De la difficulté d'équilibrer un MMO.

First, I hate the word nerf as it was created in an attempt by disgruntled players to help rally people ahainst balance changes in changes. I generally think its use should be reserved for only major downward adjustments made by the developer. Today, if a game company makes any change, no matter how small to the game, some players scream NERF! Second, time for another couple of rules:

1) No MMORPG has ever, no ever will be balanced as a whole - These games are simply too complicated.

2) Most game systems within a MMORPG will not be perfectly balanced (same reason).

3) No combat system that involves complicated, diverse and ever-increasing abilities/skills will ever be balanced.

4) No complicated game system, no matter how well designed will survive intact from design to final form. Once players get involved and when tens of thousands of players get involved, all sorts of unexpected things happen.

5) The only way to have a balanced combat system in a game which features RvR is to have very few options and characters that are essentially clones of each other.

So, no matter whether we have a TL system for WAR (we will) nor even if we had the money that Blizzard has, if we want to system that is fun and constantly changing and widely diverse, the game will never be perfectly balanced. Now, in terms of our reaction time, keep in mind that every single time we change anything in the game, it will provoke howls, cheers and/or yawns. We take our time and even when we sometimes still make the wrong call. MMORPG developers are pretty much stuck in a no-win scenario. If we do nothing, we get B&M at. If we react too quickly, we get B&M at. If we react slowly, we get B&M at. Heck, even when we don't nerf and instead up abilities of other classes/races/etc. to compete, we get B&M at by the people who enjoyed their uber status. One of the things I truly hate about being a large-scale game developer is that no matter what we do, there will be a number of annoyed and vocal players who will scream until their lungs give out about how awful, terrible and stupid Mythic is. We do our best (it's not like we enjoy being yelled at nor the fact that some people are unhappy) but it will never be good enough for some.

So, we will, as always do our best to make sure that the game is balanced as it can be at launch. We will run though a long beta test but in the end, we will have to continue to balance the game after launch.

Mark

1. Aucun MMORPG n'a jamais été et ne sera jamais entièrement équilibré. Ces jeux sont trop complexes.

2. La plupart des mécanismes internes des MMORPG ne seront jamais parfaitement équilibrés pour la même raison.

3. Aucun système de combat impliquant des compétences/capacités variées et en constante évolution ne sera jamais parfaitement équilibré.

4. Aucun jeu complexe, aussi bien conçu soit-il, ne pourra rester identique de sa genèse à sa forme finale. Dès que les joueurs sont impliqués, à fortiori des dizaines de milliers de joueurs, des choses inattendues se produisent fatalement.

5. Le seul moyen d'obtenir un véritable équilibre dans un jeu RvR serait de proposer un minimum d'options et des personnages plus ou moins tous identiques.