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Why codex dislikes balance

bloodlover

Arcane
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
2,039
I never got the idea that the Codex dislikes or likes balance in general. It has more to do with the way it is implemented tbh. Furthermore, many games that are all around liked (like Arcanum or Fallout 2) are not balanced.

Imo, the problem that comes with balance in single player games can be traced in MMORPGs (WoW being the biggest offender with its recent expansions) where the developers have to please a very large crowd. Everyone wants his/her class to have the same mobility/sustain/combat power that every other class has and while this makes people happy it really breaks the gaming experience. At some point in time, I remember that WoW had the "bring the player not the class" philosophy in their game and this has been more and more extended in single player games where one class can do many things thus making another (almost) useless (mage and thief comes to mind).

Also, this might be a time/demographic thing but many games in the genre take a lot of time to finish so people want to see all or most of the content in one run. It's fun to play games multiple times with different characters and very different choices but most people don't have the time for that so making their experience more streamlined and balanced is very good for that type of player.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
There's also an issue with over-balancing in regards to level design/opportunities for different classes, which I somewhat touched upon with the quest example of my previous post.

Wasteland 2 is the best example for that one. There's a lockpicking skill, a safecracking skill, a hacking skill, and a toaster repair skill.
When I made my party I made sure to give each character one of those skills to specialize in cause I expected them to come in useful at various points of the game.
The toaster repair skill was one I expected to be useful maybe once or twice in the game, during one specific quest or as an easter egg somewhere. I was looking forward to see what it's gonna be about.

And then, as I played the game, I realized that all these four skills were used equally often: every dungeon had at least one room that contained
a) a locked door, behind which there is
b) a computer to hack and
c) a safe to crack and
d) a damaged toaster to repair.

Everywhere. I don't think there's a single location in Wasteland 2 where there isn't one of these skills to use. It feels highly artificial.
 

Momock

Augur
Joined
Sep 26, 2014
Messages
644
And then, as I played the game, I realized that all these four skills were used equally often: every dungeon had at least one room that contained
a) a locked door, behind which there is
b) a computer to hack and
c) a safe to crack and
d) a damaged toaster to repair.
And behind all of that you find crappy randomly generated garbage, because putting cool equipment here would be unfair to people without these skills. Think of the balance!
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
I played Elex in max difficulty because of the codex.
Cheesing 15 minutes a fucking mob by knocking it back was the best experience of my life.
Fuck balancing, it's all about autism, min maxing and glitching.
Nothing beats beating that MM6 dragon at level3 for a first time :obviously:
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
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Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
There's also an issue with over-balancing in regards to level design/opportunities for different classes, which I somewhat touched upon with the quest example of my previous post.

Wasteland 2 is the best example for that one. There's a lockpicking skill, a safecracking skill, a hacking skill, and a toaster repair skill.
When I made my party I made sure to give each character one of those skills to specialize in cause I expected them to come in useful at various points of the game.
The toaster repair skill was one I expected to be useful maybe once or twice in the game, during one specific quest or as an easter egg somewhere. I was looking forward to see what it's gonna be about.

And then, as I played the game, I realized that all these four skills were used equally often: every dungeon had at least one room that contained
a) a locked door, behind which there is
b) a computer to hack and
c) a safe to crack and
d) a damaged toaster to repair.

Everywhere. I don't think there's a single location in Wasteland 2 where there isn't one of these skills to use. It feels highly artificial.
You forgot the alarm disarming,trap disarming and mechanical repairs :). A lot of retarded skills that could have been put in to one.
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
I played Elex in max difficulty because of the codex.
Cheesing 15 minutes a fucking mob by knocking it back was the best experience of my life.
Fuck balancing, it's all about autism, min maxing and glitching.
And because of people like you i have to listen to ELEX combat being called trash.
The biggest lie in the history of pb games - maybe ever.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
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Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You forgot the alarm disarming,trap disarming and mechanical repairs :). A lot of retarded skills that could have been put in to one.

I don't mind having a lot of very specific skills, but "EYYY MAN! YOU KNOW ALL THOSE SECONDARY SKILLS YOUR CHARACTERS HAVE? WELL HERE'S A ROOM WHERE YOU CAN USE ALL OF THEM!! TWICE!!! btw we copypasted this exact same room into every dungeon of the game, have fun" is just terrible design.
 

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
Breaking game systems and coming up with absurdly overpowered nonsense is super fun, that's why.
 

Farewell into the night

Guest
Take a look around the world, my friend. It is the ultimate blueprint for RPG's.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Bulgaria
You forgot the alarm disarming,trap disarming and mechanical repairs :). A lot of retarded skills that could have been put in to one.

I don't mind having a lot of very specific skills, but "EYYY MAN! YOU KNOW ALL THOSE SECONDARY SKILLS YOUR CHARACTERS HAVE? WELL HERE'S A ROOM WHERE YOU CAN USE ALL OF THEM!! TWICE!!! btw we copypasted this exact same room into every dungeon of the game, have fun" is just terrible design.
I prefer interesting and unique skills over redundant ones that could be put in to one. And yeah w2 was fill to the brim with garbage that you had to unlock,crack,hack,disarm or fix. To be honest i believe that the repair mechanics had the best use of those useless skills.
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
Because lack of balance makes them feel smart.

"Oh, you specced in axes? Lol you're such a scrub, should've picked swords, there are some real good magical ones but no magical axes except for basic +1 crap. This isn't one of your fancy balanced games, here your build choice matters! ...what? No, nowhere in the manual or in the game is mentioned that swords are stronger. You should've read gamefaqs divined it through your innate prestigiousness like I did."

What you're describing isn't the same thing as balance, not getting good spears, mauls or 2 handed axes without any crafting options is a serious flaw but not a balance issue.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
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Messages
33,052
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Because lack of balance makes them feel smart.

"Oh, you specced in axes? Lol you're such a scrub, should've picked swords, there are some real good magical ones but no magical axes except for basic +1 crap. This isn't one of your fancy balanced games, here your build choice matters! ...what? No, nowhere in the manual or in the game is mentioned that swords are stronger. You should've read gamefaqs divined it through your innate prestigiousness like I did."

What you're describing isn't the same thing as balance, not getting good spears, mauls or 2 handed axes without any crafting options is a serious flaw but not a balance issue.

Yeah a balance issue would be if, for no reason, swords increase in skill much faster than any other weapon (if we use a Morrowind style increase-by-use skill system). Or if swords gave you straight-up better and more plentiful special abilities compared to other weapons.
 

Ol' Willy

Arcane
Zionist Agent Vatnik
Joined
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Reichskommissariat Russland ᛋᛋ
In recent times it seems developers hate the notion of someone fucking up their character through poor choices on rolling/level ups or party composition and rather than having the player figure it out on their own or consulting others for help they start to make it so you can't mess up and you will be able to win despite not earning that win through knowledge of mechanics, rulesets and systems.
This is our times. You do it the old-school way - people gonna flood the according forums with "WTF how do I kill anyone in this game".

Many mainstream games today are balanced so the goym-journos can actually play and complete them.
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
A criticism like “this developer was too worried about balance” becomes popular here, probably because it was true the first time it was brought up, and certain people here just run with it to shit on anything they don’t like.

It isn’t really true that most people here generally dislike “balance” as an absolute.
In fact, there are games that are commonly criticized here for not being balanced enough.

Question posed in this thread is based on a false premise.
 

nobre

Cipher
Joined
Apr 27, 2016
Messages
674
Location
Pays-Bas
Balance only makes sense in multiplayer. Us monocled gentleman prefer singleplayer. Therefore, balance is scoffed at by proper lads.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,476
Location
Frostfell
All masterpiece RPG's are unbalanced. Arcanum? Unbalanced. BG1/2? Unbalanced. Fallout 1/2? Unbalanced. Dark Sun : Shattered Sands & Wake of the Ravager? Extremely unbalanced. Half giant gladiators are so powerful and has no drawbacks. For the same of "balance", many developers DESTROY every variety and consistency of game mechanics and lore.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
TL;DR
Because balance in broad sense applied with narrow understanding and no respect for priorities yields shit, or at least shittier games.
:obviously:
If you try to (naively) balance a guy who beats the laws of nature into submission with his mind with guy who beats other people with a stick, something has to give.
 

Ol' Willy

Arcane
Zionist Agent Vatnik
Joined
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Messages
24,574
Location
Reichskommissariat Russland ᛋᛋ
a cleric/preserver to cast stoneskin, haste and heal and 3 half giant gladiators is probably the best party for the first game
True. Half-giants are generally too OP, and half-giant gladiators are even more broken. I didn't cast much with my gimmick party of four double-classed half-giants, generally just mashing things to death, but some fights do require some heavy casting. With gladiators? Even more HP and STR, kek.

That's what we call fun. Not castrating some spells, classes or races so they will become closer to each other, in the name of BaLaNcE and boredom.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Because lack of balance makes them feel smart.

"Oh, you specced in axes? Lol you're such a scrub, should've picked swords, there are some real good magical ones but no magical axes except for basic +1 crap. This isn't one of your fancy balanced games, here your build choice matters! ...what? No, nowhere in the manual or in the game is mentioned that swords are stronger. You should've read gamefaqs divined it through your innate prestigiousness like I did."
That reminds me of dagger builds in AoD, which benefit from you easily getting a unique steel dagger with the highest hit chance bonus in the game the moment you walk into Maadoran and the fact that you can get easy access to 1 lb of blue steel ore in Teron (from cutting a deal with Cassius for his life) and 1 lb of meteor ore in the sewers of Maadoran, which is just enough to craft a dagger and nothing else (except ammunition, but those are not reusable). Running around Teron with a blue steel dagger while the next weapon build will take effort to get anything better than iron ore does things for you alright. Throw a few whetstones on top and you will brutally murder anything in your way, since whetstones last for twice as many strikes on blue steel as they do on iron and your crafting skill should be damn high if you do this.

That's just one of those things you can't properly anticipate without prior knowledge.

What you're describing isn't the same thing as balance, not getting good spears, mauls or 2 handed axes without any crafting options is a serious flaw but not a balance issue.
While perfect loot balance gets stupid, loot is a balance factor. There's no point in, say, leveling an axe skill if all the axes you find are shit and you can't make a decent axe yourself. PF: Kingmaker runs into this problem with the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats. Without prior knowledge on what loot you are going to find it's very easy to have invested into bonuses for a shit weapon because you only find good weapons for the other weapon types. KotOR 2 also has large loot imbalance issues. Heavy armors for instance blow in that game, so building for it leaves you with a crappier character. Fallout games also leave you at the mercy of "sure that weapon skill looks good, but are you actually going to find a good weapon for it?" And then someone does some ridiculous stunt where you walk through those empty "open world" zones to some end-game zone and grab the weapon you want and plow through the game in ways you wouldn't be doing if you didn't have a game guide or prior playthroughs to inform you where to find that ridiculous shit.
 
Last edited:

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
Location
Kelethin
I love balance, and I don't think "balance" and "lots of fun things" are mutually exclusive. You can have both if it is done well.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,476
Location
Frostfell
"Oh, you specced in axes? Lol you're such a scrub, should've picked swords, there are some real good magical ones but no magical axes except for basic +1 crap. This isn't one of your fancy balanced games, here your build choice matters! ...what? No, nowhere in the manual or in the game is mentioned that swords are stronger. You should've read gamefaqs divined it through your innate prestigiousness like I did."

Wrong. The fact that the game lacks a lot of viable option is a problem. If in this same game, an mace is much better to destroy a rock golem than an sword, it would be unbalanced but good at the same time.

If the game had maces, axes, spears, polleaxes, halberds, javelins but all weapons use the same animation and are mechanically identical to swords, that would be a far greater problem. Swords are overrepresented and overrated. Blunt and Piercing weapons needs far more love on pop culture.
 

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