What is balance?

[standistortion]

Seems some folks want PvP balance and some RvR, PvP balance would result in RvR balance but would probably dumb things down to the point where greater numbers always win and I really don't want to play a game with nothing but knarb's, warju's and whatever archers would become.

Seems like there are just to many variables to ever achieve balanced but the problem brakes down easily. There are support and offense classes, I see no reason why balance cant be achieved between offense classes in PvP, then in equal groups (terrain would still sway an advantage), then in 2v2 battles with a single offense and support on each side and finally fine tuned with uneven combinations to ensure no combination has a major advantage (ie. no herds of conj's and barb's).

[Yttrium]

Balance: in any given encounter, the outcome is not easy to predict. When the outcome is easy to predict, the game becomes rote and boring.

[bois]

How do you balance a game which by its design will have a few "right" builds and many "wrong" ones for every single class.
True balance is impossible.

Balancing for fairness that is. Balancing for fun factor could be the way out that keeps players coming back. That is what made NGD a cult classic.
What made this game ? Not the fun factor? It was probably imbalanced as heck but people kept coming back for more. They came back because despite all the problems, I think every player always felt that if they had the right conditions they had a chance. That was the balance. The balance of fun and believing in your self , your class, your experience, allies and ability.

NGD slowly kills all this. They do not understand (maybe they do which is even more scary). Reading data streams will never tell you this story.

I will not even go into the technical conceptual issues and gaffes that NGD introduced into the game that makes things off kilter. We know them and discuss them to death already. I put that aside.

The reality is that with game constructs such as this, there will always be a flavour of the month build or a flavour of the month class. There will always be bugs, exploits and technical problems leading to that thing we call imbalance. No getting around that.

The issue in not balance so much but NGD's concept and forward thinking of balance. Is it a fun factor driven or is it revenue driven. Is the balance between those two ideals in a healthy position? Does NGD understand that the game needs to be fun and unique above all to continue to be successful?

But what about a different approach to balancing. Why not identify areas of weakness and supply temporary class specific boosts to these areas as a test. These are not spells. They are tokens you can either drop, buy etc. They are temporary and can raise the fun factor while modifying balance in a temporary way. It is a fine way to beta test small changes which can then be integrated into the system (via spells etc.) after the data is compiled.
Seems like a better way to test things than tinkering with spells then taking an eternity to get back to tuning them again. Note that such an approach is not nerf friendly but spell enhancing.

[alam_pj99]

Originally Posted by Seher

Balance is the best possible fun (gameplay) for everyone. How strong and efficient classes are compared to each other is an important factor there, but comes in second, the most important thing is fun. Since this game is RvR centric, slight imbalances for PvP might be necessary to achieve a better RvR gameplay.
My opinion.

Either way, you need a vision of classes, too. Most are quite clear and don't need further specifying by NGD, just hunters are the big question mark. What are they supposed to be? Not just any vision will do, it needs to be a good one that makes sense. Yes, NGD should provide it (so that I can take it apart :P), pretty much everyone on these forums has already posted their vision of hunters, it's time to decide.

+1
I agree with the