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Darkfall Unholy Wars custom roles raise balance concerns
After relaunching with set roles, Darkfall Unholy Wars recently introduced custom roles to the game, allowing players to take on any combination of abilities to build a truly unique character. If you guessed from that sentence that there are probably certain balance issues to be worked out, you'd be correct. The community team recently posted on Facebook to address concerns from players regarding balance, noting that it was inevitable that such a major patch would have some issues to be worked out. Rather than patching immediately, the team intends to wait for a few more days to see how matters develop before addressing balance issues. The posting also states that the game is based around large-scale combat, so duel performance is not necessarily indicative of the game's overall state of balance. A full update regarding balance adjustments and bug fixes should be available next week. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Darkfall Unholy Wars answers questions on custom roles
In the original version of Darkfall, skill selection was a wide-open field. When the game relaunched as Darkfall Unholy Wars, the role system was introduced, narrowing the field of options significantly. Now custom roles are incoming, and that means that players have questions about how the new mechanics will work. Those questions are being answered in a three-part series of community Q&A sessions, with the first two parts available now. Some mechanics are being removed -- Wobble, for instance, was introduced solely to balance roles, but with the new system the developers no longer need balancing specifically between roles. There have been significant adjustments made to some skills, in part to avoid the situation wherein everyone has a ranged kill skill and super-powerful healing. Despite this, the answers also point out that most characters will actually see a net increase in power overall. If you want to know more, feel free to glance at the full rundown of answers for more details.
The Soapbox: The illusion of balance
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Somewhere, on a lone computer in a lonely room, sits the archetype for a balanced MMO, one in which every set of abilities in a skill-based MMO is just as useful as every other set of abilities and every class in a class-based game is just as potent as every other class. There are no disparities in terms of power level, no massive gaps in gearing, and no issues with the specific fights. It is an entirely balanced machine. And as long as we're creating a myth with no place in reality, let's assume that it's being guarded by unicorns. That's the problem with balance -- it's an idea that doesn't actually work in a real environment. We talk a lot about wanting games to have balanced systems, and there are players devoted to declaring with great fervor that classes aren't balanced against one another, but balance is such a hazy concept that no matter how much you want a balanced game, it doesn't really exist.
PvP questions answered for Star Trek Online
One of the oft-raised issues that Star Trek Online has faced has been PvP and its implementation. With a faction almost wholly devoted to PvP, some iffy use of maps and missions, balance problems and other concerns... people might argue it's not the biggest issue, but it's certainly a sizable one. So the most recent installment of Ask Cryptic for the game has centered around the time-honored art of facing down your virtual opponents. It starts off with a couple of small disappointments for some: open PvP regions and one-on-one combat are something the development team would like to implement, but it's not as high on their priority list at the moment. Good news is included, however. There are plans for better rewards for PvP, both including a wider variety of weapons and improvements to earning consumables in both space and ground combat. There are plans to try and expand team sizes for PvP maps as well as helping to distinguish between allied and enemy ships. Most importantly, there are balance changes coming to fix certain ships (such as Science Vessels) that are holding up a little too well in PvP. Take a look at the full list of questions, which should be of interest to any Star Trek Online player that enjoys mixing it up with other players.
