Paul Prosek
Kirkinen Risk Control
Caldari State
0
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Posted - 2013.10.04 23:12:00 -
[1] - Quote
Not to get too new agey, but I think when most people talk about balance they are referring to a feel you get for the game. Games teach us their systems through trial and error. With a good game you slowly learn what is and isn't possible, what does work and what doesn't. The core of a game needs to be logical enough that situations play out as expected, i.e. no killing an undamaged tank with a pistol, but with flexibility to allow for genuinely unexpected and exciting moments. Getting good at a game should be like developing a skill through solving small puzzles. You learn to survive where you were dying before. You learn to kill what before always took you out. You learn what equipment will let you complete the tasks you didn't even know existed. Where before you couldn't figure out how people were getting massive scores and kill numbers, you first learn how it's possible and then do it yourself. This is balance.
Imbalance in games is actually the small moments that destroy immersion by breaking the rules the game itself set up. This manifests in situations for which there is no counter. Your skill and knowledge of the game can't overcome the problem at hand. No amount of going back to the drawing board will produce a solution, and worse others start using this exploit to dominate the game in a way that was not intended. It can be map design, or a weapon that is overpowered, or even exploitable gaming code that breaks the physics of the game itself. But when it happens, it's like a strange sound your car makes. You immediately sit up and notice that something is wrong. Even worse it starts happening again and again until you have to pull over and see what's going on. This is imbalance.
Now imbalance doesn't necessarily mean a bad game, it's just something that needs to be fixed. You want to have it fixed because you want to get back to the game as it was meant to be. A bad game is just bad, and even if it was perfectly balanced you wouldn't want to play it because it wasn't fun or rewarding.
In regards to vehicle vs. AV, what you want is a consensus among players that feels logical. A tank can't be invincible, but it also shouldn't fall at the first volley from a swarm launcher. The balance for this should probably be found less in the numbers than in the tactics and skill of the players. I think most tankers would concede that a concerted effort by one team to make killing him a priority should succeed, i.e. two to six players shift focus to AV. Most infantry would also agree that a tank should be able to cut down infantry caught out in the open, and that regular weapons should have little to no effect. It's generally only when a reasonably buffed tank is cut down by one guy, or a vehicle continues it's path of destruction when everyone is trying to kill it that people feel cheated.
For developers, the task is to listen to the people who care enough to tell them what they think, and sort out the responses. These usually fall into two categories. People who think something is hurting the game, and people who think something is hurting their character personally. The first is usually an honest opinion. Not always right, but honest. The second has to be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, no one knows better than a user of X what is right or wrong with X. Using the feedback between these two groups of people to fix problems and than applying this experience to future endeavors is the responsibility of the developers. Our job is to provide well thought out feedback. |