21/09/2019

Balanced

As we're approaching four weeks since Classic's launch, I have three tauren ladies in their mid-twenties. It's not how I expected things to go at all (I very much expected to be much more focused on my main), but I'm having fun. I do want to level up, but I keep feeling the pull of other attractions.

One thing I've found very striking about playing Classic is how well-balanced everything feels. Expressing it like this may raise some eyebrows, since balance is usually only associated with things like raid dps and PvP, and I certainly wouldn't claim that Vanilla WoW was all that great in those areas.

But when exactly did we decide that those two aspects of an MMO needed to be balanced above all else? What about things like levelling speed, difficulty of soloing or profession rewards? Why should these be treated as also-rans?

Almost everything in Classic's levelling game feels extremely thoughtfully balanced against each other. One-on-one combat is not difficult by default, but you can dial the difficulty up or down not by selecting some sort of UI toggle, but by choosing to engage mobs that are above or below you in level. Soloing is comfortable, but the world is threatening enough that grouping usually feels beneficial anyway.

While levels are your primary progression mechanic, they are far from the only thing to care about. There are flight paths to unlock, weapon skills to level, professions to work on, class-based progression mechanics like a shaman's totems, a hunter's pets or a rogue's lock-picking to consider. All of these matter and everything feels logically tied together.

Take something as simple as money. Having gone through the same starter zones multiple times in quick succession, I found it notable how they are designed in such a way that as you complete that very first handful of quests, you should - on average - have just enough money to afford your new spells as you level up, but nothing else. You may have a few copper left, or be just a little bit short of an upgrade, but you'll likely be close.

And this continues as you level up, as you'll probably find that for a long time you'll only have just enough money to get by, and always find yourself longing for more - again, on average. If you spend all your time grinding mobs you'll probably be somewhat better off financially compared to someone who's trying to level a crafting profession as they go along.

Also, something as simple as which class you play can make a difference: For example I noticed that my shaman has a much harder time with money, being expected to upgrade a bazillion different totems every other level, than my druid or hunter, who'll often have less than half a dozen new spells to train. Still, the trend is clear that you're given enough to get by but are always left longing for more.

As another example of balance, let's look at something like fishing. It's a secondary profession, purely optional, and I'm sure many people skip it altogether because they consider it boring. However, it does have benefits that make it worth your time: It's an easy source of food, both to level your cooking and just to have something to eat if you're a class that doesn't have any healing abilities. Most hunter pets also eat fish, making it a great source of free pet food as well. Alchemists need certain rare fish for a couple of their recipes, and if you seek out fishing pools you can also dredge up kelp (another alchemy reagent) and crates full of money, leather and cloth bolts for tailors.

Nothing feels bolted on and like it's just intended to be busywork: all systems are interconnected in ways that make them extremely engaging. It's something that I haven't seen done this well in any more modern MMO that I've tried. Seems that the original dev team weren't just lucky with their timing and all that, but also actually knew their craft very well. Who'd have thought it?

12 comments:

  1. I am at 5 characters closing in on level 20... something is going to have to give on that front... and spend about half my time solo and half in a group. Even with the problem of needing drops for everybody, the group effort does tend to go better. But I do still feel viable solo, though more so with my hunter than my rogue I think.

    Money. Every time I think I am saving up, have more than a gold, I hit an even numbered level and find my skills drain me out. My pally skills at 18 were past 30 silver each. Going to have to work on money at some point.

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    1. Money is extra interesting because the economy in Classic is quite weird. Used to be that taking a gathering profession while levelling was an easy ticket to lots of gold, but with how overcrowded the servers are, I've found many materials basically going for vendor price - which is not nothing, but a lot less than we're used to I guess.

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  2. The busywork thing is really telling. How much of late-game activities since MoP (at least) have felt like busywork designed to keep us playing a subscription fee?

    Classic has the same sort of things, but they don't tempt you with welfare epics or other enticements. It's just, like, you wanna eat? Go get some fish! I dig that.

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    1. Exactly! I'm pretty sure that from a purely numerical point of view, Classic has as many time sinks as your average MMO - if not more! But they all feel like a natural consequence of the world, so they aren't nearly as annoying.

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  3. I totally agree with all of this. It's becoming apparent to me that Vanilla WoW, at the stage reproduced in Classic, had been designed to within an inch of its life. Almost nothing is left to chance. Everything is a jigsaw piece that fits with something else. Everything is logical.
    I do believe that someone even timed the quests to ensure that the relative number of kills vs drop rates vs solo vs group all averaged out to be roughly equal.

    I said in a comment at Endgame Viable (I think it was) that Classic has a ryhthm to it and it does. It's not just that it feels comfortable - it has it's own timing that ticks away underneath like a metronome. It's something I think most of the WoW clones and almost all of the imports either didn't understand or were unable to replicate. It's like precision clockwork.

    The introduction of dailies and all the other mechanical tropes of the later expansions throw the timing off and nothing really feels natural any more. Applies to all the games that use them. It encourages drop-in, drop-out gameplay rather than settle back and enjoy gameplay. Not a great trade-off in my opinion.

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    1. I think it's the comparison with the private servers that's really driving the point home for me. They were decent emulations of Vanilla and a lot of fun, but considering how much reverse-engineering was involved in building them, a lot of things like numbers and drop rates were more or less guesswork.

      Seeing the content with its real numbers in Classic, the difference is noticeable in the detail as everything feels just that little bit better. On private, some mobs were boring to fight as they lacked abilities, others hit way too hard just because someone vaguely recalled them being tough. Some quests had atrocious drop rates, again presumably because someone recalled them being a pain. In Classic all those things are that much smoother, showing just how much thought must have gone into getting them just right in the first place.

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  4. It's a significant plus of the game. In our small guild everyone has three or four alts and in the static quartet we have alt characters for a sub-group trio to play if the fourth isn't around, plus some of them have solo characters too. We've divvied up the gathering and crafting professions for efficiency's sake.

    The danger with this style of profession synergy, which I love, is that it makes the solo playstyle a lot less tenable long-term. Everytime I go back to LOTRO I end up feeling like I'm drowning under alts and their crafting professions as there's always little things needed between them as I level one or another. Classic WoW is the same but I can at least rely on guild mates to cover a lot of the work.

    Having this balance is so important in MMORPGs for long-term engagement and making the world feel more interesting, but it does present a threat to the more dedicated soloist. Of course I could, and have in the past, join a guild (Kin) in LOTRO to solve this very problem but for whatever reason I've always wanted to "do all the professions" in that game - I just find the crafting system to be so very engaging.

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    1. I didn't play LOTRO for long enough to really get into the crafting there, so I can't judge it. I think the way it's done in Classic is good though, because most of the recipes don't require materials from other professions, so you can still level up your skill on your own, but the closer you get to max level the more beneficial/important it becomes to get things from other professions.

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  5. One of the things from John Staats book I picked up was just how much Blizzard would iterate on things. They didn't care so much about being original as being the most polished. Add to that a willingness to wait on design until most of the engine and world development was done and they would have a game that fit what they could actually support well.

    I would also say that Classic would feel more balanced than launch day Vanilla as Blizzard had 11 patches to fix things and hone the leveling experience. It definitely feels more organic in the pull to keep playing than the various other methods they'd introduced along the way to adjust to their changing player base.

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    1. One of the things that jumped out at me was how Blizz would take things that already existed and make them better. I remember reading a blog post back when it first came out (long since gone) that was absolutely bonkers about how there was no loading screen between zones. In EQ, at the time, if you went from one zone to the next, you had a moment where everything glitched and loaded. That was one thing, albeit minor, that Blizz implemented that made people go, er, "wow".

      It's funny in retail how it seems like they're going the other direction. Someone comes out with a REALLY popular addon, and in an expansion or two you see its functionality implemented in the core game - only with far fewer features than the original. Seems kind of regressive to me.

      It's funny to me that if, as people say, pre-BC final patch was the epitome of Vanilla, then they've been kind of regressing ever since. Everything in BC and onward has been a step towards current Retail, starting with BC dailies.

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    2. I finally got my own copy of the WoW Diary and started on it yesterday! I'll probably make a post about it once I'm done.

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  6. > But when exactly did we decide that those two aspects of an MMO needed to be balanced above all else?

    TBC, unfortunately.

    But... isn't that my role to complain about how the "raiding above everything" focus negatively impacts the game? :-)

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