Continued from "Pure balance is Utopia, but that doesn't mean we should avoid trying to balance at all, you dimwitted" Edition
Spotlight balance is wrong? Should every time everyone be able to contribute to every situation? The jock should be able to help the nerd hack the college system as they try to change the test grades?
>Spotlight balance is wrong?
As long as you spin that spotlight, I don't think so.
>Should every time everyone be able to contribute to every situation?
My preferred method, yes.
>The jock should be able to help the nerd hack the college system as they try to change the test grades?
He should be executing the social engineering stuff.
Balance is relevant during competition. Whether your players are competing is up to you, as the person defining the game. Balance isn't relevant to most RPGs. If it becomes a problem, give the thief a +4 dagger and move the fuck on.
From the last thread-
>You say cooperative balance doesn't matter? Well that's just bullshit. In a team game, everyone being able to contribute is important. Some people might be more or less relevant in a particular scene or context, but everyone having something to do to help out is important for keeping people engaged. You can see a lot of this in the design of cooperative board games, as well as one of the key problems they suffer- If one player starts trying to play the game for everyone else, bossing them about or being able to solve it all themselves, it stops being a fun experience for the rest of the group.
Honestly, the OP should have just reposted the entirety of the OP from last time, it's good shit.
From that exact post you just ignored-
>If it becomes a problem, give the thief a +4 dagger and move the fuck on.
Also countered in the original OP-
>Another angle I often see is 'The GM can balance it, so why should the system bother?'. This one always seems particularly bizarre to me. Having less work to do as a GM is a good thing, right? You've already got more than enough things to worry about without having to wrangle a severely unabalanced system into doing what you want. Sure, most GM's will make minor adjustments in any case, but there's a significant difference to slightly tweaking something to your preference and having to work against the rules and structures of the mechanics to ensure all your players are playing the same game. Good GM's can learn to run severely unbalanced systems, but why should they have to? Why use that to excuse designers just not putting in the effort to test and balance it themselves?
In other words, you agree it can become a problem that requires intervention to balance it? Why are you being so dismissive?
I think games should assume that you're broadly capable of all the things the game expects you to do, and then include options for specialization within that field.
On that note, in the case of the vast majority of games, expecting a choice between combat capability and capability in other areas is an idiotic idea, since combat is pretty much always the most mechanically intensive area of the game.
Have you noticed that it's not a big issue and if you do decide it is, it's easily handled on the GM"s end? Did that part escape you?
Do we really need a thousand threads of this same shit?
I completely agree with this. I find it really annoying when a game forces you to choose between being relevant in the ways the game cares about, and interesting flavour options that aren't directly useful but help flesh out a character. The two using different development currencies or choice slots is an excellent way of improving character progression and making it more satisfying, letting you actually have both flavourful and effective elements instead of forcing you to choose between.
But what about the times when it is a big issue?
Although even then, if you are stuck on the point that you don't think it's a big issue... It's still an issue. And it's one the designers could have dealt with. So why excuse their laziness?
>Do we really need a thousand threads of this same shit?
looking at the catalog, I have no idea why this thread out of all of them is the one that triggered you
god forbid we talk about game design on the game board
>Balance is relevant during competition.
Nah, it matters just as much in a cooperative game. Cooperative games are about using teamwork to overcome challenges, and teamwork implies everyone has something to contribute. In an ideal cooperative game every player has strengths they bring to the party and weaknesses they need other players to cover, which encourages everyone to work together to do things together they couldn't do alone. That breaks down quickly if some players don't have anything to contribute or could solve all the problems by themselves.
>If it becomes a problem, give the thief a +4 dagger and move the fuck on.
Balance needs some thought because it's not always an easy thing to fix. If the problem the thief has is that they aren't doing enough damage then giving them a +4 dagger would be a temporary fix (they would continually need better magic items than the rest of the party or they would fall behind again, hope no one else wants that dagger). But if the skill system is continually screwing them over or the core design of their class is fucked then giving them an item might not be enough.
Because they're worried about more important things than caring about how some hypothetical group is going to exceed their expectations?
Stuff like making an interesting and thematic system that inspires the GM? Stuff like ironing out what rules slow down play or are too complicated?
All the stuff that matters more than wondering if Billy's better at making a character when provided with identical options and accessibility?
Or are you talking about shit like saying players should never roll for stats?
As long as there aren't any glaring flaws it's fine, different playstyles and people forgetting shit are going to fuck it up more than slight mechanical differences at that point.
Well, rolling for stats is a garbage mechanic, but that's beside the point. Nobody is saying balance is the only priority, or even the most important one, just that it matters and can have a significant effect on a groups experience of play. A better balanced system is always an asset, all other things being equal, and a lack of it is always a fair critique.
>A better balanced system is always an asset
Nah, you don't want it too balanced, because then anybody who doesn't play it 100% RAW (which is pretty much everybody) will fuck it up and it won't work properly, and it will be much more obvious than playing a system without such careful mechanical balance with the same slight differences in playstyle and whatnot.
Something something comparison to mechanical tolerances.
How does that make any sense?
It's a marginal effect and one that can be dealt with on the user end where the GM sees the final construct and can adapt to it accordingly. It's such a non-issue, especially for cooperative games, that unbalanced parties were the norm thirty years ago, and not some horrible disease that needed to be stamped out. Remember when rolling for stats meant an exciting moment where you might qualify for rare and powerful options not available to lucklets?
Fuck. Newfags talk about "balance" like that matters in any system where a GM is expected to be paying attention to his own game.
You've never actually given a reason why the GM should have to do so, if the designer can do it for them. You've just said 'They did it that way before', which isn't actually an argument. Maybe it's just that game design has progressed since then?
you're literally just a big ol' bitch
>It's such a non-issue
>Everything you know about from 3.5: CoDzillas, Diplomancers, Batman Wizards
>SR3 Riggers
>Pornomancers
>Stick'n'shock: you either warp the game around it by making everyone wear nonconductive armor, in the process shitting on other legitimate options like lightning bolt, or watch enemies get paralyzed at the drop of a hat
>Shadowrun summoning period
>on the other end
>Aspected magicians
>Anything that uses Shadowrun scatter rules
>pure classed AD&D Thieves
>a bunch of shit in Exalted
>every trap option from 3.5, with Truenamers in the front running
Yeah, such a non-issue that experienced groups that aren't assholes will all warn you about them.
I think of balance as a system where there isn't a matchup worse than 4-6.
>>pure classed AD&D Thieves
If the GM is using the per-class bonus XP they're fine, because by the time things get really dire they have a heist team/thieve's guild cell/spy ring/hit squad that they run, long before anybody else gets their 'name level' features. The real problem is how much extra work it is to make it shine--that's an awful lot of plates to keep spinning.
>stick'n'shock indirectly hampers magicians
Not that user, but...
>You've never actually given a reason why the GM should have to do so
See
>It's a marginal effect and one that can be dealt with on the user end
There are lots of tiny, marginal things that the designer could try to eliminate from the user end, but there is a point of diminishing returns for the effort.
That's honestly a pretty way of putting it. It's not about everything being the same, it's just about ensuring that the power gap isn't too big as to cause problems.
>there's a significant difference to slightly tweaking something to your preference and having to work against the rules and structures of the mechanics to ensure all your players are playing the same game
This is also a valid point.
I acknowledge that balance could be so bad that it disrupts the game or makes an inordinate amount of work for the GM.
I have not encountered this once in several decades.
I have also not encountered a baby pigeon.
...
Except that's total bullshit, and if you were around for the edition war you would know that. Anti-4e hate threads were happening before the system even released purely because it looked different to what they expected, and it all came from that. People were predisposed to hate it and just found justifications for it after the fact.
Yea, no. The edition wars were completely one-sided. You can't criticize players for defending a system when you post in the thread for that system.
Are you two 4rries a couple?
This was valid until 5e came out and immediately crushed Pathfinder despite all the 3eeaboos claiming 5e was too simple and too balanced and didn’t offer enough to last more than a few months on top of would compete.
3aboos are the main reason for 5e's success though, and 3aboos formed the main core of the 5e group. There's almost no bad blood between the groups, and nothing compared to the butthurt 4rries still have.