Would you accept homogenisation for balance and fun?

#1 - July 19, 2012, 6:01 p.m.

[As ever, keep it constructive and please fully read the thread before commenting]

I've generally seen this as being one of the things that the devs have been thinking about a lot for awhile now, whether or not the community would accept classes being more similar if it made the game more fun and balanced.

In my mind I probably would, but in my thinking is that I don't really find it fun when the class I enjoy playing goes from broken 1 patch to overpowered the next. It's been an entire expansion since the last time I actually considered Warrior's to be fun.

In MoP more "homogenisation" is coming with things such as Rets getting a slow, if you speak to the vast majority of Rets they'll say it's about time and how much they've needed it (and generally I agree) but what happened when the rest of the community learned this it was all "oh homogenisation again", "wow is getting boring, all classes are the same etc".

So I though let's have a proper discussion on this.

Would you prefer if every class was completely unique, but it often meant that some classes would be bottom of proverbial pile, imbalances were rife, things would polarise quite often (1 classes goes from best to worst) each patch and so on.

Or

Classes were very very similar, with only a few distinctive abilities/signature abilities which separated each class from another, but the game was a lot more balanced, you could play the class you enjoyed and not have to worry about suddenly becoming much worse than any other class.

And yes, I know the vast majority of people would prefer a happy medium, unique classes while still being balanced and fun, but for the sake of argument we're using the 2 extremes.

Nakatoir

Community

#122 - July 20, 2012, 5:03 p.m.

Would you prefer if every class was completely unique, but it often meant that some classes would be bottom of proverbial pile, imbalances were rife, things would polarise quite often (1 classes goes from best to worst) each patch and so on.

This extreme offers the most diverse play style, letting a player choose the class they enjoy and you can look at your character and say “That is class X”, which is pretty awesome being able to distinguish yourself like that. :D This can sometimes also create points where your class may sadly feel either too strong or weak which is something that is not enjoyed.

Classes were very very similar, with only a few distinctive abilities/signature abilities which separated each class from another, but the game was a lot more balanced, you could play the class you enjoyed and not have to worry about suddenly becoming much worse than any other class.

This offers you a less distinct play style with the class you are playing. While you may feel all of the classes are in good balance, which would be great, you would end up looking at two classes of the same role and think to yourself, “Well, what’s the difference?” :( This does not really feel like something that offers an enjoyable experience.

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I can understand why for your discussion you have decided to choose these two extremes, so you can find where the opinions of everyone lie. But from this thread it can be seen that nice balance with the ability to distinguish your class is what most of you would like to see, why not swing the discussion more in this direction?

We hope that you keep up the constructive discussion and look forward to anything else you have to say. :)