The Good ole Balance Debate

[Malorn]

Recognition and status is powerful in social games. It's the carrot that drives the sales for vanity items. People get them as a status symbol. Some get them just to show that they have the money to spend. Others just becuase they want to not be "like everyone else" in their quest to be a unique snowflake.

You don't need to provide actual power to people. I believe tradeoffs & options are a far better alternative, and merits, achievements, and vanity items also go a long way to showing recognition and status. Giving actual combat bonuses is not only detrimental - its entirely unnecessary.

I think vanity items will probalby be a significant revenue maker for PS2 and by itself, along with initial purchase of the game would allow it to sustain a fair amount of non-subscribers and keep the game alive.

[Volw]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Recognition and status is powerful in social games. It's the carrot that drives the sales for vanity items. People get them as a status symbol. Some get them just to show that they have the money to spend. Others just becuase they want to not be "like everyone else" in their quest to be a unique snowflake.

You don't need to provide actual power to people. I believe tradeoffs & options are a far better alternative, and merits, achievements, and vanity items also go a long way to showing recognition and status. Giving actual combat bonuses is not only detrimental - its entirely unnecessary.

I think vanity items will probalby be a significant revenue maker for PS2 and by itself, along with initial purchase of the game would allow it to sustain a fair amount of non-subscribers and keep the game alive.

Obviously as long as the game is at least to some extent subscription based. I think all of the successful business models which are based on selling vanity items only (hats!) are based on non-MMO games, where all of the costs associated with running servers are not present.

Ah, there's also a noticeable percentile of people who are simply buying stuff to support developers. Can't remember exactly, would have to dig through my papers and I cba.

Bleh, I'm starting to write as if I'm at work. Enough. Off to bed. NN.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Tlacatecatl

I think this a clash of game design philosophy. While FPS usually go for the pure tradeoff progression (like BFBC2 for example)

BC2 perks unambiguously increase power. The only downside to them is you can only pick 2. But its still more than the newb gets to pick.



I'm not seeing the big deal though. Unless they carry it to an extreme, a 5% damage/rof/accuracy boost here and there isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. Frankly, from the sounds of it, the PS2 system will be far more newb friendly than PS1, at least so far as infantry combat is concerned(there were few things you could do to give yourself an edge in vehicle combats). Want to play a role? You just unlock it, and you'll do it 80% as well as a vet.

Assuming they are even locked in the first place. Might be that, like the battlefield games, a player can do all things right off the bat, to a greater or lesser degree, which they then augment with training based on their gameplay preferences.

Seems fair enough to me.

[Logit]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

BC2 perks unambiguously increase power. The only downside to them is you can only pick 2. But its still more than the newb gets to pick.



I'm not seeing the big deal though. Unless they carry it to an extreme, a 5% damage/rof/accuracy boost here and there isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. Frankly, from the sounds of it, the PS2 system will be far more newb friendly than PS1, at least so far as infantry combat is concerned(there were few things you could do to give yourself an edge in vehicle combats). Want to play a role? You just unlock it, and you'll do it 80% as well as a vet.

Assuming they are even locked in the first place. Might be that, like the battlefield games, a player can do all things right off the bat, to a greater or lesser degree, which they then augment with training based on their gameplay preferences.

Seems fair enough to me.

I think it's been said multiple times that it's 15-20% stronger...which in a video game is more than enough for a veteran to own a new player every single time.

If a veteran reaver is more maneuverable, and has more armor the player with less time spent in the game is clearly going to be at a disadvantage. Yes, day 1, it's not going to be a problem, but down the line it's going to be an issue, because the imbalance between new players and Veterans will grow little by little each day.

The argument that implants have this same effect is ridiculous in my eyes. You can't "jam" maneuverability or armor. In the example from the original quote, they are saying a Vets plane will flat out be stronger in more than 1 aspect of the battle. Fairly large aspects at that.

PShield and second wind are the only advantages during a fight, which can be countered quite easily, and aren't making the gun in your hands better.