Why Asymetrical Balance doesnt work in Planetside 2

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Xebov, Jan 15, 2014.

  1. maxkeiser

    Balance is absolutely fine as it is. I much prefer asymetry to bland sameness.
    • Up x 1
  2. Goretzu

    Nonsense; "balanced" and "not balanced" are very easy to define and are perfectly sensible and well understood criteria.

    Get yourself a set of kitchen scales and see for yourself. :D
  3. Tuco

    seems fine to me
  4. TheFamilyGhost

    I'm not talking about kitchen scales. I'm talking about this game. :)

    Let me give you an example. A certain weapon (any weapon) has a global (across all servers) KD of 500/1. Should its effectiveness be reduced?

    That 500/1 came about because the weapon is used at spawn camps. Should the effectiveness still be reduced?
  5. nitram1000

    Asymmetrical balance does not work in this game, it ruined it.
    • Up x 1
  6. Pizzasaurus

    Asymetrical balance cannot be done in any PvP FPS game.
  7. Tuco

    Symmetrical balance is world of warcraft where a warrior has the same abilities as a priest, they just look different doing the same thing.

    Just say no to symmetrical balance.
  8. Nephera

    I agree that they didnt go far enough with the asymmetry and it makes for a boring game.
  9. Goretzu

    You are talking about kitchen scales, you just don't realise it. :)

    How would a weapon give an average 500/1 K/D ratio only at spawn camps? :confused: (short of it being a weapon that flips the polarity of the spawn field)
  10. uhlan

    Faction flavor is being slowly drained away because of the vocal MLG crowd that needs to have more "balance" for small unit combat and SOE's half-hearted attempt at faction developement.

    It has been said many, many times that the hope for Epic-ness discussed everywhere about PS2 simply doesn't exist any longer. A few big 48+ fights doesn't make the game "Epic" and SOE really needs to come through with some promises to right the ship.

    The problem is that in catering to the small map, small team spam-fests with MLG etc, they have are driving the people away who came here for something different.

    There are LOTS of gamers tired of the same ol' FPS grind and were looking for a game that tends more to a war sim, than spam-a-lot.

    Not that spam isn't bad, log on, shoot a few thousand rounds, kill 20-30 then log off for afternoon tea.

    Sure, there are people like that, but this game is missing depth and I wonder how long they are going to get folks to trust the name PS2 and and bother to sign on?
    • Up x 1
  11. TheFamilyGhost

    Kitchen scales don't balance differently because I like one ingredient over the other, or because one ingredient cooks faster.

    See the absurdity of it? If I am correct, the last large scale tweaking of weapon abilities was based primarily (solely?) on the in game performance of the weapon, which has far too many variables to be a good indicator of weapon balance.

    The only way talk of balance makes sense is when there are consistent physical laws applied to weapon ability.
  12. Goretzu


    [1] Neither does balance. :confused: Balance is always the same, regardless of personal preferance or cooking time. :D

    [2] No, because unlike your "cooking time" arguements, it isn't absurd!

    [3] A lot of variables makes balance harder, but not impossible. You surely don't think the devs should just not bother because it might be difficult do you? :eek:

    [4] "Physical laws applied to weapon ability"........ I think you're going to have to explain that one. o_O
    • Up x 1
  13. TheFamilyGhost

    I think that the variables are moot. They don't matter. Why? Because there are so many. The devs can try to balance as much as they want, but as long as the bar is moving, then it will be a never ending job.

    By "Physical Laws", I mean that there are an agreed upon set of physics that each weapon must obey, and that the weapon's abilities are based on those physics. It is then up to the player to best use those weapons.

    A great example of how arbitrary the balancing is weapon damage drop off. On Earth (my only frame of reference), a round that has enough charge to travel ~ 500m does not lose large amounts of its energy after 10m. However, in PS2, we are seeing that weapons that have been deemed to have excess effectiveness outside of 10m have had the energy of their round reduced.
  14. Crayv

    The more similar you make the factions the more noticeable the few remaining differences will be. That's not a good thing.

    When one faction is outperforming the other, rather than making the factions more similar a better approach would be to amplify their differences.
    • Up x 1
  15. Goretzu

    [1] The bar isn't moving, there's just a lot of variables, which is why MMO take time to balance, but usually get there eventually.

    [2] In game physics is fairly irrevent to balance, it can certainly be incorporated if you want to, but it doesn't have to be.

    [3] Again game balance and "realism" have nothing really to do with each other (you can have a perfectly balanced unrealistic game and a perfectly balanced realistic game, but those are two seperate choices and balance is seperate to the realism choice).
  16. TheFamilyGhost

    OK, fair enough. What should balance be based on then?
  17. Goretzu

    Everything.
  18. FluffyM

    I pretty much play infantry 90% of my game-time (and 90% of that is spent playing NC [and 90% of that is spent playing LA and HA]), so I couldn't really comment on differences between factions too much, but starlinvf's post pretty much hits the nail on the head when it comes to everything that is wrong with infantry-play in particular and gameplay in general.

    Sadly I don't think there is much merit to discussing this any more, as "people" have been saying this for well over 2 years. SOE are not willing to change the gunplay in its (imo shocking) core principles, so the asymetrical balance can never really be worked out, as OP suggests. There is simply no room.
  19. Patrician


    It was done in PS....
  20. Irathi


    Asymetrical balance is really difficult.

    In my post about Empire Weapon Variance and Balancing I argue for why the balance worked in PS1, short version; today in PS2 there are 123 empire "specific" weapons, however most of them are designed to work in the same combat range / role. So in effect they could be considered common pool and I think they should be. That way you can easily balance 90% of all weapons (since they are identical in performance).

    PS1 then made certain that if you chose an empire specifc weapon it would be truly different from any others, TR had the Mini Chain Gun, NC had the Jackhammer and VS had the Lasher.

    They were a big part of the empires identity and defined much of how that empire would approach various situations. The truth is that also in PS1 people always complained about balancing the empire specific weapons from the first day until PS2 where released.. And that was just 3 weapons. How are they going to manage balancing 123?