Immersion, Realism, and "Balance".

And why its all pretty silly...


In real life, things aren't balanced - balancing things is a system unique to videogames which greatly disturbs realism far beyond the damage a fish mask can do. Does this need to be balanced first? I'm saying do we need to get the pitchforks and torches regarding realism to weapon balance instead of glittery wings and trout armor? Nah - because its all really silly.

In real life, weapons are not balanced to be equivocal with each other- they're designed to out perform outright other weapons in so on.. And now that i'm being redundant in this thread I'll ask what keeps you using the gear and weapons that you do?

I think there is a great deal of /principle/ to our characters whether we admit it or not. Otherwise we'd all be cookie cutter hally-mages, aye wtfman?

When everything is perfectly balanced its kind of boring and plain... I support misbalance and asymetry amidst our avatars... The real balance lies in how we utilize the shortcomings and strengths...

You might cry "but that /is/ balancing" - Sort of. Its actually a lot more "work" to balance things asymmetrically but its a lot cooler.

 

Sounds interesting, but I think Sota's guiding principle is "play it safe'. Although perhaps the benfit of instanced zones/rulesets is that perhaps we can do some cool experiments.

 

Yea I've been a proponent of the idea that weapons should have the same trade-offs as in real life, ie they have different utility bases on circumstance. A bow is going to give an advantage in some situations, but not for instance, in a narrow dungeon hallway.

That's how real life does have "balance"; ie why more than one weapon exists, because different types of weapons have different types of utility.

Also been skeptical of forced ideas like "pure archer" though, for the same reason.

In general, realism does have a kind of balance on it's own (properly implemented), but I agree that artificial balance is kind of boring. It makes everything more like each other, with differences superficial. It's also what people ask for when they want encounters always matched to their level.

 

Fascinating point. Does anything other than 'balance' work in a video game/commercial product these days? Your argument is a bit like saying my $20 toaster should burn my toast half the time whereas my $200 toaster should cook it perfectly and butter it. That's what folks expect these days.

Find me a video game where true random drops give me a Samurai Sword when everyone else is averaging a viking hand axe and i'll sign up for good.

 

To my mind, balance isn't the aim, but also nor is realism. What you want is more complex game of rock, paper, sissorss.

Skill trees should have strengths and weaknesses. BUT the important point is all trees/buildsbdecks have a counter.

So a certain mob/player is a hard counter to a given build/deck. When you turn up to a knife fight with a gun, you win. However when you turn up with a gun and everyone else is sitting in bunker using drones, you lose.

Some fights aren't fair, but no single build/deck trump's all others.

Regards
Spung

 

Yeah - after I posted (quite frivolously, mind you, because people on this forum seem to think really hard) - That its kind of more about skilltrees than it is the actual weapons!