Jonquill Caronite
Tronhadar Free Guard
Minmatar Republic
115
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Posted - 2012.07.30 12:46:00 -
[1] - Quote
That doesn't actually balance the weapons though, it just creates the illusion of balance under the assumption that each of the 4 axises maximum are of equal value, which isn't always the case. Want to know how to tell if something is balanced? Look at the market, the most frequently bought and abused things should be reduced, and the least bought need a buff, with explicit exceptions being made for the familiar vs the unfamiliar, and what I mean by the latter is, assault suits with assault rifles should be expected to be the staple, and thus seeing them bought more frequently does not imply the need for reduction, they are fine, but only if there still is variety and specialization. What this means is an arbitrary decision must be made on what one expects the average battlefield compositon to be, and other compositions should be the exception to rule...
Now I don't like this idea of balance too terribly much, I personally am a strong believer in the art of continually escalating warfare, in this case, the way you balance is by reducing and increasing the requirements and strengths of more advanced gear and requirements to leveling up a specific specialty, and continually adding material faster then specialists can reach their theoretical caps... This means that ANY idea can be a good idea, so long as significant time and resources are applied. Will other ideas progress faster, and provide better results at parrallel stages of development? Of course, but the point is, you can still get better if you work at it and make any of your ideas work, which is more fun and encourages far more creativity in builds, and reduces min maxing.
A different method of balancing, which I've never seen employed in a game, and wouldn't like to see, is the concept of making all statistics for all guns the same as they currently are, but having them all have handicap modifiers. As the particular system does increasingly well as a whole in the game (Above average) the handicap modifer actively reduces its strength until it performs average once again, and as something continues to do increasingly poorer the handicap modifier actively increases its strength until once again it is on average. This of course would NOT be relative to kill to death ratio, but to ISK PROFIT to death ratio. This system would undoubtedly work in making ALL equipment and gear as balanced as is possible in the game at one time, and would make playing the game rather like playing the stock market in terms of gear selection where individual items are LITERALLY at times more OP then others dependent on the previous days performance. It would also make the game very aggravating at times as the only constant would be function, and you could come back to find your outstanding build was completely horrible because everyone and their mother copied you one week and dropped your average making everything you used below average for a time. Once again, a gaurenteed to work system, but also not recommended.
The final system is the one currently in use, which rough in game balances determined very quickly and indecisively in a laissez faire manner, which are then balanced not by the market, but by the composition of player bases. Namely Sagaris are OP one week then next week half of all teams are Forge Specialists, and Assault Classes specialize that week, then the next week Dropships become the new OP to counter all the Assault Classes on the rise, followed the next week by a Swarm counter in response to the Dropships, and around the food chain we go.... Rather each weapon is independently balanced or not no longer becomes an issue in this system, because in regular cycles each specialist comes upon periods in which he or she can't specialize because their counter is too overwhelmingly present in response to their previous good fortune, so the game balances in SPITE of some OP builds existing purely the team compositions changing in response to present dynamics. This sort of system works, but I would like to see some integration of the first two suggestions rather then purely relying on this. |