Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Lium]

And yet the Old School Runescape is still going strong and it's combat system is simplicity incarnate. Since I grew up with Runescape, I never saw the appeal over pushing dozens of buttons to do damage vs pushing one. When I played Halo PC, only 3 buttons did damage, shoot, grenade and melee and that game was a masterpiece. I don't see Homogenization as a big problem. Players do want simplicity and accessibility, but I also think players want more variety in the challenge levels. At the moment it's a bit binary on the difficulty, normal / extreme. Some players I think are willing to engage in more challenging content, without it being an extreme level fight.

Yeah, this is the side of the argument that I fall on. People are always complaining about simplicity and lack of difficulty in their games, and also, lack of originality and innovation, and yet, the market has shown consistently that whenever an MMO does come out that caters to a more hardcore crowd (WildStar) or is original and unique (The Chronicles of Spellborn) no one plays it, and the games are shutdown.

I'm all for challenging content but it should be optional like it is now. Savage and Extreme content are there with great rewards if you want to try and tackle it. But the normal mode of the game focuses mainly on the story, which for me is perfect. I do agree class identity is something I miss in older games like vanilla WoW. And I never understood why anyone would cry about nerfing another class in PvE. PvE is coop. You're all on the same side trying to down the same bosses.

PvP, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. That's where class balance is MUCH MORE important, in my opinion.