Radio Silence on Class Balance
We arrive at a topic which has garnered nary a comment from the EQ2 development team since February. I’m talking of course about class balance. While we realize it’s foolish to think that one day all the classes will be truly “balanced”, there’s no better terminology for the valid concept of making sure that all 24 classes have the tools necessary to do their jobs, and that classes that do the same basic job are able to put out similar numbers.
There’s something wrong when a fully raid-geared, fully-mastered Ranger betrays to Assassin, and sees their DPS more than double using the same exact gear and similar weapons. The perpetual jokes about the “Shadowknight Odyssey” are now a tired cliché.
Game Update 56 made a sweeping change to the Fury and Mystic mythical weapons — yet there has not been a single developer comment on the subject.
At Fan Faire 2009, many of us pushed the idea of a State of the Class for each of the 24 class forums. A brief list of problems identified with the classes and plans to fix them. This, along with better communication from the team about class changes, would go a long way to showing us that there is a plan and someone has a vision for how the classes should look.
I’m not denying that Sentinel’s Fate made some good to very good changes in AAs and spells for many classes. Some people are now calling this expansion Summoner’s Fate (or my personal favorite — Druids of Odus). 😉 But there will always be issues, and we are hearing less from the EQ2 team about how they view core class design than we did under Aeralik.
In response to a new forum thread, brilliantly titled Radio Silence on Class Balance, SmokeJumper has asked for patience:
Being silent may be considered bad, but talking just to say something is worse.
I tend to do research before I say things, and that takes time.
I’ve been speaking to the designers about class balance. We have a general idea what we’d like to do about it, but we don’t have a detailed plan yet.
So no, I’m not going to talk about it until after we develop that plan. I’m sorry if that annoys. That is not my intention.
and further:
We’re looking at it now. I’m not stopping anyone on the team from communicating, but after I get the rundown on what changes will occur, someone from the team will provide an overview of what’s coming.
NOTE: I have absolutely no ETA for when that will occur. It’s going to take us some time to make those decisions. Stuff like this isn’t a 1-day change.
No offense, Mr. Georgeson, but we thought that “change” happened last November. It’s June and we’re still holding the bag.
Tags: class balance, smokejumper
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Comments (14)
Ferrel
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Great write up on the situation and I couldn’t agree more. Why the idea of “not talking” continues to crop up in development I’ll never know. Being silent is basically the worst possible thing you can do. It gives players the opportunity to speculate and rumor monger.
Sometimes you do have to talk just to talk. The black box approach to class balance is just foolish. There are tons of players with years worth of parse data that would be a huge resource to the process. Why isn’t there a request for feedback?
Why isn’t there an acknowledgment of problem areas?
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Phujiak
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Class balance is simple…change SK and Zerk max armor to chain. This accomplishes two things. It begins the process of detaching the evil/good alignment of subclasses that are clearly no longer valid. The days of crusader, predators, cleric, etc. I think are long gone. It is more role specific now. SK and zerker are AE tanks imho. When I see bards doing as much or more dps than rangers geared at the same level, it kinda makes rangers OBE. /cry
The second thing this accomplishes, is it lower mitigation of the AE tanks and basically trades mitigation for dps and vice versa. So either you kill faster and therefore don’t worry so much about survivability or you make yourself more survivable and be able to take the spike damage for the long fight.
Everything is about dps now. Heck, even a lot of the raid encounters in SF right now can just ignore the script or technique by just smashing them with a dps tidal wave.
Enough ranting. Just suspend SKs for a few months I guess is the bottomline. =P
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Jerry V
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How is it that Georgeson does not mention that class balance has been an ongoing issue? These problems existed way before he came on board but he speaks of them as if their new. How about some acknowledgement of long time problems and transparency as to what was in the pipe before he took over? Then he could revise those plans and give us his take on them. This guy is the, “King of Vague”.
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AlienShine
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Good thing i´m only playing out of boredom. When Old Republic goes live EQ2 will die.
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I’m talking Templars « Epic Slant – MMO Design and Guild Leadership
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[…] When I picked up EverQuest II again I wrote a few posts about what my early experiences back with the game were. At the time I was somewhat down on the Templar class. Since writing that I put a lot more miles on Ferrel, took some data, and survived the release of Sentinel’s Fate. I’m back in my old rhythm of looking, watching, and documenting and I thought it was time to share some observations. This is a good time to do since since SOE is looking at class balance but not really taking feedback or even discussing it. […]
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SadChanter
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Sentinel’s Fate “Death of the Chanter”. Everyone still wants one in group, but nobody wants to play them. Going from Tier 1.5 dps to getting killed by bards and furies sux!
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zerigo
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To think a game that is this old will simply die is absurd, but surely numbers will decrease as players venture to other MMOs. Far as Georgeson goes, hes only been here for a while, no way is hes going to have a grasp on how all 24 classes play in comparison to the others. Simply put, hes not going to answer a question he isn’t prepared to.
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Macke
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Well, playing a ranger myself and the only that that makes me decend DPS is others in raid that can’t play their class well… For a hardcore raidforce I would not be interesting.
I think it’s good that they do look into this, it’s clear what tiers/utillity most classes have and some were just left behind. Having said that I think it’s key that they don’t “quick-fix” this, usually some will be way overpowered and then when it’s realized they are nerfed… (I hate nerfs more then in-balance).
Also saying he’s not doing this in a rush means for me he has character and that’s important so he can stand behind the decisions but I do agree some “general” comments on progress/ideas would be nice.
AlienShine says EQ2 will die when SWTOR comes out, I don’t think I’ll blow that horn just yet, seems very different in terms of how the game is built in comparison with todays mmorpg-end-game=raids. In addition I think EQ2 has a complexity we have yet to see from other mmorpgs, in raid setups, strategy requirements and ammount of classes! Some will claim the opposite but if your are an EQ2 player that means you know your shit, good for you!
Oh well, that’s my oppinion anyway
Cheers! (btw, still love my ranger complexity despite it beeing “broken”)
//Macke
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Bubbahotep
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Georgeson isn’t going to ride out his reputation based on ideas floated by Aerelik. If I were him I’d do some fact finding and research, too. Anything previously in the works, would be under review as well.
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Brian
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What is he supposed to say? He’s been in his job for what, a month or two? It’s unfair (and I am by no means an apologist) to expect him to have an overview of something as important as class change in that time, especially on top of GU56 just going live.
I like his comment on saying something just to say something is worse than not saying anything at all. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that balancing will occur. Now, if we’re having this same discussion many months down the road, and there is not even a gameplan in place, my attitude will change, but let’s cut the guy some slack, shall we?
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Karith
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The only class I still don’t invite to my raids unless the encounter requires it is Brawler.
Save the Brawler, save the game…. lol….JK!
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abitterbeing
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Nice Heroes reference!
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AlienShine
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Good comments here. It´s still a nice game I think but simply the fact there are no real alternatives keeps people where they are. Let´s hope for the best but I doubt SOE will come to sences. Playing 1.5 year now and the changes and promises SOE makes are just not healthy. It certainly aint as long as most of you here, the fact that I think that for playing that short really says something.
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David
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I agree with Brian, given how new he is to the job, why would he say anything that he hasn’t had time to fully understand? There is enough over-promising/ under-delivering going on in this and all other MMOs. I’d rather he step back take his time in looking at the issues, and then respond. If nothing is said till Fan-Faire, so be it.
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