Archived Post
08-28-2009, 06:22 PM
StrykerX already wrote out a great example of why this should be done and wanted to share to the live forum.
Look at it this way... a team-scaled supervillain (like a lair boss) hits harder than a player, right? But a good tanking build should be able to stand up to that boss pretty much indefinitely without dying (though he'd need to sacrifice a lot of damage output to do so). Defenses that strong would be important to team PvE but would unbalance PvP... such a tank would be unkillable but also unable to kill anyone else (his damage is too low since he's specced for survuval and taunting). Stalemates are no fun in PvP but in PvE that's what a tank's job is... to stalemate the enemy (and keep his attention) while his buddies do damage.
Likewise, a higly offensive based build has extreme damage in PvE but no survivability. But killing players in five seconds in PvP is bad, as is dying in five seconds... so the pure offense energy blaster type doesn't work well in PvP either.
As a result, if you balance for PvP everyone is in the middle. No one does great damage or has great defense. Defenses are equal to each other, as are attacks. In short, the actual power sets you use only offer cosmetic differences... to be balanced in PvP every single target attack has to function pretty much like every other, every AoE has to be about the same, every defense equally useful, and so forth. There are minor differences (fast, weak attacks vs slow strong ones, and so forth) but ultimately every power set has to be about the same in terms of DPS, crowd control strength, damage mitigation, etc... Otherwise you run into situations where one build is a lot better than another and then things are no longer balanced.
In PvE, it's perfectly acceptable to have wide variations in powers. As long as all characters can defeat solo-oriented enemies and quests and gain XP at a reasonable rate people are happy. You can have group-focused builds like pure tanks, glass cannon energy blasters, or buffing healers as well as generalist builds. But in PvP, there's no aggro control. There's no way to force people to attack the tank rather than the glass canon. Everyone has to be a generalist to a large extent, because otherwise people start screaming for nerfs. And they keep on screaming for nerfs until everything homogenized and bland, with no power being any better than any other. And if PvP and PvE use the same powers, that means PvE is now also bland.
Fortunately there's an easy solution... separate power effects in PvE and PvP. That way once the whiners get everything nerfed into mediocrity in PvP people can still actually do things that are fun in PvE. Fun in PvP comes from defeating other thinking (mostly :p ) players... it's like a sport. But mobs are stupid. Abysmally, painfully stupid. Fun in PvE comes from seeing how far you can push your build... what supervillains and instances you can solo, how fast your team can take down Dr. Destroyer, whether you can solo Dr. Destroyer. In short, fun in PvE comes from doing the sort of things that the whiners will never allow in PvP, which is why they need to be balanced separately.
Of course the devs could just ignore the whiners and actually allow significant variations in PvP effectiveness between builds, only fixing obviously broken powers (like Pyre) and relying on team composition and intelligent play to do the rest... but I've never heard of any MMO dev team having the guts to do that so I'm understandably pessimistic in that regard. The squeaky wheel does get the grease, and nobody squeaks louder than PvP whiners and nerf-herders.
(Look at City of Heroes for an example. A top-end, fully tricked out build can do insane things in PvE... soloing content made for a group of eight, singlehandedly defeating giant monsters, blowing through the hardest full team missions in the game with three or four people faster and easier than most full 8-man groups can do it. But in a PvP zone those characters aren't much tougher than the average guy.)
Oh, and I'm not saying we should all be able to breeze through the PvE content without danger. I am saying that a fully optimized endgame character with an excellent build, the best gear in the game, and a highly skilled player should be able to do things a guy who just hit level 40 with a so-so build in random drop gear couldn't dream of doing, rather than being marginally better.
Almost all the MMOs out to date have been plagued with this issue, and just want to voice my opinion that I would not like to see the same thing happen in this game.
The separation of balancing these two aspects of the game will help PVP become more balanced just as much as it will save PVEers the hassle when a power gets changed in PVE due to an unintended effect it is having in PVP.
Look at it this way... a team-scaled supervillain (like a lair boss) hits harder than a player, right? But a good tanking build should be able to stand up to that boss pretty much indefinitely without dying (though he'd need to sacrifice a lot of damage output to do so). Defenses that strong would be important to team PvE but would unbalance PvP... such a tank would be unkillable but also unable to kill anyone else (his damage is too low since he's specced for survuval and taunting). Stalemates are no fun in PvP but in PvE that's what a tank's job is... to stalemate the enemy (and keep his attention) while his buddies do damage.
Likewise, a higly offensive based build has extreme damage in PvE but no survivability. But killing players in five seconds in PvP is bad, as is dying in five seconds... so the pure offense energy blaster type doesn't work well in PvP either.
As a result, if you balance for PvP everyone is in the middle. No one does great damage or has great defense. Defenses are equal to each other, as are attacks. In short, the actual power sets you use only offer cosmetic differences... to be balanced in PvP every single target attack has to function pretty much like every other, every AoE has to be about the same, every defense equally useful, and so forth. There are minor differences (fast, weak attacks vs slow strong ones, and so forth) but ultimately every power set has to be about the same in terms of DPS, crowd control strength, damage mitigation, etc... Otherwise you run into situations where one build is a lot better than another and then things are no longer balanced.
In PvE, it's perfectly acceptable to have wide variations in powers. As long as all characters can defeat solo-oriented enemies and quests and gain XP at a reasonable rate people are happy. You can have group-focused builds like pure tanks, glass cannon energy blasters, or buffing healers as well as generalist builds. But in PvP, there's no aggro control. There's no way to force people to attack the tank rather than the glass canon. Everyone has to be a generalist to a large extent, because otherwise people start screaming for nerfs. And they keep on screaming for nerfs until everything homogenized and bland, with no power being any better than any other. And if PvP and PvE use the same powers, that means PvE is now also bland.
Fortunately there's an easy solution... separate power effects in PvE and PvP. That way once the whiners get everything nerfed into mediocrity in PvP people can still actually do things that are fun in PvE. Fun in PvP comes from defeating other thinking (mostly :p ) players... it's like a sport. But mobs are stupid. Abysmally, painfully stupid. Fun in PvE comes from seeing how far you can push your build... what supervillains and instances you can solo, how fast your team can take down Dr. Destroyer, whether you can solo Dr. Destroyer. In short, fun in PvE comes from doing the sort of things that the whiners will never allow in PvP, which is why they need to be balanced separately.
Of course the devs could just ignore the whiners and actually allow significant variations in PvP effectiveness between builds, only fixing obviously broken powers (like Pyre) and relying on team composition and intelligent play to do the rest... but I've never heard of any MMO dev team having the guts to do that so I'm understandably pessimistic in that regard. The squeaky wheel does get the grease, and nobody squeaks louder than PvP whiners and nerf-herders.
(Look at City of Heroes for an example. A top-end, fully tricked out build can do insane things in PvE... soloing content made for a group of eight, singlehandedly defeating giant monsters, blowing through the hardest full team missions in the game with three or four people faster and easier than most full 8-man groups can do it. But in a PvP zone those characters aren't much tougher than the average guy.)
Oh, and I'm not saying we should all be able to breeze through the PvE content without danger. I am saying that a fully optimized endgame character with an excellent build, the best gear in the game, and a highly skilled player should be able to do things a guy who just hit level 40 with a so-so build in random drop gear couldn't dream of doing, rather than being marginally better.
Almost all the MMOs out to date have been plagued with this issue, and just want to voice my opinion that I would not like to see the same thing happen in this game.
The separation of balancing these two aspects of the game will help PVP become more balanced just as much as it will save PVEers the hassle when a power gets changed in PVE due to an unintended effect it is having in PVP.