Lessons from recent IE playthroughs

[Lephys]

I actually agree about DA2. However, you didn't quite answer my question accurately. I asked for an example that demonstrates how balance mandates that. You just pointed out how it's possible to use balance to a horrible degree.

 

I'm still wondering how a lack of preposterous disparity = everything's the same. Either we eat raw meat, or we eat burnt meat, because heat is bad! Why can't we just eat reasonably cooked meat?

 

Dragon Age 2 did a TON of stuff horribly. AND, it really wasn't even that balanced. I played as a Mage, and basically went with the most glass-cannon build I could, and I could hardly kill 3 things in a 3-minute fight, while my NPC Warrior was over there mowing crap down. That's a bit beside the point, though...

[Gromnir]

am much in favor of more balanced classes than were existing in d&d... and ad& d, and d&d 2e... and to a lesser degree, 3e, or 4e d&d.  am using d&d, 'cause the example o' bg2 were being utilized. clear overpowered classes tends to make other classes, understandably, less appealing. under-powered classes has same problem. 

 

we beg folks not to go all argumentum ad abdsurdum on us. the impossibility to be getting perfect balance is Not an excuse to forgo balance. am not claiming that folks is asking for that... yet. nevertheless, is a typical ploy and we might as well head off before we hear it. 

 

that being said, different but balanced does not equate sameness.... not by a long shot. it woulda' been much better if all fallout traits, skills and abilities were balanced. not take gifted were voluntarily gimping your own character. take energy weapons at start were a wasted skill for 2/3 of the game. agility ain't That important for a combat focused character, is it? if all skills were genuinely of equal use in fallout, we woulda' been far more likely to build a character based on what sounded fun rather than what we knew were get us the most juice per squeeze. yeah, nothing is stopping us from making a gimped character, and after playing fallout 3 or 4 times, we probable is then looking for a challenge. but guess what, most people will not play a game 3 or 4 times. developers has revealed time and again that play once is typical.. 

 

that brings us to a second point and that is that usefulness is not always the same as power. you not need to make sure all skills and abilities is of equal power, but is stoopid to make some far more useful than others. if you feel as if the character you painstakingly crafted and spent tens of hours leveling is nothing more than your party's superfluous appendix, then you will be feeling justifiably disappointed. sure, you may be ultra-powerful for the final run at the boss, wherein you can diplomacy your way through all endgame content and get the Best results, but if you were relegated to gimp status for 75%-80% of the game 'cause you had largely useless skills or abilities, that ain't good neither. 

 

*shrug*

 

balance is actual the OPPOSITE of sameness. lack o' balance results in a small handful of potential builds being actual played. balance has complete different result. if you were told that there were no best skill, ability, class whatever, then the typical player would be choosing for fun and style... far more variations would be probable, regardless of possible. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps "Gromnir receives congratulations from Kjaamor. Kjaamor politely points out, however, that for all Gromnir's shoulder movements, Gromnir's assertion that a Quadratic equation results in a Parabolic graph was never in question."

 

untrue. you used quadratic for party, mage and good v. evil. so how you meant quadratic was very much in question. as we stated in our initial post, we know what is difference 'tween linear, exponential and quadratic, and you seemed to be using at cross-purposes.  so, in point o' fact, the assertion that quadratic results in a parabolic graph were very much in question... y'know, at the time we level'd the question.

Edited May 21, 2014 by Gromnir

[Lephys]

@ Lephys

P:E does indeed have more suited lore in that respect. However, a warrior in the end is still mostly a stick fighter, even if his stick fighting is powered by some supernatural soul, the whole thing is still rather mundane. You can't do much with a sword other than thrusting and slashing, it's not something abstract and elusive like magic. Just taking the old model of a warrior from d&d and other systems and add some supernatural speed and strength is probably not enough.

Yeah, but there's more to it than that. If the same essence kind of flows through all things, then everything's more connected. Which is exactly why something like Arcane Veil is still connected to the physics of the world, instead of magically circumventing it. Wizards can create that barrier, but enough focused physical force (say that ten times fast, ) can break it. Unlike in other games, in which you have "This is a magic barrier, so it makes me immune to physical force." No, it just protects from it. It's magical in nature, but... so is the force powering pretty much everything else.

 

*shrug*. I'm not saying "Souls!" is like, the easy button that makes everything fine. Just, the fact that "powers" in PoE are all interconnected by the workings of soul matter/essence/energy kind of grounds everything to the same foundation. So you don't have "I come from a race of anthropomorphic planets that uses energy not even found in your dimension!" running around. You don't have that "If you're not a Mage, you can't affect me/this!" factor. Sure, it might still be an advantage, but it's not alien to the workings of another class, mechanically.

[Valorian]

 

Have they ever said that all class powers stem from souls? I interpret the whole soul power thing as some things and abilities being influenced by your soul, especially those that one could describe as supernatural.

I'd find it rather silly to discover that soul, not his physical and mental capabilities, propels the warrior's ability to swing his sword, get better with it and use a variety of mundane maneuvers.

Ehhh, I'm not sure on the exact specifics of that, actually. But, I didn't mean to say that all individual abilities are powered by soul-power. And I'm aware that that might've been what my words meant. In which case, my apologies.

 

I'm fairly certain all classes are soul-powered. Meaning, no, every sword-swing isn't necessarily a use of soul "magic," but the Fighter is capable of doing things that go beyond mere physical conditioning and training, as opposed to Fighters in traditional fantasy RPG lore, who are basically just in-really-good-shape, well-trained equipment specialists.

 

Via the souls thing, everyone's got some kind of "magical" aspect to them, even if some rely on it a lot more, and others a lot less.

 

 

There's no need to apologize Lephys.

 

Josh Sawyer mentioned this last year, in June:

"A lot of the more "magic-y" flavored things that fighters, rogues, et al. can take will probably wind up being Talents (optional) instead of core class Abilities.  If you want to play an effectively non-magical fighter or rogue, you will probably be able to do so, but there will be more fantastic options available for players who want them."

 

I like that these are optional talents.

If everyone ends up being a special soul-powered snowflake, then nobody is. 

[Stun]

I actually agree about DA2. However, you didn't quite answer my question accurately. I asked for an example that demonstrates how balance mandates that.

I've got a better idea. Why don't you show me a game that doesn't. Show me a game that managed to perfectly implement class balance. Then the rest of us can discuss whether multiple playthroughs of that game felt "samey" or not. Because honestly? The only games I can think of that truly balanced their classes all ended up suffering from DA2's soulless class rigidity. Ever played Dungeon Siege 1 and 2? Same phenomenon!

 

 

 

I'm still wondering how a lack of preposterous disparity = everything's the same. Either we eat raw meat, or we eat burnt meat, because heat is bad! Why can't we just eat reasonably cooked meat?

I don't recall advocating preposterous disparity.

 

 

 

Dragon Age 2 did a TON of stuff horribly. AND, it really wasn't even that balanced. I played as a Mage, and basically went with the most glass-cannon build I could, and I could hardly kill 3 things in a 3-minute fight, while my NPC Warrior was over there mowing crap down. That's a bit beside the point, though...

Trust me lephys, building a glass cannon Warrior will yield the same results. Sure, you'll do 1000000000 damage per swing, but you'll die in 30 seconds as enemies shatter your 'glass' Edited May 21, 2014 by Stun

[Lephys]

Amen, Gromnir!

 

Yeah, balance isn't about perfection. Or rather, true perfect balance isn't actually what people think it is ("everything's EXACTLY on par with everything else!").

 

Balance is simply drawing boundaries such that the distance between things doesn't start negatively impacting stuff. It's not about bringing everything to the center. It's just constraining the playing field. You wouldn't want a soccer match with the two goals 5 feet apart, but you also wouldn't want one with one goal on the east coast and one goal on the west coast.

 

You don't want to give people "equal" options (you can either spend this one, quantifiable "class point" on THIS class, to choose it, or you can spend it on this OTHER class), then have one of them be blatantly crappy the whole time. "Oh, you picked the Suckster: You get +1 to everything per level up. Meanwhile, this other class the Awesomenator, gets +7 to everything every level."

 

That would be preposterous. You don't offer ranged weapons as a choice, with an attack speed of 100 seconds, or melee weapons, with an attack time of 1 second. It doesn't even matter if the ranged weapons deal 200 times the damage of the melee weapons. They're no longer feasible to use, thus, that's a moot choice.

 

Same with mage stuff. Yeah, you could say the Mage in the referenced games is "balanced" by the fact that, while he's really powerful at higher levels, he kinda sucks early on. But, where's the interest in that? "Don't worry... we know this isn't fun at all early on, but LATER, we'll make up for it with lots of fun!"? Is making it to higher levels not always a goal in the game? "I actually only want to play half the game, then stop. So, hmmm... maybe I should go with a Fighter?"

[Lephys]

I've got a better idea. Why don't you show me a game that doesn't. Show me a game that managed to perfectly implement class balance.

A) I don't have to, because I'm simply arguing that balance doesn't necessarily = sameness. If I say "I saw a cat yesterday," and you doubt my claim, I'm not going to tell you to show me footage of yesterday, where I was, and show me there was no cat. You're going to tell me to produce some evidence that this cat was really there. Not to mention the fact that "hasn't happened yet" doesn't equal "is obviously impossible," or we'd not have ANY piece of technology we have now.

 

B) It doesn't have to be perfectly implemented to be not-horribly implemented. I don't have to be a renowned surgeon for my dressing of your wound with a torn t-shirt to be blatantly more beneficial than a lack of any wound dressing.

 

What is it with you and binary?

 

I don't recall advocating preposterous disparity.

I don't recall claiming you did. You did, however, acknowledge the disparity between mages and non-mages in some of the IE games, which you followed up with "big deal." Thus, what you advocate is the idea that the amount of disparity doesn't really matter at all. Which is the opposite of the very idea of balance, which is simply that the amount of disparity matters, not that there isn't any disparity.

 

 

 

Trust me lephys, building a glass cannon Warrior will yield the same results. Sure, you'll do 1000000000 damage per swing, but you'll die in 30 seconds as enemies shatter your 'glass'

Ehhh, the problem wasn't me dying. It was my having to exhaust my mana 17 times just to slay like 5 enemies, even with the rest of my party beating on them all. Granted, I was playing on higher difficulty settings, which were PREPOSTEROUS in that game. I could not, for the life of me, beat that stupid first golem boss on Nightmare. I tried changing up my party composition several times, even bringing oodles of potions, etc. Couldn't even get the thing to half health.

 

This was all on console, btw. I realize I should've gotten it on PC, but, alas... I didn't have a good enough PC at the time.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I don't understand the whole 'Mages are better in BG2 and any other class is pointless' argument. If that was the case, then a party of magic users such as PC (Magic user), Aerie, Nalia, Imoen, Jan and Edwin would absolutely roflstomp through the game compared to a party that had two or three tank/melee type characters.

 

It would be easier for me to play through the game by swapping out two or three magic users for some melee (eg. Paladin/Fighter/Ranger) type characters like Keldorn, Korgan, Mazzy, Minsc, etc. But going from some comments, these characters were all but useless near the end of the game.

[Gromnir]

I don't understand the whole 'Mages are better in BG2 and any other class is pointless' argument. If that was the case, then a party of magic users such as PC (Magic user), Aerie, Nalia, Imoen, Jan and Edwin would absolutely roflstomp through the game compared to a party that had two or three tank/melee type characters.

 

It would be easier for me to play through the game by swapping out two or three magic users for some melee (eg. Paladin/Fighter/Ranger) type characters like Keldorn, Korgan, Mazzy, Minsc, etc. But going from some comments, these characters were all but useless near the end of the game.

for us, the most useless bg2 character were probable a vanilla thief. mage/thief. fighter/thief... anything/thief or thief/anything coulds be useful, but a single class thief were pointless. could max useful thief skills before leaving irenicus start dungeon, and then you is stuck leveling as a third-tier melee or ranged combat character. what fun.

 

bards also sucked. play as a f/m/t gets you more attacks, a better thac0, potential exceptional str 'bove 18, and backstab. cost of a couple mage spells and lore ability... and near useless bard music.  'course is not much call to play f/m/t neither when you gots a whole party o' superheroes... unless you is soloing. f/t or f/m or t/m is all gonna be useful AND powerful and whatever bit you don't have covered, somebody else in your party will. bards is slight more useful than a vanilla thief... but not by much. too bad too, 'cause bards get best stronghold quest.

 

the feralan were a planned bg2 ranger kit... got killed quick by community outrage. sure. playing as tarzan sounds intriguing, but no armour and limited to primitive weapons were too much for folks. conversely, josh made some recommendations of very balanced kits for iwd2... and those also got slammed too. folks wanted drow deathknights who could dual-wield halberds and cast fireballs.  so josh makes up a ridiculous kit that were silly overpowered and posted. people didn't get the joke. he gots far more approval for his joke kit than for his serious offerings. is probable best not to leave up to the community to decide balance.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I wasn't really pointing to once class. I was merely commenting on these types of comments which we see all the time on these boards:

 

 

 

To return to the example in the original post (I know you love examples and similes, Lephys), The comparitive Exponential Wizard (to the Quadratic Wizard and Linear Fighter) spends almost the entire game being weaker than the fighter and the Quadratic Wizard, but at the end becomes so vastly powerful as to render the other classes utterly pointless.

 

Kjaamor says all other classes are utterly pointless by the end of the game. That means, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, etc are utterly pointless. I don't know how someone could come to that conclusion when those classes are quite powerful by the end of the game. eg. Sarevok, Minsc, Keldorn, etc

[Gromnir]

I wasn't really pointing to once class. I was merely commenting on these types of comments which we see all the time on these boards:

 

 

 

To return to the example in the original post (I know you love examples and similes, Lephys), The comparitive Exponential Wizard (to the Quadratic Wizard and Linear Fighter) spends almost the entire game being weaker than the fighter and the Quadratic Wizard, but at the end becomes so vastly powerful as to render the other classes utterly pointless.

 

Kjaamor says all other classes are utterly pointless by the end of the game. That means, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, etc are utterly pointless. I don't know how someone could come to that conclusion when those classes are quite powerful by the end of the game. eg. Sarevok, Minsc, Keldorn, etc

we weren't intending to be specific critical of your pov. we were simply making 2 contributions:

 

1) there were at least a couple classes in bg2 that we did find useless

 

2) community opinions regarding balance are suspect

 

am thinking point 2 is particular noteworthy for poe. we observed josh's reaction to community notions o' balance. am doubting he is less dismissive nowadays.  

 

...

 

is additional funny about the kits, 'cause midway through development, black isle decided to use a kinda/sorta 3e d&d rules for iwd2, which made kits a non-factor.  in any event, am suspecting that many developers don't take community opinions regarding balance all that serious.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps as for some obvious, non-useless classes from bg2, ones that approach over-the-top powerful, we would actual choose ranger/cleric dual class and inquisitor paladins before most mage and mage combos. am not saying is necessarily more powerful (though equipped correct, that may be true too,) but for pure bada$$ery, we thinks those two is silly powerful.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Gromnir

[Kjaamor]

I wasn't really pointing to once class. I was merely commenting on these types of comments which we see all the time on these boards:

To return to the example in the original post (I know you love examples and similes, Lephys), The comparitive Exponential Wizard (to the Quadratic Wizard and Linear Fighter) spends almost the entire game being weaker than the fighter and the Quadratic Wizard, but at the end becomes so vastly powerful as to render the other classes utterly pointless.

 

Kjaamor says all other classes are utterly pointless by the end of the game. That means, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, etc are utterly pointless. I don't know how someone could come to that conclusion when those classes are quite powerful by the end of the game. eg. Sarevok, Minsc, Keldorn, etc

 

That was an example illustrating what an Exponential wizard would be like to Lephys, as an exercise in mathematics and definitions of Quadratic and Exponential.

 

I think something was lost in translation if you've been led to think otherwise.

[illathid]

I want to encounter a Level 1 enemy in the world that's the toughest enemy in the universe.

 

Quiet You! You'll summon Pun Pun!

[Silent Winter]

@ Lephys

P:E does indeed have more suited lore in that respect. However, a warrior in the end is still mostly a stick fighter, even if his stick fighting is powered by some supernatural soul, the whole thing is still rather mundane. You can't do much with a sword other than thrusting and slashing, it's not something abstract and elusive like magic. Just taking the old model of a warrior from d&d and other systems and add some supernatural speed and strength is probably not enough.

That's why Fighters in PoE get other abilities - like being able to 'engage' more than one enemy at a time, fast stamina regen in battle, things like 'knockdown' or whatever they have.  Because just clicking 'fight' is boring (though having a party member you don't need to micromanage is handy too).

 

---

 

I'm mostly in the 'balance doesn't equal saminess' camp, but I can see the POV of not needing to perfectly balance all the classes all the time.

Vanilla thief in BG wasn't equally powerful overall but still had handy things like backstab and HIS for scouting.  Even if all the kits in BG2 were better than vanilla, the plain thief was still something you could play with.

By end of TOB, HLAs made thieves ludicrously overpowered, true - methinks limiting 'spike trap' to one or two would've been more 'balanced' but then we couldn't instakill demogorgon for the lulz

[Greensleeve]

 

I want to encounter a Level 1 enemy in the world that's the toughest enemy in the universe.

 

Quiet You! You'll summon Pun Pun!

 

 

Ah. The excellent example of how poorly worded D&D 3.5 really was. And above all, the shining example of how no splatbooks were ever playtested in conjunction with anything at all. Maybe not even themselves. 

 

As for a game that is well balance, I don't know. RPGs are notoriously poor when it comes to balance. I've heard that most MOBAs are pretty good when it comes to balancing, and they have crazy replayability. Civ 5 is rather well balanced between leaders, at least with all expansions installed. Some sucked massively before Brave New World. 

 

I can however point to a subset of a game which is really rather well balanced, fun, and with great replayability. Games of D&D 3.5 where everyone played Tier 3 or 4 characters are rather well balanced and incredibly fun. Tier 3-4 classes are all classes that are not 1) Full casters 2) Fighters, Samurai, Truenamers, NPC classes, Monks, Paladins, and probably a few I'm forgetting. The ideal classes are anything from Tome of Battle, the Binder, Bard, Duskblade, Wildshape Ranger, and probably one or three I'm forgetting. I'm going off memory here, though I could dig up the thread.

 

Edit: Found the thread: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0

Also, I don't care if a reader here doesn't agree with the list. I've argued and seen enough arguments about Tiers to not care anymore. The Tier 3-4 classes are rather close together in terms of balance and power and playing a game with just those classes would be fun and interesting and have plenty of replayability. 

Edited May 22, 2014 by Greensleeve

[PrimeJunta]

I've got a better idea. Why don't you show me a game that doesn't. Show me a game that managed to perfectly implement class balance. Then the rest of us can discuss whether multiple playthroughs of that game felt "samey" or not. Because honestly? The only games I can think of that truly balanced their classes all ended up suffering from DA2's soulless class rigidity. Ever played Dungeon Siege 1 and 2? Same phenomenon!

Perfect is a bit of a high bar to clear, obviously, but... NetHack. IMO it has both excellent class differentiation and class balance. A Wizard, Archaeologist, Tourist, and Samurai each require a different strategy to play to maximum effect, the differences carry from early game to endgame, and they're not dramatically different in power at any point in the game.

[Mor]

Lessons from recent IE playthroughs: Big world project - takes a looong time to install, don't use experimental content and don't be too greedy -- its a big lady and unless you have a lot of time to handle her, you'll never going to hear her sing.

[Zwiebelchen]

 

As for a game that is well balance, I don't know. RPGs are notoriously poor when it comes to balance. I've heard that most MOBAs are pretty good when it comes to balancing, and they have crazy replayability. Civ 5 is rather well balanced between leaders, at least with all expansions installed. Some sucked massively before Brave New World. 

 

 

This. MOBAs, especially League of Legends (or the initial DOTA) are a perfect example of great class design. Every hero feels unique, no hero feels just like a carbon copy of another one with some changed visuals. Every hero has a completely different playstyle and strategy. Even if LoL might not be perfectly balanced in general (there's always a flavour-of-the-month class), it's perfectly balanced within its scope. FOTM heroes always cause anti-FOTM heroes to skyrocket in popularity. It's like an ever-changing game of cause-and-effect. Which is interesting.

Extra Creditz made a good video on this effect, explaining it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

 

I think there's a lot to be learned in terms of class and hero design both from MOBAs and MMORPGs. Yes, I said it. The most popular western MMORPGs, Rift and WoW really nailed that class design to a point where those games were basicly ONLY about the replayability of the game by re-rolling a different class. WoW with a little bit more focus on totally different mechanics, Rift with more freedom to build interesting hybrids and more choices for RPers.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Zwiebelchen

[Messier-31]

6. Evil is stupid

 

The quadratic problem with BG2 is not Mages, but the forces of good. The good option will, time and time again, grant you the better item and more experience. It will, less frequently, grant slightly less gold, but good characters can shop for cheaper and by the time you leave Athkatla you are already so flush for gold that you could probably just pay the Gods themselves to deal with Irenicus.

 

Evil loses you items, experience, and if you don't change your tune quickly will make shopping an impossibility. So even if you mean to play as evil, the chances are you'll be off to donate to Umberlee to make you less evil.

 

So true. As a matter of fact there are some aspects of evil outcomes which are arguably better than the good ones, but there's so few of them. I can merely recall two:

1. taking the ransom in Athkatla which gives you the Silver Pantaloons (I guess most of you know why in the Nine Hells you need that in the 1st place)
2. evil path in the Test of Greed grants you with Blackrazor, one of my favourite swords (there are ways to obtain it by being good, but consider it a flaw)

Tried my best to be spoiler-free.

[Sensuki]

This. MOBAs, especially League of Legends (or the initial DOTA) are a perfect example of great class design. Every hero feels unique, no hero feels just like a carbon copy of another one with some changed visuals. Every hero has a completely different playstyle and strategy.

ROFL. No DotA-knock off game holds a candle to DotA Allstars. DotA 2 is pretty good but I don't like a lot of the recent design decisions made by IceFrog.

 

I think there's a lot to be learned in terms of class and hero design both from MOBAs and MMORPGs.

Not really (at least not for this game) as the heroes are restricted to four abilities.

 

The thing that can be learned from from those games are in the Combat and movement mechanics area.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

Even if LoL might not be perfectly balanced in general (there's always a flavour-of-the-month class), it's perfectly balanced within its scope. FOTM heroes always cause anti-FOTM heroes to skyrocket in popularity. It's like an ever-changing game of cause-and-effect. Which is interesting.

 

 

And how do you suppose this could be implemented to a single player game?

[Sensuki]

It shouldn't be. Fullstop.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

It shouldn't be. Fullstop.

 

It's outside the scope of this game, that is true.

 

On the other hand, a game which adapts itself to your party composition sounds like fun. You'd need slightly imbalanced classes with a rock-paper-scissors-ish setup, and the opponent selection would need to be weighted towards enemies who could reasonably discover and adapt to your tactics (say, a hive-mind of malicious and intelligent spirits like in the tabletop RPG Wraith), but the idea of the game actively seeking to counter your tried-and-true strategies has potential.

[PrimeJunta]

That... is a cool idea. It wouldn't even be too hard to do. The counter-strategies themselves could be quite simple; just field the appropriate counter-units to your party members. To make it feel fair and interesting, introduce a suitable time delay so that the counters don't appear immediately, and even better, require some way for the enemy to gather intel on you. You might see shady characters spying on you at the local inn, the enemy doing armed recon, retreating quickly after making contact and so on, with the opportunity to thwart these strategies (kill or capture the spies, allow no-one to escape the field of battle). Each of these thwarts would add to the time lag or add errors to the counter-strategy.

 

Huh. Cool!

Edited May 22, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I think there's a lot to be learned in terms of class and hero design both from MOBAs and MMORPGs. Yes, I said it. The most popular western MMORPGs, Rift and WoW really nailed that class design to a point where those games were basicly ONLY about the replayability of the game by re-rolling a different class. WoW with a little bit more focus on totally different mechanics, Rift with more freedom to build interesting hybrids and more choices for RPers.

 

Don't games like WoW have a never ending cycle of tweaks and nerfs to balance the classes from the developers because players find something that unbalances the class and then developers like Blizzard nerf that skill/abilitiy/item and then someone finds something else, and then that gets nerfed, ad infinitum.

 

I've noticed that with games like World of Tanks and Diablo 3. After years of tweaking, it's still not balanced as more tweaks come through with later patches and hotfixes. That doesn't come across as a balanced game. Quite the opposite.