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Seriously, why do people not understand simple balance?

In League of Legends, there is this ability called Flash, which allows you to instantly teleport a short distance over interveining terrain. Now, I see no problem with a Flash Like ability; Mobility is a good thing. But you can't design a Champion AROUND mobility (Higher Mobility, Lower Damage) and then give a Champion built around damage (High Damage, Low Mobility) THE SAME FREAKIN MOBILITY! So if your playing a Heavy Hitter, all you need to do is take Flash, and you have instantly invalidated the champion based around Hit and Run, because the other guy hits harder and runs just as fast now.

Point this out to the League of Legends community, and it's "FLASH IS BALANCED, NUB, L2P" All the while they cry that "Hit and Runner X is underpowered!" or hell, even heard "Brush is Overpowered!" Their excuse for Flash being balanced is, wait for it; Everyone can use it and start doing better. So the guy who is already a Hit and Runner can use it, even though he doesn't get anything out of it, because he already has that ability.

Flash is also the Most Used Ability in the game.

Now, to the Halo 3 forums. The Battle Rifle (BR). The "Skillful" weapon. Nevermind you can kill someone all distances of the map with it, this thing kills people in three shots. What do I hear? "This weapon is the most skillful; I can go negative K/D of .5, pick it up, and get to 2.0"....... So wait.... You don't have enough skill to kill anyone with any other weapon, but the ONE that EVERYONE can pick up and get kills with is the most skillful? A person picks up a Battle Rifle, and INSTANTLY starts doing better, winning a "Duel" against most other weapons, and this thing is balanced? So it requires skill and is perfectly balanced because, you'll never guess this; Everyone can use it and start doing better.

The Battle RIfle was the most used weapon in the game, and the most popular Starting Weapon.

Now, Gears of War Forums: the Sniper Rifle. Capable of instantly killing someone in the head, or instantly downing someone if it hits them ANYWHERE else (even the finger, or it some characters cases, the Cape). Go down three times, and your insta-killed, and this thing has 12 shots against four people. 12/3 = 4 people can be insta killed anywhere on the map. But was it "balanced"? Oh sure, because everyone can pick it up and start doing better, without being able to aim worth a damn. You were "UBER 1337 PR0" if you even touched the thing, and if a Lancer (Machine Gun) beat you out, it was a noob weapon (Back me up guys, the Lancer in the first Gears of War was WOEFULLY Underpowered individually). But the Sniper Rifle was "balanced" because, I'm starting to see a pattern, but Everyone can use it and start doing better.

The Sniper Rifle was the most used weapon in the game, barring the shotgun.

Now, to Shadowbane, the Druid Class. The Druid Class had an Earthquake spell, 5 Second Casting Time, 2000 damage STANDARD (Without any buffs/equipment), Ignores Friendlies, and hits everything around the Druid, even things in the Air (Which is pure lazyness, but that's not what we are talking about), all on an ~8 second Recharge Timer. This spell was a favorite amongst Druids and it was on a healing Class; It was not unheard of for entire groups of Druids to run forward all of them cast this spell (You couldn't possibly stun them all, which broke them out of the cast), kill everything around them, Heal up, walk forward, do it again. Now, compare that the Channeler's AoE's: 500 damage, 2 second Cast Time, Friendly Fire, and 12 second Recharge Timer. Now, the Channeler COULD be a Healer Class, true, and the Channeler is also a Single Target DPS class, hence his AoE's being alot lower, but a good Druid could out Single Target DPS a Channeler.

Also, lets look at the Sentinal: He also has a huge AoE, dealing 2500 damage standard, ignores friendlies, with a 2 second casting time, but the kicker is; he hits himself with it (Holy Class, supposed to be a Last Stand type of skill, or "I'm dragging you bastards to hell with me!"), but the Sentinal was overpowered, while the Druid was perfectly balanced. Druid could heal, Sentinal couldn't.

Because I forgot: Most Caster classes have ~2000 health, most DPS classes had ~5000 health, and most tanks had around ~8000 health.

The Druid was also the most played class in the game.



Now, I'm not saying these aren't balanced (Well, the Sniper and Flash were/are woefully overpowered), but why do people think that something that EVERYONE has to rely on in order to do well is balanced? If everyone gets 5 kills with weapon X, but everyone, and I do mean everyone, can get 10 kills with weapon y, isn't Y substatially more powerful than Weapon X, and as such, much less skillful?


Disclaimer: Druids weren't overpowered at all, I wrecked them with my Channeler to the point where people I never met started calling me the Druid Killer on my server; god I love Worldwide Kill Feeds and the ability to look up who people were playing as. Slarg has slain Druid X, Slarg has slain Druid Y, slarg has slain druid Z, slarg was slain by already dead druid Z's dots. You just can't get much better than an Instacast, 1 sec recharge .5 second stun. Doesn't really stun them for long, but damn is it good for interrupting 5 second spell casts....

Generally the crying of idiots is their only way of dealing with a "problem". It only becomes a problem if game developers giving into the complaining without proper research first.

Cause it can't be the skill of the player and has to be the game, yet if they're doing well it's all player skill then.

People in the general sense, are idiots.

I hope this answers your very long and (probably) painfully typed question

Could be shortened to "People are idiots" though.

I'm more annoyed at people who whine about shotguns in most modern-warfare style fps games (especialy combat arms, but not exclusively) because they kill people quickly at point blank range... you know, exactly what they're supposed to do?

If these idiots had their way shotguns would be useless....

A lot of it is heat of the moment rage. I do it on Halo and Black Ops, but I don't really mean it at all.
However, there are some games and weapons that have balance issues. Ghost, the Famas and the AK47u in Black Ops are overpowered and are used A LOT compared to other weapons and classes. Armour Lock and the DMR on Halo are both quite bad. Armour Lock is used by almost everyone I meet on Team Slayer, whilst the DMR is too powerful compared to the Assault Rifle.

Actually I tend to find the "two heads are better than one" philosophy to be complete crap. The school bully, who gets F's on everything, was actually a really smart guy. So was his best friend. And their buddy, we'll call him Bob. Put these three together though and its like they become dumb, dumber, and dumbest.

The problem with balance is that developers often have an idea in their heads of how people will act and what they will do with various abilities/items/weapons etc. They all have an intended use. Gamers however, will often find ways to use such things in manners the developers had no foreseen. Play testing is an expensive thing and the developer doesn't always have the time they need to do it (hence why so many times in FPS games most guns are functionally identical with the only difference being appearance).

Problem is that a community often quickly develops its own 'balance' that may or may not conflict with what the developer had in mind and the two then have to contend with one another to resolve the issue. You can get it like Blizzard, where the developer just bends over and takes it whenever the community whines about something or like Infinity Ward where they just hang on to their initial concept and fail to realize what is being utilized by the community.

Halo I think does a decent job at balance but I agree that the battle rifles have been OP since Halo 2, but since everyone starts with them in most multiplayer modes, it's not that big a problem. Halo's entire concept though has never really seemed to be complete weapons balance. The power weapons (shotty, rocket launcher, sword, and sniper) are often used as a means of encouraging team play in the game and to regulate the flow of a match. It's a different balancing concept than say, Unreal Tournament, where the weapons are generally balanced (but a good sniper, or shock rifle, will dominate the field).

Some developers just don't bother trying especially in primarily single player games.

IMO, Armor Lock isn't that good. All you have to do is throw a grenade at the person right before their invulnerability deactivates.

This is purely my own opinion so take it as its worth.

If everything was to become balanced then you would only need a select few. For example a quick fire, low damage weapon or a slow fire, heavy damage weapon. Having a high selection of gear is usually what draws people into a game, even if they end up using the same equipment. I sadly am one of those people, while I love customization I can easily be locked into 2 or 3 items. For example, 4 of 5 of my custom class slots in Black Ops consist of both the Famas and Ghost(and no I dont camp, I actually run and gun).

In a fantasy RPG im designing, mostly for fun but I could program it if i wanted, Iv got 3 types of armour. Now I could add in say another 3 types but they wouldn't server as good as the others. The only reason I personally would include is to add X options for customization, that is all.

I do understand where you are coming from though, if something is insanely overpowered then it becomes unfair.

If I use it, and I win, it's balanced.

If you use it, and you lose, it's balanced.

If I use it, and I lose, it's underpowered.

If you use it, and you win, it's overpowered.

League of legends is a perfectly balanced game, except when a new hero is released they need a bit of time before they get nerfed.

I don't see flash as OP. Everyone can take it, and for the most part everyone does. So the high mob, low str char vs the hi str, low mob char is still even because they both can do the same thing. When one flashes, the other can to, and the effect practically negates itself in terms of being OP to any degree.

After playing the game for a bit, I came to realize the Halo fanbase is atrocious in terms of intelligence and maturity. The concept of the battle rifle being "skillful" is stupid. It does not take much skill to use that gun. You said it yourself, three head shots and you're dead, at just about any distance. There is no steep learning curve to using the battle rifle. It is commonly used, because it's so easy to use, and effective to boot. I would think the weapons that require the most skill to use would be the sniper rifle while scoring head shots, and that plasma grenade launcher, because I never saw someone do well with it.

As for the gears of war sniper rifle issue, I'll just say this. Sniper Rifles are a cancer in video games. The only solution I can see to fix it is a game that only let's one player on a team have one, or simply limit them in some way. If everyone carries a sniper rifle as a back up weapon, anyone who doesn't do the same and know how to use it will become infuriated with dealing with getting sniped ALL THE TIME.

Necroshea wrote:I don't see flash as OP. Everyone can take it, and for the most part everyone does. So the high mob, low str char vs the hi str, low mob char is still even because they both can do the same thing. When one flashes, the other can to, and the effect practically negates itself in terms of being OP to any degree.

I hate being exhausted more than being flashed.

I had a stint into video game creation in my time.

Current game theory is you cannot punish your player for any reason. Imbalances are generally actually added purposefully into popular games to give players an easy, positive experience which keeps the game popular and generates sales.

MW2/3 are popular for this reason, you get a bit of a thrill when you get to maul a bunch of people in a row and get instant rewards in the form of killstreaks and such, this really pushes the elite douche category of players. When these games come out you have people bragging or saying how great they are and how good some perks/weapons/killstreaks/ect. are that help generate sales, you toss out an expansion or some DLC that was created during the dev process long before to increase the games shelf life until the next game come out.

Team fortress is an example of a game that doesn't do this, and rewards its players through other means, you'd hope that more games take this approach but its not going to happen, TF exists because of micro transactions and the fact that the team works for valve who are fairly awesome they aren't pushing things like purchased advantages, you can get any item you want except for hats given enough time and crafting. If EA was running the show you'd be sure that anything good would have to be purchased.

Grundz wrote:I had a stint into video game creation in my time.

Current game theory is you cannot punish your player for any reason. Imbalances are generally actually added purposefully into popular games to give players an easy, positive experience which keeps the game popular and generates sales.

MW2/3 are popular for this reason, you get a bit of a thrill when you get to maul a bunch of people in a row and get instant rewards in the form of killstreaks and such, this really pushes the elite douche category of players. When these games come out you have people bragging or saying how great they are and how good some perks/weapons/killstreaks/ect. are that help generate sales, you toss out an expansion or some DLC that was created during the dev process long before to increase the games shelf life until the next game come out.

Team fortress is an example of a game that doesn't do this, and rewards its players through other means, you'd hope that more games take this approach but its not going to happen, TF exists because of micro transactions and the fact that the team works for valve who are fairly awesome they aren't pushing things like purchased advantages, you can get any item you want except for hats given enough time and crafting. If EA was running the show you'd be sure that anything good would have to be purchased.

I feel the Demo Man's in TF2 Loch-n-Load is an under powered item.

Necroshea wrote:I don't see flash as OP. Everyone can take it, and for the most part everyone does. So the high mob, low str char vs the hi str, low mob char is still even because they both can do the same thing. When one flashes, the other can to, and the effect practically negates itself in terms of being OP to any degree.

After playing the game for a bit, I came to realize the Halo fanbase is atrocious in terms of intelligence and maturity. The concept of the battle rifle being "skillful" is stupid. It does not take much skill to use that gun. You said it yourself, three head shots and you're dead, at just about any distance. There is no steep learning curve to using the battle rifle. It is commonly used, because it's so easy to use, and effective to boot. I would think the weapons that require the most skill to use would be the sniper rifle while scoring head shots, and that plasma grenade launcher, because I never saw someone do well with it.

As for the gears of war sniper rifle issue, I'll just say this. Sniper Rifles are a cancer in video games. The only solution I can see to fix it is a game that only let's one player on a team have one, or simply limit them in some way. If everyone carries a sniper rifle as a back up weapon, anyone who doesn't do the same and know how to use it will become infuriated with dealing with getting sniped ALL THE TIME.

But if Flash is balanced because everyone can take it, why are Battle Rifles and Sniper Rifles terrible if everyone can take them?

Grundz wrote:I had a stint into video game creation in my time.

Current game theory is you cannot punish your player for any reason. Imbalances are generally actually added purposefully into popular games to give players an easy, positive experience which keeps the game popular and generates sales.

But that's just stupid (In My Humble Opinion); if you make a game for a positive experiance and make one weapon underpowered on purpose, then people who like that weapon (Let's just say... popular theory is the Needler), then people who like that underpowered weapon will then have a negative experiance due to their weapon being terrible. You can't possibly create a game that will not punish anyone, becuase just by making an imbalance you are punishing a player for using the imbalanced weapon.

The Needler is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for. OP in Halo 3 when you had two of them.

LordofHats wrote:The Needler is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for. OP in Halo 3 when you had two of them.

Oh god, I love the thing, but it's considered very underpowered by, as you said, alot of people.

iproxtaco wrote:A lot of it is heat of the moment rage. I do it on Halo and Black Ops, but I don't really mean it at all.
However, there are some games and weapons that have balance issues. Ghost, the Famas and the AK47u in Black Ops are overpowered and are used A LOT compared to other weapons and classes. Armour Lock and the DMR on Halo are both quite bad. Armour Lock is used by almost everyone I meet on Team Slayer, whilst the DMR is too powerful compared to the Assault Rifle.

Ghost is better than Cold-Blooded in MW2 - Choppers still see you with Ghost on...I think the FAMAS is fair, as it does low damage and has a high rate of fire. I'll agree, the AKS-74U is totally OP, but IRL it is an assault rifle. It uses the 5.45x39 round...the "low" rate of fire and recoil are supposed to counter the power, but it's still a beast...I actually run Ghost w/ a silenced AKS-74U pretty often. Total

But that's just stupid (In My Humble Opinion); if you make a game for a positive experiance and make one weapon underpowered on purpose, then people who like that weapon (Let's just say... popular theory is the Needler), then people who like that underpowered weapon will then have a negative experiance due to their weapon being terrible. You can't possibly create a game that will not punish anyone, becuase just by making an imbalance you are punishing a player for using the imbalanced weapon.

I think the only reason you can make this argument is you haven't played games for long enough.

"early" video games were torturous events that quite literally punished you for not playing how the (usually single) programmer wanted you to.
The huge push towards making every game an easy, dumbed down shadow of what it could be really started around wow's original release and success.

As long as the people that are having fun with double shotguns or whatever nonsense are louder than the it is positive for sales for them to exist.

Giving something to someone being perceived as a punishment for everyone that doesn't get it is a fallacy that a 10 year old might make.

I'd say the BR was more balanced than the DMR is now, and you couldn't kill people at any range of the map with it. However, you can with the DMR, because it is hitscan.

I never really play team slayer so I don't get to see how incredibly annoying armor-lock is, but they are nerfing it in the new title update anyway.

Grundz wrote:

But that's just stupid (In My Humble Opinion); if you make a game for a positive experiance and make one weapon underpowered on purpose, then people who like that weapon (Let's just say... popular theory is the Needler), then people who like that underpowered weapon will then have a negative experiance due to their weapon being terrible. You can't possibly create a game that will not punish anyone, becuase just by making an imbalance you are punishing a player for using the imbalanced weapon.

I think the only reason you can make this argument is you haven't played games for long enough.

"early" video games were torturous events that quite literally punished you for not playing how the (usually single) programmer wanted you to.
The huge push towards making every game an easy, dumbed down shadow of what it could be really started around wow's original release and success.

As long as the people that are having fun with double shotguns or whatever nonsense are louder than the it is positive for sales for them to exist.

Giving something to someone being perceived as a punishment for everyone that doesn't get it is a fallacy that a 10 year old might make.

First of all, I am 20, and have been playing games since I have been 3, first starting with Mortal Kombat. I have boughten all 100 games I own with my own money, if not Christmas or Birthday. I have been playing video games since before I started playing warhammer.

Second of all, why do games like Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Contra knock offs do so well if people hate a challenge? Even Catherine is known as being incredibly difficult. So why are the Torturous Games still popular today if people only care about feel good inc.?

And assuming seems to be something you still seem to be doing.

Slarg232 wrote:
First of all, I am 20, and have been playing games since I have been 3, first starting with Mortal Kombat. I have boughten all 100 games I own with my own money, if not Christmas or Birthday. I have been playing video games since before I started playing warhammer.

Slarg232 wrote:
First of all, I am 20, and have been playing games since I have been 3, first starting with Mortal Kombat. I have boughten all 100 games I own with my own money

Slarg232 wrote:
I have boughten all 100 games I own with my own money

Slarg232 wrote:
boughten

"Bought" is already past-tense, so boughten... not a word.

Slarg232 wrote:why are Battle Rifles and Sniper Rifles terrible if everyone can take them?

I never said anything about battle rifles being terrible. I said that they are easy to use and do no require much skill to use effectively.

Sniper rifles are terrible simply because it's not fun to be walking around and be instantly killed. If enough people have them, you can quite easily get killed walking around, then spawn killed a couple times. If you think being sniped is fun, then you're the only person I've ever known who feels that way. I prefer close/mid ranged combat over long range because usually both parties have a chance to win. Playing against snipers is usually a one sided ordeal.

I feel that Gears multiplayer is utter crap tier. I see videos of people with "skill" shooting 3-4 ft ahead of someone, watch the bullet trace not touch them, and still a head shot occurs. Gears is the only game that does this.

I guess condensed, I feel that a game can be fun without sniper rifles, but it has a hard time being fun with only sniper rifles.

Cheesecat wrote:League of legends is a perfectly balanced game, except when a new hero is released they need a bit of time before they get nerfed.

I laughed.

That's why only about 20 heroes, out of 81-82 heroes, are picked, right?

That's why some heroes are nerfed to the ground and then never touched again, right? (Sup Shaco, Eve, Garen, Twitch, etc)

League of Legends is terribly balanced. Riot balances towards low-level players (Eve nerf..) so that people who get stomped by high-level player's smurfs, that they don't quit and give them more money.

League of Legends, who's team compositions are commonly 1 faceroll support such as Sona or Soraka, and then 4 tanky DPS such as Warwick, Jarvan, Alistar, Cho'Gath, Amumu, Gangplank, Irelia, Lee-Sin.

Masteries, Runes, Summoner Spells all make the game unbalanced, Flash and Exhaust being the biggest offenders. They make certain champions just useless entirely, and forgive any mistake you may make. Nobody wants to buy runes with IP instead of champions, so you always get matched with people who don't have any runes, and feed early game because of it.

LoL balances towards terrible players so they can make the maximum amount of money, because the F2P model attracts all the morons who don't know their ear from their donkey-cave.

If you want a balanced Action-RTS, say hello to Dota, or, soon to be, Dota2.

Necroshea wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:why are Battle Rifles and Sniper Rifles terrible if everyone can take them?

I never said anything about battle rifles being terrible. I said that they are easy to use and do no require much skill to use effectively.

Sniper rifles are terrible simply because it's not fun to be walking around and be instantly killed. If enough people have them, you can quite easily get killed walking around, then spawn killed a couple times. If you think being sniped is fun, then you're the only person I've ever known who feels that way. I prefer close/mid ranged combat over long range because usually both parties have a chance to win. Playing against snipers is usually a one sided ordeal.

I feel that Gears multiplayer is utter crap tier. I see videos of people with "skill" shooting 3-4 ft ahead of someone, watch the bullet trace not touch them, and still a head shot occurs. Gears is the only game that does this.

I guess condensed, I feel that a game can be fun without sniper rifles, but it has a hard time being fun with only sniper rifles.

Not Terrible as in "Bad to use" but Terrible as in "Not a good thing"; you said Flash was good because everyone has access to them, but you went on to say that Battle Rifles and Snipers are bad because everyone has access to them.

Also, keep an eye on Gears 3; I was in on the beta for that. In Gears 1 and 2, you would get into 49 games that were laggy and nothing worked like it is supposed to, but that last one is just heaven. Gears 3, you get into 49 games that work perfectly and one that just sucks.

I also said that the BR (and basically flash) are easy to use effectively.

I also said the sniper rifle requires skill to use effectively.

Everyone has access to all three, and because the first two are easy to pick up and be useful, I would consider them fair game. However, the sniper rifle does require skill to learn to use right, and if you're playing someone who's really good with them, you'll never get close enough to use anything besides a sniper rifle. Since the person is better than you, getting better at using said rifle will be a chore. Sniper rifles just muck up the entire game for me.

Unless it comes out for PC, I won't be playing it. Ever since owning a playstation, I've been paranoid about buying a game then damaging it somehow to where I could no longer play it, leading me to have to buy it again. So I decided to tinker with my 360 so I circumvent this dilemma, and microsoft didn't take too kindly to that. No more online play for me.

All the weapons that supposedly 'take skill to use' i am terrible at using...
I still get along through... less conventional methods.

Why are people that use exploits so obtuse about people who want a little balance in their games?

Karon wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:League of legends is a perfectly balanced game, except when a new hero is released they need a bit of time before they get nerfed.

I laughed.

That's why only about 20 heroes, out of 81-82 heroes, are picked, right?

That's why some heroes are nerfed to the ground and then never touched again, right? (Sup Shaco, Eve, Garen, Twitch, etc)

League of Legends is terribly balanced. Riot balances towards low-level players (Eve nerf..) so that people who get stomped by high-level player's smurfs, that they don't quit and give them more money.

League of Legends, who's team compositions are commonly 1 faceroll support such as Sona or Soraka, and then 4 tanky DPS such as Warwick, Jarvan, Alistar, Cho'Gath, Amumu, Gangplank, Irelia, Lee-Sin.

Masteries, Runes, Summoner Spells all make the game unbalanced, Flash and Exhaust being the biggest offenders. They make certain champions just useless entirely, and forgive any mistake you may make. Nobody wants to buy runes with IP instead of champions, so you always get matched with people who don't have any runes, and feed early game because of it.

LoL balances towards terrible players so they can make the maximum amount of money, because the F2P model attracts all the morons who don't know their ear from their donkey-cave.

If you want a balanced Action-RTS, say hello to Dota, or, soon to be, Dota2.

Every hero I've played against has strengths and weaknesses, find out their weaknesses and exploit them that's how you beat them.