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Rules of Engagement, Lesson #1 -- Say Nothing
August 10th 2000, 03:55 CEST by andy Diablo II and The Patch That People Hate. What's going on? You want to be kept informed, I know you do. You've got questions that you want to ask, and baby you know I want to get those answers for you! And I nearly managed it too... But you see, Blizzard is one of those game companies that still insists on locking its developers away in a dark room and putting a load of PR people out front to defend them against the perceived evils of journalism. And so, it is my sad news to report that despite the best efforts of your friends at the Planet o' Crap, we've been defeated by the lovely Ms Debra Osborne of Havas Interactive, Blizzard's parent company. For the curious, it went like this...
And that, my friends, is where the curtain closes. Apparently the questions were passed on to the QA team as promised, answered, handed back to Debra, and then, for some unexplained reason, she was asked not to send them to me yet. Will she send them? Did she ever intend to send them? Were they ever answered? Did she even pass them on to the QA team in the first place? Believe whatever makes you happy, folks! |
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Topic: Rules of Engagement, Lesson #1 -- Say Nothing
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<b>Show Time</b> (#33): <QUOTE>pissing them off wouldn't be very good for business</QUOTE> I let the patch and the blizzard forums speak for themselves <I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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Damn time to sleep, there will be probably over 50 or 100 posts when I wake up <I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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i have an old Diablo action figure i bought for $2.99 on clearance at EB. Was i a Diablo fan? nope, but the lil' Knight guy looked pretty cool, and i figured he'd make a good addition to the mass of crap above my computer. Is he still there? nope, he's been replaced by a Major Maxim figure and now sits atop a mass of boxes on another bookshelf. i bought Diablo 2 for $39.95 at the same EB. Was i a Diablo fan? nope, but i figured i'd install it and it would provide some vague sense of entertainment for a while. Is it still there? nope...two sets of reference drivers, a few blue screens and a re-format later, and it's gone from my HD. the little Knight provides a fitting guardian to the 'dead elephant graveyard' of PC games he stands atop... ^M^ |
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<b>#32</b> "BloodKnight" wrote... <QUOTE> Ummm..use your head, skills are lowered, therefore, weaker! Where does skill apply? To a character in diablo. Who controls the character? The player. What happened to the skills? They have been weaker then before, and this affects every character/player that worked their asses off. People wouldn't be complaining if this didn't 'affect every player' </QUOTE> I'm not a big Diablo player, but I was under the impression that the lowered skills only affected certain characters in the game, hence only players using those characters are affected. And if you really think everyone is pissed off... well, it's a certain number of extremely vocal people. If they've sold a million copies of the game, it ain't a million people. It's probably not even 100,000 people. It may not even be 10,000 people. What is it, 10%? 1%? .1%? --- "My life is a patio of fun."<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#30</b> "Steve Bauman" wrote... <QUOTE>Um, hmm, your example would affect every player. This patch, as I understand it, does not. </QUOTE> Sports league constantly change rules to stop unbalanced or unfair play. Here's a few off the top of my head for American football. 1) In the final two minutes of a half, a team may not gain yardage after regaining their own fumble--The Stabler rule who fumbled into the end zone where his teammate recovered for a game winning touchdown. 2) They instituted some rules on the no-huddle offense. Seems a team was tearing up its opponents by just running it constantly. You can still do it, but the officials can call a halt to it under certain conditions. 3) Instant Reply rules. They're still experimenting with it, I think each team is now given a handful of challenges, which they can use as they see fit. If they blow them all early in the game, it can come back to haunt them later on. So, it happens in the real world, so get over yourself :) I... AM BAYTOR!!!!<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#37</b>, Steve Bauman: <QUOTE> And if you really think everyone is pissed off... well, it's a certain number of extremely vocal people. If they've sold a million copies of the game, it ain't a million people. It's probably not even 100,000 people. It may not even be 10,000 people. What is it, 10%? 1%? .1%? </QUOTE> Ah, now hang on a minute ya crafty scamp! ;-) You can't judge public opinion based on the size of a survey. You have to judge it based on the responses <i>within</i> that survey. That's still not a very scientific way of doing it, but it's better. Let's set out some <b>hypothetical</b> figures: There are a million Diablo II players. On the web, 1,000 of those players are complaining about the latest patch. You're using those figures to conclude that 0.1% of Diablo II are annoyed, and therefore 99.9% don't care. You should actually look at this way, again hypothetically: There are a million Diablo II players. There are 10,000 of them who regularly use the web, posting to message boards etc. 1,000 of them are complaining. Therefore, you can conclude that 10% of players who use the web do care, and 90% don't. You can't make any assumption about what the other 990,000 players think. -- There was a good example of this kind of statistical distortion recently, after the murder of a young girl here in the UK. A newspaper, the News Of The World, ran a very emotive campaign to reveal the names and locations of known paedophiles. Then they ran an opinion poll, asking their readers to vote on whether a register of paedophiles should be available to the public. 97% of people who took part in the poll said yes. The paper claimed that this meant 97% of the British public wanted the law to be changed. HUGELY inaccurate! The only accurate conclusion they could draw is that 97% of NOTW readers who took part in the poll wanted the law to be changed, and 3% didn't. The readers of a particular newspaper will generally be a distinct subset of society, so to claim that a newspaper poll is indicative of national feeling is wrong. |
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<b>Steve Bauman</b> (#18): <QUOTE>I have to say, though, that you and Scott at 3D Realms are by far the most approachable folks in the industry, and have always quickly answered any and all questions. </QUOTE> Well, in all honesty, it doesn't take all that long to type, "No comment". ;) -- Warren Marshall - Professional Nuisance<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#39</b> "Andy" wrote... <QUOTE> You're using those figures to conclude that 0.1% of Diablo II are annoyed, and therefore 99.9% don't care. </quote> Or they don't care enough to rant on a message board. But message board traffic is usually dominated by a handful of posters to write most of the messages and tend to distort the message or make it appear there is consensus when there is none. --- "My life is a patio of fun."<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#41</b>, Steve Bauman: <QUOTE> Or they don't care enough to rant on a message board. </QUOTE> Or they don't know about the board in the first place. |
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I read about 20 posts and I'm just jumping down here and I'm gonna say something about PR dudes. Why do you all dislike them so much? I talk to Dan Miller at Lith all the time, and he's a really cool guy. I asked him for screenshots for a very small website, and he said he will probably send a few over. And this is when he has just come back from a vacation, with 200+ emails to answer and over a week to catch up on. Developers is understandably different. When you're working 12+ hours a day so that you can get a game out on time, I don't think that screenshot requests, or e-mail in general is very high on their priority list when they've got to get a game out. So, cut the developers and Dan Miller (if not any other PR guys) some slack.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#42</b> "Andy" wrote... <QUOTE> Or they don't know about the board in the first place. </QUOTE> Or they don't even notice the changes because they're not that hardcore. --- "My life is a patio of fun."<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>Steve Bauman wrote in post #44:</b> <quote>Or they don't even notice the changes because they're not that hardcore. </quote> And if you ask me, that's the majority. -- Dethstryk Damage Gaming |
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Sorry to say, but those changes Blizzard made were well-founded and 100% justified. As a paladin, it pisses me off to see the barbarian so over-balanced with the whirlwind attack; it's <b>much</b> stronger than my 'zeal' ability. Not to mention the barbarian can wield duel weapons, including two handed weapons in each hand. To quote one of my favorite movies "Your days of finger-banging Mary-Jane Rotten Crotch through her purty pink panties are over!" If you don't like it, leave it. |
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<b>#47</b> "Apache" wrote... <QUOTE>To quote one of my favorite movies "Your days of finger-banging Mary-Jane Rotten Crotch through her purty pink panties are over!" </QUOTE> I've heard that but I can't remember the film, was it in Home Alone?<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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#47 they ruined my necromancer im suing for mental distrrbance and time wasting and mental damage and theyve ruined my life. |
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<b>#47</b>, Apache: But surely Blizzard should at least <b>engage</b> their customers? Blizzard have done something that has made many people feel unhappy, annoyed, and downright betrayed, and so far the only thing they've done is stick some poor PR woman out front to say "<i>move along please, nothing to see here</i>". They should say something. Soon. It's the right thing to do. |
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<quote>I've heard that but I can't remember the film, was it in Home Alone? </quote> Damn you Hulka! It's "Full Metal Jacket"! |
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<b>#50</b> "Andy" wrote... <QUOTE> They should say something. Soon. It's the right thing to do. </QUOTE> Absolutely, but people are crucifying them for not saying it RIGHT NOW. It's amazing how impatient we've become as a society over the past few years... even in the other topic, you sent a message to Fox and TWO WHOLE DAYS have passed without a response. Wow. And to think I'm used to having responses measured in weeks... --- "My life is a patio of fun."<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#52</b>, Steve Bauman: <QUOTE> <B><A href="spy-internal:Load/126#50">#50</A></B> "Andy" wrote... Absolutely, but people are crucifying them for not saying it RIGHT NOW. </QUOTE> Well, it *has* been nearly a week now, hasn't it? Since the patch came out and the fuss started, I mean. <QUOTE> It's amazing how impatient we've become as a society over the past few years... even in the other topic, you sent a message to Fox and TWO WHOLE DAYS have passed without a response. Wow. And to think I'm used to having responses measured in weeks... </QUOTE> In this case, I don't think it's a society thing, so much. I'm just used to getting responses quickly. I don't think I've ever had to wait more than 24 hours for a legitimate (IMO) response from any company, and when I do get a response after that time, it's always a no comment. So nowadays I (usually) give them 48 hours, which I think is reasonable. Are you suggesting I wait one, two, three weeks for a response? Okay, maybe that's your opinion, but guess what -- that's the end of PlanetCrap and 90% of other gaming sites, because (cliché time!) there's no such thing as a fortnight in the news. (Could you hear Tea Leone saying that? Well <i>could you?!</i>) |
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<quote>Sorry to say, but those changes Blizzard made were well-founded and 100% justified. As a paladin, it pisses me off to see the barbarian so over-balanced with the whirlwind attack; it's much stronger than my 'zeal' ability. Not to mention the barbarian can wield duel weapons, including two handed weapons in each hand.</quote> They are makign the same dumbassed mistakes Verant did though, and I know they played Everquest so I can't fathom how they didn't learn from Verant's mistakes. People don't want to feel *weaker* even if it is in the best interest of the game. We as game players want to feel stronger. It's our goal to get stronger. When you take something away you really piss off game players (this is something that most single player games get right just out of habit). If you messed up in your design and someone is too strong, raise up the abilities of the weaker classes to compensate. Nobody is going to complain if they are given a benefit except maybe that Barbarian who can't out kill a Paladin anymore. And if someone complains like that they are going to be shut down quickly by almost everybody for being an idiot. It's a problem I see in deathmatch games as well. The developer sees that their ultra fun to use, but slightly over powering mega weapon is all people use. Instead of figuring out how to make the other weapons more fun to use, they instead opt for the knee jerk reaction of making the ultra weapon weaker and thus far less fun to use. It *really* frustrates me to see developers make the mistake of taking away from their audience. It is their fault the corpse explosion and whirlwhind skills were too strong, not the players and the player should not be punished. The players who are playing the underpowered classes should instead be rewarded by being raised up a notch. Now, will it make it that much easier for those people to play the game? Sure, but it was already that easy for the barbarian and it isn't that big of an issue, so don't worry about it. At the very worst the company can simply up the difficulty of the monsters just an itty bitty fraction. It's insulting that the players are punished for Blizzard's mistakes. Charlie Wiederhold |
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Egads. I'm really out of practice with my typing skills. |
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<b>Charlie Wiederhold</b> (#54): <QUOTE>They are makign the same dumbassed mistakes Verant did though, and I know they played Everquest so I can't fathom how they didn't learn from Verant's mistakes. People don't want to feel *weaker* even if it is in the best interest of the game. We as game players want to feel stronger. It's our goal to get stronger. When you take something away you really piss off game players (this is something that most single player games get right just out of habit). </QUOTE> Wow. That was really well said Charlie. I never thought of it that way before ... why take away from some people ... give to everyone else. That way you get to rebalance the game, and everyone is happy. Like you said, who would bitch about getting MORE strength? Neat ... (no that's not sarcastic, I'm serious dammit! :) -- Warren Marshall - Professional Nuisance<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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Post <b>#25</b> by Andy: <QUOTE><i> She says they've already been answered -- that's what is weird. </i></QUOTE> She probably asked her boss if it's OK to send some info to Andy, after she got the answers... And he said "THAT Andy? From PC? Are you out of your mind? No way. Pretend we are all dead." Just for the record, Blizzard never answered my emails about some technical things in D2. I'm not surprised much but other companies, like id, usually respond within a week. I understand they get million pieces of hate/love mail now each day, but could not they filter out everything which contains "YOU SUCK" and "I LOVE"? This would leave them with reasonable sub-hundred emails per day, imho. Or hire a dedicated mail reading/forwarding person.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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Post <b>#56</b> by Warren Marshall: <QUOTE><i> Wow. That was really well said Charlie. I never thought of it that way before ... why take away from some people ... give to everyone else. That way you get to rebalance the game, and everyone is happy. Like you said, who would bitch about getting MORE strength? Neat ... </i></QUOTE> See, Blizzard said back in Diablo2 pre-release days "it would be possible to go past level 50 but it would be very, very hard". They had this vision, that past level 50 it would take players months and months to go up. So their ladder would not max out for few years before Baal1 or Diablo3. Seeing as they screwed up and everyone who wants to rush for experience is at level 80+, I doubt they would want to raise other classes in power. They are doing what looks like quick hacks to cut the experience gain for powerfull/high level characters. I think when people would start reaching level 90+ in a month or two they would release another "balancing patch", with even more ridiculous experience cuts. Obviously, the skills which allow to kill monsters in hell/hell would have to be weakened too. If they would remove the character level cap, and if they would be releasing addons with more powerfull monsters periodically (Mlvl 100+), then they would be able to balance the game by raising other classes to normal level. Instead they are doing an addon which would have two more character classes. They decided to rebalance classes already, how much worse would it be with addition of another 2?<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<QUOTE> Andy, when did you send your questions? I mean, we're talking about two days without the questions answered, right? Something like that. A little more than two days, my time, but I'm not sure if Debra would have been in the office at the time I sent them. </QUOTE> I was in contact with Blizzard about this and that before the game was released, and two days for a response was the norm. I'd guess three or four days might be the norm now, especially with Susan Wooley out with a baby now. |
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<QUOTE> Just for the record, Blizzard never answered my emails about some technical things in D2. I'm not surprised much but other companies, like id, usually respond within a week. I understand they get million pieces of hate/love mail now each day, but could not they filter out everything which contains "YOU SUCK" and "I LOVE"? This would leave them with reasonable sub-hundred emails per day, imho. Or hire a dedicated mail reading/forwarding person. </QUOTE> Take a look at the volume their bnet boards do each day, and then multiply that by the number of people too shy to post on a board and the number of people with specific, detailed questions. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard is getting 10,000 emails a day. Heck, if 5% of the installed base is emailing, that might be 50,000 email a day. |
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Of course Blizzard had to tone down the necro and barbarian. <A HREF="http://www.voodooextreme.com/apache/shots/blah/top.jpg">Barbarians and Necros comprise the top 28 players in the world on battle.net</a> Are people who play barbarians and necros simply 'better'? Is this some freak coincidence? Ummm, no? |
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<quote>See, Blizzard said back in Diablo2 pre-release days "it would be possible to go past level 50 but it would be very, very hard". They had this vision, that past level 50 it would take players months and months to go up. So their ladder would not max out for few years before Baal1 or Diablo3.</quote> Actually, that is part of the problem that both Everquest and a lot of muds suffer from. The creator has a vision of how they want their players to play, and how long it should take them to do something. That's is their worst mistake. No matter what you want, your vision of how to play the game is not how every player is going to play the game. This is why when you are watching someone test your game you do not, under any circumstances say anything at all to them. You see what they are going to do, how they react, etc. If they are never able to figure out a puzzle, that is your clue to make it easier. If they get through something far too easily (and this is a pattern) you know to make it harder. Once it is out there though, don't punish the player for trying to play their character the best way they see fit. It's their choice and if they are capable of being stronger or quicker than you intended, that is your fault. <quote>Seeing as they screwed up and everyone who wants to rush for experience is at level 80+, I doubt they would want to raise other classes in power. They are doing what looks like quick hacks to cut the experience gain for powerfull/high level characters. I think when people would start reaching level 90+ in a month or two they would release another "balancing patch", with even more ridiculous experience cuts. Obviously, the skills which allow to kill monsters in hell/hell would have to be weakened too.</quote> Well that's another issue. There are always going to be powergamers who play through the game faster than you would like (akin to the 6 and under times reported for FAKK 2). However, there are a whole lot of other people (a whole lot more mind you) who are not speeding along and are having a hard enough time going at the rate that is already set. I don't have the time to play that the hardcore diablo players do so I a go pretty darn slow. The more they disable me, the slower I go, the more frustrated I get. They need to ignore those couple of gamers who are going to go faster than they want, no matter what changes they make to the classes, and focus on making sure the largest chunk of their audience is able to enjoy themselves. <quote>If they would remove the character level cap, and if they would be releasing addons with more powerfull monsters periodically (Mlvl 100+), then they would be able to balance the game by raising other classes to normal level. Instead they are doing an addon which would have two more character classes. They decided to rebalance classes already, how much worse would it be with addition of another 2?</quote> Hopefully these are the only major changes they will make though and everyone can settle down and get back to the business of just enjoying the game. It is a much tougher to battle balance by increasing the classes that are lacking, but it's a way to handle it that leaves customers pleased, so long as you tell them why the changes are made. Ex: Barbarian Whirlwind is too powerful so we made Paladin's Zeal more effective to counterbalance the situation. ---- <quote>Wow. That was really well said Charlie. I never thought of it that way before ... why take away from some people ... give to everyone else. That way you get to rebalance the game, and everyone is happy. Like you said, who would bitch about getting MORE strength? Neat ...</quote> That was actually a problem with some of the weapons in Sin deathmatch. The little that we did get to test it, we make the stronger weapons weaker instead of working on the weaker weapons and making them more fun to use. The end result was that a good chunk of people felt the weapons were anemic and lacked "oomph". Charlie Wiederhold |
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<quote>Of course Blizzard had to tone down the necro and barbarian. Barbarians and Necros comprise the top 28 players in the world on battle.net Are people who play barbarians and necros simply 'better'? Is this some freak coincidence? Ummm, no?</quote> Who's fault was that though? The people who played those Barbarians and Necros? <b>NO!</b> Then why are they the ones who have to get punished for playing effective classes in an effective manner? Wouldn't you have preferred they help out your Paladin to compete by upping some of his skills? I can't imagine you saying "God Damn you Blizzard! My Zeal is more effective now, I can rely on it so much better and am a more powerful character because of it! DAMN YOU TO HELL SATAN SPAWN!!!!!" :) Charlie Wiederhold |
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<b>Charlie Wiederhold</b> (#63): <QUOTE>Are people who play barbarians and necros simply 'better'? Is this some freak coincidence? Ummm, no?</QUOTE> That doesn't prove nothing, so you seen a butch of people who need a social life, big deal. Level 80 characters? They worked hard to get up there, and now you are telling me that they should be lowered because of their hard work? <I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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One thing that some people are forgetting here is that play balance is not just about balancing the classes against one another. It's also about balancing the players against the monsters. I was a wizard/admin on MUDs for many years, so I can sympathize with what Blizzard has to deal with here. When one class is more powerful than another, you can't always just increase the powers of the less powerful class. If you do that, you run into an ever upward spiral of increasing character power. That requires constantly increasing the stats of all of the monsters and items in the game. Using this technique, you're in for a near infinite amount of work on game balacing. For example, if instead of decreasing the Barbarian's Whirlwhind, Blizzard increases the Paladin's Zeal skill. Now all of the players are tearing through monsters way too fast and there's no challenge in getting experience. Ok, easy enough - make the monsters tougher, right? Aside from the players bitching about monsters being tougher, there's a new problem because now that the monsters are tougher we see that the Paladin is having much more success with Zeal than the Barbarian is with Whirlwind. That means we need to up the Barbarian skills again and we need to make the monsters tougher or both classes will be ripping through them too fast. And oh yeah, because everything has scaled up in power, the items are lagging behind and need to be increased as well. Well, after all of that is said and done, it turns out that there's a few items that are way too powerful but we can't take them away because people will complain. So that means another round of increasing everything else to be on par with those few items. See the problem here? And this example only includes 2 classes, not 5. This method of "always increase player powers" to solve the problem with unbalanced classes simply isn't feasible. The only feasible way is to envision a certain difficulty with the game and tweak things up or down to match that vision. Hitting a moving target is much more difficult. Let's face it, no matter what you do, there will always be players who will whine unless they can walk through the game with a "Sword of all-monster instant slaying" or the "Chainmail of never get hit". Those players need to be ignored because they are the small minority, even though they tend to make the most noise. Most people enjoy a game to be at least relatively challenging. One of my 2 main characters is a necro, and I'm glad that they toned down CE. That skill was way too overpowered. The game just wasn't any fun - one corpse, and I could clean out an entire room. The really sick part is that the spell damage scaled up with the number of players in the game, so a necro could easily solo in an 8 player Hell mode game - that's just stupid. I can't comment on Whirlwind because I've never played a Barbarian. If you look at the B-net forums over the past week or so, you'll see that opinions on the patch are really split about 50/50. I do agree that Blizzard kinda screwed people in the way that they did the patch. What they SHOULD have done is somehow allowed people to reallocate skill points that were put into the nerfed skills. People would still complain (they ALWAYS do), but at least now the rational people would be happy since they could us the skill points elsewhere. Q |
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Someone mentioned FAKK2 taking not too long to finish. I recall <i>roaring</i> through the (astonishing, superb, brilliant) <b>Scourge of Armagon</b>. I finished every level the day I bought it. I played each level at least two dozen times since then. From what I can figure, FAKK2 is going to be similar. Yummy. |
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Another point on increasing character powers to balance things: There's 150 skills in the game. If you increase a handful of them, you have to increase them ALL. Otherwise, the character classes will become one-trick ponies where everyone uses the same 1 or 2 skills. At that point, you might as well remove all of the other skills in the game. |
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<b>#62</b> "Charlie Wiederhold" wrote... <QUOTE>The creator has a vision of how they want their players to play, and how long it should take them to do something</QUOTE> All true, I agree with your post 100%. Also, one more vision Blizzard had and that's teamwork. They tried to ensure people would be teaming up, however currently it is not profitable at all. You gain more exp when you solo, why bother sharing? Find an 8-ppl game and go solo. So the only reason to team up is when you get your ass heavily kicked, and that is what Blizzard was trying to ensure with this patch. Fundamental flaw in design, 'cause if they wanted people partying they should have provided expirience bonus for parties. Say, you play with 3 people in a team, you should get 3 times more exp for monsters your party kills than if you were soloing that area in 4 ppl game alone. No need to try and make soloing impossible with nerfing, someone might actually like getting lower experience but playing solo in multiplayer game to get all the items and play at his own pace. Currently, exp is simply divided between members of the party, so the exp you get by soloing 4 ppl game is 3 times higher than when partying. Ain't it screwed up, for a cooperative-oriented game? Some people say that "the exp in solo is higher but you should not be able to play solo, if you are then your class is unbalanced and needs to be tweaked down" - but that's bullshit, if the game allows and actually rewards it people will always be soloing, even when heavily balanced. One more vision down the drain.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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Q, you are correct in it being a constant rise of skills/monsters/equipment, but again... that is Blizzard's problem and one they should have to suffer through, not the consumer's. Here is the kicker though, I've watched Everquest and muds follow the same fate from lowering statistics. It never stops, and generally once you have done it once, it's that much easier to do it again and for a far less important reason. You end up with a constant stream of tweaks and weakening of the characters that only make the player mad, not glad. Now, if your goal is to maintain your vision of how fast people should progress through your game, despite whether you piss them off or not, feel free to cut skills down. This is a punishment to the player, but it's also the easiest and quickest solution (which is why it is chosen so often). However, if you are willing to accept that your vision of the world is going to be altered the moment you allow other people to enter it, you can make much better choices on your changes and in almost all cases a little careful examination will show how you can help the suffering classes as opposed to hindering the exceptional classes. Most importantly you have to ask yourself "If I don't change this, is it going to affect how much fun everyone else is having?". Quite often there is no real need to alter the game at all and any changes you make (up or down) create a ripple effect and a chain reaction that is more far reaching than you ever intended it to me. There was a document I saw someone had written a while ago that goes into great detail about the stages of muds and what NOT to do when the subject of balance comes up. I'll see if I can dig that out somewhere. Charlie Wiederhold |
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<b>#67</b> "Q" wrote... <QUOTE>Another point on increasing character powers to balance things: There's 150 skills in the game. If you increase a handful of them, you have to increase them ALL. Otherwise, the character classes will become one-trick ponies where everyone uses the same 1 or 2 skills. At that point, you might as well remove all of the other skills in the game. </QUOTE> Well, 75% of skills are lower level prerequisites. You have a limited amount of level 24+ skills, and these should be powerfull. You can't make all skills equal. Granted, there should be some level 50 and level 70 skills as well, when the last thing people have is a level 30 skill they sure as hell would be putting 20 points to it. CE is an exception, being at level 6 it was intended to be a handy-dandy skill for necros to get corpses, though it's power was high enough for a level 30 skill. What you are saying is true (especially that they should have allowed players to reallocate skills and stats), and as for the items - I guess Bliz should do something about Sigons shield, fast. It is simply so superior to all other shields in the game that you won't see anyone with anything else. I saw barbs drop their cool two-handed axes to wear this shield. Then there is a ring of jordan which certain classes would trade their right arm for. There are some item issues, and if they go the MUD way of balancing them... guess what would a sorceress with two jordan rings (for which she traded everything she had) feel when the ring would become an average +10 to stamina shit one day? As for lowering the power of characters, same holds true - you lower one class, now some other class is more powerfull, go lower it, no one can kill monsters now, make monsters weaker - etc, everything ends up bad. I'd say, leave it as you released it and live with it.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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Damn I wish a D&D MMORPG (is that right?) would be out, everything would be so balanced because they know what the hell an RPG is. <I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<a href ="http://www.best.com/~tenarius/mudwimping.html">The Mud Wimping Guidebook</a> Read through this and see just how much stuff you watched Verant do, and can see Blizzard doing potentially if they continue to feel the need to "adjust" the challenge of the game. I watched this happen to several muds and only one mud I played on managed itself extremely well (they have more players now than back when I played about 3+ years ago which is insane). It's a good read for anybody interested in game balance with real people/emotion/investment in the characters. Charlie Wiederhold |
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<QUOTE>Fundamental flaw in design, 'cause if they wanted people partying they should have provided expirience bonus for parties. Say, you play with 3 people in a team, you should get 3 times more exp for monsters your party kills than if you were soloing that area in 4 ppl game alone. No need to try and make soloing impossible with nerfing, someone might actually like getting lower experience but playing solo in multiplayer game to get all the items and play at his own pace. Currently, exp is simply divided between members of the party, so the exp you get by soloing 4 ppl game is 3 times higher than when partying. Ain't it screwed up, for a cooperative-oriented game?</QUOTE> No, the design is fine, it's just that people are abusing it with the overpowered skills to gain xp insanely fast. The intent of the design is that you don't even join a multiplayer game unless you plan on partying with the people there. That's why the monsters are automatically ramped up in experience and toughness for each player that joins. The experience bonus for parties is inherent with this concept. The intent is that if you join a game with other players in it, you HAVE to party with them in order to survive. If you want to play by yourself, start your own game and lock it. |
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Q, if the game lets you do it, and the designer sees that as a problem, then it's a "fundamental flaw in the design". If that is what Blizzard truly wanted then they should have made it so that everyone splits the experience evenly and is automatically grouped. Or any other number of things that would have encouraged people to group up as opposed to going solo. People can rarely solo successfully in Everquest because they designed the grouping abilities of the classes to work well together, as well as the zones/enemies where the players need to stick together to design. Saying the players are "abusing it is like Blizzard tossing in a "God" cheat code and saying "Well we never intended you to actually <b>use</b> the darn thing in a multiplayer game!!" Charlie Wiederhold |
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<b>#72</b> "Charlie Wiederhold" wrote... <QUOTE>The Mud Wimping Guidebook </QUOTE> Send the link to Blizzard, they sure need to read this. I never understood why people prefer to learn everything on their own mistakes instead of looking for established knowledge on the subject. Of course they are so much smarter than anyone who did an online rpg game before, right? <i>"What has happened is a marked shift from player centerdness to one of worshiping at the alter of their creation - the software program that runs the mud. Damage tables become more important than player satisfaction and they begin to seek out the most minor of things to change in what was once a well established world under the banner of 'making everything equal'."</i> Oh how true.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<quote>As for lowering the power of characters, same holds true - you lower one class, now some other class is more powerfull, go lower it, no one can kill monsters now, make monsters weaker - etc, everything ends up bad. I'd say, leave it as you released it and live with it. </quote> <quote>Here is the kicker though, I've watched Everquest and muds follow the same fate from lowering statistics. It never stops, and generally once you have done it once, it's that much easier to do it again and for a far less important reason. You end up with a constant stream of tweaks and weakening of the characters that only make the player mad, not glad. </quote> I'm not saying you ALWAYS lower the power of characters, that's also bad. I'm saying that you pick a point of equilibrium and maintain it by raising and lowering things to keep the balance. Tweaking one or two things here and there is far better than overhauling the entire game. Wanting balance to be achieved through ALWAYS increasing character power is a very short sighted view. This is a long path to stability, which is really what most players want. Sure, in the short term people will be pissed that CE and WW got nerfed, but in the long term it will lead to a stable game where all of the classes have an equal chance to get to a top rung in the ladder AND the game will continue to be challenging. I played and admined a lot of muds for a lot of years. The best muds were the ones who remained consistent by maintaining a balance through increases AND decreases. I've seen muds that constantly took things away from the players, and I've seen muds that constantly gave things to the players. Both of these paths lead to ruin. In the first case, you get eternally frustrated players, and in the second case you get to a point where players are so powerful that they level insanely fast and you wind up with all wizards and no players. Constantly increasing player powers is like playing in an AD&D Monty Haul campaign. Sure it's fun to wield god-like power in the short term, but that gets old very quick. |
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This one is the most relevant quote from the (very cool, thanks!) text that Charlie linked (for those who are lazy to read it all): <QUOTE> Question: <i>people are leveling too fast. I had envisioned it talking 3 months to make Avatar, and this one guy did it in 2 weeks!!</i> Answer: <i>So the players are having fun at the expense of how you perceived the mud would play? They aren't sticking within your little cage of expectations and are not blindly doing things in the way you had envisioned? Uhm, again with all due respect SO WHAT? Did you see Jurassic Park? It makes for a good analogy. Players are people - People, life itself, can not be boxed into your perception of how to act and how to play. Some people mud to get millions in virtual gold, some to attain levels, some want one Avatar (highest level player) of each class, some come solely for social interaction. As long as they are not maliciously hurting each other leave em be and let them have fun! </i></QUOTE><I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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I'm not suggesting you overhaul the entire game. In fact I'm always against any changes unless it becomes a major major issue. If you work yourself into a corner where your players are all ultra gods, you have some major problems and have design flaws far deeper than class balances. Giving to the weaker classes enough to make them feel an equal to the stronger classes is a positive action that makes the players feel like you have them in your best interests, not some vague vision of how they should be playing "your game". Now, the Barbarian and Necro might be able to level far too fast for Blizzard's tastes, but are the people that are playing these classes having a non-fun experience because of this? That is the most important question they have to ask. Is Blizzard's goal to make people move up the ladder at a pace they deem worthy, or to have people who go in and have a good time playing the game and advancing their character. That is why I *hope* that these recent changes are the only major changes we will see on the Diablo class balancing issue. If they are, people will forget and move on and that will be that. If they see fit to constantly adjust things, you are simply going to end up with a lot of very vocal annoyed people who cringe with each patch. I have *never* seen a benefit from lowering an ability in any game. In the face of all choices you should always either not touch it, or give to the player. Never take. More often than not you shouldn't ever touch an established skill but if you simply must, you should reward your customer, not punish. The forums are currently split on the topic because you have the people who are not dependent upon Whirlwind and Corpse Explosion saying "YEAH, that wasn't any fair" and the people who depended on them saying "Hey wait a minute, I relied on that, how would you feel if I took your favorite skills and weakened them?". Now imagine the response if Blizzard took their time instead of doing an instant knee jerk reaction and worked on giving just enough of a boost to the other classes to make them on an even level with the Barbarian and Necro. Oops, suddenly you have no upset Barbarians or Necros, and a good chunk of happy everything else. If you continue to make constant changes (up or down) you are going to screw yourself no matter what. If you feel that there is more balance needed beyond that initial change, do it in the addition of new skills. Those can be tweaked for a short time while they are first tested and then should be locked into what they are. You do not allow a player to get halfway through the game and suddenly change who they are. All that said, giving them the chance to allocate their skill points differently would have shup up a whole lot of the complaints and been an elegent solution. You are still taking away what many players had grown to love and enjoy, but at least you give them a choice. ---- By the way: <quote>One of my 2 main characters is a necro, and I'm glad that they toned down CE. That skill was way too overpowered. The game just wasn't any fun - one corpse, and I could clean out an entire room. The really sick part is that the spell damage scaled up with the number of players in the game, so a necro could easily solo in an 8 player Hell mode game - that's just stupid. I can't comment on Whirlwind because I've never played a Barbarian.</quote> Here is a tip, don't use the power if it was making the game less fun for you. I doubt you were even scratching the surface of the abilities of the necro and I imagine you could have gotten along just fine using a whole host of different skills without using CE if it truly bothered you. You get to pick how you want to play through the game and the beauty of having so many skills to pick from, as well as so many characters, is that you can play it how you most want to. Ever hear about the Barbarian who is trying to be a throwing knife only guy? :) Charlie Wiederhold |
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<b>PiRaMidA</b> (#68): <QUOTE>All true, I agree with your post 100%. Also, one more vision Blizzard had and that's teamwork. They tried to ensure people would be teaming up, however currently it is not profitable at all. You gain more exp when you solo, why bother sharing? Find an 8-ppl game and go solo. So the only reason to team up is when you get your ass heavily kicked </QUOTE> Well, aside from that whole "having fun" thing of course. :) If you're only concern is levelling your char then yeah ... but some people actually play games to have fun ... with friends no less! :P -- Warren Marshall - Professional Nuisance<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>Charlie Wiederhold</b> (#78): <QUOTE>Here is a tip, don't use the power if it was making the game less fun for you. I doubt you were even scratching the surface of the abilities of the necro and I imagine you could have gotten along just fine using a whole host of different skills without using CE if it truly bothered you. </QUOTE> Exactly. :) "Doctor it hurts when I do this." "Then don't do that." -- Warren Marshall - Professional Nuisance<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#79</b> "Warren Marshall" wrote... <QUOTE>Well, aside from that whole "having fun" thing of course. :) If you're only concern is levelling your char then yeah ... but some people actually play games to have fun ... with friends no less! :P </QUOTE> Yes sure, I was having exp-hunting players in mind. I actually play the game teamed with friends ignoring the fact that I get much less exp that way. If it would be giving us some exp bonus (as it should be), then it'll be only more fun. But all players who plays hard working their way up to level 99 play solo, and Blizzard's patch seems to be mostly aimed at them.<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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<b>#78</b> "Charlie Wiederhold" wrote... <QUOTE>You get to pick how you want to play through the game and the beauty of having so many skills to pick from, as well as so many characters, is that you can play it how you most want to. Ever hear about the Barbarian who is trying to be a throwing knife only guy? :) </QUOTE> Naked necro also seems fun (you don't wear anything at all, no weapons/rings/etc). There was a naked sorc back in Diablo days, and necro really looks hip naked, with long white hair not covered with any helm. Throwing barb, java/bow zone, cold/light/fire only sorc, - you can set your own subset of restrictions if you want to and still have fun with the game. Hmm, I'll try a barb limited to warcries tree next I guess, he has one-two damage dealing skills there... :)<I><B></B></I><I></I><I></I> |
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"Throwing barb, java/bow zone, cold/light/fire only sorc, - you can set your own subset of restrictions if you want to and still have fun with the game." A cold/light/fire only sorc isnt really a restriction. With the exception of static field/warmth, EVERY sorc i have seen above level 40 is a cold/light/fire only sorc. Unfortunately, in order to do even half the damage as the other classes in the late game the sorceress MUST specialize in only one skill, until she maxxes it out, andin many cases, then max out that mastery, just to keep that spell doing somewhere near reasnonable damage on hell/hell. She's a lot of fun to play on normal difficulty, where she can haev a range of usefull skills, but she needs to specialize too much for her to be fun for me later in the game. -ilian |
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Topic: Rules of Engagement, Lesson #1 -- Say Nothing
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