Also, I don't like the idea of having intentionally weaker classes for the sake of experienced players being able to take on additional challenge. What about new players who don't know they're being punished for something they have no way of knowing to begin with?
Pretty much this.
Roleplay and taking on an additional challenge is up to the player. Crappy options being included on purpose, is crappy design.
And if it's not on purpose, it should be changed and improved, or removed. No player should feel "I took this thing but it's actually garbage. What a waste of time."
I completely disagree. Asymmetric challenges make the game interesting, and sometimes that means conspicuously stronger or weaker characters and classes. The only point I would concede on this is that the relative power level and trade offs involved in any character choice should be completely clear in the documentation. If a class choice is going to be dominating, or severely restricting, it should be noted that this choice will effect the difficulty level of the game. I admit when reading through class or kit descriptions I have enough experience with the game I can make those judgments maybe a little more easily than a newer player. So perhaps this could be made more clear in the class/kit write ups. But I think this is the fatal weakness of the later rule sets for D&D; that so much effort is made to balance everything that good vs bad choices no longer have any meaning.
I admit when reading through class or kit descriptions I have enough experience with the game I can make those judgments maybe a little more easily than a newer player. So perhaps this could be made more clear in the class/kit write ups.
@atcDave Again I bring up the example from the Total War series, where each faction is assigned a starting difficulty, from "Easy" to "Legendary". Something like this could be applied for RPGs too, where each class has a power rating, for example, "weak", "average" and "strong".
Another way you could have a balanced game with unbalanced characters is if your party members had a shared pool of power that you can divide unevenly. For example say you have 100 points, a sorcerer might cost 35pts, a single class thief 10 points, a bard 15 points, etc... Of course this works better for games where you create your entire party like IWD and the Avernum series, but you could theoretically do this for companion NPCs too just by applying exclusion rules like Edwin does not get on with Minsc and Dynaheir.
Anyway like I have said before, I am not advocating imbalance for the sake of it. I just feel that artificial balance detracts from the immersive realism of a fantasy world. I just don't want to be able to see obvious balancing decisions and start to view a game as mathematical equations and spreadsheets. For example the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies would be rubbish if they depicted Black Widow or Hawkeye (normal humans) going toe to toe in a slugfest against Thor (basically a god) and any game they made based on that setting would suck if they tried to balance those characters artificially.
Baldur's Gate is really hard to 'balance' when it comes to some classes.
Mages. In BG1 they are horrible in the early levels. They become great later.
Monks. They are *hopeless* for all of BG1! I've got one in a playthrough. At lvl 7, the monk is just barely above being useless. That is a first for a Charname. However, when they hit lvl 14+, they become amazing.
Single Class Thieves start off kinda slow, get really good, and then putter off into being subpar.
For a new player, I'd be *really* bummed if I made it through half the game, only to realize that my monk was never going to even be mediocre, or that my wizard slayer is just one big handicap. At that point, who much do you trust the game to give you a good playthrough if you restart?
At the very least, some classes should come with warnings. Kind of like how there is a warning in the description of the katana, to warn new players off from investing heavily into it.
Isn't the whole point with the monk and mage class that you're an underdog early and then you'll become very powerful later on? And the rogue and bard might not be as powerful as some other classes, but they bring a lot of utility to your party. If every class was equally powerful and had the same options, it wouldn't be D&D anymore, nor an RPG. An RPG is all about making choices and then playing through the game with the consequences of your decisions.
Icewind Dale balanced? Is that a joke? Its a powergamers wet dream or a casual players nightmare. There are a lot of overkill items in the game but at the same time there are some overkill enemies to fight especially if you get daring and play HoF.
@SionIV excellent take on the classes, I agree with all of that.
@Heindrich I often like that use of a point buy. Especially if its in conjunction with other restrictions. Apart from fantasy gaming I'm also a huge fan of historical simulations (war gaming). So often the whole point is to figure out how to use what you're good at against the opponents weaknesses. Like a naval battle where you know you have to stop a force of two Battleships and four Destroyers; and you can buy from a select group of defenders that don't include ANY battleships. So the system is telling you that you cannot match your opponent's strength with strength. You will have to find some combination of ships and tactics that can win a different way entirely (in that case it probably involves a lot of torpedoes!) Of course a big difference in an RPG is your behavior may be limited by personal, moral or story issues apart from pure tactics. And I think the only way I'd like a point buy system is in something more like Black Pits. The characters themselves still need some way of retaining that organic randomness or they will also start to feel more like ships off a design board. But the buy system can obviously work for starting equipment, possibly spells. And I could imagine something involving starting experience being done that way; like maybe your six character party can start with 12 levels; but Paladin and mage levels count double and no character can exceed level four... That could lead to some interesting decisions like maybe maxing out two characters, or just spreading the levels out more equally. But I don't really see most of this as a balance issue so much as being about operational decision making. Of course I really like operational decision making.
I am hesitant of trying to have all classes being equally useful in combat and out. It almost feels like... no matter what you choose as the player, you can never fail. If you can't fail, what's the point?
I wonder how Josh's experiment will turn out.
I imagine that if you build your character incorrectly you could end up bodging them, maybe not creating a complete failure but it could cause them to be somewhat weaker than the "correct" build.
I completely disagree. Asymmetric challenges make the game interesting, and sometimes that means conspicuously stronger or weaker characters and classes. But I think this is the fatal weakness of the later rule sets for D&D; that so much effort is made to balance everything that good vs bad choices no longer have any meaning.
Who wants to make bad choices? If no one wants to make bad choices, why are they in the game in the first place?
I agree on asymetric challenges but that should take the form of different, equally interesting challenges. If a class is simply inferior or more limited than another then there's no reason to choose it other than making the game quantitavely more difficult. Difficulty options and character build choices should be two separate things.
I enjoy the Enhanced Edition. That said, its not hard to see what Josh Sawyer is talking about. Look at Heart of Winter. The expansion pretty much nerfed the previous IWD incarnation. Obviously they took a hard look at balance in regards to spellcaster classes and magic items and made some serious changes. So obviously he's going to say something like this in regards to the Enhanced Edition - where basically the template for BG2 is taken and just applied to IWD, even in some instances where one could argue it doesn't make sense (for example: Wild Mages didn't even exist in Forgotten Realms during the IWD timeline, but are playable in EE).
Also, keep in mind while classes were solely mentioned, its not just classes which take away from game balance. Half-Orcs for example. With an achievable base 19 strength, why play any other race of fighter (With the exception of some sub-classes, or maybe a bow user?) And given the Character Creation engine, 19 Strength is even more ridiculous. You don't even have to roll it like you do an 18/00. 18/00 takes time and is hard to "roll" because its rare and not everyone has it. 19 is just an uptick of an arrow after you decimate your dump stat.
I really never understood the 19 Strength base being achievable. 18/00 is the strength of an Ogre. 19 is the Strength of a Hill Giant. You're telling me your Half-Orc has Giant Strength through non-magical means? Get out of here with that garbage.
I completely disagree. Asymmetric challenges make the game interesting, and sometimes that means conspicuously stronger or weaker characters and classes. But I think this is the fatal weakness of the later rule sets for D&D; that so much effort is made to balance everything that good vs bad choices no longer have any meaning.
Who wants to make bad choices? If no one wants to make bad choices, why are they in the game in the first place?
I agree on asymetric challenges but that should take the form of different, equally interesting challenges. If a class is simply inferior or more limited than another then there's no reason to choose it other than making the game quantitavely more difficult. Difficulty options and character build choices should be two separate things.
Okay I guess I'll bite; I WANT to have bad choices.
This is about role playing. It's not about making everything all matchy matchy same same. Seriously, if the game is going to allow a range of cultures and technologies for players it should allow that some choices *should be* inferior to others. If you chose to play a Jester you are choosing your handicap. Why is this a problem? The more limited character is challenge. It's fun. It's no different than someone who wants to try a solo run or someone else who wants an all Mage party. It is good game design to allow a range of challenges. The very thing that makes some choices good MUST make some choices bad. The only other option is to make those choices meaningless. But for me, the primary reason for choosing a class and kit is because of what it suggests for the character. If I chose to play a Wizard Slayer it's because I want to play the Wizard Slayer. If I chose the cleric it's because I want to play the holy man. Figuring out their abilities and weaknesses is what makes it a game and a challenge. And again, I see no reason to be so player centric as to say every kit even has to be a player character option. I see the world has having a life and a reality apart from JUST the player character. Some kits can exist purely to show why something shouldn't be a certain way (*gee, the spearman/savage needs at least a three level advantage to equal a more sophisticated armored swordsman, interesting*) ... Maybe I want to play Operation Barbarossa just to see exactly how many squadrons of Polikarpovs it takes to equal a single Messerschmitt....
If you can't make a bad choice, where's the achievement when you make a good choice?
I'm talking about class balance. If the game allows you to select a class, it shouldn't punish you for selecting that class. The game should still be as fun and challenging to play, simply in a different way than with other classes.
Of course the game can punish you for venturing into a dragon's lair at level 1; that's not the same thing.
This is about role playing. It's not about making everything all matchy matchy same same. Seriously, if the game is going to allow a range of cultures and technologies for players it should allow that some choices *should be* inferior to others.
I would argue that for a majority of players, effectiveness considerations trump role-playing considerations. Very few players would make a fighter specialized in daggers, for the sake of a role-playing idea, for instance, because other weapons are plain better. So a game that would give you plainly superior classes for role-playing's sake would actually have most players selecting only the better classes and limiting their choice for effectiveness reasons. If you take effectiveness out of the equation by making every class equally effective (albeit in various ways), then in effect you let players select their class for role-playing or gameplay style reasons.
So in my view, a good role-playing game is one that lets players select their class for role-playing or style considerations and provides a consistently challenging and interesting experiencing in all cases.
If you chose to play a Jester you are choosing your handicap. Why is this a problem? The more limited character is challenge. It's fun. It's no different than someone who wants to try a solo run or someone else who wants an all Mage party. It is good game design to allow a range of challenges.
On one hand, if the game allows these choices it should make them challenging and fun in their own ways. On the other, by going solo or all-mages, the player is very explicitely limiting his options and the game should be more difficult because of it, on that I agree. Very few will do that because it's obvious that it's going to be very inefficient. But there's no way of knowing without extensive metagaming that this or that kit is more or less useful. And there's still no reason at all to choose plainly inferior classes, i.e. why would you play a non-kit Cleric when kit Clerics only have advantages? Class choice has be a set of tradeoffs that you make rather than a metagame of selecting the one the game wants you to choose or else.
Whilst I understand where people like @Zeckul are coming from when you say "Who wants to make bad choices? If no one wants to make bad choices, why are they in the game in the first place?", I disagree but I won't repeat RP reasons that @atcDave and I have mentioned already. I do however think that it is possible for a game to satisfy both our preferences.
I think the key here is player choice and player information. Frustration arises from lack of information and misinformation. I played the Elder Scrolls Online as a Night Blade Stamina Build (i.e. weapons focused) because the game promised that all classes and all strategies were balanced and viable (which is crucial in a MMO), so imagine my frustration when I grinded my way to the endgame (admittedly I had lots of fun doing it), and discovered that my class and build was literally inferior in every way to an equivalent Magicka build, and elite teams tackling endgame content refused to even accept non-Magicka DPS builds. Similarly @ChildofBhaal599 discovered that his class (Templar) could not even solo high level content because it lacked sufficient damage output.
The problem there was not necessarily that our builds were weak (though to be honest, as much as a roleplayer as I am, I get very competitive in multiplayer games, so I'd never intentionally pick a weak class/build in a multiplayer game) but rather we were mislead into believing that our characters would be viable, and it was very annoying when that proved to be incorrect.
Thus I think it was entirely possible for a game (especially singleplayer one) to provide lots of options, some stronger than others to help create a less artificial and more immersive environment, and not anger powergamers if they provided accurate information about the strengths and weaknesses of each class in context of the game.
Imagine a game has 5 strong and balanced character classes, and then added 10 weaker ones, what has the powergamer lost? Nothing, he was always going to use one of the 5 strong classes if he cared about efficiency, but now the world is more organic for the roleplay-driven players and there are more options overall, which must be a good thing for all. (The powergamers are also those who are most likely to pick a very weak class to challenge themselves.)
I keep going back to the Total War series for this, but I think it is relevant here. My favourite game in that series is Shogun2: Total War. The game is set entirely in Japan, so the differences between factions are fairly minor in terms of units and technology. Starting difficulty varies drastically depending on which faction you pick.
If you choose Chosokabe or Shimazu, you start from a relatively safe and defensible region to grow from, and your faction bonuses are pretty powerful (bow and sword bonuses respectively). You could also start as the Tokugawa, who start the game as vassals to a stronger clan (half of your income goes to him), and under attack by yet another stronger clan. They also have fairly weak faction bonuses and their homeland is one of the most indefensible parts of Japan with all manner of dangerous and aggressive neighbours rampaging across the place. Why would anyone pick the Tokugawa? Because it is precisely the differences in circumstances, strengths and weaknesses, that makes the game interesting where otherwise all the factions are pretty much the same. Of course the game tells you upfront that going Chosokabe and Shimazu will be easy, whilst Tokugawa are very hard, so you shouldn't be surprised if/when things go pear-shaped in your first attempt. Incidentally the Tokugawa are historically the guys who won.
The stat tables used in early DnD were unnecessarily complicated and the IE games took the route of following the core rules largely on this. I don't know how Half-orcs were implemented in 2nd ed, but in 1st Edition they did not have the ability to start with over 18/90s, but they had a bonus to whatever they rolled, making them more likely to get exceptional strength. Humans iirc were the only core race that could start with 18/00. Even Ogres rarely had that much str in 2nd ed, iirc only the chieftan was supposed to have 18/00. Old D&D was very creative, but was also inexplicably byzantine. On top of this, magical strength enhancement for warriors was supposed to only bump you up the ladder, IE +1 str at 18/01 did not bump to 19, it bumped to the next threshhold. 19 strength is supposed to represent someone beyond normal human capacity, ie only available via powerful magic. I think implementing that would have helped a ton actually.
@Zeckul Daggers are actually not terrible in 2nd ed, its a very versatile proficiency, both melee and rannged. You can definately do okay, but I agree most players at first glance see (well, those who know math) 2.5 average damage vs 4.5, and decide immediately that daggers are inferior. In PnP mind you, some DMs restrict weapon posession in cities I know, much like real world, meaning a fighter can't legally go around town with a longsword, but can have a few daggers without being questioned or bothered... this is an RP thing though. Not as many gamers are serious about practicalities I agree, so some potential is wasted.
I think in a game in which RP is intended to be significant, some more leeway is tolerable on weaker but interesting choices, but in games like WoW, expect weaker builds to be anathema. In BG even, WS, Beastmaster and Shapeshifter were all 'cool RP ideas', but in practice were very handicapped. A first timer trying one of these will be unfairly challenged, so they either shouldn't be immediately available (ie some games have unlockable options, though RPs not so often), or something needs to warn them "this is a sub-optimal".
Now, there is much to be said though for a game that lets you select 'feats', in whatever form... In BG, Single Weapon Style and Sword and Shield both have VERY limited utility, to the point many see them as lousey picks. TWF is just mechanicaly better, and at least THS has strong weapon choices to reward it. This IMHO is even more problematic than daggers, which can have significant advantages, especially early. The easier solution here is to nerf TWF, as its significantly better, but buffing the other two would work too.
Game design seems to have certain tropes we see very often, ie dual wielding is almost always best. In the real world, dual wielding is pretty impractical, even with practice. Its not exactly impossible, but is silly how many games freely buy into this. A nice option in some gaming systems is to allow a warrior that utilizes lighter weapons and relies on dexterity over brute force. 2nd Ed did not allow this type of build, due to straightjacketing roles, which brings me to my final point; in an organic system, can you really expect a game to hold your hand for each pick? Feat trees help, encouraging a player to follow a path, but a warrior that stubbornly refuses to specialize in many games is very, very ineffective, but forcing specialization as strictly as 2nd Ed tends to can feel very limiting.
A work around is including a blurb of text for each ability/choice, and perhaps even an auto-chooser or 'recommended pick', with a bit of explanation. Civilization had something like this on low difficulty, sometimes the advice was bad, but you could ignore it. It could help a beginner a great deal if they are told Bronze Working is a great tech to get fairly early... You will likely get swamped if you don't research it. Obviously at higher difficulties, nobody should be having their hand held anymore, and the game should reward good choices, while brutally punishing really bad ones. But at the lowest difficulty, the game should be oriented towards rewarding good choices more than punishing mistakes. Rewards are where the fun early on, challenge pays dividends later. Games that just stomp new players are not usually as popular, though they can generate a cult following if they are hard enough.
@heindrich while I suppose it doesn't matter very much for whatever discussion you are going on about, I would like to chime in that I was unable to solo content because I was a tank and the VR levels required a lot more dps than I could put out as a tank. templars are not actually really underpowered, and I in fact did the high level content before 1.6 as that character. and now for anyone who would be checking it out in the future 1.6 made templars the king of DPS with this death ray ability they got. sadly, though, the game did launch strongly leading towards stamina, which is where you had problems. luckily it was fixed in the future, and now anything is taken.
nowadays, you in fact do have a lot of choice too. although as DPS you want to focus on light and medium armor, you can put in 2 extra heavy because there is a really difference in armor value. some abilities now have stamina morphs so stamina players have more options. the only thing that continues to be at a disadvantage (and greater than ever) is hybrid stamina/magicka. for that I think they would just need to stop the increase in damage for abilities that use them based on your maximum of them.
and since from what I can tell this is a discussion on balance, I'll pitch in on that and not ESO. i am absolutely cool with imbalanced single player games, as they can provide challenges and it often times makes sense for a mage to be better than a fighter at killing things. however, I do need balance in a multiplayer game, as otherwise players are put at a disadvantage. of course, you know all about that from the above experience. however, would you have stuck it out if this were a single player game? in our multiplayer BG game not all of us are a mage, and in fact only you are a mage of the created characters. i still have fun with my fighter/thief though because it is all about the roleplay, not too mention my time will come in TOB! of course I wouldn't be upset if everything was balanced, as that would make it that you aren't at a disadvantage choosing one playstyle over another, but if you are only worried about NPCs I don't see a problem being weaker than you can potentially be if it makes sense and if you have your own different area of expertise.
Imagine a game has 5 strong and balanced character classes, and then added 10 weaker ones, what has the powergamer lost? Nothing, he was always going to use one of the 5 strong classes if he cared about efficiency, but now the world is more organic for the roleplay-driven players and there are more options overall, which must be a good thing for all. (The powergamers are also those who are most likely to pick a very weak class to challenge themselves.)
If 2/3 of the classes make no sense from a powergaming perspective then it's a pretty boring game for powergamers. I guess I'm speaking with a bias towards viewing RPGs as solving challenges in varied and stylistic ways. If the game tells me that the best solution is obviously this or that then it's not very interesting from my perspective anymore. One of the most fun parts of IWD to me is designing an effective party with different compositions. If there was a greater number of optimal character builds, then party design would be greatly enhanced.
I would offer, as an alternative to your suggestion, that RPGs don't need to provide intentionally weaker classes to cater to what we call the "role-player" and I expect PoE to be an example of that. One thing PoE does very differently is to not give any combat XP. Therefore, characters who suck at combat can still thrive as long as they can do the actions that provide XP in the game, some of which involve excelling in combat and many of which involve excelling at other things. So if your character can persuade, or climb obstacles, or spot secret passages, or craft tools, or conjure divine help, etc., he may not be good at killing stuff but there's still a challenging, albeit different, way for him to do well in this game.
No class should ever be intentionally weak or strong; it should be organic to the setting and story. But I think it's completely reasonable to include players notes that advise what classes/kits will have an easier time (especially for newer players) and which classes/kits will provide more of a challenge.
Now again, all this is from the bias of someone who considers the PnP game first. I want the CRPG to play as much like PnP as possible. So part of that is moving the difficulty slider off of "core" for any reason really irks me. I would much rather explore the challenges of the game from a consistent game difficulty and just play around with stronger or weaker characters. Part of why the IE games have been so appealing to me is they let me do exactly that. I can play a whole game with character combinations I would likely never try in a PnP game. I see it all as a giant simulation. Funny, since I first got into D&D because my friends wanted to try something different from the more historical simulations I typically prefer. Now I'm playing a D&D sim....
@atcDave Seeing as my reply would consist in saying the exact opposite of what you said, I think I'll just say we seem to have a different bias on the game vs simulation thing. My experience prior to the IE games was Diablo, yours was PnP D&D, so...
As I said I'm curious to see what IE fans will think of balance and role-playing in PoE, but only time will tell.
For anyone who has been playing PnP RPGs for as long as I have, the idea of balance simply didn't exist in the 80s. I played Traveller more than I played ADnD, and the only balance there was the balance of the RNG. Even into the 90s, when I played FASA Star Trek RPG, character generation was a series of random rolls.
Absolutely. My 'Balance' post was intended to be facetious. I never expect balance, much in the way that No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. I don't power game (much) and I generally have a select group of party adventurers that (as non-optimized as they are) I exclusively play with. It helps that I am a pretty poor player, and I absolutely suck at PvP. I simply ignore those aspects and enjoy the role play aspects of the games. So I don't care if I am more or less powerful than anyone else who may or may not have found 'The combination'.
With that having been said, I found the video about 'Imperfect balance' to be quite informative.
And let me tell you, it is REALLY hard to have fallen so in love with Dark Souls as I have.
Dark Souls is actually a really good example of a game that very consciously presents you with differently balanced options during character creation. But what it does well is presenting you with enough information to see clearly, "Yes, this option is weaker, I should only choose that if I want an extra challenge at the beginning".
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Roleplay and taking on an additional challenge is up to the player.
Crappy options being included on purpose, is crappy design.
And if it's not on purpose, it should be changed and improved, or removed.
No player should feel "I took this thing but it's actually garbage. What a waste of time."
The only point I would concede on this is that the relative power level and trade offs involved in any character choice should be completely clear in the documentation. If a class choice is going to be dominating, or severely restricting, it should be noted that this choice will effect the difficulty level of the game.
I admit when reading through class or kit descriptions I have enough experience with the game I can make those judgments maybe a little more easily than a newer player. So perhaps this could be made more clear in the class/kit write ups.
But I think this is the fatal weakness of the later rule sets for D&D; that so much effort is made to balance everything that good vs bad choices no longer have any meaning.
Another way you could have a balanced game with unbalanced characters is if your party members had a shared pool of power that you can divide unevenly. For example say you have 100 points, a sorcerer might cost 35pts, a single class thief 10 points, a bard 15 points, etc... Of course this works better for games where you create your entire party like IWD and the Avernum series, but you could theoretically do this for companion NPCs too just by applying exclusion rules like Edwin does not get on with Minsc and Dynaheir.
Anyway like I have said before, I am not advocating imbalance for the sake of it. I just feel that artificial balance detracts from the immersive realism of a fantasy world. I just don't want to be able to see obvious balancing decisions and start to view a game as mathematical equations and spreadsheets. For example the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies would be rubbish if they depicted Black Widow or Hawkeye (normal humans) going toe to toe in a slugfest against Thor (basically a god) and any game they made based on that setting would suck if they tried to balance those characters artificially.
Mages. In BG1 they are horrible in the early levels. They become great later.
Monks. They are *hopeless* for all of BG1! I've got one in a playthrough. At lvl 7, the monk is just barely above being useless. That is a first for a Charname. However, when they hit lvl 14+, they become amazing.
Single Class Thieves start off kinda slow, get really good, and then putter off into being subpar.
For a new player, I'd be *really* bummed if I made it through half the game, only to realize that my monk was never going to even be mediocre, or that my wizard slayer is just one big handicap. At that point, who much do you trust the game to give you a good playthrough if you restart?
At the very least, some classes should come with warnings. Kind of like how there is a warning in the description of the katana, to warn new players off from investing heavily into it.
@Heindrich I often like that use of a point buy. Especially if its in conjunction with other restrictions.
Apart from fantasy gaming I'm also a huge fan of historical simulations (war gaming). So often the whole point is to figure out how to use what you're good at against the opponents weaknesses. Like a naval battle where you know you have to stop a force of two Battleships and four Destroyers; and you can buy from a select group of defenders that don't include ANY battleships. So the system is telling you that you cannot match your opponent's strength with strength. You will have to find some combination of ships and tactics that can win a different way entirely (in that case it probably involves a lot of torpedoes!)
Of course a big difference in an RPG is your behavior may be limited by personal, moral or story issues apart from pure tactics. And I think the only way I'd like a point buy system is in something more like Black Pits. The characters themselves still need some way of retaining that organic randomness or they will also start to feel more like ships off a design board. But the buy system can obviously work for starting equipment, possibly spells. And I could imagine something involving starting experience being done that way; like maybe your six character party can start with 12 levels; but Paladin and mage levels count double and no character can exceed level four... That could lead to some interesting decisions like maybe maxing out two characters, or just spreading the levels out more equally.
But I don't really see most of this as a balance issue so much as being about operational decision making. Of course I really like operational decision making.
I agree on asymetric challenges but that should take the form of different, equally interesting challenges. If a class is simply inferior or more limited than another then there's no reason to choose it other than making the game quantitavely more difficult. Difficulty options and character build choices should be two separate things.
Also, keep in mind while classes were solely mentioned, its not just classes which take away from game balance. Half-Orcs for example. With an achievable base 19 strength, why play any other race of fighter (With the exception of some sub-classes, or maybe a bow user?) And given the Character Creation engine, 19 Strength is even more ridiculous. You don't even have to roll it like you do an 18/00. 18/00 takes time and is hard to "roll" because its rare and not everyone has it. 19 is just an uptick of an arrow after you decimate your dump stat.
I really never understood the 19 Strength base being achievable. 18/00 is the strength of an Ogre. 19 is the Strength of a Hill Giant. You're telling me your Half-Orc has Giant Strength through non-magical means? Get out of here with that garbage.
This is about role playing. It's not about making everything all matchy matchy same same.
Seriously, if the game is going to allow a range of cultures and technologies for players it should allow that some choices *should be* inferior to others. If you chose to play a Jester you are choosing your handicap. Why is this a problem? The more limited character is challenge. It's fun. It's no different than someone who wants to try a solo run or someone else who wants an all Mage party. It is good game design to allow a range of challenges.
The very thing that makes some choices good MUST make some choices bad. The only other option is to make those choices meaningless.
But for me, the primary reason for choosing a class and kit is because of what it suggests for the character. If I chose to play a Wizard Slayer it's because I want to play the Wizard Slayer. If I chose the cleric it's because I want to play the holy man. Figuring out their abilities and weaknesses is what makes it a game and a challenge.
And again, I see no reason to be so player centric as to say every kit even has to be a player character option. I see the world has having a life and a reality apart from JUST the player character. Some kits can exist purely to show why something shouldn't be a certain way (*gee, the spearman/savage needs at least a three level advantage to equal a more sophisticated armored swordsman, interesting*) ...
Maybe I want to play Operation Barbarossa just to see exactly how many squadrons of Polikarpovs it takes to equal a single Messerschmitt....
Of course the game can punish you for venturing into a dragon's lair at level 1; that's not the same thing. I would argue that for a majority of players, effectiveness considerations trump role-playing considerations. Very few players would make a fighter specialized in daggers, for the sake of a role-playing idea, for instance, because other weapons are plain better. So a game that would give you plainly superior classes for role-playing's sake would actually have most players selecting only the better classes and limiting their choice for effectiveness reasons. If you take effectiveness out of the equation by making every class equally effective (albeit in various ways), then in effect you let players select their class for role-playing or gameplay style reasons.
So in my view, a good role-playing game is one that lets players select their class for role-playing or style considerations and provides a consistently challenging and interesting experiencing in all cases. On one hand, if the game allows these choices it should make them challenging and fun in their own ways. On the other, by going solo or all-mages, the player is very explicitely limiting his options and the game should be more difficult because of it, on that I agree. Very few will do that because it's obvious that it's going to be very inefficient. But there's no way of knowing without extensive metagaming that this or that kit is more or less useful. And there's still no reason at all to choose plainly inferior classes, i.e. why would you play a non-kit Cleric when kit Clerics only have advantages? Class choice has be a set of tradeoffs that you make rather than a metagame of selecting the one the game wants you to choose or else.
I think the key here is player choice and player information. Frustration arises from lack of information and misinformation. I played the Elder Scrolls Online as a Night Blade Stamina Build (i.e. weapons focused) because the game promised that all classes and all strategies were balanced and viable (which is crucial in a MMO), so imagine my frustration when I grinded my way to the endgame (admittedly I had lots of fun doing it), and discovered that my class and build was literally inferior in every way to an equivalent Magicka build, and elite teams tackling endgame content refused to even accept non-Magicka DPS builds. Similarly @ChildofBhaal599 discovered that his class (Templar) could not even solo high level content because it lacked sufficient damage output.
The problem there was not necessarily that our builds were weak (though to be honest, as much as a roleplayer as I am, I get very competitive in multiplayer games, so I'd never intentionally pick a weak class/build in a multiplayer game) but rather we were mislead into believing that our characters would be viable, and it was very annoying when that proved to be incorrect.
Thus I think it was entirely possible for a game (especially singleplayer one) to provide lots of options, some stronger than others to help create a less artificial and more immersive environment, and not anger powergamers if they provided accurate information about the strengths and weaknesses of each class in context of the game.
Imagine a game has 5 strong and balanced character classes, and then added 10 weaker ones, what has the powergamer lost? Nothing, he was always going to use one of the 5 strong classes if he cared about efficiency, but now the world is more organic for the roleplay-driven players and there are more options overall, which must be a good thing for all. (The powergamers are also those who are most likely to pick a very weak class to challenge themselves.)
I keep going back to the Total War series for this, but I think it is relevant here. My favourite game in that series is Shogun2: Total War. The game is set entirely in Japan, so the differences between factions are fairly minor in terms of units and technology. Starting difficulty varies drastically depending on which faction you pick.
If you choose Chosokabe or Shimazu, you start from a relatively safe and defensible region to grow from, and your faction bonuses are pretty powerful (bow and sword bonuses respectively). You could also start as the Tokugawa, who start the game as vassals to a stronger clan (half of your income goes to him), and under attack by yet another stronger clan. They also have fairly weak faction bonuses and their homeland is one of the most indefensible parts of Japan with all manner of dangerous and aggressive neighbours rampaging across the place. Why would anyone pick the Tokugawa? Because it is precisely the differences in circumstances, strengths and weaknesses, that makes the game interesting where otherwise all the factions are pretty much the same. Of course the game tells you upfront that going Chosokabe and Shimazu will be easy, whilst Tokugawa are very hard, so you shouldn't be surprised if/when things go pear-shaped in your first attempt. Incidentally the Tokugawa are historically the guys who won.
@Zeckul Daggers are actually not terrible in 2nd ed, its a very versatile proficiency, both melee and rannged. You can definately do okay, but I agree most players at first glance see (well, those who know math) 2.5 average damage vs 4.5, and decide immediately that daggers are inferior. In PnP mind you, some DMs restrict weapon posession in cities I know, much like real world, meaning a fighter can't legally go around town with a longsword, but can have a few daggers without being questioned or bothered... this is an RP thing though. Not as many gamers are serious about practicalities I agree, so some potential is wasted.
I think in a game in which RP is intended to be significant, some more leeway is tolerable on weaker but interesting choices, but in games like WoW, expect weaker builds to be anathema. In BG even, WS, Beastmaster and Shapeshifter were all 'cool RP ideas', but in practice were very handicapped. A first timer trying one of these will be unfairly challenged, so they either shouldn't be immediately available (ie some games have unlockable options, though RPs not so often), or something needs to warn them "this is a sub-optimal".
Now, there is much to be said though for a game that lets you select 'feats', in whatever form... In BG, Single Weapon Style and Sword and Shield both have VERY limited utility, to the point many see them as lousey picks. TWF is just mechanicaly better, and at least THS has strong weapon choices to reward it. This IMHO is even more problematic than daggers, which can have significant advantages, especially early. The easier solution here is to nerf TWF, as its significantly better, but buffing the other two would work too.
Game design seems to have certain tropes we see very often, ie dual wielding is almost always best. In the real world, dual wielding is pretty impractical, even with practice. Its not exactly impossible, but is silly how many games freely buy into this. A nice option in some gaming systems is to allow a warrior that utilizes lighter weapons and relies on dexterity over brute force. 2nd Ed did not allow this type of build, due to straightjacketing roles, which brings me to my final point; in an organic system, can you really expect a game to hold your hand for each pick? Feat trees help, encouraging a player to follow a path, but a warrior that stubbornly refuses to specialize in many games is very, very ineffective, but forcing specialization as strictly as 2nd Ed tends to can feel very limiting.
A work around is including a blurb of text for each ability/choice, and perhaps even an auto-chooser or 'recommended pick', with a bit of explanation. Civilization had something like this on low difficulty, sometimes the advice was bad, but you could ignore it. It could help a beginner a great deal if they are told Bronze Working is a great tech to get fairly early... You will likely get swamped if you don't research it. Obviously at higher difficulties, nobody should be having their hand held anymore, and the game should reward good choices, while brutally punishing really bad ones. But at the lowest difficulty, the game should be oriented towards rewarding good choices more than punishing mistakes. Rewards are where the fun early on, challenge pays dividends later. Games that just stomp new players are not usually as popular, though they can generate a cult following if they are hard enough.
nowadays, you in fact do have a lot of choice too. although as DPS you want to focus on light and medium armor, you can put in 2 extra heavy because there is a really difference in armor value. some abilities now have stamina morphs so stamina players have more options. the only thing that continues to be at a disadvantage (and greater than ever) is hybrid stamina/magicka. for that I think they would just need to stop the increase in damage for abilities that use them based on your maximum of them.
and since from what I can tell this is a discussion on balance, I'll pitch in on that and not ESO. i am absolutely cool with imbalanced single player games, as they can provide challenges and it often times makes sense for a mage to be better than a fighter at killing things. however, I do need balance in a multiplayer game, as otherwise players are put at a disadvantage. of course, you know all about that from the above experience. however, would you have stuck it out if this were a single player game? in our multiplayer BG game not all of us are a mage, and in fact only you are a mage of the created characters. i still have fun with my fighter/thief though because it is all about the roleplay, not too mention my time will come in TOB!
I would offer, as an alternative to your suggestion, that RPGs don't need to provide intentionally weaker classes to cater to what we call the "role-player" and I expect PoE to be an example of that. One thing PoE does very differently is to not give any combat XP. Therefore, characters who suck at combat can still thrive as long as they can do the actions that provide XP in the game, some of which involve excelling in combat and many of which involve excelling at other things. So if your character can persuade, or climb obstacles, or spot secret passages, or craft tools, or conjure divine help, etc., he may not be good at killing stuff but there's still a challenging, albeit different, way for him to do well in this game.
Now again, all this is from the bias of someone who considers the PnP game first. I want the CRPG to play as much like PnP as possible. So part of that is moving the difficulty slider off of "core" for any reason really irks me. I would much rather explore the challenges of the game from a consistent game difficulty and just play around with stronger or weaker characters.
Part of why the IE games have been so appealing to me is they let me do exactly that. I can play a whole game with character combinations I would likely never try in a PnP game. I see it all as a giant simulation. Funny, since I first got into D&D because my friends wanted to try something different from the more historical simulations I typically prefer. Now I'm playing a D&D sim....
As I said I'm curious to see what IE fans will think of balance and role-playing in PoE, but only time will tell.
With that having been said, I found the video about 'Imperfect balance' to be quite informative.
And let me tell you, it is REALLY hard to have fallen so in love with Dark Souls as I have.