Questions
by Brock “Brokain”
and the Ten Ton Hammer Staff
Answers by Brian Wheeler (Designer, RvR), Yvonne Bridges
(RvR Lead), and Adam
Gershowitz (Careers Lead)
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 style="font-style: italic;">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!
style="font-weight: bold;">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?
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style="font-style: italic;">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?
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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? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?p=185497#post185497">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! Ten
Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for Warhammer
Online news
and articles!
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