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.
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.