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Calixtus · 06/09/08, 2:47 PM

Hehe, glad to hear I managed to keep the vitriol bottled up. To avoid quote stacking I'll pick up after "I think the answer is it's a logistical nightmare and extremely difficult."

I'm not entirely convinced it is so. For starters, there's the mumbled intentions of making the 51 point talents "gamebreakingly good". If they pull that off, so people actually want the 51 point talent of their tree of choice (ignoring the previously mentioned stated intentions of the design of the Unholy Death Knight talent tree) regardless of what they plan to do, they actually simplify balance immensely.

Right now, any talent - regardless of tree - that is "in reach" has to be considered for it's PvP/PvE viability. A 31 point talent does not exclude a 21 point talent. A 41 point talent does exclude a 21 point talent. We will therefor not encounter a warlock with Shadowfury and Soul Link, and there is no need to balance either of those two abilities around that contingency. Where as SL/SL is attainable, and at one point lead to two notable nerfs of life draining abilities 1) Soul Siphon toned down 2) Mortal Strike effects affecting leech effects. While both of these changes certainly served to adjust SL/SL, both of them hit affliction based builds harder, who relied more heavily on life returning effects for survival than a build with Soul Link. Affliction spells/talents rebalanced because of how they perform in a build drawing mostly from Demonology.

If you can actually rely on people taking the 51 point talents in any given tree, you have a cut off point in either of the other trees where an ability only has to be balanced after how it affects that particular talent tree (within reason obviously, as you could still screw things up by making something like one 31 pointers and one 21 pointer good enough to stack to overcome the 51 point awesomeness *cough* SL/SL*cough*). And thus, you can actually implement abilities that makes that particular tree worth pursuing for PvP or PvE without upsetting the overall class balance. Near enough as I can tell, Blizzard knows this, have learned from the total fiasco of many of their 41 point talents, and intends to make an effort to avoid that situation in WotlK.

And secondly, there's a reason that has to do a lot less with actual game design. I'm not saying the kind of balance I believe you can implement in this game is easy to implement. But I genuinely believe it's possible to implement. One of the reasons behind this belief is size of the game. Last time I saw a number cited, WoW had 11.5 million players. My old social studies teach used to say that numbers is nothing unless you have something to compare it to, so for the sake of comparison, let's use pre-WoW MMORPG sizes. Nicking the data from mmorpgcharts.com who's been tracking it for a fair few years now, at the time of WoW's launch, a big MMORPG had around 500 000 subscribers. Most, even the ones who were considered succesful, had less. WoW has 22 times as many customers. 22 times as much income as one of the older MMORPGs. I'll repeat that, just for effect; WoW has a monthly income of more than the twenty old-school MMORPGs, taken togheter. That's an order of magnitude difference, and while I actually respect Blizzard's customer service - unlike SOEs, which was just... Not. Proper. - that kind of income also means I have different expectations for what they can and can't do in terms of design that requires resources, compared to the standard in pre-WoW MMORPGs. But even so, as I said, I don't think it would be easy.

But then again, if it was easy, anyone could do it.

And I agree with you, the problem with battlegrounds really is human behaviour and in extension, design that allows that human behaviour. Rated battlegrounds is arguably the easiest way to do it; You wouldn't have to remove the pig's trough of regular battlegrounds, you'd cater to the organized PvP guilds - who seem to be have died a rather brutal death come 2.4 - and all actual "content" you'd need is already designed. Throw in some funky maths for the reward calculation (rated battlegrounds wouldn't even need to give arena points, in fact, it might even be better if they didn't), add a few NPCs, reuse some code from the arena system and you're good to go.

06/09/08, 2:47 PM	#483 (permalink)
Calixtus Von Kaiser Calixtus Human Warlock <Off Limits> Boulderfist (EU)	Hehe, glad to hear I managed to keep the vitriol bottled up. To avoid quote stacking I'll pick up after "I think the answer is it's a logistical nightmare and extremely difficult." I'm not entirely convinced it is so. For starters, there's the mumbled intentions of making the 51 point talents "gamebreakingly good". If they pull that off, so people actually want the 51 point talent of their tree of choice (ignoring the previously mentioned stated intentions of the design of the Unholy Death Knight talent tree) regardless of what they plan to do, they actually simplify balance immensely. Right now, any talent - regardless of tree - that is "in reach" has to be considered for it's PvP/PvE viability. A 31 point talent does not exclude a 21 point talent. A 41 point talent does exclude a 21 point talent. We will therefor not encounter a warlock with Shadowfury and Soul Link, and there is no need to balance either of those two abilities around that contingency. Where as SL/SL is attainable, and at one point lead to two notable nerfs of life draining abilities 1) Soul Siphon toned down 2) Mortal Strike effects affecting leech effects. While both of these changes certainly served to adjust SL/SL, both of them hit affliction based builds harder, who relied more heavily on life returning effects for survival than a build with Soul Link. Affliction spells/talents rebalanced because of how they perform in a build drawing mostly from Demonology. If you can actually rely on people taking the 51 point talents in any given tree, you have a cut off point in either of the other trees where an ability only has to be balanced after how it affects that particular talent tree (within reason obviously, as you could still screw things up by making something like one 31 pointers and one 21 pointer good enough to stack to overcome the 51 point awesomeness cough SL/SLcough). And thus, you can actually implement abilities that makes that particular tree worth pursuing for PvP or PvE without upsetting the overall class balance. Near enough as I can tell, Blizzard knows this, have learned from the total fiasco of many of their 41 point talents, and intends to make an effort to avoid that situation in WotlK. And secondly, there's a reason that has to do a lot less with actual game design. I'm not saying the kind of balance I believe you can implement in this game is easy to implement. But I genuinely believe it's possible to implement. One of the reasons behind this belief is size of the game. Last time I saw a number cited, WoW had 11.5 million players. My old social studies teach used to say that numbers is nothing unless you have something to compare it to, so for the sake of comparison, let's use pre-WoW MMORPG sizes. Nicking the data from mmorpgcharts.com who's been tracking it for a fair few years now, at the time of WoW's launch, a big MMORPG had around 500 000 subscribers. Most, even the ones who were considered succesful, had less. WoW has 22 times as many customers. 22 times as much income as one of the older MMORPGs. I'll repeat that, just for effect; WoW has a monthly income of more than the twenty old-school MMORPGs, taken togheter. That's an order of magnitude difference, and while I actually respect Blizzard's customer service - unlike SOEs, which was just... Not. Proper. - that kind of income also means I have different expectations for what they can and can't do in terms of design that requires resources, compared to the standard in pre-WoW MMORPGs. But even so, as I said, I don't think it would be easy. But then again, if it was easy, anyone could do it. And I agree with you, the problem with battlegrounds really is human behaviour and in extension, design that allows that human behaviour. Rated battlegrounds is arguably the easiest way to do it; You wouldn't have to remove the pig's trough of regular battlegrounds, you'd cater to the organized PvP guilds - who seem to be have died a rather brutal death come 2.4 - and all actual "content" you'd need is already designed. Throw in some funky maths for the reward calculation (rated battlegrounds wouldn't even need to give arena points, in fact, it might even be better if they didn't), add a few NPCs, reuse some code from the arena system and you're good to go.