Love and Balance

The following was sent to me in a PM (Private Message) by Leg enD. Leg is not new to BadLands, just BadLands RPG. I know of Gnoff as an NPC in BadLands, did not know Gnoff was also a real Person. But quite a few of the Bosses and/or high-level NPCs were named after the original members that started building BadLands as a group. Stride is one we all know as a BOSS. It is a lot of reading, but I found it interesting and will pass it on without any edits.

Qwildurn


From: Leg enD
To: Qwildurn
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 9:20 pm
Subject: some light reading, ignore if your not interested, its long here's the reply i got after asking a long time badlands player (longer than even me) what he thought about dodgy/badlands X. it also imo sums up ideal balance as the person who wrote it... really knows thier shit.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
It's taken me a little bit to get back to you on the whole Badlands and Balance thing...

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
People never seemed to understand what a multi-faceted thing PvP balance was, the ideas that resided in it, the concepts that went with it, and the math involved in it.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
I wanted to make a post detailing that on the still flopping Badlands X forums, but have no real active account... you see.. people see balance as a singular issue, they look at one issue troubling them, and to them, at that second, that is balance... but in reality, it's like looking at a scratch on one side of a gem covered in other sides, and wondering what, if anything, you can do to it without shattering the gem in question.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
what I'm saying is... it's like looking at a tree-chart that all flows into balance... actions players can / are allowed to take affect balance (locks, pick pocket, disarm, so called griefing).

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
weapons affect balance (I cannot count the number of times I have had to argue with someone why, exactly, 2d6 is better than 1d12, or why 2d4 is better than 1d10 for that matter, despite the upward of two damage potential.), and you can have your boss rapier if you intelligently accomodate for it by creating things that are less used that people can build for (someone is always going to use a crafted rapier/kukri/scimitar, the critical hit range is just too worth it).

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
spells affect balance, how you nerf heal should be proportional to how IGMs is nerfed, how acid sheeth is nerfed in relation to elemental shield / death ward, the spells you disable and the spells you enable.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
: items affect balance, what statistics you can gain for your character, what you can merge into shape shifts, the variety of maxed stats you can make if you're willing to sacrifice things, the bonuses to skills you can find if you combine items properly.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
There's a slew of other things that affect balance as well... Classes, skill points, traps, basic character progression, money (to an extent), how fast one could feasibly level (no xp transfers is generally a rule of thumb) alignment restrictions, and lack of subraces (to create the potential to add towards one stat IS unbalanced, as it's not accomodated for in the original design, I.e. a character with the ability to gain +2 wisdom while still making the race playable and implimentable, no matter what detriment you give them, will always be a great DC cleric / druid, or a wonderful zen archer.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
but these things don't just affect THEMSELVES, and that's what people miss out on. They influence EACH OTHER. Your powerful items are indeed useful so long as dwarven defenders are still viable class selections. Your maximised IGMs can do 120 unerring damage as long as a player can potentially and feasably break the mage's damage reduction in some way shape or form, you can have characters that potentially heal for 390 hit points if you accomodate for it with character ability traits like stunning fist or devistating critical hit, you can get rid of healkits if you are willing to modify acid sheeth slightly.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
and these choices should be left up to someone who has spent a great deal of time studying and learning from how they all coincide, someone who will not feasibly lose sight of the bigger picture, despite the fact that they still play and experience the game.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
not simply one person, as we learned from leaf, but a staff of people all similarly educated, with slight differences in class selection, potential building strategies, and module affecting skills that they bring to the table.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
there need not be a public relations officer if this is done right, because players should play and be happy... sure it may suck to get trumped by the mage on path of the beaten, but the ten people who made it possible obviously thought of a way (or in the case of a mage, several dozen) to kill that mage and many more.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
simple lack of inginuity and resourcefulness isn't an excuse for the clamour that the Badlands 3000 staff constantly recieved. While we tried to finalize balance, we got earfuls of complaints from everyone from Sweetly / Dhast, to Highv, about how we could reel in more players, when we lost sight of what our ten people had been elected to do... there were no propaganda machines here, our ten man staff was no office of immigrations, it was a government of balance.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
why should the people who are focusing so hard on the balanced side of the server be the ones responsible for bringing in players... in the past, that was the job of OTHER players. When I played and was not a DM, I went from server to server, sometimes using less subtle methods, but sometimes simply playing there for an evening, making a variety of friends, and then bidding them farewell as I left to return to my intriguing home.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Players who played DeX obviously came here steadily as a result of players who played here who USED to play on DeX. We know DEX players played here, because DEX shortly after changed its crafting system and spell balance to imitate ours. It has since strayed, yes... but there were obviously people there... now there were no DEX members on the staff, with the possible exception of Gein, (a lot of ex DEX members though) and yet they still came here in droves, because their fellow PLAYERS told them about it.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
there's nothing we can change here that will bring in players if those players don't know what we did... changing things to attract a fanbase is futile. A techno artist does not become a country singer in order to bring in droves of rednecks. They enjoy their noteriety in their field, despite the fact that it may be significantly smaller (Small circles of people vs the entire south)

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
and yet people clamoured like mad for the changes they got with Badlands X... Dodgy was the Barrack Obama of Badlands... he came forward, no experience, said "Let's have change", implimented the change, and now he's closing the doors.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Sure, his charisma and people's desperation made for a lot of suckers... but it's obvious that some change is not good change. Sometimes the old standby needs a tad bit of tweaking to be worthwhile again, but a solid system that malfunctions is better than a new system that doesn't start.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Badlands is the exact same way... and yet people still don't see it. People like Highv still advocate that people should be allowed to say exactly what gets changed... but sometimes you get an ignorent majority, and then you're on thin ice... And when that ice cracks, Badlands X happens.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
I've already got deli signed on for hosting badlands roughly once a week so that the older players who actually understand all of these things can have a place to go... People served a great deal of time and effort into the server with actual knowlege, only to be put down and scoffed at by hyper-critical people who, rather than learn the game, would have it handed to them.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Over the time I've played Badlands, there were so few people who were non staff members that I still respected, that it disheartened me. I respected people who had a drive to learn the game, and the humility to admit that even if they'd been playing it for five years, they still didn't know what they were doing.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Dodgy was one of those people, but he felt that rather than listen to wisdom, changes could be implimented to the system that he saw fit... Unfortunately, I think we can all agree Dodgy's system was more than a little broken. If someone says they have played other servers, and did not like them, and need to play badlands, why do those same people advocate the addition of things that would make badlands no more than one of those very servers we were just talking about? Subraces, additional classes, etc. have so little bearing on the world at large.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
What matters isn't what you offer, it's how you offer it. Badlands had a nice 60 players when DEX was no more. DEX came back, and its balance sucks. It offers by far the most terrible PVP experience I've ever born witness to, and yet it draws a crowd, because it has members that do just that, draw a crowd. Badlands was once the place that noobs stepped into and came out as hardcore PVPers, but that age died a long time ago. If you're looking for a game or a server with a ton of people, simply put, play world of warcraft... but if you're looking for a balanced hand at being able to create a wide variety of characters, you need to get over some of the more boring parts of the game.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
People bitch and moan about leveling, they say they have fifty characters, but what's important is making the experience worthwhile. Strid and I have never once complained that leveling is boring. Each new character is an adventure that we usually share together, from level 1 to level 40, and we do it because we make the world our own. Vampires and Driders hold a special place for me when leveling, because I remember a great deal of things happening in those areas. What's important isn't what you offer, it's how you offer it. You can sell a blind man oranges, if you can just convince him that they're sweet apples.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
I enjoy leveling because it's the unique experience. If you think about it, the ability to combine character races, classes, and abilities, are what adds for so much diversity to the game, and sets it apart from world of warcraft. If you're in it for players, WoW has it hands down... if you're in it for that diversity, stop complaining about what it takes to get there... Those millions of combinations can't be available and still be something else. The people balancing that give birth to that which makes NWN what it is, an excersize in diversity, the ability to build characters endlessly, make thousands of them over the course of years, and still have new ideas and new potentials. As time goes on, it only gets more challenging, but it gets easier to learn to... Databases exist that can take a lot of the work out of learning. To make the game fun, you have to embrace what makes it what it is, and that's balanced diversity, not a large player base.

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
If you're willing to read all that insight, bravo to you. If you're willing to copy paste it to forums, a round of applause for you. I'll grant you I still have access to reading them through other accounts, but I'll not be posting there again. I rarely post in places where vast amounts of experience and opinion are not rewarded

Gonff "Measure in Love" says:
Until we talk again Leg, take care, and best of luck in everything you do.