dude you have a group and a dedicated thread on this , u trolling me now ?lol

No, you're the one trolling me and responding to a reasonable argument with a personal attack that has nothing to do with a single thing I talked about in this thread.  So that's one thread on this forum you've identified.

Where are all the others?  My statement is accurate unless I'm misremembering (which is possible).  I don't think I suggested any nerfs besides the ones in that thread.

I might not post a lot , but i do read a lot , there has been almost none balance related thread that you havent been voicing your opinion, shall i go look for them and post links?

The only thing that i wonder is why have you convinced yourself you can be the one on Erics shoes (your words not mine). Can you please inform me what is it that qualifies you for that?

[Imp of the Perverse]

InvincibleHero wrote...

Imp of the Perverse wrote...

I'll admit I didn't read more than the first line of that wall of text, but the reason for balancing is to keep as many things viable as possible. If one or two weapons or builds clearly dominate all others, there'll be pressure to use only those builds, or to kick people from lobbies when they're not using those builds. That prevents people from being able to enjoy the full variety of content.

Wait so people were getting kicked for not being a GI. Every lobby had to be 4 GIs right? No never was.


It is job done then. I've used every character and have never been kicked. I have used unpowered weapons to try them out. I even did poorly with pirahna my first few games. Tinkered with mods and synergized with it better getting a feel for the range. Typhoon I don't get the excitement on that. It seems to take much longer to kill things than many other options. I'll take harrier or saber X any day though if I ever get to X maybe that will change.

People actually being kicked for not using the top one or two builds would be an extreme case, and the fact that it doesn't seem to happen indicates that bioware is doing a decent job keeping things balanced.

The closest I've come to it was probably being hassled for bringing a raptor into a gold match, but they never actually kicked me.

Another time I was trying out a paladin in a public gold match alongside a guy using a destroyer with piranha. We wiped on wave ten due to a tough objective on jade, and when we got to the scoreboard, the guy had about double my score (I was in second place.) He started ranting at everyone about how bad we were and put kick votes next to our names. That annoyed me so I switched to a GI to show him its more due to potential damage output than skill, but the dude insisted "I doubled your score. You suck. Get out of my lobby." He ended up leaving.

Later that day I used my piranha GI in a few matches, and had some successful gold extractions where I had about double the score of the guy in second place, something that never happens when I use other builds (usually if I'm that far out ahead of everybody we're probably not going to make it to extraction.)

[darkpassenger2342]

i love how you guys use basketball as an example of "balance". not even basketball is balanced.
having shaq on your team because he was born 7 foot tall is not balance. being able to sign better players because you are in new york or la and not cleveland is not balanced. having a salary cap to balance things when half the players in the league are horrible is not balance. The nba JUST had a lockout because it is NOT balanced.
this is not to disprove a person either way, just sayng not even the examples of balance are balanced.
chess and checkers? possibly.
 but anything involving the human element and you can throw "fairness" out the window.

Modifié par darkpassenger2342, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:30 .

[GodlessPaladin]

xtorma wrote...
then why isn't this, or most any other online game balanced?. Basketball , chess , checkers is a mirror

  Actually, chess and checkers aren't truly symmetrical.  Who gets the first turn is a meaningful difference, as any serious chess player knows.  But as I said before, his general principle is falsified by even a single counterexample.  Even one game that shows perfect balance proves that a game can be perfectly balanced.

But what you're doing here is using the word "balanced" when you mean "perfectly balanced."  Perfect balance is practically impossible for an asymmetrical game, but nobody is arguing that perfect balance will be achieved, and noting that it won't does nothing to oppose the idea that balance can or should be improved, which is what advocates of balance are actually saying.

The argument that is being made here is similar to saying that scientists should not seek knowledge because they will never know everything.  Well, sure, that's true, but that doesn't mean that there isn't value in improving one's knowledge.

Likewise, with balance, saying that perfect balance will never be achieved doesn't mean anything.  The argument is that balance can and should be improved, even if it can't be perfected.

darkpassenger2342 wrote...

i love how you guys use basketball as an example of "balance". not even basketball is balanced.
having
shaq on your team because he was born 7 foot tall is not balance. being
able to sign better players because you are in new york or la and not
cleveland is not balanced. having a salary cap to balance things when
half the players in the league are horrible is not balance. The nba JUST
had a lockout because it is NOT balanced.
this is not to disprove a person either way, just sayng not even the examples of balance are balanced.
chess and checkers? possibly.
 but anything involving the human element and you can throw "fairness" out the window.

This is yet another case of changing the argument.  As far as I know, no advocate of balance is actually claiming that players with different natural skills should achieve similar results, just like no advocate of balance is actually claiming that all things should be the same or that perfect balance is achievable.

Modifié par GodlessPaladin, 31 juillet 2012 - 10:34 .

[Eckswhyzed]

mrwizeguy wrote...

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

GodlessPaladin wrote...

mrwizeguy wrote...

Hey godlesspaladin i got a question for you man ,

if these balance changes ever stop , will u need to go through a rehab ?

You do seem pretty addicted to this , is it bc of the publicity or because you hoping BW will offer you a job?

When's the last time you saw me actually suggest a balance change?  I think I've done it all of twice since the game came out months ago.

I am just pointing out basic errors in reasoning.

GodlessPaladin wrote...

Alright, so this is still a work in progress.  Basically, I felt it
would be a fun game design thought exercise to put myself in Eric
Fagnan's shoes and think about how I'd rebalance the game using just
.ini file changes

Dude you have a group and a dedicated thread on this , u trolling me now ?lol

No, you're the one trolling me and responding to a reasonable argument with a personal attack that has nothing to do with a single thing I talked about in this thread.  So that's one thread on this forum you've identified.

Where are all the others?  My statement is accurate unless I'm misremembering (which is possible).  I don't think I suggested any nerfs besides the ones in that thread.

I might not post a lot , but i do read a lot , there has been almost none balance related thread that you havent been voicing your opinion, shall i go look for them and post links?

The only thing that i wonder is why have you convinced yourself you can be the one on Erics shoes (your words not mine). Can you please inform me what is it that qualifies you for that?

I've never seen GP claim that he could do a better job than the Bioware team. He said it would be a fun exercise and not "hurr durr bioware is complete suckage listen up nubz"

As for the OP...well let's just say I'm very glad that Bioware are the ones making the decisions and at least they acknowledge that balance is important, even if I don't agree with every single change they've made.

[ABjerre]

Holy-Hamster wrote...
That's my problem with the Pirahna now.

Well, my problem with it is that at ranges over 30yds, shooting at a traget the size of an Atlas, the Pirnaha X does damage comparable to the common Mattock X (which can do that damage at all ranges and all size targets too).

Assault Rifles does less damage, but work at "all" ranges, so you can start dishing out damage a lot sooner than you can with a Shotgun.
Shotguns does a lot more damage up close, but doing so involves risky gameplay and being ineffective at longer ranges.

Balance. Right there.

[its THAT guy]

Good job at using common sense OP. This nerfing to the ground of so many guns in this game is becoming increasingly annoying as Bioware seems intent on putting nearly every gun in the game on par with the avenger. Personally I blame GodlessPaladin and the rest of his nerf brigade, but w/e, the whining nerfers can make their voice heard, I'm sure the opposite can be held true for the rest of us as well that DON'T want super soaker 2000's after every balance change.