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By RAW balance is built into the game:
First, you can use Acrobatics to move on narrow surfaces and uneven ground without falling. A successful check allows you to move at half speed across such surfaces—only one check is needed per round. Use the following table to determine the base DC, which is then modified by the Acrobatics skill modifiers noted below. While you are using Acrobatics in this way, you are considered flat-footed and lose your Dexterity bonus to your AC (if any). If you take damage while using Acrobatics, you must immediately make another Acrobatics check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone.
As you can plainly see it is a function of the acrobatics skill.
By RAW balance is built into the game:
First, you can use Acrobatics to move on narrow surfaces and uneven ground without falling. A successful check allows you to move at half speed across such surfaces—only one check is needed per round. Use the following table to determine the base DC, which is then modified by the Acrobatics skill modifiers noted below. While you are using Acrobatics in this way, you are considered flat-footed and lose your Dexterity bonus to your AC (if any). If you take damage while using Acrobatics, you must immediately make another Acrobatics check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone.As you can plainly see it is a function of the acrobatics skill.
They can use it like a minigame (Balance from a rope) to complete Infiltration/Spy quest.
I think somebody failed their Detect Joke roll...
Goblin Squad Member
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Well, perfect game balance certainly won't be reached in PFO or in any other computer game more complex than, let's say, Pong. So I'm inclined to agree with Artanthos on this.
Not even chess or Tic-Tac-Toe is perfectly balanced, though they are quite good approximations.
Balance and perfect balance are two different degrees of the same thing, and the fact that one may be unachievable does not make the other a myth.
There are things which are balanced, and there are things which are not balanced. All else held equal, balance is preferable to imbalance in a game. And not just slightly preferable. I mean really preferable - moreso in a multiplayer game, and much moreso in a massively multiplayer game.
There's no such thing as a successful MMORPG design team that will tell you, "Nah, balance wasn't really on our priority list at any point."
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is a moot point. Everyone has access to the same skills as there are no classes. Therefore, it is perfectly balanced because any perceived unbalances will be totally voluntary.
That's not the balance we're talking about. At all.
What you're saying is that people are free to choose to suck harder than other people, and therefore everything is balanced.
Well, sure. That's balanced. It's balanced in the sense that everyone will choose the options that don't suck, and no one will choose the options that suck.
Of course, that's going to create a boring game where everyone chooses the same options. So it's not really a good policy.
A good policy is to create a diverse set of options that are carefully balanced against one another so that a variety of playstyles are made mechanically valid. You don't want to include "trap" choices in your game that seem cool at first blush but end up locking you into a sub-par build. You want to create a mechanics environment where the player is truly flummoxed by which options to choose because they are all good options, balanced for the same game environment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's no such thing as a successful MMORPG design team that will tell you, "Nah, balance wasn't really on our priority list at any point."
I agree. Would be stupid not to make it a priority in designing an MMORPG. The only reason I commented your "no" at all is that for me,there are no degrees of balance. Something is balanced or it isn't. If it isn't it may be less imbalanced than other things but it still isn't balanced. From this standpoint, your "no" didn't make much sense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's no such thing as a successful MMORPG design team that will tell you, "Nah, balance wasn't really on our priority list at any point."I agree. Would be stupid not to make it a priority in designing an MMORPG. The only reason I commented your "no" at all is that for me,there are no degrees of balance. Something is balanced or it isn't. If it isn't it may be less imbalanced than other things but it still isn't balanced. From this standpoint, your "no" didn't make much sense.
I think that, for any sufficiently complex system (and an MMORPG certainly qualifies) balance exists on a spectrum. "Perfect balance" or "absolute balance" (or simply "balance," if we're talking in binaries) isn't something that can really be demonstrated in a complex system anyway. Past a certain point, you can only determine the strength of balance through practical use, and there's an inherent lack of absolute certainty in experimentation. You develop criteria, do your best to create a balance that meets that criteria, and then test the balance until you are reasonably satisfied - design, develop, test.
Balance is a worthy goal and a necessary priority in game design, made even more worthy and necessary by the MMO nature of this project.
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There's no such thing as a successful MMORPG design team that will tell you, "Nah, balance wasn't really on our priority list at any point."
And there is no such thing as an MMO where the playerbase believes all the classes are well balanced.
It is not possible to have both balance and diversity in the same game for one simple reason.
The playerbase will always define balance to mean that their particular class / build is just a little better than the next guys.
What will happen is this: A single class / build will be min/maxed for each role (tank / healer / dps / cc ). That class / build will be deemed "the best" and anyone who deviates from it will be shunned by a large segment of the playerbase.
What me expectations are is for more than 3 - 4 narrowly defined builds to accepted as viable. Currently, DDO struggles with this, with the balance of power recently shifting from nearly pure melee groups to nearly pure caster groups.
Rifts does a somewhat better job, but even months after launch they continued to make radical changes to class trees in a hopeless attempt to appease both PvP and PvE players with abilities that would be considered balanced in two radically different playstyles. What you wind up with is something that on the surface looks like a lot of choices but upon closer examination, a lot of abilities are duplicated across both class and archetype lines. Aside from graphics, the distinctiveness of individual characters has decreased, and the war on balance continues to rage on the forums.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is a moot point. Everyone has access to the same skills as there are no classes. Therefore, it is perfectly balanced because any perceived unbalances will be totally voluntary.That's not the balance we're talking about. At all.
What you're saying is that people are free to choose to suck harder than other people, and therefore everything is balanced.
Well, sure. That's balanced. It's balanced in the sense that everyone will choose the options that don't suck, and no one will choose the options that suck.
Of course, that's going to create a boring game where everyone chooses the same options. So it's not really a good policy.
A good policy is to create a diverse set of options that are carefully balanced against one another so that a variety of playstyles are made mechanically valid. You don't want to include "trap" choices in your game that seem cool at first blush but end up locking you into a sub-par build. You want to create a mechanics environment where the player is truly flummoxed by which options to choose because they are all good options, balanced for the same game environment.
Or, you could just let each person play as the enjoy...this levels the relevant skills. Different groups will evolve with different dynamics...some more efficient than others, but everyone gets to enjoy what they are doing and the company they are keeping. Sounds balanced to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or, you could just let each person play as the enjoy...this levels the relevant skills. Different groups will evolve with different dynamics...some more efficient than others, but everyone gets to enjoy what they are doing and the company they are keeping. Sounds balanced to me.It is a moot point. Everyone has access to the same skills as there are no classes. Therefore, it is perfectly balanced because any perceived unbalances will be totally voluntary.That's not the balance we're talking about. At all.
What you're saying is that people are free to choose to suck harder than other people, and therefore everything is balanced.
Well, sure. That's balanced. It's balanced in the sense that everyone will choose the options that don't suck, and no one will choose the options that suck.
Of course, that's going to create a boring game where everyone chooses the same options. So it's not really a good policy.
A good policy is to create a diverse set of options that are carefully balanced against one another so that a variety of playstyles are made mechanically valid. You don't want to include "trap" choices in your game that seem cool at first blush but end up locking you into a sub-par build. You want to create a mechanics environment where the player is truly flummoxed by which options to choose because they are all good options, balanced for the same game environment.
Sure.
And when you end up with a game that is horrifically skewed towards a certain build and end up with a rightfully upset, marginalized segment of your player base that regrets ever taking the options you presented them (because they were woefully subpar options) I'm sure you will do a fine job of consoling yourself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or, you could just let each person play as the enjoy...this levels the relevant skills. Different groups will evolve with different dynamics...some more efficient than others, but everyone gets to enjoy what they are doing and the company they are keeping. Sounds balanced to me.It is a moot point. Everyone has access to the same skills as there are no classes. Therefore, it is perfectly balanced because any perceived unbalances will be totally voluntary.That's not the balance we're talking about. At all.
What you're saying is that people are free to choose to suck harder than other people, and therefore everything is balanced.
Well, sure. That's balanced. It's balanced in the sense that everyone will choose the options that don't suck, and no one will choose the options that suck.
Of course, that's going to create a boring game where everyone chooses the same options. So it's not really a good policy.
A good policy is to create a diverse set of options that are carefully balanced against one another so that a variety of playstyles are made mechanically valid. You don't want to include "trap" choices in your game that seem cool at first blush but end up locking you into a sub-par build. You want to create a mechanics environment where the player is truly flummoxed by which options to choose because they are all good options, balanced for the same game environment.
Sure.
And when you end up with a game that is horrifically skewed towards a certain build and end up with a rightfully upset, marginalized segment of your player base that regrets ever taking the options you presented them (because they were woefully subpar options) I'm sure you will do a fine job of consoling yourself.
I think you are not being very realistic by stating people will regret doing what they find fun. Either way, that is the great thing about a skill based system, everyone is welcome to change what they are working on at any time and they do not loose what you have done. Where am I wrong?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you are not being very realistic by stating people will regret doing what they find fun.
No one's going to regret doing what they find fun. If you think that's what I'm saying, you need to go back and reexamine what's been said.
What people will do if balance is ignored or done poorly is make certain choices en masse. If it turns out that two-handed weapon fighters are much much stronger than any other sort of fighter, you will have way more (way more) two-handed weapon fighters than any other sort. To boot, the people who did choose another type of fighter will feel like chumps, and will be angry at you (the developer) for presenting crappy choices as valid character options.
So you end up with a mechanically homogenous player base and everyone who doesn't go with the flow ends up marginalized.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To boot, the people who did choose another type of fighter will feel like chumps, and will be angry at you (the developer) for presenting crappy choices as valid character options
Well, that's especially true in competitive games (and PFO sounds like quite a competitive game to me). In collaborative games, not so much, but even there, there's a tendency to ignore people not building their character according to the rules set by class guides (which for this very reason I hate very much).
So aside from our nitpicks about semantics, I agree with Scott even if I personally don't care too much about balance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To boot, the people who did choose another type of fighter will feel like chumps, and will be angry at you (the developer) for presenting crappy choices as valid character optionsWell, that's especially true in competitive games (and PFO sounds like quite a competitive game to me). In collaborative games, not so much, but even there, there's a tendency to ignore people not building their character according to the rules set by class guides (which for this very reason I hate very much).
So aside from our nitpicks about semantics, I agree with Scott even if I personally don't care too much about balance.
Actually even in collaborative games it matters. If a difference is large enough between options. Parties will ask which build you are when you join, and kick if they don't like what they hear. Unless what you are playing is a class that is very hard to find or they have been looking to fill the slot for hours.
Take WoW (pre-burning crusade days, no idea how it is now as I haven't been back). When you were raiding, there were holy spec priests, and defense specced warriors. To participate in raiding, shadow priests and rage warriors, were required to respec. If they didn't the guild would bring a different warrior in their place.
Actually even in collaborative games it matters. If a difference is large enough between options. Parties will ask which build you are when you join, and kick if they don't like what they hear. Unless what you are playing is a class that is very hard to find or they have been looking to fill the slot for hours.
Take WoW (pre-burning crusade days, no idea how it is now as I haven't been back). When you were raiding, there were holy spec priests, and defense specced warriors. To participate in raiding, shadow priests and rage warriors, were required to respec. If they didn't the guild would bring a different warrior in their place.
Now, things are pretty well balanced. There's almost no reason to ask anyone to respec unless you don't have the proper roles filled or are in a top progression guild and need that extra couple percent. Additionally, dual spec makes respeccing as easy as pushing a button.
The key to WoW's balance is that everyone's dps (appropriately specced) is competitive, everyone's tanking (again, appropriately specced) is competitive, and everyone's healing (you guessed it) is competitive.
I'm sure you remember in vanilla WoW, warriors were the best tanks, priests were the best healers, pure dps classes were the best dps, and many people felt that was how it should be. However, that design philosophy invalidated many specs and even reduced certain classes' roles to single spells (ie: innervate, blessings). This made whole classes feel marginalized, as it was clear they had only one road to success, and an unglamorous one at that.
What Blizzard realized is that people resent having "options" that aren't viable. People don't like being given 3 choices and then being told which one is correct. Then the other 2 choices are nothing more than "traps," as Scott said.
The one thing I think WoW's crazy success can be attributed to more than any other single thing is simply that they made all specs viable. That is relatively easy balancing act for WoW though because everyone in WoW has the same goal: kill the bad guys. I suspect PFO could potentially have a much more complex balancing act to pull off, with everyone having potentially different goals. I might want to be an explorer, or a merchant, or a fighter. Given enough time, I gather I could be all three. But which do I do first? Will choosing the "wrong" one retard my progress? Could I get caught up in remedial skill after remedial skill and find after months of play that my character is completely useless?
I have no idea how you would balance a "merchant" build with a "fighter" build. Purchasing power to buy better gear? Synergy between combat skills and non-combat skills? Social necessity? Or do you choose to forego combat viability when you start down the merchant tree?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Again, balance is relative.
Rather then making sure every build is mechanically equivalent, make sure they are sufficient distinct to be viable under different circumstance.
Two-handed weapons should have high Alpha/Burst damage, but somewhat lower overall DPS.
Two-weapon fighting should top DPS graph, but take a bit of time to build to their maximum output.
So, this is a pretty good example of something that requires a bit more consideration than you're giving it.
If PFO, like most MMORPGs, is going to feature anything resembling substantial "boss" fights (and I hope it does), then you're going to have to account for the fact that the length of a fight can be much longer than you might be used to in solo play. If a typical boss fight takes 10 minutes, you need to make all of the potential builds roughly equally effective over the course of those 10 minutes.
This means that you can't do the whole "two-handers start big and drop off" and "two-weaponers start slow and build big," because over the course of a 10-minute long fight, the two-handed weapon fighter is going to end up with a very low DPS compared to the two-weapon fighter. If the difference is significant enough to matter, two-handed weapon fighters will find themselves marginalized. You don't want to create a seemingly valid character development path that ends with that character being marginalized.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You're looking at this a little narrowly. Just because a 2 handed build starts big and then tapers off, doesn't mean the taper has to be permanent.
Ah, then absolutely. You mentioned "alpha" damage, and that typically means start-of-combat, when all your cooldowns are available (as opposed to mid-combat cycles, where cooldowns typically don't line up). If you're simply referring to heavy burst classes versus steady DPS classes, then I agree.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well first off I think that kind of structured boss fight is the kind of PvE theme park content they are intending to avoid.
Are you sure? The team has said that they want a sort of hybrid game. Perhaps with more focus on sandbox than theme park, but they are (as of last I heard) planning on including some substantial theme park-ish content. People like boss fights, and they're sort of a D&D trope that would make the game feel a little empty if they left them out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well first off I think that kind of structured boss fight is the kind of PvE theme park content they are intending to avoid.Are you sure? The team has said that they want a sort of hybrid game. Perhaps with more focus on sandbox than theme park, but they are (as of last I heard) planning on including some substantial theme park-ish content. People like boss fights, and they're sort of a D&D trope that would make the game feel a little empty if they left them out.
You are correct, he has implied "theme park elements", though I do think the traditional MMO instance dungeon may not be the means for this. I do expect bosses of some kind in some way, though it is worth noting, they will not likely be frequent, nor will they likely be the major focus of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Like I said in another thread, I think what we'll see is a far more involving world from a sandbox perspective but that we'll still have 'instances', perhaps for dungeons and raids, etc.
There still "might be" instances. I have yet to hear a single phrase from the developers that confirms or denies the intention to add instances.
By RAW balance is built into the game:
First, you can use Acrobatics to move on narrow surfaces and uneven ground without falling. A successful check allows you to move at half speed across such surfaces—only one check is needed per round. Use the following table to determine the base DC, which is then modified by the Acrobatics skill modifiers noted below. While you are using Acrobatics in this way, you are considered flat-footed and lose your Dexterity bonus to your AC (if any). If you take damage while using Acrobatics, you must immediately make another Acrobatics check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone.As you can plainly see it is a function of the acrobatics skill.
But...they're not using RAW in the game! I think we have a problem.
Now, things are pretty well balanced. There's almost no reason to ask anyone to respec unless you don't have the proper roles filled or are in a top progression guild and need that extra couple percent. Additionally, dual spec makes respeccing as easy as pushing a button.
The key to WoW's balance is that everyone's dps (appropriately specced) is competitive, everyone's tanking (again, appropriately specced) is competitive, and everyone's healing (you guessed it) is competitive.
I'm sure you remember in vanilla WoW, warriors were the best tanks, priests were the best healers, pure dps classes were the best dps, and many people felt that was how it should be. However, that design philosophy invalidated many specs and even reduced certain classes' roles to single spells (ie: innervate, blessings). This made whole classes feel marginalized, as it was clear they had only one road to success, and an unglamorous one at that.
What Blizzard realized is that people resent having "options" that aren't viable. People don't like being given 3 choices and then being told which one is correct. Then the other 2 choices are nothing more than "traps," as Scott said.
The one thing I think WoW's crazy success can be attributed to more than any other single thing is simply that they made all specs viable. That is relatively easy balancing act for WoW though...
Blizzards idea of balance is to make every class a face roll class with no variety, pre-wotlk every class was fairly different which led to top pve guilds stacking certain classes because they had a skill that worked best for a fight and led to a few classes stomping pvp (arena pvp), lucky for me i played a dps warrior and the whole time for pre-wotlk they were good haha
you could do good with some of the worse classes and specs but top pve guilds always wanted the best, also most people weren't good enough to get high rating without going for the best specs and classes (you saw pretty much no feral druids but so many resto druids)
post-wotlk they have given every class the same skills, nothing is really unique to a class which sucks but makes it easier to balance
having some good variety between classes is good for fun factor but horrible for balance, have to meet in the middle, its not easy to balance even the most basic MMO but i would rather see good variety then a dumbed down game for the sake of balance
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Goblin Squad Member
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That homogenized pile of classes is the reason I quit playing. In vanilla WoW the differences between the factions were pretty sweet, I thought. Sure, not having pally blessings sucked, just like it probably sucked to have no chain heal or bloodlust alliance side. Since neither faction was to be "evil", this class variation was really the only thing to differentiate them(aside from all the 12 year-old night elf hunters). Those differences were what led to me choosing a shaman to raid on for the next 4-5 years.
The big reason for this complete watering down of all classes can be directly traced to Arena pvp(IMO), which(again, IMO) ruined the game completely. I'm glad that PFO will have PvP prioritized from the beginning so that we can avoid the balancing act a few years down the line.
Scott keeps mentioning that you don't want to offer up a seemingly viable spec only to have it become inferior in actual play, which was a huge problem in old WoW. I agree completely with him, but I'm seeing player choice as a bit of a sticky wicket here. Even if optimized builds will be balanced, people will water down their characters by making RP or flavor decisions that detract from combat effectiveness. I'm not just talking about the 20/20/21 spec(sorry, more WoW terms) hunters of the world, but also people who want to flesh their characters out in ways that will not translate to combat. This sort of element(call it RP, vanity, whatever) could add a pretty serious wrinkle to the idea of "balanced classes".
As long as the player is fully aware of the fact that what they are doing is going to make them less effective, I think that's fine. Dumb, perhaps, but not really something for the developers to be concerned about. If this game does end up being skill based, it's entirely possible that you'll be able to specialize in skills that make you worthless in combat. As long as it's clear when you make those choices that your combat effectiveness will not improve, then no harm is done. The harm lies in presenting multiple options to a player and saying "Choose how you want to beat people up!" and then shrugging your shoulders when they choose incorrectly.
The real question for me is: will there be enough incentive to creating a character that is totally worthless in combat?
Star Wars Galaxies had a great crafting system so you could play the game and have fun without doing any combat, the best crafters were known server wide for the items they made because it wasn't just get 5 mats and you craft a weapon that is the same every time, crafting a good item in SWG took some effort
The big reason for this complete watering down of all classes can be directly traced to Arena pvp(IMO), which(again, IMO) ruined the game completely. I'm glad that PFO will have PvP prioritized from the beginning so that we can avoid the balancing act a few years down the line.
that is very far from true, the focus with WoW was always PvE, they very rarely changed something in PvP even it was it overpowered because it would effect PvE. people love to blame the arena for killing WoW but really it kept a lot of PvPers from leaving because BG's at that point were extremely boring and no longer competitive because they were cross server, arena was new, fun and no longer just face rolling people in BG's who have no idea what they were doing
even with PvP in PFO being a big focus of the game there is no getting around the balancing act, there will almost always be times when something is strong or weak
one way to try to stop people from being the op class is making every class different and fun, if all the classes feel the same most people will just play the best class/spec, give every class something unique that would make someone want to play it and make other people want to have in there group
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Goblin Squad Member
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The real question for me is: will there be enough incentive to creating a character that is totally worthless in combat? Another way to word that is: will enough of Pathfinder's PnP elements make it over that you can continue to find interesting things to do "late-game" despite being a non-combatant? I truly and fervently hope so.
Well, first, I wouldn't rely on Pathfinder's pen-and-paper elements for this. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (and the D&D system it's based on) is designed to facilitate adventuring, with some other stuff tacked on. But adventuring is the focus. Now, it may be that the Goblinworks staff is going to focus much more on non-adventuring activities than the tabletop roleplaying game does, but as it stands you will definitely need more than the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game provides in order to make non-adventuring activities enjoyable enough to give up adventuring entirely.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Totally, I was thinking more along the lines of making it viable for a character to choose to be *exclusively* a merchant or musician or sage. By PnP elements I was suggesting "more than just crafting skills", as in "the ability to actually have a lifestyle".
What would you consider "viable"? For instance, what features would make playing a sage worthwhile to you?
What would you consider "viable"? For instance, what features would make playing a sage worthwhile to you?
Difficult to answer without knowing what I would have to sacrifice. If, for instance, my sage was halfway competent out of the box, no skills, and I could spec pure sage and still be capable of performing in combat at say 50% capacity, that might be ok. On the other hand, if it meant certain death if I stepped outside the castle, no way.
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In a well crafted sandbox, there are things that will require you to dedicate your character's development towards that would preclude that character from becoming effective as a combatant beyond a certain minimum level.
Let me give you an example: In EVE, if you want to be a character able to play at the "good" level of being a space trucker [you have the requisite skills to fly the ships that enable a profit to be made from space trucking, you have the skills you need to use the ship modules that you need to fit to improve your chance of surviving a pirate attack, etc.] (at least for the first year or two of that character's existence), you're not going to have the luxury of also having that same character be able to solo the most profitable PvE content, nor will that character be able to lead an effective multidisciplinary combat fleet against a well-qualified opposing force.
What often happens in a sandbox is that you start out fighting things (because that's how you learned to play other MMOs) but as you explore the world and learn how the systems in the sandbox interconnect, your own natural inclinations lead you to focus your character's development on other things, and before you know it, you've become so engrossed in pursuing that path that you don't seriously miss the fact that you're not out there fighting every day when you're logged in. (And those that do often just create a second account so they can develop two characters in parallel).
(For example, I spent close to a year developing a character in EVE specifically to pilot a logistics/transport ship and associated modules and other gear that could act as a "mothership" to a crew of other pilots in wormhole space. That effort enabled my buddies to play with much less intensively developed combat-focused characters who could rely on my ship as their repair/resupply point while they engaged the interesting PvE opportunities in the wormholes we visited. I was perfectly content with this role as I found it satisfying, though I rarely, if ever, had to engage in combat myself while operating that ship.)