by Karen Hertzberg on Nov 27, 2007
The PvP Balancing Act
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!
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.