Not to be possible, but definitely to be feasible. This really depends on how many races you have implemented, though.



Restarting, going away/coming back, "and so forth" are not viable solutions to a balance problem.



No, in my example the black man "wins" in the 2nd situation. However, certainly you aren't meaning to imply that this example is fair and balanced as long as there's some other employer out there somewhere who is prejudiced against the white man?

There is a fundamental difference between players and characters which I believe you are overlooking here. Players evolve, adapt, and learn. Algorithms do not.

All things being equal means all things inside the mechanics of the game system… if you and I have identical skills, identical gear, and whatever other variables exist in the game, victory will be determined by the skills of the human player sitting at the keyboard. If we're both fighters, and your ogre has an in-game advantage over my halfling, I will expect to lose more often than win, unless I can overcome this in-game handicap with my brain.

We may start out equal in personal cleverness, knowledge, and skill…. but if we keep fighting, whomever is the underdog will probably adapt and learn to work around the hard-coded difference because they have the incentive to do so. The player with the advantage will not (usually) keep pace.

I hope you are not attempting to balance your game system for elements that exist outside the system itself. That is impossible unless you are looking at extremely narrow (contrived) situations, and will lead to a great deal of frustration.

Quick example: You implement a trivia game with a 30 second timeout. One player is given a 5 second penalty so they only get 25 seconds to ring in. The player with the penalty would normally have a hard time winning, since both players know the questions about the same on average. The disadvantaged player opens a web browser and uses google… suddenly they are always hitting the answer at the 5 second mark, which means the advantaged player only wins if they know the answer immediately. The underdog has evolved to beat the system. If both players were on an equal footing, neither would (probably) have thought to use google.



No, it isn't balanced. However, is this hiring manager the ONLY person in the city trying to fill a position? Can the black man not apply for a job at another firm, where they dislike white people and would hire him, perhaps even at a higher pay rate? If he really wants to work at this firm, can't he accept a lower position and work his way up?

Again, I say that the system is balanced. Both men can find equivalent jobs if they do their research and look around the city for the right work environments. If they insist on doing it the hard way, they can certainly suffer and perhaps fail. If those opportunities don't exist, the content people (city council?) haven't done their jobs.

Perhaps the real question to ask is, what purpose does race serve within your game system? If you dislike giving one side advantages or disadvantages, what should race contribute?

No, I quite explicitly stated that I was including player skill. "All things being equal" does not mean "all things being equal except human components". By and large, though, we're only speaking about advantages that are significant enough that they come with the possibility of not being able to be overcome by skill, because these are the only discrepancies that your typical player will usually even notice or care about during game-play. Anything else is rather irrelevant to discussions of balance, since if players don't care, it makes it rather pointless for administrators to care.



That's really only a situation that applies to the analogy and not to what the analogy was referring to, though. The corresponding action to this in our scenario would be a player leaving the game and finding a game where his race is the one with the unfair advantage. That's a rather ridiculous way of thinking about balance, if you ask me.



It's not that I dislike giving out advantages/disadvantages; it's that I don't like giving these out through constructs that aren't player controllable. As I said before, I think this kind of stuff belongs in skills, spells, etc. - not race.

Races can provide variety, and variety is the spice of life!



Each side can have advantages and disadvantages which balance out - it's when one race has an overall advantage over another that I have a problem with it. In my opinion, given a fight between two warriors, it shouldn't be possible to predict the outcome knowing only their races. Instead it should be possible to predict the outcome based on things which the players can change - their choice of weapons and armour, their tactics, etc. That way they're not forced to lose over and over against the same opponent.

Imagine there are four people playing Warcraft III - one plays Alliance, one Hoard, one Night Elves and the last one Undead. They each play three one-on-one games, playing each other in turn. Which player do you think will win the most games? The answer is impossible to predict based purely on their choice of race, yet each race clearly has its own advantages and disadvantages. That's the sort of principle I like to see applied to muds.

Of course it's also possible to have racial bonuses which don't have a direct impact on competitive activities, or which unlock new options rather than add power. Certain races can also require you to adopt a different playing style (like playing a wolf, a dragon or a cloud of bats, in my mud).

It does apply to the game though, and it also applies to our analogy. The corresponding action is NOT to leave the game, it's to accept that white manager #1 is difficult, and to go find a different manager to fight. In any reasonable game you are not going to only have ONE choice of what to fight, are you? If you're a halfling and are pretty sure you can't beat an ogre, why not go fight a dwarf? It's rather ridiculous to think that you should always win every single fight you get into, isn't it? If you were playing a fire elemental, would you expect to be able to swim? I wouldn't.

Let's try another example, City of Heroes. If you've ever played that particular MMO, you are no doubt familiar with how the game works. In short, you create a character and choose an archetype (think class). Then you choose primary and secondary power sets. You also choose an origin. Finally, you choose a starting city.

Your archetype is your class. If you choose a blaster, your primary power sets will all be related to shooting things. Your secondaries will all be ways to provide yourself with a small amount of control over your opponants, and/or a small amount of defense to yourself.

Your primary and secondary sets define all the skills you get, from level 1 to 50. They also define how you have specialized. If you create a fire/devices blaster, all of your primary attacks will be fire based. You will gain some auxillary control and minor damage from your devices secondary (most of which will be smashing or lethal damage), but you will be a fire blaster.

Your origin determins the types of drops you can use, and which low level contacts you get. Those contacts are the ones who give out missions, and for the first 12 levels or so, they determine which types of enemies you face. If you select a magical origin, you will be fighting "Circle of Thorns" more often than not. If you pick science, you'd face "Vashilok" frequently.

Here's where I make this relevant to our discussion. In CoH, your "race" is probably best described as a mixture of your primary power set and your origin. A fire blaster and a fire controller both use fire as their damage type, and if they both choose magic as their origin, they will both face the same type of enemies in the early part of the game.

As a fire blaster, I do fire damage. When I fight Hellions (a street gang in Atlas Park which has connections to the Circle of Thorns), I'm at a disadvantage becuase they all resist fire damage. This is a hard-coded thing I have to work around. Had I chosen anything else as a primary (ice, dark blast, energy, many others), I would have had an easier time with the missions from level 1 to 6. Had I chosen a different origin, I wouldn't have faced as many of them and had an easier time. Had I started in Galaxy City instead of Atlas Park, I would have faced their rival gang (the Skulls) who do NOT have resistance to fire.

However… when I get to level 25, I really become happy I chose fire because I get to fight Banished Panthon in the Dark Astoria zone. All of them are susceptible to fire damage and while everyone else is grumbling about how long it takes to kill the huge groups of pistol-wielding zombies, I can mow through them like butter.

My point is that the game, overall, is balanced. Choose ANY character, and there will be SOME things they cannot fight effectively, and there will be other things they have an easy time fighting. Just because I, as a fire blaster, can't beat an even-con Hellion boss NPC… that doesn't mean fire powers are gimped, it means I haven't chosen my opponents wisely, or that I (the player) haven't figured out a way to whittle him down despite my disadvantage.

I just can't accept that it is even desireable to create a game where all characters have exactly the same odds of winning against all opponant types. If that's the case, it removes an entire layer of thinking from the game, since at that point it really doesn't matter what you're fighting, just kill anything that moves and cons even level or less until you ding, then go train.

No. The manager in the analogy corresponds to the game, not the players within it. The other person (or people) competing with you to get the job correspond to the other players.



This is not a relevant example, since you're talking about fighting against computer-controlled enemies. There is no valid comparison between player and computer, as computers have no "skill". I'm not familiar with the game, but you made no mention of PvP, so I can't see any similarities to our discussion.



Again I'll reiterate: a game where this is the case is not what I'm suggesting. I'm only suggesting that these differences (advantages/disadvantages) only be applied to things the player can control - not race.

Maybe, maybe not. The point is that the comparison is not a good one.


I gave you fair warning that I wasn't going to touch this again, so I won't, until you convince me that the analogy is actually a good one in the first place. :wink:


But that is the logical conclusion of where you are heading. The equilibrium state in this utopian (dystopian?) world is one where everybody is the same against everything, because eventually players learn to control their characters well enough that no situation is a problem anymore.

Also, the player can control race, just as much as they can control their class or even where they level early on. It just happens to be a choice made very early on. Once you are level 50, you cannot change your level 5 decisions any more than you can change your character race. Decisions in the early levels can sometimes be as important if not more important than race (depending on what exactly race does). It is a decision in the player's hands, immutable just like very many other decisions the player makes.

We're all adults here; I think we can handle whatever it is you have to say on the topic. The analogy is as accurate as it gets, even if the subject matter seems controversial to you.



You're being a tad bit (read: absurdly, ridiculously, and extremely) dramatic if you think a game that doesn't have unfair race advantages leads to a dystopian world with identical players.



When I say "control", I'm referring to the choices available to a player in planning a strategy for different opponents. To fight opponent X, a player can control what skills or spells he uses, but he can't control what race he "uses".

It has little to do with the subject matter, although discussing the subject matter will bring in irrelevant and distracting real-world details. I already explained why it is not appropriate to compare the real world to fantasy worlds. The physics are completely different. A person's identity works completely differently. Too many things are drastically different for it to be a valid comparison. So like I said. . .


Amusing hyperbole aside, I didn't say everybody was identical. I said that everybody was the same against everything else. There is no longer different strategy depending on who/what you are facing if you have precisely even chances against everything.


I'm not sure how this makes race more special than any of the other immutable choices that are made during character creation and "early years".

I don't think anyone is suggesting that all characters have the same odds - only that the advantages and disadvantages shouldn't be based on something fixed. I don't see any benefit in having races work like this:



Painfully predictable fights are neither fun nor tactical. Instead I would rather see the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" element represented by in-game tactical options such as weapons, armour, fighting styles, etc. Things you can change.

Maybe the dwarf warrior beats your halfling warrior the first time around, because he's stronger and tougher. So the next time you have to fight him, you change your tactics to something more appropriate - lighter armour, as armour is unlikely to stop his huge axe anyway, and the lower encumbrance gives you a better chance of dodging; a spear, because it renders his favourite charge attack suicidal, and the longer reach puts his axe at a disadvantage; a low fighting style, because he tends to make a lot of overhead attacks which leave his legs and stomach unprotected.

You still have your advantages and disadvantages, but it's no longer a case of "I'm rock, he's scissors, therefore I win". Instead, each player has to actually think each time they fight an opponent.

That's not at all how I read it. I saw "finding a job" as the game, with the manager being your opponent, and other people being other players trying to "level" by defeating the manager.



City of Heroes does have PvP, and the same rules and limitations apply. However, when did we move from talking about all aspects of balance to ONLY PvP?

Even if this is true, how can you fail to see similarities? Does your hypothetical game exist ONLY to have two players online at once, both of whom do nothing but duel each other the whole time? Even if you replace NPC with PC in my examples above, if my halfling fighter sees a choice between a human fighter opponent, and an ogre fighter opponent, do I NOT have the choice of engaging the human?

I also object to the statement that computers have no skill. If that were the case, human players would win against computer opponents all the time. As I said before, they can't learn or adapt (well, not the current generation of games anyways), but to say they have no skill at all is dismissing them out of hand.



Well, then race might as well fall into the same category as description. There's nothing wrong with having races be cosmetic only, or having them simply yield different starting areas/equipment/etc… However, if there is any advantage, IN the game mechanics, to choosing one over another… you can't really balance it for every single instance. You can balance them overall (as I described in my City of Heroes example), but not for every possible pair.

As KaVir said, in World of Warcraft, you could equip a night elf warrior and an undead warrior with the same gear, same build, and same levels. Only the player skill and random dice rolls would determine the winner of that duel. However, if you replace the undead with a tauren, the tauren would probably win. Why? Because the night elf racial ability (shadowmeld – stealth as long as you don't move or use any abilities) isn't as useful in melee combat as the tauren's racial ability (stomp – 2 second stun in a radius around you). Does that mean the tauren is a better warrior in PvP? Nope… the elf can use shadowmeld to hide and wait for victims to walk by, or in the middle of a large fight to let the battle pass over him. However, in the limited case of our duel, yes, the tauren has an advantage.

I've not played World of Warcraft - the example I gave was Warcraft III. In Warcraft III there are certain plenty of ways to gain the upper hand, but you cannot predict who will win a game based purely on the race they've selected.

Quixadhal and I are not suggesting that. While your "RPS MUD" example was amusing, having to say over and over again that this is not simplistic RPS is getting a little old… :rolleyes:

I dont see how you switching that tauren out with an undead is making a huge difference. The undead is just as good, the real key is player skill with using the build, and rage management. If the elf pops all of their cooldowns, the undead doesnt, the Elf could very well get a much larger advantage. If the undead has allot of pots and can stay at range better, they could have a higher advantage. A good warrior being stunned for (most likely less then 2 seconds) isnt going to be effected much. The only way that might help is if they were both specced DPS, the stun goes off and the tauren warrior manages to get every major combo and cooldown off in less then 2 seconds, which wouldnt happen. Each have an advantage in a duel.

The elf, at the beginning of the duel can just meld and choose when they want to strike, the tauren has his stomp (frantice run/jump *could* save you), undead the awesome fear/stun breaks, etc etc. You are trying to paint a picture that doesnt really exist.

–Normally the only times that people look at race as an advantage is when talking about undead and their insane ability to get out of/break any fear effect in the game, repeatedly. Otherwise races largely have no bearing. Even the undead while getting a couple extra fear breaks equal out in the end against skill/build/eq/etc. Race is probably the lowest factor in determining wins, period.

-Syn

While this is just one particular game, it says an awful lot about this whole debate, and further calls into question the premise that making one race simply better at something than another race actually means that the one race will always beat the other.

Indeed, syn's post shows that strategy matters immensely when you want to overcome an opponent who has inherent advantages over you.

Quixadhal believes that a halfling warrior shouldn't be on equal footing with an orc warrior, while you've suggested that perhaps it is to be expected that some classes steamroll over others.

So what you're suggesting is indeed an outcome that can be predicted based purely on race and/or class. The degree of that prediction will obviously depend on the specific implementation, but even a relatively small degree of predictability based solely on race/class is something I would find undesirable in a game.

It would be difficult at best to make such predictions because of the human element in the equations. In the given example, it may very well be that the halfling warrior will win because it has more experience, knowledge or is just a more skilled player than the orc warrior.

If you leave player experience and skill out of the equation and just assume that the characters are controlled through some AI (the same for both races, based on warrior class) then it would be very possible that the orc, who probably has a higher strength and damage roll than the halfling, would win the battle.

Balance isn't something that can be obtained, only striven for.

Darwin put it well, so I won't elaborate further. I will point out though that I thought the clarification would have already been made clear by now, given how often I've insisted that it's not as simple as plain RPS… :wink:


Well, what you're suggesting is that everybody be exactly the same modulo player experience. How does this provide interesting variety?

It only makes the chances even to start with. As you and quixadhal were quick to point out, player skill still plays a big role in PvP. I really don't see how starting with even odds is undesirable for anyone.



It doesn't, and I don't condone any of those choices having said advantages/disadvantages either. The only things that I think should be allowed to affect balance in such a crucial way are those that can be altered based on your opponent. The actual scope of this is definitely game-dependant, but is usually restricted to equipment, skills, spells, and strategy (e.g. hit and run against a high-HP opponent, or staying out of range of an archer, etc.) in most games that I've seen or played.

Hahaha. That had me laughing so hard.

While this example is very simplistic (as DavidHaley pointed out), it still drives home the point. It's not to what degree, necessarily, that race X has an advantage over race Y, but rather the fact that they do at all (assuming it's something significant enough to be noticeable, and affects game-play in a way that could make predicting the outcome of a battle based on race possible).