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Questions by Brock “Brokain” Ferguson and the Ten Ton Hammer Staff
Answers by Brian Wheeler (Designer, RvR), Yvonne Bridges (RvR Lead), and Adam
Gershowitz (Careers Lead)

Balancing the classes (or skills) in a massively multiplayer online game is no simple task. Even though forum trolls constantly complain about “the lack of balance” or how a particular class is “broken” or “nerfed,” developers are constantly trying to iron out these issues. When you throw PvP into the mix, the balance issues escalate to epic proportions. Since Warhammer Online will be featuring just this sort of PvP and RvR content, we decided to toss the EA Mythic developers a few questions and Brian Wheeler, Yvonne Bridges, and Adam Gershowitz all helped answer our inquiries. If you’re at all interested in the process of PvP balancing, make sure you read this article!

Ten Ton Hammer: With any type of PvP or RvR system, there's always a worry about balancing the classes in the game. What are you working on right now to balance the various classes and how they fight against each other?

Realm vs. Realm combat is an essential piece of WAR.

WAR Devs: There really is no magical silver bullet for this. The only way to really balance a career is to actually play it, fighting other careers, take feedback and iterate on the design. This is something we do every single day internally and in the beta. Yes, I know, not super sexy but that's how it’s done. *smiles*

Ten Ton Hammer: We love the idea of turning a player into a chicken if they go into an RvR zone too far below their level. What if you are just coming back to finish up some quests?

WAR Devs: There are two primary types of quests in RvR areas that a player could have as incomplete in their journal.  The first type sends players to participate in scenarios, and players in the chicken rank range won't have that scenario bracket available. These quests cannot be completed and will need to be abandoned.  The second type sends players to the various Battlefield Objectives and Keeps, which they are certainly welcome to try to do as a chicken.  Technically, they will still be able to complete the objective and the quest.

Ten Ton Hammer: There's obviously a benefit in having better gear when engaging in RvR, and in certain other games this has created a balance issue. How are you planning on balancing RvR in terms of being more skill based than gear based, if at all?

WAR Devs: Both skill and gear will obviously play a role in a player's success in RvR. That is the nature of this type of game. Some players will naturally excel in combat and we don't want to penalize them for this. However, we don't want them to dominate all the time either, thus gear comes into play. Spend time in the game and you will be rewarded with gear, and you should be able to put that gear to use. As to how we then impose some sense of balance on these factors, well, see the answer to question #1. It is pretty much the same process.

Ten Ton Hammer: There has been talk in the past concerning how certain factions would fight against each other. According to those reports, Orcs will have advantages vs. Dwarves, Empire vs. Chaos, and vice versa. How do these match ups fit into the overall balance of the RvR system?

Certain careers will have an easier time fighting other races, but it will typically be because of career mechanics rather than a race's innate ability.

WAR Devs: That's really not 100% true, because we are not giving one race an explicit advantage over any other race. In general some race's careers will have an easier time fighting other races but that is because of how the career mechanics play out. For example the Dwarf Ironbreaker WILL do really well against the Greenskins since they are not very magic heavy, and he has very good physical defense. But on the flip side the Dwarf Engineer WILL NOT do really well against the Black Orc for the exact same reasons (His attacks are physical and Orcs have high armor and toughness). So not all Dwarves beat on all Greenskins and vice versa

On the flip side we will be introducing things into the game that do give explicit advantages against certain types of opponents both in PvE and PvP; however, in many cases we will not lock this to a specific race. In all honesty, while Dwarves traditionally know how to kill Greenskins, there is no reason why an Empire Warrior Priest can't be a Greenskin killing specialist either. That choice is up to the player.

Ten Ton Hammer: As the final question, when balancing casters vs. tanks (or nukers vs. melee classes) what is the biggest challenge you face?

WAR Devs: Once again that's a bit too broad of an assumption. Certain careers just don't play nice with others… You can have two completely different types of tanks one that's great at soaking up physical damage (who will just get chewed up by mages) and the other that is really good at soaking magical damage types (nighty night Mr. Mage).

Overall, in an attempt to keep the parity between close range & long range in general, we have to be very careful with how we allow players to control or manipulate other player's movement. Long range classes just don't get the ability to lock an opponent at long range. Yes, they can slow their advance, but they really can't immobilize them until they get into close range (so they can attempt to escape). Even then they have to be careful because those types of Crowd Control have long reuse timers and diminishing returns on effectiveness. Use it on one charging tank and you may find that you are run down by the next one.

The same holds true for close range careers; expend you're abilities to get into melee range quickly and you may find those tools unavailable to you later. In the end it's the same with everything, play the game, take feedback, adjust, rinse, and repeat.

Ready to kill some Greenskins? Are you aching to eat some Dwarves? Let us know in the forums!

Make sure you check out our Warhammer Online Community Site for up-to-date and detailed information on the game!

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