Thanks for the articles Stik, they were a good read.
Original Stikman wrote...
There is no such thing as perfect balance, and when you get into the
minutae of balancing small dimensions of a kit, you lose focus on the
most important part of balance, "is this a dominant feature?"
Anyone who looks for perfect balance is on a fool's errand and I said as much in my previous post. There are a few good points two of these articles bring up. I want to address what I see as the problem with EDI and then the dominant strategy theory.
Why do we have rules?
We have rules in order to provide the player with a system within which
they can make interesting choices. Imbalance weights a player's choice
to a degree that it no longer becomes interesting. The classic example
of this is the RPG item that you never unequip. When you find an item
that is so good that every other item you could equip in its place
becomes worthless, all the interesting choices that you should have had
to make about equipping that slot become moot.
In a vanilla RPG game we might have several levers to pull, such as strength, dexterity, endurance, bla bla bla. In ME3MP, a horde style game, we can really boil things down to 2 levers (3 if you wanna call something like Misc. or Utility): damage and survival. I know I've said it before in posts but this game really does boil down to that. Everybody gets lever 1 up or down at some level, and hopefully lever 2 the opposite. EDI has extreme damage and practically game-breaking survivability. There is no other kit as good as her. Other than "for kicks" or to be a hipster there is no real reason to pick another kit (exception being an all biotics squad coordinated beforehand). But on a one-on-one basis there's no reason to pick anything else. She's freakin' immortal. " Imbalance weights a player's choice
to a degree that it no longer becomes interesting." Kit selection is no longer interesting.
Gameplay is all about making choices and in a poorly-balanced game,
many of the choices available to the player are essentially rendered
useless. And this, in a nutshell, is why game balance is so important --
it preserves your game elements from irrelevance. In an imbalanced
game, one or more "dominant strategies" quickly emerge, limiting other
strategies useless except for some un-intended purpose (such as getting
used as a handicap mechanism, or comedic reasons).
Unless I want to handicap myself or for comedic reasons EDI is the superior kit. I especially like the part about Fortress because it is similar in many ways (an MP with class style selection) to ME3MP.
Cherish Weaknesses. Valve's Robin Walker, lead designer of Team Fortress 2, said
that the most important aspect of the character classes in the game was
actually their weaknesses, not their strengths. It's somewhat
counterintuitive to think this way, but making sure that all of your
game elements have a distinct weakness can be a great way to help you
avoid dominant strategies.
Sometimes these weaknesses manifest in really interesting ways,
creating interesting situations. One of my favorites is the
super-destructive Demoman class in Team Fortress 2. Loaded with
two types of explosives, he can quickly turn masses of foes into small
barbequed chunks of flesh, and he's great at taking out sentry guns.
He's also got an average amount of health and moves at an average speed
-- which are the main knobs tweaked to balance most classes in the game.
So how is the Demoman balanced? Because he has no bullet-type weapons
whatsoever. This means that besides using melee, the only way for him
to kill anyone is to predict where they'll be, whereas every other class
can attack by shooting where you are. It's a great example of a non-straightforward way to balance a game element.
He loves him some weakness. So do I. It's what makes a kit interesting. How can I keep the strengths while minimizing the kit's downsides? Can you help point out to me EDI's weakness? Is it damage? Is it survival? It's possible she does and I don't see them. But from my testing -- she has none.
Original Stikman wrote....
Edit: Just to be clear (once you have read/watched the video), the
concern these nerfers have is that the AIU will become the feature that
players use/realize that they can "win" if they simply use her, without
ever really learning how to play. I say, this is crap, because it is
based on prediction, and we cannot assume that she will do this to the
game without verifiable proof that the playerbase is gravitating toward
this feature.
I don't care if players learn the game or not. The kit is simply out of balance and far superior to all other kits. The prediction part leads me to the next part.
Dominant Strategy
The gamasutra blogger is of the opinion that something should only be balanced if/when the game comes crashing down around a single strategy/feature. You said that we can't call it a dominant strategy because its prediction. So you're fine with waiting until the game becomes laughably static by one kit/feature/strategy? Up until that point everything's kosher? It's not a dominant strategy yet? How many people will have to use her to fill this criteria?
Bioware doesn't seem to follow this theory of balance. Every week (now every two weeks) they make changes to the game. Absurdly minor balance changes. Things that do not come anywhere near to being a "Dominant Strategy". Things that no one even notices sometimes.
Eric Fagnan wrote...
Turian Sentinel
- Starting encumbrance capacity increased from 40% to 50%
Turian Soldier
- Starting encumbrance capacity increased from 55% to 65%
This deserves a balance change but Repair Matrix doesn't? Why can't we call a a horse a horse? Even people like you and January say she's a relatively overpowered kit. But until the game becomes EDIbot multiplayer you don't care?
Original Stikman wrote...
FYI: I believe the Geth Juggernaught was intended for lower level
players to use as a way to get accustomed to higher difficulties, while
the AIU was intended for the higher skilled players to further their
abilities.
Probably on Juggy. I've seen quite a few lately. You won't hear nerf calls for him, though. Why? Because he coughs up damage for his durability. Trade off. Does not trivialize the kit selection choice. If you want damage you go another route. If you want durability he's your dude. Cool.
As for The AIU-- if anything she deteriorates playing skill. I play so much worse with her than any other kit because f*** it! who cares if you play like garbage? The worst that happens is a lil get-up animation. I run into situations firing away that I would never ever go into with another kit. At least I'd have to sit there and feel like an ass for being so reckless while a teammate comes to revive me.
Modifié par etm125, 09 mars 2013 - 04:57 .
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