Dev Thinking on Balance?

Originally posted by Cainehill:
First, by that logic : I never use crones, and I lose all my games. Therefor, crones are overpowered. Second - no slight intended to Zen, but if he's winning 95% of all his MP games, he needs to try swimming in a bigger pond. Especially given diplomacy and alliances, I'd be amazed if anyone was winning 95% in a range of games / players.

That's nice of you to say, but I think it's you, who needs to swim in a bigger pond. You can lose all your games playing a VQ as well, that takes as much skill as losing with a Crone. You may be surprised but that's fine, it is precisely diplomacy and alliances why you can win 95% of your games.

Again - no insult meant to Jasper, nor Zen, nor anyother beta tester. But Beta Testers tend to think they know how the game is supposed to work, therefor they have foregone conclusions, prejudices, and don't really push the envelope.

No insult ment to Newbies, but they often have no idea what they are talking about at any given moment in time and constantly contridict themselves. Beta Testers are there to help provide a service and give perspective to the design of the game, not to whine about personal preference or playstyle.

And yep, there are other pretenders almost as good as the VQ - maybe even better. But there's only one AllFather in any game, and only one Carrion Dragon, and 13 VQs.

So if there are as many as good, maybe even better, why isn't the crusade to nerf them in full effect? Is it because you've been beaten with a VQ more often than the others? Or that it's easier to do for more nations? By your example, noone at all plays Rainbows or Bless Effects, only VQ's and combat pretenders. Which unfortunately is not the case so there must be a flaw in either your argument or your experiences.

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
If you think about it, a beta-tester is almost certain to deny an alleged imbalance. If he agreed, then the imbalance would have been eliminated in the beta-testing.

That might be for huge budget games or maybe alot of other companies, but even the Developers for IW either state they didn't think of it, or didn't care/have enough time for something that they later find imbalanced. I'm fairly certain that most of the Beta Testers would fully admit if something they feel is genuinely wrong or inbalanced if they didn't happen to catch it. I may be giving too much credit, but considering how Dom2 came about and is progressing I don't think so.

[ May 04, 2004, 05:44: Message edited by: Zen ]