The answer is in the loot, says I =)

“Balancing for awesome” to me is more about giving players noticeable changes that advance their characters across time. Dynamic balancing will be slight changes across lifespan and if it’s done right will never really feel “awesome” it’ll just feel right.

FotM has always seemed like to dirty word to me too but it’s often been the FotM that drives the life into the early game (though it may not be the best life as the power leveling/zerging form it comes in) where it would otherwise be devoid of experienced players if there were no reason to reroll (well outside us alt-aholics who simply play different characters because we had a name/backstory/skill/class/whatnot we wanted to try).

I’d say that SWG’s original profession system would have been amazing for this type of “balancing for awesome” with the ability of anyone to work into certain roles without having to make a new character and the ability to keep the things you like from other “professions” at the same time. However, sadly, that character advancement system is gone (most likely forever) from the game.

Really when it comes down to it one of the things players (and I) want out of playing a game is to feel awesome. “Awesome” is made of of looking awesome (animations/appearance) as well as being awesome (being able to complete superhuman tasks).

As referenced above “You can never have too much power.”

(Actually it’s sort of creepy that their stuff sounds so close to what I’m thinking, to the point where I feel like I need to point out that I don’t work for them.)

I think the principle is basically sound that self-leveling systems, while not a panacea, are more resistant to breaking than systems that depend on human monitoring and tweaking. It’s harder to get self-leveling systems working, and of course nothing entirely frees up humans from monitoring, but once you’ve got such a system working it does free up attention for more productive tasks. That’s got pretty broad support throughout a lot of branches of systems design…

…so why does it seem so blindingly obvious to you that it clearly doesn’t work for the particular application of game design? What’s so different about balancing character capabilities at the same rated power level across multiple classes that normal system design principles don’t apply? Is there some practical evidence that hand-tweaking must always be a clear winner over dynamic balancing?

If so, does that mean game designers are eternally doomed to be stuck with the “balancing for perfection” groveling over stats that Eric described? If dynamic balancing isn’t a way toward “balancing for awesome,” what is?

No.

+7 Systems has been trying to sell balance middleware for several years. I don’t think they’ve made any deals.

Their system is based on spell usage frequency data, if I remember correctly, and automating changes based on that is patently ridiculous — it’s so reliant on context. Put in a bunch of new mobs that are resistant to fire damage and everybody starts using frost instead? Clearly, frost is overpowered!!1! and the system will fix it for you. etc. etc.

They do have super awesome-looking dashboards and such.

The bulletpoints at the bottom of the link describing the mentoring system in general are a description of how the mentoring system has always worked.

They’re copied from the original system description that I wrote in 2005, which is mirrored here: http://eq2.warcry.com/news/view/43160

The mentoring system was designed to provide viable/fun advancement experience from the get-go. :)

- Scott

In particular I agre with Eric’s concluding advice to MMORPG developers. Instead of trying and failing to achieve perfect balance (by increasingly constraining player action), design your gameworld so that it doesn’t need as much active tinkering for balance.

But while the essay stated the problems well, it didn’t get into the “how?” of the question of gameplay balance. What are some design possibilities for making a MMORPG that doesn’t require as much rule-tweaking?

My suggestion would be to design game systems that are more self-balancing, where a player community is treated like a ecological system.

Any “systems designer” worthy of that title knows that a self-balancing system works better and costs less than one that requires constant maintenance by some human(s). By spending more on the front end defining and testing feedback models, you save over the long run because your programmers can work on value-adding feature enhancements instead of on balance fixes.

Anyone else think this might be a more fruitful approach for achieving ongoing play balance in a MMORPG than constant developer tweakage?

Finally, this is lovely for a game still in development, but what can be done to minimize maintenance balancing in an existing game? Probably the biggest “balance redesign” in MMORPG history was the New Game Experience for Star Wars Galaxies… and we all saw how well that went.

So what are the practical options for changing an existing gameworld to meaningfully reduce the need for constant balance tweaks? Are there any, really?

But when every class is ‘overpowered’, are they balanced?

I would say yes — and also, that this sounds like a lot of fun to me.

Blizzard states in their Diablo 3 gameplay video “there is no such thing as too much power!”
Granted, this is easier to implement in a single-player game than an MMO, but….