Endgame and balancing.

[Felix]

I surely hope the developers has PvP in mind when they design and balance the characters. PvP becomes the endgame for many of us, and building a superb char requiring a wealth beyond all other chars on the account, perfected and specialised as they may be.

Many a game, well all of them, WoW an excellent example, starts out with fleshing out the chars towards PvE, then later realise PvP is what keep many people playing.

Then it gets hard, because starting to balance for PvP ingame, requires suddenly that the whole world must change, as it's created to meet the skills of the chars. So the chars are locked by the world that is made as a glove around them and balancing becomes a difficult task.

So instead do it the easy way, make the chars PvP balanced first, then start fleshing the world around these chars. Not in anyway belittling PvE, as it is as stated made to fit as a glove around the chars in either way. Balanced or not.

I hope Blizz has realised from WoW, and from DII, that PvP is a gamekeeper, and that it's by far the easiest to adress it firsthand in development.

[Erwwwd]

I do think this would be a good way to go. Although balancing every character is so hard, it will be hard to really pull it off.

I'd like to see more options for team-pvp, and organized pvp-area's. The "clearing of the bloodmoor" shouldn't be necessary.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

I, on the other hand, think they should say "**** PvP balance" as they have in D2.
I mean, don't ignore it completely, but don't make it anywhere near the focus. Infact, don't even worry about balance all that much in general.

D2 is stupidly unbalanced, in both PvE and PvP, but it's still obviously a lot of fun for a lot of people. Why? Because if you want to play the overpowered character, you can just go make one with a fairly limited time investment.

I'm not saying I want to see nothing but, say, barbarians in PvP, try to have all the classes at least somewhat capable, but if there's obviously more barbarians than anything else, that's not too terrible.

Focusing on the balance is for a game like WoW where someone who thinks their class is weak or another is strong can't just reroll in a day. Focusing on balance also results in a lot of unnecessary whining. For nerfs, for buffs, about nerfs, and about buffs.

I'm not a WoW hater, I hit HWL pre TBC, and 2250 in S1&2, but the focus on making it balanced and a professional sort of game gets kind of out of hand. I understand it because rerolling takes so long, but in D3, if it's character development is anything like 1&2, shouldn't be subjected to all that bull****.

[Erwwwd]

Rerolling could be very hard if you factor out the rushing possibilities. I think we will see an attack on those in the next game.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Rerolling could be very hard if you factor out the rushing possibilities. I think we will see an attack on those in the next game.

Even then it's still only a week or so to level right now, and even if they change it into about a month like WoW, that's still not THAT bad.

Twinking is what makes it doable though. In WoW you've got a month to hit 70, but then you have to get the BG gear. And the professions. And the gems. And the enchants. And then, finally, you can start on the arena gear. And you have to do it every single time.

In D2, you level your one MF character, do runs for a month, and you're set for gear for the rest of the season with just whatever odds and ends you happen to pick up. Don't like your light sorc? Trade off all her skillers and buy max/ar/life charms. Decide the barb is lame? Trade those off and pick up pcombs.

A BoP concept would completely kill the ability to make whatever you want whenever you want.
A BoE concept would cripple it fairly decently.

I hope they don't introduce either with D3, but who knows =/

[sovabrat]

Hi I am new to theses forums. I just wanted to add in as a piggyback off of Wiz, I do tend to disagree with you on the BoP and BoE concept. I think items would carry more value in D3 if they were bound to you on equip. I do not think Bind on Pickup would work very well except for class specific items or charms, something along those lines. They did mention I believe that they would have class specific "adventures" so it would be a good instance of using the BOP for adventure rewards or something.

[CdMagicFind]

Imo.. PvP in diablo is more balanced than PvM actually. Hammer and generic sorcs are incredibly good PvM, while there are more comparable strengths of more builds in PvP..

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Imo.. PvP in diablo is more balanced than PvM actually. Hammer and generic sorcs are incredibly good PvM, while there are more comparable strengths of more builds in PvP..

Neither is really balanced is the thing, and this is obvious in spades in HC, where if you can't kill faster than they can juv, leave, or get back to town, you shouldn't be playing, because even if you "beat" them 50 times, the one time they get the lucky crit, you're the one rebuilding =)

[Burst Cancel]

Everything being overpowered doesn't necessarily mean there's no PvP balance - take a look at Guilty Gear. What really counts is depth, and some mechanics to make sure that all classes at least have a reasonable chance, even if individual matches aren't all 5-5 even. The glaring problems are where, it doesn't matter how much better one player is than the other, class X always wins.

As for balancing for PvP and building PvM around it - I point to Guild Wars as the cautionary tale to consider before embarking on this sort of design adventure.

[Uncle_Mike]

As for balancing for PvP and building PvM around it - I point to Guild Wars as the cautionary tale to consider before embarking on this sort of design adventure.

Care to elaborate for those of us who never tried Guild Wars?

[Burst Cancel]

Care to elaborate for those of us who never tried Guild Wars?

The gist is that it doesn't work. Or at least, Anet ultimately wasn't up to the job.

The analogies aren't useful if you've never experienced GW, but the basic problem is that PvM focuses on crowd control and raw damage output (kill as much as you can, as fast as you can), neither of which is paramount in PvP.

[zooply]

I, on the other hand, think they should say "**** PvP balance" as they have in D2.
I mean, don't ignore it completely, but don't make it anywhere near the focus. Infact, don't even worry about balance all that much in general.

D2 is stupidly unbalanced, in both PvE and PvP, but it's still obviously a lot of fun for a lot of people. Why? Because if you want to play the overpowered character, you can just go make one with a fairly limited time investment.

I'm not saying I want to see nothing but, say, barbarians in PvP, try to have all the classes at least somewhat capable, but if there's obviously more barbarians than anything else, that's not too terrible.

Focusing on the balance is for a game like WoW where someone who thinks their class is weak or another is strong can't just reroll in a day. Focusing on balance also results in a lot of unnecessary whining. For nerfs, for buffs, about nerfs, and about buffs.

I'm not a WoW hater, I hit HWL pre TBC, and 2250 in S1&2, but the focus on making it balanced and a professional sort of game gets kind of out of hand. I understand it because rerolling takes so long, but in D3, if it's character development is anything like 1&2, shouldn't be subjected to all that bull****.

I'd prefer they balance it as well as possible, both when it comes out and in any patches. I'd rather see PvP games that are won by skill than one class being overpowered. It won't ever be perfect of course. In D2 all the builds are a bit like rock paper scissors, which also works for balance, just in a different sense.

Now of course I wouldn't mind builds/items that make your character underpowered, to set yourself up with a bit more challenge.

And lastly, balance skills! By that, I mean make them at least somewhat useful when maxed. It's a bit annoying that some skills are either 1 pt wonders (yet you can max them), while others serve no point other than being a synergy. I've put up this point in other threads too, and it would be relevant here.

[phool]

There was increasingly a lot of antagonism between pvpers and pvmers on account of skills being nerfed due to pvp abuse that pvmers had been abusing (and wanted to continue abusing) in pvm, and pvm being all about AoE dpsing with no real use for a lot of pvp skills such as energy-denial. The short version is that by trying to cater to both pvmers and pvpers everyone suffered, and the constant influx of tons of new skills really hurt organised pvp - particularly for beginner and intermediate play, aka most of it - pvp was dumbed down by overpowered and simplistic gimmicks which a balanced team could no longer rely on defeating due to the RPS element - to defeat, say, a 'rt-spike' team build, you would gimp yourself against the 'hexway' team and 'smiteball' team builds (just an example before someone calls me up on it).

I disagree with burst though, the whole system worked pretty well for a while.

It's not an appropriate comparison though.

[Uncle_Mike]

I'd like D3 PvP to be somewhat more skill oriented. At the moment (d2) characters with perfect gear have huge advantage in many cases (chars with a full inventory of perfect charms such as 3/20/20 or 20/5 scs). There would be nothing wrong with that if it weren't for duping behind those high-end items and the said advantage.

It would be cool if dedication to the game (taking advantage of various exploits excluded) would really pay off in D3.

[Burst Cancel]

Skill became a factor in D2 once you leveled the playing field. Most serious PvPers had perfect or near-perfect gear anyway, and the dueling leagues, to my knowledge, were active and healthy for a long time.

As for GW, the antagonism between the two camps actually wasn't the main problem I was pointing to. More to point are the design philosophies of the characters and how balance issues are addressed. It has long been complained, for instance, that Mesmers (and to lesser extent, pre-Agility Assassins) were largely worthless in PvE; it's easy to see why - whereas disruption is excellent in PvP, in PvE you just kill the monsters without bothering with this disruption nonsense. There are, further, a large number of skills that were never used in PvE (who cares about snaring monsters, right?). Similarly, some balance changes were disruptive because they changed skills that needed changing in one setting but not in the other. In short, you simply can't take both PvP and PvE/M into account simultaneously, as they are too disparate.

GW manages to escape somewhat simply by having a lot of skills, some of which only see use in PvP, and some only in PvE - and more recently, by splitting PvE and PvP skills and 'balancing' them separately. Diablo, with fewer skills and probably no split between PvM and PvP, isn't really able to implement those solutions.

Again, I think the route of, "Make everything stupidly overpowered and it'll balance itself" is the way to go for Diablo. It is, after all, tradition :).

[phool]

It was considered by some *coughs* that Anet was capable of improving enemy AI and skillsets (particularly prot/heal skillsets), while reducing their energy and health (and later, ability to near instantly KO you guys) - i.e. make (end game) pvm a little more like pvp - which would have sorted the class imbalance by increasing the need for complex and situationally adaptive pvm strategies that included the 'pvp' skills and classes, but that this may have alienated the noticably terrible players that always felt like 85% of the playerbase... already the terrible standard of other players forced many people to resort to playing with heroes/hench, if they wanted to actually complete a quest in less than a dozen attempts or play a non-cookie cutter build/class, which isn't much fun at all.

None of this really applies to D2 though.

[Share]

If they have a 'Rock, paper, scissors' system à la tedious MMOs where each class is set up in a way to only be able to beat a few classes, and then are pretty much useless against the others, i'm out of here. Pretty much all MMOs got this system and that's why I just can't enjoy those games very much.

If they bring this ideology over from WoW, i'm boycotting this game. Each class should be able to, in a fair fight, beat the others depending on the players' skill level. This is what made D2 pvp interesting together with it's fast pace.

[tetracycloide]

If each class can win 'in a fair fight' when one on one with any other class then team PvP really suffers. 5 simultaneous one on one fights is not nearly as interesting or nuaunced as 5 people working together to beat 5 other people. One thing guild wars did do right was provide a balanced group the opportunity at major success if played brilliantly and it would be a welcome addtion to D3 if 'pressure' style PvP was a viable alternative to the chaotic and spiky style from D2.

I would actualy not be all the suprised if PvP is removed entirely, however. WoW has proven to be quite sucessful at retaining players based on the introduction of new and progressivly harder PvE combat. It has also demonstrated how difficult it is to simultaneous balance PvP and PvP rewards with PvE and PvE rewards so PvP might be ditched just to save themselves the headache.

The OP point that PvP is what keeps people playing a game is too short-sided and D2 centric. PvP kept people playing in D2 because there was nothing else to do in D2 after you finish Act V hell. Blizzard did attempt to introduce new PvE challanges first with the D-clone and then with pandemonium event but they were each far to limited in scope to hold lasting interest. Furthermore the poor end game balancing made the two events frustrating and tedious for all but a handful of builds and for that handful they were compltely trivial. Here's hoping that class specific quests are tailored to provide every class with significant PvE challenges that keep the game interesting.

[Share]

If each class can win 'in a fair fight' when one on one with any other class then team PvP really suffers. 5 simultaneous one on one fights is not nearly as interesting or nuaunced as 5 people working together to beat 5 other people. One thing guild wars did do right was provide a balanced group the opportunity at major success if played brilliantly and it would be a welcome addtion to D3 if 'pressure' style PvP was a viable alternative to the chaotic and spiky style from D2.

I would actualy not be all the suprised if PvP is removed entirely, however. WoW has proven to be quite sucessful at retaining players based on the introduction of new and progressivly harder PvE combat. It has also demonstrated how difficult it is to simultaneous balance PvP and PvP rewards with PvE and PvE rewards so PvP might be ditched just to save themselves the headache.

The OP point that PvP is what keeps people playing a game is too short-sided and D2 centric. PvP kept people playing in D2 because there was nothing else to do in D2 after you finish Act V hell. Blizzard did attempt to introduce new PvE challanges first with the D-clone and then with pandemonium event but they were each far to limited in scope to hold lasting interest. Furthermore the poor end game balancing made the two events frustrating and tedious for all but a handful of builds and for that handful they were compltely trivial. Here's hoping that class specific quests are tailored to provide every class with significant PvE challenges that keep the game interesting.

GW was based around group pvp, one vs one wasn't in the game at all. Besides GW had a healer class which I presume D3 will lack.

Team pvp in D2 was pretty much individualists in a team. Some classes like barb/pala had skills that favored the whole team, but most characters were pretty self-centered. You help your team simply by acting your role to take out the other team.

There will be at least one option to pvp, i'm pretty sure. There's too big a crowd of pvp'ers in all games these days that it's not reasonable to leave out.

[zooply]

If they have a 'Rock, paper, scissors' system à la tedious MMOs where each class is set up in a way to only be able to beat a few classes, and then are pretty much useless against the others, i'm out of here. Pretty much all MMOs got this system and that's why I just can't enjoy those games very much.

If they bring this ideology over from WoW, i'm boycotting this game. Each class should be able to, in a fair fight, beat the others depending on the players' skill level. This is what made D2 pvp interesting together with it's fast pace.

But that's kind of how it's already set up in D2 PvP now anyways (whether intentional or not I don't know). Also I wasn't talking about classes, I was talking about builds. Your statement did make me notice a bit of hypocrisy in my last post though.

'I'd rather see PvP games that are won by skill than one class being overpowered.' vs 'In D2 all the builds are a bit like rock paper scissors, which also works for balance' - meaning you may lose a duel to an inherent disadvantage from the rock/paper/scissors system.

tetracycloide: While with a 'fair fight' system everyone could go 1v1 in a team duel, does that necessarily mean that a team using cooperation of skills can't be better than an individualistic team?

p.s. Remove the ability to completely negate another players damage with absorb and whatnot.

[phool]

RPS in that sense doesn't transfer well. TvT vs 1v1 aside, In Diablo you basically choose who you want to fight against, and there are no ladders or rewards for consecutive victories, in Guildwars it's totally blind selection and you can only estimate based on the current meta (which is the issue; increasingly in Guildwars, but pretty much since Factions after rts and sins became good, 1 team could no longer counter popular gimmicks without gimping itself vs other teams and gimmicks).

[5zigen]

Well I'm sort of with mouse on this one, except not to the extreme (and I would love some more balance in PvE please).

Aside from that, RPS balancing is really detrimental to the game in terms of pve and pvp. Losing a battle because you made a bad choice at the character selection screen simply isn't very fun.

Now, that doesnt mean to say that team tactics cant come into play. Let's say in d2, depending on build most classes can beat most other classes. But, if you had serious team based PvP, you would end up with people making some obvious teams (Conc/fanat aura pala + WW barb, LR nec + sorc, Decrep nec + barb etc etc) but they would have unique playstyles and it would be interesting.

The thing with RPS balancing in group fights is that it's impossible because you will always end up with the inherent RPS 'imbalance'. What that means is that more often than not your battle will be lost, not because of how good you or your gear is, but because your team makeup simply isn't the right one to beat another team. This leads to other sorts of discontentment, See wow and people not being able to form arena teams because certain teams simply aren't viable.

Keeping every character on a sort of even playing field really negates that effect in that it makes more teams viable, which means more people can play with each other in pvp which means more happy people, yay!

That being said, I hope they don't balance for PvP first then for PvE. I hope they keep this game at least PvE focused and leave the PvP balancing to skills that are truly broken.

And leave out absorbs please :( Resistances are good enough.

[tetracycloide]

tetracycloide: While with a 'fair fight' system everyone could go 1v1 in a team duel, does that necessarily mean that a team using cooperation of skills can't be better than an individualistic team?

p.s. Remove the ability to completely negate another players damage with absorb and whatnot.

If any class can win in a fair fight against any other class then that must mean there are no weaknesses inherient to any class that any other class is capable of fully exploiting. Team PvP suffers because group composition doesn't matter if all classes are equal in every PvP situation. If every class has the same chance to beat every other class then group composition is irrelevent.

In a rock, paper, scissors system duels will most certainly suffer since they are quite often forgone conclusions. However, setting up that system allows group composition to become part of the strategy in group PvP. You would not, for example, want to populate your team exlusivly with scissors for fear of running into a rock or too.

This idea is born out in WoW and guild wars. Each class is not equal in PvP, they all have fairly clearly defined roles that can be used as parts to construct a complete team. If D3 is balanced around duels then group PvP will remain the largely irrelevent novelty that it was in D2.

[5zigen]

If any class can win in a fair fight against any other class then that must mean there are no weaknesses inherient to any class that any other class is capable of fully exploiting. Team PvP suffers because group composition doesn't matter if all classes are equal in every PvP situation. If every class has the same chance to beat every other class then group composition is irrelevent.

I've already gave a counterexample to this ridiculous assertion. That simply isn't true.