Are unbalanced/convoluted rule systems more fun?

[aleph]

I am replaying (or actually for the first time seriously playing) Arcanum and like the broken character system quite a lot. I also enjoyed 2nd edition ADnD and the systems from the Might and Magic games. Both system are pretty byzantine. On the other hand, I really can't stand the streamlined and balanced to the death shit you find in most MMOs and in newer DnD editions (sans splatbooks). Somehow to much balance kills the fun and makes every character play essentially the same.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

There's good balance and shit balance. Shit balance is making everyone feel the same by not having variation in builds / choices, good balance is making no one effectively be the same by not having obviously superior builds / choices (because people like winning and will flock to that one)

 

[aleph]

sounds good on paper, but have you actually ever seen this "good balance" in a game?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Any game that doesn't have a playstyle that is clearly superior to the other choices, I guess. I didn't really enjoy knowing that my mage in Arcanum could just take Harm and my life would be a hundred times easier.

I actually like the way they do in MMOs because they have to make sure everyone is useful in some way.

 

[Daemongar]

sounds good on paper, but have you actually ever seen this "good balance" in a game?

Since you are asking the question, define good balance. Sounds like you want examples that meet some predifined idea. Let it out. I think UW1 is pretty well balanced, how would you counter that?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

I decided not to bother with Drakensang because the system seemed way too complex and intimidating to me. I figured learning all this crap just for one game isn't worth my time.

Anyway, Arcanum isn't complex at all when compared to other RPGs, even D&D.

 

[muffildy]

unbalanced

Id say it depends on what your facing in the game.
If i have to fight against hordes of moderate enemies with the occasional unbelievably impossible boss then i would like to have some unbalanced abilities to counter with; for example, see dragon age 2 ancient rock wraith fight is quite impossible; i ended u having to cheat and give my characters 500 more hp to survive since my glass cannons got iced in the first 20 seconds every time. So in this particular battle, a shield of beholder reflecting err i mean rock wraith deflecting would be awesome.

 

[octavius]

I'd say it depends on wether it's a single player or multi player game. In Multi player games you need balance, while it's not that important in single player games. I play single player games and I find games that are not 100% mathematically balanced and supersymmetric to be more fun than those that try to be. If something is too unbalanced in a single player game you don't have too exploit it, while in multi playe games you can bet every one uses that same build, units and tactics if one is statistically stronger then the others.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Unbalanced systems are good so long as they are unbalanced to reward players with good planning or tactics. The bad ones are those who reward the player picking Harm at character creation or crafting a Balanced Sword in the first town with god mode.

 

[aleph]

sounds good on paper, but have you actually ever seen this "good balance" in a game?

Since you are asking the question, define good balance. Sounds like you want examples that meet some predifined idea. Let it out. I think UW1 is pretty well balanced, how would you counter that?

I meant good balance in the way clockwork knight described it, a lot of balanced but distinctively different builds.

Anyway, Arcanum isn't complex at all when compared to other RPGs, even D&D.

I didn't say complex, I said convoluted, not doing things more complicated than necessary


I don't think that balance is that crucial in MMos either, as long as you have builds that excel only in one or two scenarios and not at everything. Like, say a tank build that is better than any other build when fighting dragons but totally sucks when fighting beholders. This of course requires that respecing is not trivially possible.

 

[poetic codex]

I decided not to bother with Drakensang because the system seemed way too complex and intimidating to me. I figured learning all this crap just for one game isn't worth my time.

Anyway, Arcanum isn't complex at all when compared to other RPGs, even D&D.

Drakensang's rule system is complex and was fun to learn for someone like me who exclusively played D&D, BUT the actual gameplay itself is repetitive and quite easy once you get the hang of it.

There are no formations, and enemies can run right through your warriors to get to the mage in the back so there's no tactics involved in the combat. Health points and mana points regenerate very quickly.

So while the background rule system might be complex, the actual gameplay (what the user behind the keyboard does) is in fact quite simplistic and repetitive.

 

[Ruprekt]

Yes if it's a choice you make at the beginning of the game like a character class. Then it's akin to a difficulty setting only more interesting.

No if it's a case of bad design aka 'gimped' vs 'uber' 'builds'.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I meant good balance in the way clockwork knight described it, a lot of balanced but distinctively different builds.

Well, you added that second "balance" there, which is why it sounds weird ("good balance is balance"). By good balance, I meant enough variation that people will feel compelled to choose according to their preferences instead of just following the clearly superior path, thus feeling the same. It doesn't necessarily mean that the ugly brawler should be just as good at dealing with conflicts as the charismatic sniper, just that playing as the former feels like a playstyle preference instead of gimping yourself because the game clearly favors the latter.

In other words, I kind of agree with you anyway. I was only bitching about how the way you worded it it was as if you thought of balance as an inherently bad thing, and the more imbalanced the better - but I think that when a system isn't very well balanced people will mostly flock to those superior choices, thus everyone will feel the same (since I mentioned my Arcanum mage earlier: there really is no reason not to take Harm if you're a mage, unless you're very adamant about using something else, bordering on self challenge - which leads to most mages beginning the game with Harm spam)

 

[Johannes]

Basically good design/good balance is that the players skill determines success or failure.
If there's something that's too easy to exploit, so the game becomes trivially easy, that's shit.
If the game is so "balanced" that you cannot screw up whatever way you try to proceed in it, that's boring too.
Of these the first is still more salvageable - you could just tweak up some numbers and it might get balanced and interesting (or just give self imposed restrictions like "no harm"), but a bland game is still bland even if you try to rebalance it.

Bland system might be easier to balance than an interesting one, but that doesn't make balance inherently bland.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What makes the imbalance fun is the large degree of power you gain by upgrading from default choices to ideal ones. As long as there are multiple high end options, this is a good thing. Having unarmed combat do ludicrous broken amounts of damage compared to default swordplay is awesome; as long as tweaked out swordplay and archery are also up there. To take an example from a different genre; fully upgraded zerglings dumped on a building via overlords can demolish it about as rapidly as some seige tanks deployed on a cliff overlooking it. Both are extremely enjoyable compared to sending generic ranged units in through the front door and pecking away. The fun is seeing your chosen specialization having an exaggerated effect.

The problem with balanced mmo style choices is the fact that there's so little difference between them. The warrior that specializes in dealing critical hits deals them 20% more often and they do 15% more damage, while the one specialized in attack rate hits 25% more often. Woo. The numbers should be more like 600% more critical hits for 800% more damage vs 900% attack speed. Even if it works out to the same raw dps in both cases, either way you feel like the abilities you chose are having a large impact.

Immeasurable benefits like attack range or movement speed are good too, for muddying the waters when it comes to which path is 'best', since it's impossible to argue the point without any raw numbers to work with.

 

[aleph]

I meant good balance in the way clockwork knight described it, a lot of balanced but distinctively different builds.

Well, you added that second "balance" there, which is why it sounds weird ("good balance is balance").

true I kinda screwed that sentence up, it was actually meant to read:

"I meant good balance in the way clockwork knight described it, a lot of [strike]balanced[/strike] more or less equally powerful (whatever that exactly means in the context of the game) but distinctively different builds."

I was only bitching about how the way you worded it it was as if you thought of balance as an inherently bad thing, and the more imbalanced the better

Didn't mean that t all. To me balance is not bad, just (usually) boring.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Having unarmed combat do ludicrous broken amounts of damage compared to default swordplay is awesome

Speaking of that: a funny read about party balance in FF1.

http://web.archive.org/web/200512291317 ... ties.shtml

bonus: http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/FFbb.html

 

[Excidium]

Some balance is needed. RPGs are fun with a varied group of characters, but nobody wants to play a gimped character.

 

[DraQ]

I think it's not about unbalanced or convoluted systems being better, but about compulsive balancing and simplification simply destroying all the intricacies and relations to in-universe stuff.

 

[Zomg]

AD&D 1st/2nd edition aren't really like that, there isn't much customization past class choice unless you're talking about some late TSR splatbook. With the base rules you aren't even supposed to worry strategically about point buying stats, you just roll and go with it. Sucking or not comes down to luck and basic class choice, not build.

Now 3rd edition is really the pinnacle of convoluted unbalanced spreadsheet autism build gaming. Unbalanced as in all choices are sure as fuck not equally useful, powerful or interesting. You are supposed to put a lot of thought into multiclassing and whatever other bullshit. In CRPGs I feel like this is a recipe for being like, "Ahhh bullshit my build doesn't work on demons/undead/whatever, I had no way to know they were 99% of the enemies in the game and now I am a gimp." That kind of character development philosophy also sucks in MMOs that have constant balance patches that fuck over builds constantly, and anything that you figure out that works really well will be gone in the next patch so just copy something safely mediocre off the internet.

 

[Destroid]

I think I've played a game (probably ARPG) which during class selection specifically says that some are harder than others.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I don't mind unbalanced stuff all too much, unless it rapes the replayability of the game by making one build viable or something,

but I do mind if all the different classes end up playing the same via the sort of balancing that makes all of them indistinguishable with reworded abilities

that is far worse because at least I know there'll be a variety of different experiences with the former, most people will end up knowing who's going easy mode by taking a mage anyway, and if you can rape a top tier class with a supposedly unoptimal character in clever ways so much the better

Before stuff should be balanced there should be the basic agreement that the personality of a class or race or what have you should be retained above all else

if they don't know what that actually means and think the visual effects or description is personality then they have failed and are also probably modern game designers

 

[bhlaab]

Sometimes. Probably wouldn't enjoy Morrowind as much if it wasn't so exploitable.

 

[Gord]

Guess it depends. As has been mentioned in a singleplayer game it's not that bad usually.
Since Drakensang has been mentioned, too:
I did play the PnP version (the older edition, closer to the old Realms of Arkania) which did work quite nice in terms of balancing if you modified the character creation rules a little bit (and did not play a priest, which anyway was probably not exactly meant to be a playable character in this system).
Still different classes felt different enough. Then again, in a PnP game this might anyway not be the problem as there is always some LARPing involved.

 

[laclongquan]

I think Icewind Dale 1 is pretty good in term of balance. You got several classes that develop nicely if you build them the obvious way: Paladin with Long sword and shield, bow, ranger with bow, etc... However, if you put thoughts into dual class and multi-class, they become powerful as hell.

You will need to work semi-hard to mess up builds. And pretty-hard to find uber build.

IWD is a nice blend of convolutedness and straightforwardness. IWD2 on the other hand is too convoluted it take fun out of character creation.