Charecter Balance Issue

kingslayer

Just curious what people think about charecter balance issues.  Should all classes in a particular game be "equal" ?  Should some classes own others  as in warrior owns mage at close range and such ?

 

I was thinking about this in regard to DaoC. When I was playing DaoC in RvR, as a fighter type, there was nothing better than getting close to a magic user and bashing them.  Then for what ever reason Mythic started changing some of the Magic users giving them a DD insta cast spell that would crush a warrior.  I know some of you will correct me and have all the specific calculations and such, but after playing for 2 years, I felt that the Melee classes really started losing thier importance in DaoC with all the RA's and such that casters were getting.  So what do you think about how classes should be handeld.  WoW seems to have some great races/classes  so how would you design it so each racs/class remains unique and important?

LoD254

i've actually got an interesting opinion in this i think. Now i like the idea that some classes kill other but what if you gave characters like 2 viable ways to build the same "class" like a warrior or mage type. say a mage could take melee defeating skills or go the other dirrection and take magic defeating skills. Most people would assume yea, ill go and kill mages cuz who cares about fighters, but without anyone being able to kill fighters they would rise up. Maybe the warrior could be built the same way. He could have maybe an anti casting instant cast that lasts 5 seconds or sumthing. gives you enough time to run them down while in that casting stun, and they unstun once you touch them. I know it qould take alot of differant viriables to make this work but DAoC has been my favorite mmorpg if you exclude the mindless xp. I played dreds so i got xp off people.

kingslayer

with regard to charecter balance, I am not suggesting that any one class should be "uber"  A mage at range should "own" a fighter class.  I just don't like the idea of giving any one class all the tools to be effective in all styles of fighting ie: mages have long range nukes and melee dd insta spells that counter fighter types.

You bring up an interesting point about types of fighters.  The one issue I have always had with DaoC is there is only one right way to spec a charecter.  Nearly every  Thane, Druid, Armsman, Cleric, Shaman  etc.. were identical as it never took long for the community to dissect the charecter templetes and determine which spec did the most damage or had the best healing etc....I for one liked to spec my toons to my play style, but I did this knowing I would be at a disadvantage vs. the 'uber' spec'd toons in RvR battles.  Its a shame that a developer can't find a way to make multiple paths within the same class successful.

I bring this up because WoW will be a class based system( which is fine with me) and I was wondering if we will see similar patterns in charecter templetes that I saw in DaoC ?

Chucka

i just posted on a topic the same to this but meh...... characters defiantly should have different stats.. makes it more intresting and complex

filmoret

Well they ended up giving the healer a spell that caused AOE fear for 7 seconds.  Then there was some ups and downs and now we are here instead of there.

centkin

One of Henry Ford's famous quotes about the Model T was, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black."

I hate when classes are individually balanced for solo pvp and applied to pve. 

For PVE the whole point should be: "Can you function in your role for a group?"  If this means one class solos better or differently than another so be it.

Octagon7711

WoW has always had problems with balance.  I almost think they rotate buffs and nerfs just to have something to do, like it sounds good in the meetings to say, xyz classes are getting nerfs to skills xyz and xyz classes will be getting buffs for xyz skills.  SWTOR is the same way, all over the place at times.