Yep. Unbalanced systems end up making the “game” be about whether you can figure out the exploit or not, and actually putting it into practice is often dull and repetitive. I want to have to engage with the systems in a meaningful way and make interesting decisions throughout the time playing the game.
Most of the CRPGs out there have “unbalanced systems”, often to significant degrees. Making balance - in the sense that you and @malkav11 talking about it - the end all leads down the path of 3e → 4e → even worse.
It’s really not possible to make a system where there are no suboptimal choices unless there are very few choices, even in digital games (where there’s no "judge’s discretion). The presence of suboptimal choices doesn’t generally kill systems. Likewise with some classes (builds/etc) being stronger than others.
Again, nobody’s suggesting that it must be perfectly balanced. But it should be a consideration.
Again I didn’t say anyone said it should.
Just like nobody said it shouldn’t be a consideration.
yawn
You know, except the guy I was responding to who literally said that it’s only important in high level competitive play.
Yes, he said “important”.
Reading that as “shouldn’t be a consideration” is kind of a weird interpretation.
Yes, they do! And that’s part of why I’ve drifted away from the genre – playing out all the battles often fails to deliver enough interesting decisions to justify their time expenditure. If you as a game designer are going to ask me to spend dozens of hours fighting monsters, then the moment-to-moment combat mechanics should be robust, varied, and fun to engage with for that length of time.
I seem to remember in one of the Fallout games stacking some combination of perks that dropped punching from 3 action points to 1, so the last third of the game was just everything dying from a flurry of power-fist punches within a single combat round. That was really cool for a bit, but quickly became rote. The game wasn’t ruined, but it was certainly diminished from a hypothetical version where combats were interesting and tense all the way through.
Balance in the sense of “each build could do exactly as well as each other build” is a ridiculous goal for a single-player game, but balance in the sense of “no build should trivialize the game’s challenges to the point that it becomes boring for the player” is not.
He also went on to say “fuck balance”, so I’d say your interpretation is the weird one.
I don’t even necessarily go that far. I’d just say “no character building choices should be so valuable they’re a gimme, and no choices should be so weak or undersupported that they act as a defacto handicap”. (Offering deliberate, signposted handicaps is fine, of course.) I mean, it probably shouldn’t be super easy to stumble into a build that trivializes a game when you don’t want that, but I would argue that if someone wants to trivialize the game for themselves and goes out of their way to do so, it’s not the designer’s responsibility to deny them, putatively for their own good. (In singleplayer, of course.)
Now that I think about it, it’s not technically an RPG really but I liked the way Crackdown handled leveling up. Each power, strength, agility, shooting and driving had five discrete levels you could advance through, each showing tangible growth and benefits. You were a superhero that could lift cars and leap over buildings by the time you were completely leveled up.
Seiken Densetsu 3 has an interesting advancemt system, where at level 18, you could upgrade your character to dark or light power (different spells and abilities) and at level 38 do it again.
So, you could end up with a Light/Light, Light/Dark, Dark/Light or Dark/Dark character, with Dark Characters more damage oriented, while light characters had more buffs.
I too am a proponent of classes because it reduces the clutter, the chance at wrong decisions and also reduces the chance that a character sucks until XYZ abilities are necessary to be powerful. So you suck until you are overpowered.
But I like the idea of have flexibility and choice, so to me, what is great is expanding options as you level. You star as a simple warrior at 1st level, and maybe later on can dable in magic, or stealth, or berserker rage, changing the class to something else (Barbarian, Ranger, or Spell blade). And further down the line you can pick up a few more abilities.
You’ll always have the base class of the Warrior, with the focus on combat, but you can mix in minor abilities from other classes to make unqiue combinations.
Outside of that, I really enjoyed the freedom that Titan Quest gives. Go Illusionists.
We’re actually in year ten of an Arcana Evolved campaign that we play every other month. I think we might finish this year. It gets heavy at high levels - I think we’ll do 5th ed if we do another fantasy game. The character classes are great, and I also really like that you can take racial levels.
That’s awesome.
I really think D20’s biggest mistake was a combination of “you get hit dice every level until max” and “fixed number go up intervals until max” (like BAB +1/1 for fighters or save dc’s going up +1/2 for casters or whatever). 0-2e progression slows down in some respects after 9 (no more hit dice) and then in others you get that better overall, bounded progression (can’t ever do better than a 2 to hit on an attack table). It removes the need to have those crazy high level d20 creatures with 700 hp, 50+ ac, and 50+ Attack Bonuses.
I have mixed feelings about 5e. I appreciate that they wanted to streamline without making it too simple or bland. But I wish they had gone away from what still feels like “d20 sensibilities” (e.g. “strength” fighters typically starting with 16 or 18 strength).
I really wish Cook would do an AE 2.0.
Yeah, suffice is to say I disagree to a certain extent.
There actually should be in a way…Unbalance. Discord. Chaos. Not ALL skills should be created equal in the same way. Not everything should be useful in every situation. There should be a spectrum of power. Opened doors while there are shut windows. Your character should suck sometimes.
But your scenario…is someone who min-maxes versus…we might as well say someone who picks a bunch of auxiliary-tertiary low-rent skills/cantrips/dump stats and screw up their character while running a full party of bards on drown-in-blood difficulty…yeah they should have a bad time, and that is exactly how it should work by design.
Don’t get me wrong, all skills/abilities/powers/etc should have plenty of mileage…but balanced? Not really.
I mean, most of this I agree with (although I think the spectrum should be limited within the same level or group or whatever). I think that is completely compatible with consistently viable choices and having a fun time. Because a game should probably not be the same thing over and over again, so situational powers etc are absolutely a good thing. As long as those situations are relevant and actually come up regularly. That kinda thing.
This just seems like being shitty to players for being shitty’s sake, on the other hand.
This is what it is all about. And those choices don’t have to be balanced in any way whatsoever as long as they remain viable in my book.
I would argue that being balanced and being viable are inextricably connected. Even arguably the same thing.
Yes. 4E got balance wrong by thinking everyone should be able to produce the same numeric effects on the world, except ooo, mine is a fifteen foot cube of paralyzing radiant damage but the cleric’s is a fifteen foot sphere of stupefying holy damage!
Balance isn’t absolute equivalence, but it does mean that everyone can contribute meaningfully.
And y’know what? In Fate, the guy who loaded up on Notice and Empathy as his high skills can contribute just as much to a fight as the guy with Fight and Shoot by setting up advantages, noticing enemy weak spots, and reading their tells in combat.
They’re both involved, important, and, if all goes well, enjoying themselves.
Gleefully rubbing a player’s who picks only awful, pointless skills nose in their foolhardiness feels a lot like a strawman for the “folly” of balance to me, nevermind why did that system offer enough useless choices to fill up a whole character sheet (or…why did the GM setup a scenario that consistently ensures one of this players is constantly useless?)?
Of course, part of the problem with the discussion being so broad is that what works best in a singleplayer videogame isn’t necessarily what works best at the table with a GM. I think there are a lot of broad principles that apply but like…if you’re designing a system for a videogame, that videogame will have a fixed set of content, so part of the system balance has to be taking into account the content being implemented and vice versa. Whereas a GM can deliberately build scenarios around what the players have picked, as you say…but they still can’t (or at least, shouldn’t be expected to) do the foundational design work on the system itself so if the numbers just don’t work on [power], that’s a problem.
I definitely don’t see it that way. For example in AD&D a wizard and fighter are both viable character classes, but I wouldn’t say they are balanced at all. A high level wizard will destroy a high level fighter pretty much every time…just like how a low level fighter can massacre 1D4 hp hedge mages.