Choice Matters VS Balance

Jacobin

As a DAOC vet, one of the most interesting features in that game was that all all 3 realms had unique classes and races.

It was really interesting to compare and contrast stuff like:

- Midgard Troll Warrior vs Albion Highlander Armsman vs Hibernia Firbolg Hero

or

- Midgard Kobold shadowblade vs Albion Saracen Infiltrator vs Lurikeen Nightshade

 

This was a huge part of why I think realm pride existed. Fighting people that had completely different looks, armors and abilities made RvR fell much more meaningful than more recent MMOs that have progressively become closer and closer mirror matches to the point where in GW2 there is no difference at all between the realms/factions/worlds. The only reason people are fighting is for some confusing scoring system that kills all motivation for the losing side.

Mirror matches where everyone is the same and the sides don't matter is empty and souless.

But...

They are obviously much easier to design and more importnantly BALANCE. The old DAOC forums, or even Planetside 2 today are full of posts about how class or gun X is OP which is very often the case as was shown in the last PS2 patch where it became known that the Vanu tank had over twice as many kills as the other 2 empire tanks combined.

Even with extensive beta testing as long as differences exist between Realms there will always be QQ about OP, UP and gimp specs, especially in a PvP-only game with limited respecs.

 

That said I still crave the unique RvR experience that DAOC provided so many years ago and thus have high hopes for CU. The fact that MJ is willing to take on a potential balancing nightmare like this in order to create a unique experience is reason alone for me to throw some money at this game, and it will be more than $60.

 

CluckingChicken

I welcome unbalanced classes, to an extent. A warrior class from faction A might be good against the mages belonging to faction B, but the mages on faction C completely counter them. While the warrior would gladly charge at a mage on faction B, they'll run their ass off if they run into one from faction C. Instead of nerfing the OP classes, just make sure they have reasonable counters. There might be a class on an enemy faction that your faction has trouble beating, but hopefully that just means there's a class on the other enemy faction that can wipe the floor with them.

madmossy

Realm pride has a massive impact on a games community and its something that hasn't really been taken advantage of for some time.

 

DAoC you had the mids vs albs vs hibs and people were passionate about their race and class.

WoW you had alliance vs horde and people were passionate about their race even if the classes were mirrored.

GW2 there is no realm pride because your all on the same team and with free transfers early on, server pride was also non existant.

 

For CU I want a system like DAoC, I want people to be passionate about their realm and class, I don't want carbon copy classes and more importantly I want people to give a **** about the server they play on.

meddyck

Yeah I'm glad the realms will have different classes. Balance is of course harder. But there are obvious things to avoid. For instance don't make classes that instagib enemies. Don't give a class in one realm a very important ability that isn't available in the other realms. Don't spread abilities that are required in a group out in one realm so that it takes most of a group to get those abilities while the other realms only need a few classes to have them.

Jithak

We need a perfect imbalance: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

Works good if the imbalance is not much and planned. Also every patch something changes and you might be the flavor of the next month. I think DAoC and WAR weren't too bad at this.

I tink it was already officially stated that ther will be different classes in each realm. This will automatically lead to slight imbalances. The important thing is that they will not get too big and that key abilities are available in every realm only distributed on different classes.

tlear

I think as long as Factions overall are somewhat balanced it is fine.

 

Have Vikings have best melee, Arthurians best healers and dirty hibs best mages. To me it is not an issue if simillar class on other faction is better then mine, as long as some class on my side is better then simillar class on their side. It makes for more fun battles. Remember when Midgard did not have endurance Regen or PBAOE at all but Zerker could 2 shot you with Doublefrost? To me that is more fun then just mirrored avantages/disadvantages

Odaman

I like having different classes for each realm. I do think daoc had an issue with how each realm was considered to excel at something... (mid was melee until celerity was distributed to the other factions, albs had the best range, and hib... was... supposed to be magic I think, but I don't think that panned out). I don't want to see that here. The range differences were acceptable due to instant casts etc, but celerity was an insanely good ability to only give to one faction for such a long time.