11-17-2013, 03:28 PM
No good games, that I have seen, have achieved perfect balance among classes of different player types.
For hardcoded games that never revisit balance after shipping (think cartridge era games), good players learn what the good characters or combos are and exploit them. Three words: Techmo Bo Jackson. It always sucked to pull the mage in Gauntlet! we would fight over who should get to play the dwarf in Golden Axe, we always heckled people who didn't know any of the characters from Street Fighter 2 besides Blanka, and always ALWAYS Jeremy Roenick from NHL '93.
On the other hand, "living" games have balance issued consistently addressed over time by the developers, and these constant changes allow more saavy players to always seek to optimize. Whether that's hunting for different gear combos in WoW, using the stunlock combo of the week, being an AWPwhore, abusing the lasher in either Planetside whenever it gets buffed, or those glorious weeks when the mag hover worked as intended on Mag Hill back when the phrase "Defend The Crown!" meant something. (1)
And when they do this, I think most developers throwing out perfectly fun mechanics that could be useful buffs.
Imagine, the aforementioned awesome levitation the mag had with Rival 3. Let's make that a 5-day buff that comes from winning a server event that happens every 7 days. Say, Saturdays at 8pm ET they had an alert, any of the current cross-continent variety will do. And if you win that alert, you don't get bonus XP, you get to chose from 1 NS buff (think when the Annihilator was queen) or 1 Faction specific buff (the old maglev, or the old VPC), that would stay with your character (while they could give everyone on that faction the same buff, but that would be miss the opportunity to expand the build options).
It would allow some weapons to go into "power" mode where they have those fucking buffed Strikers, which would give the other factions extra incentive for a good turnout. You're not just playing for a little more XP, which happens every night. You're playing for the priviledge of denying TR their Strikers, NC their buffed splatmaxes, and the right to climb every mountain in the best damn tank in the game.
(1) that's a different point, that with the lattice they seem to have effectively killed what was a consistently excellent battle.
For hardcoded games that never revisit balance after shipping (think cartridge era games), good players learn what the good characters or combos are and exploit them. Three words: Techmo Bo Jackson. It always sucked to pull the mage in Gauntlet! we would fight over who should get to play the dwarf in Golden Axe, we always heckled people who didn't know any of the characters from Street Fighter 2 besides Blanka, and always ALWAYS Jeremy Roenick from NHL '93.
On the other hand, "living" games have balance issued consistently addressed over time by the developers, and these constant changes allow more saavy players to always seek to optimize. Whether that's hunting for different gear combos in WoW, using the stunlock combo of the week, being an AWPwhore, abusing the lasher in either Planetside whenever it gets buffed, or those glorious weeks when the mag hover worked as intended on Mag Hill back when the phrase "Defend The Crown!" meant something. (1)
And when they do this, I think most developers throwing out perfectly fun mechanics that could be useful buffs.
Imagine, the aforementioned awesome levitation the mag had with Rival 3. Let's make that a 5-day buff that comes from winning a server event that happens every 7 days. Say, Saturdays at 8pm ET they had an alert, any of the current cross-continent variety will do. And if you win that alert, you don't get bonus XP, you get to chose from 1 NS buff (think when the Annihilator was queen) or 1 Faction specific buff (the old maglev, or the old VPC), that would stay with your character (while they could give everyone on that faction the same buff, but that would be miss the opportunity to expand the build options).
It would allow some weapons to go into "power" mode where they have those fucking buffed Strikers, which would give the other factions extra incentive for a good turnout. You're not just playing for a little more XP, which happens every night. You're playing for the priviledge of denying TR their Strikers, NC their buffed splatmaxes, and the right to climb every mountain in the best damn tank in the game.
(1) that's a different point, that with the lattice they seem to have effectively killed what was a consistently excellent battle.