Editorial by Josh Sawyer on balance

[Cabamacadaf]

http://kotaku.com/how-to-balance-an-rpg-1625516832

 

Might be interesting.

[Amentep]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67723-josh-sawyer-explains-how-to-balance-an-rpg-extensive-editorial-at-kotaku/?do=findComment&comment=1490139

 

Although I suppose it might be worth discussing both in the backer and general PoE forums.

[PrimeJunta]

It is. It nicely puts paid the canard that he's after 'perfect balance.' 

 

While it's going to be almost impossible to achieve his ideal, it is IMO most definitely a goal worth pursuing. A few rounds of doubling and halving will certainly sort out the balance issues here.

 

(Er, once the most egregious bugs are sorted so we can actually tell what the balance is.)

[Amentep]

I thought this bit might address the philosophy that could look at the feedback about Might:

As we continue to play through the game, QA and developers will start to detect choices that are outliers. These choices will either always get picked or never get picked. Both present problems that should be corrected.

 

An option that always gets chosen has some clear and obvious advantage that the other options don't. In essence, the always-picked options are so good that they are making alternatives dramatically less appealing. If the game is balanced around the always-picked option, the game is imbalanced for anything but that option.

[Cabamacadaf]

It does seem like most people are putting a lot of points into might, so they'll probably do something about that.

[PrimeJunta]

They 'might.' :paging Lephys:

 

Thing is, the more I play with these attributes, the better I like the system. Yeah, Might and Dex are a bit too useful for most characters, maybe, but Res is certainly way more important for some than I thought. Per is the only somewhat dumpy stat; usually there are better ways to disable/debuff the opposition than Interrupt. In the current system I'd rank them as follows:

 

Rank 1 (must have for most builds): Might, Dex

Rank 2 (important for many builds or must have for some): Con, Int, Res

Rank 3 (dumpable for most except specialist builds): Per

 

That would be solved with some pretty simple tweaks. Move the healing bonus from Might to Res, say, and make Per affect crit chance to make it more compelling. These changes would even make the stats more intuitive IMO.

[Gromnir]

this thing is on the board in at least 3 places.   oh well, is worth reading we s'pose.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Orogun01]

:Pop in head, see that Josh Sawyer hasn't posted.Go back out :

[Osvir]

"I think the title is a bit misleading and is a poor choice of a "Headline" by Mr Sawyer. He talks about balance, sure, but to me he's more or less telling us how they are working/QA Insights. It gives valuable insight into which stage the beta/game project is in, and what we can expect at a later stage."

Copy+paste from another post/other thread.