My problem with the balance of DnD is that it feels like the only thing combat values is dps. I once played a warlock that I wanted to make as a buff/debuffer type character but inevitably I just uad to resort to Eldritch Blast spam because every other spell was unreliable and the damage of EB was unmatched. And the thing is I like being being an EB spamming Warlock, I've played those before and I'll always defend how cool EB is. But this is a problem across the board. You can't be a healer because damage ways outpaces any kind of healing, so only Healing Word is useful (and that's just to revive unconscious allies). There aren't any reliable ways for tanks to draw aggro on themselves. I just wish other playstyles were more viable
You picked the wrong class for that, Warlock is designed almost entirely around damage. If support and/or crowd control was your main interest then Cleric, Druid, Bard, Wizard or Sorcerer are the main choices, hell even a Battle Master Fighter has some reasonable support options.
@andrewcarter9649 I get that Warlock may be more dedicated to dps, but when I picked another class, I ran into the same problem. For example, as a wizard, your support spells have a chance to fail, but magic missiles will always succeed (plus there's fireball). Even the Cleric's dps outshines their healing and support, I just end up attacking then use healing word to revive downed allies.
I know it's a video game and not really comparable to D&D but I do like how Elder Scrolls Online balances their classes because any class can fill any role so you can tank, heal, or dps as anything whether you're a sorcerer, dragonknight, or nightblade.
@@Chowder_T This just sounds like excuses for being bad since the Wizard in particular is especially well known for shutting down combat encounters with none damaging spells like Wall of Force and Force Cage. I mean Magic Missile is guaranteed damage but not a lot of damage unless you're a high level Evocation Wizard, and even then you've got other spells that will just shut down encounters.
I have to hard disagree here. With good optimization, you can make almost any character concept work. Example: sure warlocks seem to only have EB, but a carefully placed hold person or hypnotic pattern can win you the fight outright... And you make them easier to land by grabbing that 1lv in sorcerer for silvery barbs. EB can also serve as a control tool with repelling blast or lance of lethargy Sure you can't draw aggro, but you can make a very tanky cleric with spirit guardians and limit enemy movement. You can also build very effective armorer artificers to give disadvantage on every enemy attack while controlling movement with Web AND giving bonus to saving throws paladin-style
There is a specific case of balance in co-op games like DND and that is Niche protection. One of the biggest problems of balance in DnD is that most casters get to overstep in what a fighter should do, for example a sword and board fighter should be the best at defending and protecting their allies, however due to how opportunity attack goes it ends up very bad at preventing enemies attacking allies, and at high levels it will end up also be bad defending itself since AC doesn't scale while enemy attacks do. In the meanwhile clerics with a divine soul sorc dip get to have the same ac, while dealing more damage thanks to spell like spirit guardians, are better at protecting their allies due to speed reduction of spells as well as access to silvery barbs and bless, are able to have more defensive options tanks to be able to affect the battlefield while dodging as well having access to shield spell and 2d4 extra on save with favorite by the gods. Also the way most spell being save or suck is another plague to the game's balance since they either result in the caster contributing nothing to the fight or trivializing it all by themselves.
yeah absolutely. Whenever a wizard can cast a spell and summon a creature, and that creature is a better fighter than the actual fighter in the party, like what is even the point of having a fighter anymore lol. And yeah save or suck spells are definitely a whole other problem on their own. When the only two possible outcomes for certain spells are basically instant win or you effectively lose your turn, that just makes combat way too swingy and nearly impossible to balance. It's not fun when you just waste your turn casting a spell that does nothing. But because of that risk they feel the need to make the spell even stronger to justify the risk and that's just not interesting and ruins the combat even more. I know PF2e went a good direction in at least addressing the Save or Suck stuff where each spell now has 4 possible outcomes depending on whether they Critically Passed, Passed, Failed, or Critically Failed the saving throw. With usually only a Critical Success negating it completely, so 3/4 options at least accomplish *something* without wasting your turn and as a result they don't need to make the spell super busted to justify the risk of using it.
@@BlazeMakesGames The biggest problem with summoning creatures in D&D isn't the invalidation of some classes, but that each of those creatures gets an entire turn. Meaning if you summon 6 wolves onto the field suddenly you're taking 7 turns per round, which... No matter how well balanced those wolves are compared to the fighter, individually or collectively, that's still going to cause major issues to combat. (PF2e also fixes that - You can, as an action, give a companion character, which summoned creatures count as, 2 actions. You can do this once per turn per companion in your control. So summoning strategies at _worst_ double the length of your turns, and if it's doubling the length of your turns your creatures doing things is the entirety of your turn, and in most cases you're going to be getting one extra action - the same as you grant to someone with hasting them - from it because you're usually going to want to be using a couple of your actions on yourself. This means you can flood the battlefield with 20 squirrels and it won't slow the combat down significantly. When we had a bunch of companion characters in the final fight - some from magic items, one because the module... Just hands you a robot companion... I think the biggest utility we got from them was providing flanking to the rogues, giving both of them easy sneak attack. They didn't do much else aside being hp sacks for the enemies to deal with)
Martials were "supposed to" scale with magic equipment. Better weapons, armor etc. but even that isn't enough and then comes the other side that supposedly "the game is balanced around the party not having magic items." Which begs more questions. Equipping party members with something like +1 items is a long and troublesome process that also put the game into a halt. It focuses attention on them needing to get "the loot" while otherwise being too weak to matter. And from the other side it is also feels unfair towards the caster to not get part of the loot. They did their part and still they get no rewards. Whether they would actually "need" the loot or not is not even a question here, the main point is that the game is deigned to result such a circumstance
Man I wish more people understood this. You have no idea how many times I've talked in forums about how balance can heavily change the way a game feels based on how it changes your options let alone how much it can change how a game feels on a fundemental level. I can't even explain why I liked feeling weaker in monster hunter with limited movesets and longer animations without getting a dozen replies saying it's pve, you're a boomer, masochist, etc. And it's just like from my perspective, the game felt cooler and more engaging/ mentally stimulating when the monster was much more of a threat than I was due to having less ways to easily react. it also made mastering the game feel so much more satisfying. But the moment you mention, "sometimes being weaker or more balanced can be more fun", like half of the modern gaming playerbase will look at you like you're speaking another language. To them, more power = more fun and there's nothing more to be said.
Its almost ironic how often this happens. Lately I just try to build so a concept I want to play is good enough, even if it isn't meta and just get good from there. Granted, sometimes what I think is fun also so happens to be meta. I won't deny that as a possibility.
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." Balance is crucial to single-player games because if one strategy is dominant, players will naturally gravitate towards that and have a shallower, less enjoyable experience as a result. I play Warframe, and that game's community, while chill, has a very skewed view of game balance. They believe that since the game is meant to be a power fantasy, nothing should ever be nerfed, no matter how OP. At the same time, these same players also complain that the game is too easy and needs more challenging content. Since there are builds that give literal permanent invincibility and can one-shot any enemy, it's impossible to actually give players that challenging end-game content, but if they nerfed the OP stuff to allow for the existence of harder game modes, these players would throw a massive tantrum and review-bomb the game.
Absolutely with your sentiment - Everyone needs to feel equally useful in multiplayer PvE (which D&D, Pathfinder, etc, essentially are). The classes don't need to be balanced in the sense that in a PvP match, they'd have equal chances of winning, but they do need to be balanced in the sense that everyone has an important role to play. Which doesn't need _as_ tight balance but does need some balance. (the easiest way of approximating that is 'niche protection' - making sure everyone has something they're the best at, a niche, and that all of these things are useful in whatever the game thinks is the core gameplay loop. And multiclassing as it exists in D&D is the death of this) (Chess - Last I read up on the topic, White's first mover advantage is usually equated to be worth half a pawn. The smallest advantage that can be perceived at the highest levels of play is, apparently, about a third of a pawn) In single-player games, deliberate unbalance can be used as a difficulty setting. The wretch as you mentioned, or going the other way Yoshi in Mario Wonder. Player's tendencies to optimize the fun out of games can also be used to the developer's advantage - If you slightly overtune the 'more fun' strategies you can guide players to playstyles you consider more fun. This can work in both single-player, co-op (while maintaining niche protection) and even multiplayer games (I think Splatoon's patch notes at one point were explicit that they were deliberately making playstyles where you don't engage with the opponent, instead painting from a distance, maybe tossing a sub or two, and then hitting the special button - 'special spam' as it's known - to make the overall game environment more fun)
oh yeah I hadn't even thought to bring up the idea of purposefully trying to invoke dominant strategies but it's certainly a clever idea. If you want your players playing a certain way, then simply make sure that those strategies are a little bit more powerful at the start and then you can probably balance it out a little bit more down the line because once they're used to it they're probably not gonna suddenly stop playing that way. Also yeah I wish I had mentioned the specific concept of Niche protection because that's definitely a great idea when considering how to balance characters in PvE games. Whether it's D&D or even a game like Rainbow 6 or Overwatch or whatever, if you have one character that can do everything other more specialized characters are meant to do, then you're kinda ruining the point of having specializations in the first place
Balance in even single player games is extremely valuable. It's a well known fact that players instinctively optimize the fun out of a game where possible, and most who end up doing that simply drop tje game rather than put in the effort to find out how to make the game fun. They probablu have dozens of games on their steam library along with friend reccomendations, so they're often unconciously looking for an excuse to thow any game into the trash bin, even the highest acclaimed ones. Just one look at a game's steam achievements to see how many got the first achievement yet how few got the ones to see the game's ending shows that more than 70% of players for even the most popular games decided to never finish it.
Balance is a very grey thing. In my opinion for single-player games even if its unbalanced it depends how that unbalance is implemented. The stealth archer is a perfect example of bad balance because bit by bit you get molded into it by the game. While I think the alchemy and enchantment imbalances in Morrowind and Oblivion are great because they are not the natural progression and most of the time I dont even think about it when playing those games. Having several imbalanced strategies in the same game is in its own way a balance. In competitive games the most important thing is player skill so that is why they have to be balanced as much as possible so victories can depend on that skill. While in SP games you concentrate on other things and depending those things you consider what kind of balance you want. Another great example of bad balance in an SP game is the superpowers in Saints Row 4. Because of that super speed I didnt even bother with cars which made them obsolete
Yeah like I said there's definitely some circumstances where it needs to be thought about more than just what numbers are on the screen. An Infinity+1 sword doesn't necessarily ruin the game, if for example it's an end-game or post-game reward like the laser from Resident Evil 4. And yeah overpowered abilities can be interesting as long as they're not the most obvious or easiest thing to do like you mentioned with Alchemy and such. There are definitely examples where I think maybe it's gone too far like how in Skyrim you can literally boost your stats infinitely by exploiting the alchemy system. But if they toned that down to merely being overpowered instead of literally infinite, that would be fine because not everyone even plays with alchemy let alone would find that combo, so it wouldn't affect most people's runs, and it can act as a sort of interesting reward for those that do. And Saints Row 4 is absolutely a perfect example of what I'm talking about in terms of basically just wasting assets and development time on features that will never get used. TBF I think that the reason cars are even in the game at all is through asset reuse, but it still shows that they were not really considering why you should even bother with them when you have those powers.
@@noobshot9470 Again I think that should depend on what you want to do with the playerstyles. In Elden Ring not all playstyles are viable for everyone and that is sort of balance. In other games all choices may be viable from start.
Presentation is very important in my opinion for this too. If you specifically label a class/weapon/playstyle/etc as for advanced players, harder, etc it being worse becomes way less of an issue, it's way more of a problem when all the options are presented as perfectly equal
That can still lead to issues when for players who have playstyle preferences that don't match the difficulty assigned to that playstyle. I really like fast weapons and high skill ceilings for example. If a game now designates its faster playstyles as the beginner friendly "easy mode", I am forced to choose between my preferred game feel and my preferred difficulty.
Issue is: What if I want to play a fighter and it's the designated "hard mode" while I want to go easy ? Am I forced to play a Wizard to have it easy ?
Small nitpick: Balance is less about making all options perfectly balanced, merely about making them available. Balance is about ensuring that all options have a valid niche in the game and that there is a variety of valid niches available in most situations. Balance is about enabling valid choice, not about making everything exactly equally as strong as everything else. In other words, is perfectly fine (even preferable) for some options to be niche and to only rarly be good, as long as they CAN be good and there are multiple valid options in most situations.
Funny that you bring up Skyrim because I thought the issue of its balance was that it was designed to be balanced in a way that only makes sense if it was a multiplayer game. The game doesn’t make the magic and fighting classes feel powerful enough to be worth using because there appears to be some weird reticence to make them too powerful. When, since this is a single player game, the player should be allowed feel powerful when they make enough progress but instead they rarely get to feel that way. And the wild thing is that I didn’t know that stealth archer was such a meme until recently. Back in the day I only played stealth archer in Skyrim not because it was the dominant strategy, but because I played a thief and stealth archer in Oblivion. I just like playing rogues! But I agree that games like DnD require balancing for the reasons you mention. I would love to some day try out a Monk once my artificer game is done but the martial classes are so underpowered that it would feel bad trying to play this character full of flavor and interesting ideas that can’t do anything.
Even if Skyrim had been designed with balancing in mind, they clearly failed at that given how there is a clear hierarchy between different builds even when you don’t consider the stealth archer. If the game had been properly balanced, mages, warriors and assassins of all varieties could have all been equally op. Of course they could have also been equally underpowered, but at that point it’s not a question of balancing but of what game-feel the developers wanted to go for.
@@HomingAsatoMass oh I completely agree. And I think the issue is that they don’t think too hard about that. I don’t know what they think hard about honestly, but game feel clearly isn’t big on your mind when you don’t “find the fun” of Starfield until many years into development.
I think a good reframing in the context of "its not PvP so it doesn't need to be balanced" is to change "PvP" focus to PsP (Player supporting Player) focus, ie., balancing the game around how well each class can support their peers. Given that D&D is supposed to about TEAM based adventuring, you'd expect that each class can contribute to cover the weaknesses of their allies, by bringing strengths that the others lack. But the issue if that this PsP is completely out of wack, since the ostensible strengths of many classes (ie., those without spellcasting) hardly bring the weakness-compensating-strengths that their peers would need if they functionally lacked the strength to just... do those things as well. This primarily comes down to the resource management element of D&D. The fact is that if Spellcasting characters don't have to worry about resource expenditure then their ostensible weakness (being reliant on limited resources) are practically eliminated, and given their strengths are the ability to fill pretty much every niche in the game, then the lack of resource pressure eliminates the mechanical niche for everyone else.
As a note on Chess, the fact White moving first gives an advantage is handled in tournaments by playing multiple matches and alternating sides. Similarly, I think a properly balanced TTRPG campaign should be able to handle a mismatch in player strength through variety. Let's say we have a party of 3 players, one has a strong combat build, and usually makes a battle trivial that is grueling for the rest of the party. Another player picked 0 combat spells, but has every utility spell imaginable. And the last player put everything in their Charisma/Social stats. While this is a bit comically exagerated. A GM should be able to balance this party, by providing each player a moment to shine. Maybe the social character can't deal as much damage, but can talk down a few of the enemy soldiers during the fight. And the combat player might strike a deal with the king not through their honeyed words, but because they promised to slay the dragon burning villages at the border. The Utility player might really enjoy a puzzle, or creating a series of traps to Rube Goldberg Machine the enemies into dying before the fight even starts. Not only does each player have one pillar of the game they are best at, each player could be accomodated in the other fields with enough careful prep, and it is honestly something I wish more TTRPG rulebooks/GM guides would focus on. Allow people to spend their time in combat using skills not directly related to fighting. Of course, this does require the game system to be balanced properly AROUND all of the relevant pillars of play. Taking goodberry in D&D is useless in a campaign where the GM refuses to track food, so the flavour and gameplay style of picking utility spells instead of combat spells can be ruined there if not properly planned for.
Again, that is the point where "the DM is balancing the game." The DM is doing the work that the game developers SHOULD HAVE done because that was their one friggin' job.
One thing I'll say is that after Tasha's update ranger isn't half bad. I'm playing one right now and it does feel like I'm contributing to the group. Also, the usefulness each class provides greatly depends on how a specific dm runs combat and social encouters. I play with two dms and with one out of combat encounters rely strictly on personal wit and charisma stat, being limited to only doing politics. With the other we've been doing an investigation quest where every party member's skills came in useful.
A game must be enjoyable and fun. And different games are enjoyable in different ways. In PvP games a gamer wants to feel powerful, better than everyone else. A gamer wants to pick any character and feel like its their own skill helps them be good at the game, not a character they picked. In coop, a gamer wants to feel useful, to know that you group couldn't have done it without them. be a top healer is fun, to see your healer out-DPSed you is not fun. In single play a gamer wants to feel smart. A game challanges them and it feels great to think you've outsmarted everyone else, sometimes even the developers. If you sneek around a tough encounter and loot all the exp and items and see a new never before seen cutscene - that's incredible, but if you found nothing more but bugs and dev's indifference about walkarounds - that sucks. So there are just different goals a balance must achive. if in single player game you loot an OP GODSLAYER DEATH OF UNSEEN LEGIONS uber mega sword just as a first quest reword - yeah, that sucks. But if an immortal leader of paladins has that sword and you get this sword by reverse pickpocketing him some strong alcohol and loot this sword from his knocked out body - that's a different matter entirely.
Before I even start watching this video, I'm going to post a comment because funnily enough late last night when I should have been sleeping I was actually thinking about balance in games in a particular context. Dragon Age Origins. Shale, the golem. Thinking about game difficulty and how characters get knocked out in a fight, and how it doesn't really make sense honestly. Like I was thinking on how hard to defeat such an opponent would be, how the reality of multiple golems like that might go in the Deep Roads. I didn't really end up with satisfying answers honestly, but it's funny about game balance being something I was thinking about not even 12 hours ago, and seeing this video now.
I've been on a similar track and have been pointing out this issue with 5e for a while with my ttrpg group. almost all martials are basically a flavor of "I move and attack, pass turn". Whereas with casters, they just seem like they can do more. Even if they are just "I move and cast cantrip", a lot of those seem to have a good impact on the game for being a spam spell. And overall, with how 5e is designed, it basically is "anything a martial can do, I can do just as well or better" for casters. And that part about game designers making stuff that people may not use, man I feel that as I'm designing a ttrpg myself and trying to find the right balance of power so things are fun to play, but don't over shadow what the other players may be able to do.
You don't actually need balance, you just need proper labelling. You can have joke weapons that are worthless garbage, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, like a Broken Sword or Table Leg. You can also have broken weapons of OPness, as long as they are suitably placed. The problem comes when an apparently reasonable option turns out not to be. As long as the game doesn't break player expectations, there's no issue.
Another problem with op options in co op games is other players getting mad that you didnt pick the best option so even if you dont mind the challenge everyone else might harass you for playing the class you actually like
Yes you made a good explanation on why balance Matters. Especially on the part where "the player needs to balance" the game. Same goes with 5E where we are almost at the point where it is the DM that needs to balance the game. Giving freedom to the DM to do practically anything even overwriting the base rules might sound cool for the first time you hear but the more and more it happens, the more annoying it gets. This is job of the game developers and they clearly didn't do their job well but everyone still must paid for the low quality product they made.
Outside of your system you dont really need "perfect" balance but you need everyone to feel usefull to everyone. The problem of magic is that its use is so broad that if you dont give stuff to your non magic user they will always feel below caster. System like "arkanum" have very powerfull magic but it consume stamina (there is no mana its HP and stamina) so fast you often need lots of constitution (that only give stamina so low hp) to rest in battle to recover some or use stamina consumable where a non mage will be acting every turn can also use the same stamina consumable to go even harder. DnD and Pathfinder suffer a lot because magic can do everything better than non magic and more, and because of the action economie is kind of broken... the three action per turn of pathfinder and special move of classes try to reduce the inbalance btu spellcaster are still a good chunk above the rest. Most RPG give magic to all, exalted, the world of darkness group of games, warhammer, because very few know how to balance it and keep the "high power in the hand of few" feel they want to get... Or you get somethign closer to Lanfeust of Troy or anime where evrything is hyper all the time. In western rpg in the past Mages started very low in power being sometime even lower inb hp than npc and reached what was considered absurd level of power, stuff that could be considered lvl6 in dnd today. I will use dnd as an exelple but this phenomenon arrived in most western rpg. Recognising low level was ass, they buffed early mage power so it doesnt run out of magic after a single battle, with stuff like cantrip (anima beyond fantasy giving "free spells"). They also buffed their HP, and finaly they gave them even more high level power going up to lvl9-10, because, Multiclassing and half caster were barely weaker caster than full caster and could even fight, Gish were becoming very common in 2nd and early 3rd edition tried to fix that. To counter that a lot of ennemies in later books came with magic resistant or magic immunity just to counter caster. 4ed tried to make every class kind of a combo class that synergised with its keyword and sometime other classes effects, so even if caster "were " stronger other class were comboing on their spells effects . It was... quite good but such a change from classic dnd that many didnt like it. magic immunity was style quite common on every level of ennmies so caster could not win by themselves since the magic resistant/immune would wreck them. 5ed is back to 3.5+ style of play but a lot of spells have been rebalanced and spell succes have been reduced quite a lot because of rebalanced saves and AC. magic resistance and immunity is very rare. and so caster are again a lot stronger than non casters. the natural predator of caster, anti magic monster immune monster and resistant monster being almost non existant.
Part of the problem with weak classes in dnd is that each class is supposed to represent its own power fantasy so unless they are good at SOMETHING they are a failure. There can be games where weaker classes are part of the fun such as ones where you are rewarded for using every option or where you start with those and have to unlock stronger options
I agree 99% my only caveat is that if it's not PvP balance is not always the most pressing issue. Avoiding things like broken bosses should be a higher priority
I think its better to say it depends on the experience, not just competitive/non-competitive. FUN is what matters, we could totally have games where different characters are absurdly 'unbalanced'(say one a badass destroyer, another one a sidekick with no damage) as long as both are fun- and if the point of the game is not being badass killing. D&D and a bunch of others revolve around combat- its part of the main fun(if not the main one, otherwise it could be another ruleset or no rules even) - and on top of that have a loop with rewards that also factor in (so one player getting a lame reward feels bad) That said i think many people when they argue that actually wouldnt disagree with that- but rather on how much some people sweat over balance to a degree that may be overboard for a cooperative game. Frankly, truth be told, at least conceptually combat prowess shouldnt be as important as it is in d&d. From the initial concept to the core identity of the classes a rogue being the scout and smartly disarming traps would matter more, not being a glass canon ninja warrior. But d&d never got that right, from the wizards doing crazy damage later, to social and stealth being apart and contrary to the fights... On a macro level, narrative level and 'being useful to the team' that kind of difference should work better so im not surprised people expect or defend that. But they also have a point because some fans argue on balance to an extent that doesnt really fit, as if some arbitrary measure-counter thing could score characters and they 'should' be equal. Doesnt help that the game rules revolve around numbers shared with everyone that do 'tell' theyre suposedly equal
5:22 Rangers only have a few useless features though, they're very good if you just use the good ones. If you build them optimally I'd say they're better than any class that doesn't get spell slots. IMO the main reason that Ranger is unpopular is that most people want to play a character like Aragorn or Legolas, or they want to play a hunter from WoW, and then they're disappointed because the class is essentially just a druid that's good at hitting things.
3:50 playing davil advocate: My argument would be that the weapon seems badly designed because it trivializes important aspects of the gameplay, not nessesarily because it also happens to be the strongest.
7:03 Progression in Elden Ring isn't tied to finding new weapons, early game weapons are about as strong as late game weapons. This doesn't break the game because the progression is instead tied to leveling up and upgrading weapons with smithing stones, and players are encouraged to seek out new weapons because many of them have unique movesets, skills, etc.
The martial/caster divide to me is an issue of identity in D&D core gameplay. The shift away to generally more narrative focused games, away from the exploratory/dungeon crawley game, changes how resources are viewed. If you can't just rest in the wilderness to regain spellslots but instead require proper "safe spaces" and/or more than 1 day of rest, playing a caster becomes a lot more challenging. A martial character that replenishes most of their resources on short rests will be a lot more consistant than any dpell caster. Obviously there are different flaws in that system. And it doesn't change the fact some classes could just use more cool optionalstuff to use in general.
i feel like i would never love Lisa: the Pointless, or even remember it, if it didn't have it's unique combat system. which wouldn't have existed, if not for balancing.
Every pen-and-paper session can be pvp, if you make it so. >:D You bring up some great points, and this is exactly why I don't like the existence of the "defender" sets in the newer Monster Hunter games. Why give players ridiculously strong tools to get past your older content just to hit the new stuff sooner; I feel like this not only lessens the experience for players who do use the defender gear, but it also makes those who don't use it feel like they aren't playing optimally.
Yes. You get it, I think - if I'm understanding DnD balance sucks, Elden Ring balance sucks, most modern games suck at balance and I think it's because balance implies "even" and even is boring. "But what's the alternative?" The devs brain will ask. "UNbalanced?" And so here is our issue, a false dichotomy logically derived from a bad definition. Fuck balance, don't ever ask about it - just ask "is it fun" and "is it fair" Fun comes first (doesn't have to be easy fun either) and fair just means "our rules are the same" or "we share opportunities" A lot of what we call "bad balance" is a failure of opportunity I think. "Ranger can't do shit except shoot arrow" "why does malenia not have a stamina bar if I do" etc. No one finds weaker strikes made with lighter weapons "unbalanced" when they hit quicker, but many of us do when those weak strikes stun lock because they hit as "forceful" as a heavy blow (which is "balanced" because it's even). Idk maybe I'm not saying anything new, but I'm abandoning the word balance entirely. Just tell me what feels bad with description, not categorization. I like your take, good video
Another simple example of balance mattering is story games or visual novel games with a 2 choices system. Where 1 choice is clearly the correct choices, and the other is clearly the wrong choices. Thats just not fun. And allows for effectivly no roleplay. Thats an unbalanced single player game.
In single player,balance matters. Imagine you like one playstyle, but its unreasonably harder than one you dont like, because iys unbalanced. For example, I love the melee focus in vermintide. But I hate the gun focuse of left for dead. If we get a left of vermintide game or such, the guns would be inherany more powerfull than melee due to range advantage. Id always struggle with melee more than guns. Thus to plsy how I like, Id have to make the game intentionally harder. And now apply that to souls like difficulty for example. Balance matters in all games.
The problem with D&D balance is the notion of "nerf over up". I.e., if something is overperforming against the other, it would be nerfed to that level, and not the other way around. You can clearly see that in the draft of "new edition" that nobody will ever use. Because 4th edition apparently wasn't a lesson learned. It's by definition a losing strategy when it comes to balancing things that are not directly competitive. If your balancing act *takes* something from players, players won't be happy. If your change *gives* something to players, it's another thing. Also the entire combat design of D&D reeks of cocaine-infused delirium, with save-or-suck spells, no options martials, "protector/tank" role not being a thing that exists properly, but that's neither here nor there.
Well, ranger is better than every single class without native spell slots, so at least there's that they just feel bad to play, becasue the only three features that matter for them are Extra Attack, Half casting and Fighting style, which puts them squarely ahead of Monk, Barbarian, Rogue and Fighter(ordered bottom 4) from those alone. Subclassless ranger is better than any martial except top tier fighter subs But Ranger just feels bad to play, because so mayn of the features that are supposed to define their identity are so worthless
I strongly disagree that multiplayer PvP games strive for perfect balance, like not even the most competitive games out there do that Perfect Balance is a chimera that can actually do more damage than poor balance, even for your most sweaty PvP game
I believe there was a game that died because it was perfectly balanced. It became stale and no new strategies were invented at some point so people lost interest and stopped playing. The only example of a perfectly balanced game that has ever existed in history would be rock-paper-scissors. At least mechanically it's balanced but it becomes a next level mind game more akin to chess or similar wargame when played by skilled players who only need some knowledge of psychology.
Sure it matters in games where you play with multiple people but it should never matter in games like Elden Ring. Fuck that useless boring PvP stop nerfing weapons. The same way I feel like ANY game can be made co-op. You dont need a comprehensive and complete story on why there is someone else playing with you. Dying Light does it best, you both play the same character and have to be at the same place to progress mission otherwise you are free. ALL games should have the ability to share it with a friend (yes even Subnautica or RE7 or GTAV)
Ah yes, the forgotten realms. Famously known for its homogeneity and only having white humans. What causes you to point this out? Fear? Frustration? Anger?
My problem with the balance of DnD is that it feels like the only thing combat values is dps. I once played a warlock that I wanted to make as a buff/debuffer type character but inevitably I just uad to resort to Eldritch Blast spam because every other spell was unreliable and the damage of EB was unmatched. And the thing is I like being being an EB spamming Warlock, I've played those before and I'll always defend how cool EB is. But this is a problem across the board. You can't be a healer because damage ways outpaces any kind of healing, so only Healing Word is useful (and that's just to revive unconscious allies). There aren't any reliable ways for tanks to draw aggro on themselves. I just wish other playstyles were more viable
You picked the wrong class for that, Warlock is designed almost entirely around damage. If support and/or crowd control was your main interest then Cleric, Druid, Bard, Wizard or Sorcerer are the main choices, hell even a Battle Master Fighter has some reasonable support options.
@andrewcarter9649 I get that Warlock may be more dedicated to dps, but when I picked another class, I ran into the same problem. For example, as a wizard, your support spells have a chance to fail, but magic missiles will always succeed (plus there's fireball). Even the Cleric's dps outshines their healing and support, I just end up attacking then use healing word to revive downed allies.
I know it's a video game and not really comparable to D&D but I do like how Elder Scrolls Online balances their classes because any class can fill any role so you can tank, heal, or dps as anything whether you're a sorcerer, dragonknight, or nightblade.
@@Chowder_T This just sounds like excuses for being bad since the Wizard in particular is especially well known for shutting down combat encounters with none damaging spells like Wall of Force and Force Cage.
I mean Magic Missile is guaranteed damage but not a lot of damage unless you're a high level Evocation Wizard, and even then you've got other spells that will just shut down encounters.
I have to hard disagree here.
With good optimization, you can make almost any character concept work.
Example: sure warlocks seem to only have EB, but a carefully placed hold person or hypnotic pattern can win you the fight outright... And you make them easier to land by grabbing that 1lv in sorcerer for silvery barbs. EB can also serve as a control tool with repelling blast or lance of lethargy
Sure you can't draw aggro, but you can make a very tanky cleric with spirit guardians and limit enemy movement. You can also build very effective armorer artificers to give disadvantage on every enemy attack while controlling movement with Web AND giving bonus to saving throws paladin-style
There is a specific case of balance in co-op games like DND and that is Niche protection.
One of the biggest problems of balance in DnD is that most casters get to overstep in what a fighter should do, for example a sword and board fighter should be the best at defending and protecting their allies, however due to how opportunity attack goes it ends up very bad at preventing enemies attacking allies, and at high levels it will end up also be bad defending itself since AC doesn't scale while enemy attacks do.
In the meanwhile clerics with a divine soul sorc dip get to have the same ac, while dealing more damage thanks to spell like spirit guardians, are better at protecting their allies due to speed reduction of spells as well as access to silvery barbs and bless, are able to have more defensive options tanks to be able to affect the battlefield while dodging as well having access to shield spell and 2d4 extra on save with favorite by the gods.
Also the way most spell being save or suck is another plague to the game's balance since they either result in the caster contributing nothing to the fight or trivializing it all by themselves.
yeah absolutely. Whenever a wizard can cast a spell and summon a creature, and that creature is a better fighter than the actual fighter in the party, like what is even the point of having a fighter anymore lol.
And yeah save or suck spells are definitely a whole other problem on their own. When the only two possible outcomes for certain spells are basically instant win or you effectively lose your turn, that just makes combat way too swingy and nearly impossible to balance. It's not fun when you just waste your turn casting a spell that does nothing. But because of that risk they feel the need to make the spell even stronger to justify the risk and that's just not interesting and ruins the combat even more.
I know PF2e went a good direction in at least addressing the Save or Suck stuff where each spell now has 4 possible outcomes depending on whether they Critically Passed, Passed, Failed, or Critically Failed the saving throw. With usually only a Critical Success negating it completely, so 3/4 options at least accomplish *something* without wasting your turn and as a result they don't need to make the spell super busted to justify the risk of using it.
@@BlazeMakesGames The biggest problem with summoning creatures in D&D isn't the invalidation of some classes, but that each of those creatures gets an entire turn. Meaning if you summon 6 wolves onto the field suddenly you're taking 7 turns per round, which... No matter how well balanced those wolves are compared to the fighter, individually or collectively, that's still going to cause major issues to combat.
(PF2e also fixes that - You can, as an action, give a companion character, which summoned creatures count as, 2 actions. You can do this once per turn per companion in your control. So summoning strategies at _worst_ double the length of your turns, and if it's doubling the length of your turns your creatures doing things is the entirety of your turn, and in most cases you're going to be getting one extra action - the same as you grant to someone with hasting them - from it because you're usually going to want to be using a couple of your actions on yourself. This means you can flood the battlefield with 20 squirrels and it won't slow the combat down significantly. When we had a bunch of companion characters in the final fight - some from magic items, one because the module... Just hands you a robot companion... I think the biggest utility we got from them was providing flanking to the rogues, giving both of them easy sneak attack. They didn't do much else aside being hp sacks for the enemies to deal with)
Martials were "supposed to" scale with magic equipment. Better weapons, armor etc. but even that isn't enough and then comes the other side that supposedly "the game is balanced around the party not having magic items." Which begs more questions. Equipping party members with something like +1 items is a long and troublesome process that also put the game into a halt. It focuses attention on them needing to get "the loot" while otherwise being too weak to matter. And from the other side it is also feels unfair towards the caster to not get part of the loot. They did their part and still they get no rewards. Whether they would actually "need" the loot or not is not even a question here, the main point is that the game is deigned to result such a circumstance
Man I wish more people understood this. You have no idea how many times I've talked in forums about how balance can heavily change the way a game feels based on how it changes your options let alone how much it can change how a game feels on a fundemental level. I can't even explain why I liked feeling weaker in monster hunter with limited movesets and longer animations without getting a dozen replies saying it's pve, you're a boomer, masochist, etc. And it's just like from my perspective, the game felt cooler and more engaging/ mentally stimulating when the monster was much more of a threat than I was due to having less ways to easily react. it also made mastering the game feel so much more satisfying. But the moment you mention, "sometimes being weaker or more balanced can be more fun", like half of the modern gaming playerbase will look at you like you're speaking another language. To them, more power = more fun and there's nothing more to be said.
balance doesn't matter in PvE, now let me open my character optimization spreadsheet that I use to ruin the fun out of everyone
Its almost ironic how often this happens. Lately I just try to build so a concept I want to play is good enough, even if it isn't meta and just get good from there. Granted, sometimes what I think is fun also so happens to be meta. I won't deny that as a possibility.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 tbh, i just build in concept, but try to optimize within that concept
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
Balance is crucial to single-player games because if one strategy is dominant, players will naturally gravitate towards that and have a shallower, less enjoyable experience as a result.
I play Warframe, and that game's community, while chill, has a very skewed view of game balance. They believe that since the game is meant to be a power fantasy, nothing should ever be nerfed, no matter how OP. At the same time, these same players also complain that the game is too easy and needs more challenging content. Since there are builds that give literal permanent invincibility and can one-shot any enemy, it's impossible to actually give players that challenging end-game content, but if they nerfed the OP stuff to allow for the existence of harder game modes, these players would throw a massive tantrum and review-bomb the game.
Absolutely with your sentiment - Everyone needs to feel equally useful in multiplayer PvE (which D&D, Pathfinder, etc, essentially are). The classes don't need to be balanced in the sense that in a PvP match, they'd have equal chances of winning, but they do need to be balanced in the sense that everyone has an important role to play. Which doesn't need _as_ tight balance but does need some balance. (the easiest way of approximating that is 'niche protection' - making sure everyone has something they're the best at, a niche, and that all of these things are useful in whatever the game thinks is the core gameplay loop. And multiclassing as it exists in D&D is the death of this)
(Chess - Last I read up on the topic, White's first mover advantage is usually equated to be worth half a pawn. The smallest advantage that can be perceived at the highest levels of play is, apparently, about a third of a pawn)
In single-player games, deliberate unbalance can be used as a difficulty setting. The wretch as you mentioned, or going the other way Yoshi in Mario Wonder.
Player's tendencies to optimize the fun out of games can also be used to the developer's advantage - If you slightly overtune the 'more fun' strategies you can guide players to playstyles you consider more fun. This can work in both single-player, co-op (while maintaining niche protection) and even multiplayer games (I think Splatoon's patch notes at one point were explicit that they were deliberately making playstyles where you don't engage with the opponent, instead painting from a distance, maybe tossing a sub or two, and then hitting the special button - 'special spam' as it's known - to make the overall game environment more fun)
oh yeah I hadn't even thought to bring up the idea of purposefully trying to invoke dominant strategies but it's certainly a clever idea. If you want your players playing a certain way, then simply make sure that those strategies are a little bit more powerful at the start and then you can probably balance it out a little bit more down the line because once they're used to it they're probably not gonna suddenly stop playing that way.
Also yeah I wish I had mentioned the specific concept of Niche protection because that's definitely a great idea when considering how to balance characters in PvE games. Whether it's D&D or even a game like Rainbow 6 or Overwatch or whatever, if you have one character that can do everything other more specialized characters are meant to do, then you're kinda ruining the point of having specializations in the first place
Balance in even single player games is extremely valuable. It's a well known fact that players instinctively optimize the fun out of a game where possible, and most who end up doing that simply drop tje game rather than put in the effort to find out how to make the game fun. They probablu have dozens of games on their steam library along with friend reccomendations, so they're often unconciously looking for an excuse to thow any game into the trash bin, even the highest acclaimed ones.
Just one look at a game's steam achievements to see how many got the first achievement yet how few got the ones to see the game's ending shows that more than 70% of players for even the most popular games decided to never finish it.
Balance is a very grey thing. In my opinion for single-player games even if its unbalanced it depends how that unbalance is implemented. The stealth archer is a perfect example of bad balance because bit by bit you get molded into it by the game. While I think the alchemy and enchantment imbalances in Morrowind and Oblivion are great because they are not the natural progression and most of the time I dont even think about it when playing those games. Having several imbalanced strategies in the same game is in its own way a balance. In competitive games the most important thing is player skill so that is why they have to be balanced as much as possible so victories can depend on that skill. While in SP games you concentrate on other things and depending those things you consider what kind of balance you want. Another great example of bad balance in an SP game is the superpowers in Saints Row 4. Because of that super speed I didnt even bother with cars which made them obsolete
Yeah like I said there's definitely some circumstances where it needs to be thought about more than just what numbers are on the screen. An Infinity+1 sword doesn't necessarily ruin the game, if for example it's an end-game or post-game reward like the laser from Resident Evil 4. And yeah overpowered abilities can be interesting as long as they're not the most obvious or easiest thing to do like you mentioned with Alchemy and such. There are definitely examples where I think maybe it's gone too far like how in Skyrim you can literally boost your stats infinitely by exploiting the alchemy system. But if they toned that down to merely being overpowered instead of literally infinite, that would be fine because not everyone even plays with alchemy let alone would find that combo, so it wouldn't affect most people's runs, and it can act as a sort of interesting reward for those that do.
And Saints Row 4 is absolutely a perfect example of what I'm talking about in terms of basically just wasting assets and development time on features that will never get used. TBF I think that the reason cars are even in the game at all is through asset reuse, but it still shows that they were not really considering why you should even bother with them when you have those powers.
I think he meant making every playstyle should be viable and not making the player jump over hoops just to be good.
@@noobshot9470 Again I think that should depend on what you want to do with the playerstyles. In Elden Ring not all playstyles are viable for everyone and that is sort of balance. In other games all choices may be viable from start.
Presentation is very important in my opinion for this too. If you specifically label a class/weapon/playstyle/etc as for advanced players, harder, etc it being worse becomes way less of an issue, it's way more of a problem when all the options are presented as perfectly equal
That can still lead to issues when for players who have playstyle preferences that don't match the difficulty assigned to that playstyle. I really like fast weapons and high skill ceilings for example. If a game now designates its faster playstyles as the beginner friendly "easy mode", I am forced to choose between my preferred game feel and my preferred difficulty.
Issue is:
What if I want to play a fighter and it's the designated "hard mode" while I want to go easy ?
Am I forced to play a Wizard to have it easy ?
Small nitpick: Balance is less about making all options perfectly balanced, merely about making them available. Balance is about ensuring that all options have a valid niche in the game and that there is a variety of valid niches available in most situations. Balance is about enabling valid choice, not about making everything exactly equally as strong as everything else.
In other words, is perfectly fine (even preferable) for some options to be niche and to only rarly be good, as long as they CAN be good and there are multiple valid options in most situations.
Funny that you bring up Skyrim because I thought the issue of its balance was that it was designed to be balanced in a way that only makes sense if it was a multiplayer game. The game doesn’t make the magic and fighting classes feel powerful enough to be worth using because there appears to be some weird reticence to make them too powerful. When, since this is a single player game, the player should be allowed feel powerful when they make enough progress but instead they rarely get to feel that way.
And the wild thing is that I didn’t know that stealth archer was such a meme until recently. Back in the day I only played stealth archer in Skyrim not because it was the dominant strategy, but because I played a thief and stealth archer in Oblivion. I just like playing rogues!
But I agree that games like DnD require balancing for the reasons you mention. I would love to some day try out a Monk once my artificer game is done but the martial classes are so underpowered that it would feel bad trying to play this character full of flavor and interesting ideas that can’t do anything.
Even if Skyrim had been designed with balancing in mind, they clearly failed at that given how there is a clear hierarchy between different builds even when you don’t consider the stealth archer. If the game had been properly balanced, mages, warriors and assassins of all varieties could have all been equally op. Of course they could have also been equally underpowered, but at that point it’s not a question of balancing but of what game-feel the developers wanted to go for.
@@HomingAsatoMass oh I completely agree. And I think the issue is that they don’t think too hard about that. I don’t know what they think hard about honestly, but game feel clearly isn’t big on your mind when you don’t “find the fun” of Starfield until many years into development.
I think a good reframing in the context of "its not PvP so it doesn't need to be balanced" is to change "PvP" focus to PsP (Player supporting Player) focus, ie., balancing the game around how well each class can support their peers.
Given that D&D is supposed to about TEAM based adventuring, you'd expect that each class can contribute to cover the weaknesses of their allies, by bringing strengths that the others lack.
But the issue if that this PsP is completely out of wack, since the ostensible strengths of many classes (ie., those without spellcasting) hardly bring the weakness-compensating-strengths that their peers would need if they functionally lacked the strength to just... do those things as well.
This primarily comes down to the resource management element of D&D. The fact is that if Spellcasting characters don't have to worry about resource expenditure then their ostensible weakness (being reliant on limited resources) are practically eliminated, and given their strengths are the ability to fill pretty much every niche in the game, then the lack of resource pressure eliminates the mechanical niche for everyone else.
As a note on Chess, the fact White moving first gives an advantage is handled in tournaments by playing multiple matches and alternating sides. Similarly, I think a properly balanced TTRPG campaign should be able to handle a mismatch in player strength through variety.
Let's say we have a party of 3 players, one has a strong combat build, and usually makes a battle trivial that is grueling for the rest of the party.
Another player picked 0 combat spells, but has every utility spell imaginable.
And the last player put everything in their Charisma/Social stats.
While this is a bit comically exagerated. A GM should be able to balance this party, by providing each player a moment to shine. Maybe the social character can't deal as much damage, but can talk down a few of the enemy soldiers during the fight. And the combat player might strike a deal with the king not through their honeyed words, but because they promised to slay the dragon burning villages at the border.
The Utility player might really enjoy a puzzle, or creating a series of traps to Rube Goldberg Machine the enemies into dying before the fight even starts.
Not only does each player have one pillar of the game they are best at, each player could be accomodated in the other fields with enough careful prep, and it is honestly something I wish more TTRPG rulebooks/GM guides would focus on. Allow people to spend their time in combat using skills not directly related to fighting.
Of course, this does require the game system to be balanced properly AROUND all of the relevant pillars of play. Taking goodberry in D&D is useless in a campaign where the GM refuses to track food, so the flavour and gameplay style of picking utility spells instead of combat spells can be ruined there if not properly planned for.
Again, that is the point where "the DM is balancing the game." The DM is doing the work that the game developers SHOULD HAVE done because that was their one friggin' job.
One thing I'll say is that after Tasha's update ranger isn't half bad. I'm playing one right now and it does feel like I'm contributing to the group.
Also, the usefulness each class provides greatly depends on how a specific dm runs combat and social encouters. I play with two dms and with one out of combat encounters rely strictly on personal wit and charisma stat, being limited to only doing politics. With the other we've been doing an investigation quest where every party member's skills came in useful.
A game must be enjoyable and fun. And different games are enjoyable in different ways.
In PvP games a gamer wants to feel powerful, better than everyone else. A gamer wants to pick any character and feel like its their own skill helps them be good at the game, not a character they picked.
In coop, a gamer wants to feel useful, to know that you group couldn't have done it without them. be a top healer is fun, to see your healer out-DPSed you is not fun.
In single play a gamer wants to feel smart. A game challanges them and it feels great to think you've outsmarted everyone else, sometimes even the developers. If you sneek around a tough encounter and loot all the exp and items and see a new never before seen cutscene - that's incredible, but if you found nothing more but bugs and dev's indifference about walkarounds - that sucks.
So there are just different goals a balance must achive. if in single player game you loot an OP GODSLAYER DEATH OF UNSEEN LEGIONS uber mega sword just as a first quest reword - yeah, that sucks. But if an immortal leader of paladins has that sword and you get this sword by reverse pickpocketing him some strong alcohol and loot this sword from his knocked out body - that's a different matter entirely.
Before I even start watching this video, I'm going to post a comment because funnily enough late last night when I should have been sleeping I was actually thinking about balance in games in a particular context.
Dragon Age Origins. Shale, the golem.
Thinking about game difficulty and how characters get knocked out in a fight, and how it doesn't really make sense honestly. Like I was thinking on how hard to defeat such an opponent would be, how the reality of multiple golems like that might go in the Deep Roads. I didn't really end up with satisfying answers honestly, but it's funny about game balance being something I was thinking about not even 12 hours ago, and seeing this video now.
I've been on a similar track and have been pointing out this issue with 5e for a while with my ttrpg group. almost all martials are basically a flavor of "I move and attack, pass turn". Whereas with casters, they just seem like they can do more. Even if they are just "I move and cast cantrip", a lot of those seem to have a good impact on the game for being a spam spell. And overall, with how 5e is designed, it basically is "anything a martial can do, I can do just as well or better" for casters. And that part about game designers making stuff that people may not use, man I feel that as I'm designing a ttrpg myself and trying to find the right balance of power so things are fun to play, but don't over shadow what the other players may be able to do.
Nobody show this to the Helldivers 2 playerbase
You don't actually need balance, you just need proper labelling. You can have joke weapons that are worthless garbage, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, like a Broken Sword or Table Leg. You can also have broken weapons of OPness, as long as they are suitably placed. The problem comes when an apparently reasonable option turns out not to be. As long as the game doesn't break player expectations, there's no issue.
If the classes arent balanced, players playing weaker classes will feel that and have less fun.
Another problem with op options in co op games is other players getting mad that you didnt pick the best option so even if you dont mind the challenge everyone else might harass you for playing the class you actually like
Skyrim stealth archer build is insanely op.
Playing a mage is just a lot more fun though.
Balance in single player definitely matters but though
To be fair... in dnd it always depends on the DM/GM.
So dnd is additionally hard balance.
Yes you made a good explanation on why balance Matters. Especially on the part where "the player needs to balance" the game. Same goes with 5E where we are almost at the point where it is the DM that needs to balance the game. Giving freedom to the DM to do practically anything even overwriting the base rules might sound cool for the first time you hear but the more and more it happens, the more annoying it gets. This is job of the game developers and they clearly didn't do their job well but everyone still must paid for the low quality product they made.
Outside of your system you dont really need "perfect" balance but you need everyone to feel usefull to everyone.
The problem of magic is that its use is so broad that if you dont give stuff to your non magic user they will always feel below caster.
System like "arkanum" have very powerfull magic but it consume stamina (there is no mana its HP and stamina) so fast you often need lots of constitution (that only give stamina so low hp) to rest in battle to recover some or use stamina consumable where a non mage will be acting every turn can also use the same stamina consumable to go even harder.
DnD and Pathfinder suffer a lot because magic can do everything better than non magic and more, and because of the action economie is kind of broken... the three action per turn of pathfinder and special move of classes try to reduce the inbalance btu spellcaster are still a good chunk above the rest.
Most RPG give magic to all, exalted, the world of darkness group of games, warhammer, because very few know how to balance it and keep the "high power in the hand of few" feel they want to get... Or you get somethign closer to Lanfeust of Troy or anime where evrything is hyper all the time.
In western rpg in the past Mages started very low in power being sometime even lower inb hp than npc and reached what was considered absurd level of power, stuff that could be considered lvl6 in dnd today.
I will use dnd as an exelple but this phenomenon arrived in most western rpg.
Recognising low level was ass, they buffed early mage power so it doesnt run out of magic after a single battle, with stuff like cantrip (anima beyond fantasy giving "free spells").
They also buffed their HP, and finaly they gave them even more high level power going up to lvl9-10, because, Multiclassing and half caster were barely weaker caster than full caster and could even fight, Gish were becoming very common in 2nd and early 3rd edition tried to fix that.
To counter that a lot of ennemies in later books came with magic resistant or magic immunity just to counter caster.
4ed tried to make every class kind of a combo class that synergised with its keyword and sometime other classes effects, so even if caster "were " stronger other class were comboing on their spells effects . It was... quite good but such a change from classic dnd that many didnt like it. magic immunity was style quite common on every level of ennmies so caster could not win by themselves since the magic resistant/immune would wreck them.
5ed is back to 3.5+ style of play but a lot of spells have been rebalanced and spell succes have been reduced quite a lot because of rebalanced saves and AC. magic resistance and immunity is very rare. and so caster are again a lot stronger than non casters.
the natural predator of caster, anti magic monster immune monster and resistant monster being almost non existant.
Part of the problem with weak classes in dnd is that each class is supposed to represent its own power fantasy so unless they are good at SOMETHING they are a failure. There can be games where weaker classes are part of the fun such as ones where you are rewarded for using every option or where you start with those and have to unlock stronger options
Fantastic video
I agree 99% my only caveat is that if it's not PvP balance is not always the most pressing issue. Avoiding things like broken bosses should be a higher priority
I think its better to say it depends on the experience, not just competitive/non-competitive. FUN is what matters, we could totally have games where different characters are absurdly 'unbalanced'(say one a badass destroyer, another one a sidekick with no damage) as long as both are fun- and if the point of the game is not being badass killing. D&D and a bunch of others revolve around combat- its part of the main fun(if not the main one, otherwise it could be another ruleset or no rules even) - and on top of that have a loop with rewards that also factor in (so one player getting a lame reward feels bad)
That said i think many people when they argue that actually wouldnt disagree with that- but rather on how much some people sweat over balance to a degree that may be overboard for a cooperative game. Frankly, truth be told, at least conceptually combat prowess shouldnt be as important as it is in d&d. From the initial concept to the core identity of the classes a rogue being the scout and smartly disarming traps would matter more, not being a glass canon ninja warrior. But d&d never got that right, from the wizards doing crazy damage later, to social and stealth being apart and contrary to the fights... On a macro level, narrative level and 'being useful to the team' that kind of difference should work better so im not surprised people expect or defend that.
But they also have a point because some fans argue on balance to an extent that doesnt really fit, as if some arbitrary measure-counter thing could score characters and they 'should' be equal. Doesnt help that the game rules revolve around numbers shared with everyone that do 'tell' theyre suposedly equal
5:22 Rangers only have a few useless features though, they're very good if you just use the good ones. If you build them optimally I'd say they're better than any class that doesn't get spell slots.
IMO the main reason that Ranger is unpopular is that most people want to play a character like Aragorn or Legolas, or they want to play a hunter from WoW, and then they're disappointed because the class is essentially just a druid that's good at hitting things.
Balance is a myth. There is only fun.
Also, chaos is part of the fun.
3:50 playing davil advocate: My argument would be that the weapon seems badly designed because it trivializes important aspects of the gameplay, not nessesarily because it also happens to be the strongest.
7:03 Progression in Elden Ring isn't tied to finding new weapons, early game weapons are about as strong as late game weapons. This doesn't break the game because the progression is instead tied to leveling up and upgrading weapons with smithing stones, and players are encouraged to seek out new weapons because many of them have unique movesets, skills, etc.
The martial/caster divide to me is an issue of identity in D&D core gameplay. The shift away to generally more narrative focused games, away from the exploratory/dungeon crawley game, changes how resources are viewed. If you can't just rest in the wilderness to regain spellslots but instead require proper "safe spaces" and/or more than 1 day of rest, playing a caster becomes a lot more challenging. A martial character that replenishes most of their resources on short rests will be a lot more consistant than any dpell caster.
Obviously there are different flaws in that system. And it doesn't change the fact some classes could just use more cool optionalstuff to use in general.
i feel like i would never love Lisa: the Pointless, or even remember it, if it didn't have it's unique combat system. which wouldn't have existed, if not for balancing.
Every pen-and-paper session can be pvp, if you make it so. >:D
You bring up some great points, and this is exactly why I don't like the existence of the "defender" sets in the newer Monster Hunter games. Why give players ridiculously strong tools to get past your older content just to hit the new stuff sooner; I feel like this not only lessens the experience for players who do use the defender gear, but it also makes those who don't use it feel like they aren't playing optimally.
Yes. You get it, I think - if I'm understanding
DnD balance sucks, Elden Ring balance sucks, most modern games suck at balance and I think it's because balance implies "even" and even is boring. "But what's the alternative?" The devs brain will ask. "UNbalanced?" And so here is our issue, a false dichotomy logically derived from a bad definition. Fuck balance, don't ever ask about it - just ask "is it fun" and "is it fair"
Fun comes first (doesn't have to be easy fun either) and fair just means "our rules are the same" or "we share opportunities"
A lot of what we call "bad balance" is a failure of opportunity I think. "Ranger can't do shit except shoot arrow" "why does malenia not have a stamina bar if I do" etc. No one finds weaker strikes made with lighter weapons "unbalanced" when they hit quicker, but many of us do when those weak strikes stun lock because they hit as "forceful" as a heavy blow (which is "balanced" because it's even).
Idk maybe I'm not saying anything new, but I'm abandoning the word balance entirely. Just tell me what feels bad with description, not categorization.
I like your take, good video
Another simple example of balance mattering is story games or visual novel games with a 2 choices system. Where 1 choice is clearly the correct choices, and the other is clearly the wrong choices.
Thats just not fun.
And allows for effectivly no roleplay.
Thats an unbalanced single player game.
In single player,balance matters.
Imagine you like one playstyle, but its unreasonably harder than one you dont like, because iys unbalanced.
For example, I love the melee focus in vermintide. But I hate the gun focuse of left for dead.
If we get a left of vermintide game or such, the guns would be inherany more powerfull than melee due to range advantage.
Id always struggle with melee more than guns.
Thus to plsy how I like, Id have to make the game intentionally harder.
And now apply that to souls like difficulty for example.
Balance matters in all games.
The problem with D&D balance is the notion of "nerf over up". I.e., if something is overperforming against the other, it would be nerfed to that level, and not the other way around. You can clearly see that in the draft of "new edition" that nobody will ever use. Because 4th edition apparently wasn't a lesson learned.
It's by definition a losing strategy when it comes to balancing things that are not directly competitive. If your balancing act *takes* something from players, players won't be happy. If your change *gives* something to players, it's another thing.
Also the entire combat design of D&D reeks of cocaine-infused delirium, with save-or-suck spells, no options martials, "protector/tank" role not being a thing that exists properly, but that's neither here nor there.
Well, ranger is better than every single class without native spell slots, so at least there's that
they just feel bad to play, becasue the only three features that matter for them are Extra Attack, Half casting and Fighting style, which puts them squarely ahead of Monk, Barbarian, Rogue and Fighter(ordered bottom 4) from those alone. Subclassless ranger is better than any martial except top tier fighter subs
But Ranger just feels bad to play, because so mayn of the features that are supposed to define their identity are so worthless
Dnd isn't that kind of PvE, it has to be balanced far more than normal.
okay but what if there WAS a balanced PvP game that used D&D combat? likely a video game like BG3 or similar..
I strongly disagree that multiplayer PvP games strive for perfect balance, like not even the most competitive games out there do that
Perfect Balance is a chimera that can actually do more damage than poor balance, even for your most sweaty PvP game
I believe there was a game that died because it was perfectly balanced. It became stale and no new strategies were invented at some point so people lost interest and stopped playing.
The only example of a perfectly balanced game that has ever existed in history would be rock-paper-scissors. At least mechanically it's balanced but it becomes a next level mind game more akin to chess or similar wargame when played by skilled players who only need some knowledge of psychology.
Sure it matters in games where you play with multiple people but it should never matter in games like Elden Ring. Fuck that useless boring PvP stop nerfing weapons. The same way I feel like ANY game can be made co-op. You dont need a comprehensive and complete story on why there is someone else playing with you. Dying Light does it best, you both play the same character and have to be at the same place to progress mission otherwise you are free. ALL games should have the ability to share it with a friend (yes even Subnautica or RE7 or GTAV)
Bro keeps investing into D&D despite the company doing everything in its power to kill it 😂
With all of the artwork, you'd think the Forgotten Realms was swarming with blacks.
It's 2024, all fantasy worlds need to have the same demographics as current year california.
Were they not prevalent in the area in the past?
Ah yes, the forgotten realms. Famously known for its homogeneity and only having white humans. What causes you to point this out? Fear? Frustration? Anger?
Correct me if I’m wrong but a fantasy WORLD having different ethnicities of the geography of a PLANET sounds somewhat believable.
Good