Weapon Balance... What Is It Good For?

[Netrigan]

With all the talk of weapon balance in various threads, I sometimes think I'm alone in my belief that weapon balance can get stuffed.

One of my first experiences with unbalanced attacks was Sub-Zero in the original Mortal Kombat. While you might play another character because he was cool, the horribly unbalanced slide-kick and freeze powers of Sub-Zero made him the go-to character more often than not.

Doom was my first FPS and I loved the increasingly ridiculous power at your fingertips and it's clear lots of fans loved using that power in MP, too.

The whole MP experience seemed to have changed a lot of games... and not for the better in my opinion. I remember the Quake devs and fans going on and on about the weapon balance in Quake 3, which resulted in a bunch of weapons I had absolutely no desire to shoot. Obliviously, my opinion, but in the great Q3/UT rift, I wasn't alone. The more unbalanced weapons of UT seemed to enjoyed by a different segment of gamer. And I'll flat out say that "balanced" weapons have absolutely no place in a single player campaign. Balance the weapons with ammo scarcity, not by making the rocket launcher slightly more powerful and slower than a shotgun.

So, when I see people complaining about Call Of Duty's insanely popular MP by pointing out how unbalanced the kill streaks are, I seriously wonder if those unbalanced attacks aren't the reason why it's so popular. People love cheap tactics. Sure, it sucks to be on the receiving end of it, but before long you figure out how to do it and start having fun with it.

The Halo fans love to point out the weapon balance in their MP as making it superior... then a couple of minutes later they're lamenting the nerfing of their beloved over-powered pistol from the first game. WOW fans always complain when their favorite attacks (you know, the horribly unbalanced ones) get nerfed. Hopelessly unbalanced attacks were the only thing that made Prototype a blast to play.

I say long live unbalanced weapons and attacks. Who's with me?

 

[Serenegoose]

I've got a pretty simple view of unbalanced weapons.

In singleplayer they can be a great reward, really letting you go all out on a gang of mooks who have no hope which can be great fun and breaks up the pacing and the tension if deployed at the right moment.

Keep them out of multiplayer. I get that people might get attached to them and complain when they get nerfed, but I don't. To me in multiplayer, balance is everything.

 

[Romidude]

War! HUH! That's what it's good for!

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Wait...so you want unbalanced weapons and tactics to exist?

The mind boggles.

'Ryu'. That's all I'll say about balancing issues.

 

[PunkyMcGee]

i don't know since i play what turns out to be "bottom Teer" characters

 

[archvile93]

Not me, there's nothing worse than a multiplayer match that boils down to, "he got the death weapon first, he wins, we're screwed, might as well just give up now." In single player poorly balanced weapons discourage you from using other weapons. Why bother thinking your weapon choices through when you can just pick the murder everything one that allows you to breeze through even the hardest difficulty?

 

[RatRace123]

It's good for making things varied, if things are horribly balanced then everytime you play everyone is going to be fighting with the same weapons and techniques... or to put it more precisely.
"FINAL DESTINATION FOX ONLY NO ITEMS!!!"

In single player though, over powering weapons is fine and awesome. Taking out a group of mooks in a matter of seconds is great fun.

 

[Tomster595]

On what you said about CoD: The killstreaks are way over powered (at least in MW2 when they stacked) and that is why its so popular. People play cause they get a few killstreaks and think they're the best player ever. That's why I don't play lol

 

[Dexiro]

How can you be for unbalanced gameplay?

So instead of a varied range of characters and weapons that require skill to use, you'd prefer to have a game effectively reduced down to one character/weapon that require no skill?

 

[Netrigan]

Not me, there's nothing worse than a multiplayer match that boils down to, "he got the death weapon first, he wins, we're screwed, might as well just give up now." In single player poorly balanced weapons discourage you from using other weapons. Why bother thinking your weapon choices through when you can just pick the murder everything one that allows you to breeze through even the hardest difficulty?

You're discounting ammo scarcity. A game like Doom chews up a *lot* of ammo and it's always a good policy to save ammo for later encounters. Such as the Plasma Gun was basically a more powerful version of the Chaingun and all things being equal, I'd use the Plasma Gun in most encounters... but there were certain bad guys that I wanted dead faster than fast, so I rationed my Plasma Gun usage knowing that before long, I'd be facing off against something I'd need a Plasma Gun for.

I think the problem I have with weapon balancing is that some devs seem to use a damage per second model. So instead of the main advantage of the shotgun over the rocket launcher being that you can carry more shotgun ammo (and it's more readily found in the level), you get this anemic rocket launcher that can't kill a cannon fodder enemy with anything but a direct hit. It's a rocket launcher, I want to be able to aim one in the middle of a group of half dozen soldiers and see their pieces flying in every conceivable direction. It's a rocket launcher, it's *supposed* to be over-powered.

 

[Netrigan]

Doom was my first FPS and I loved the increasingly ridiculous power at your fingertips and it's clear lots of fans loved using that power in MP, too.

Except that Doom actually has a very well balanced arsenal of weapons.......

I know this since I have been playing Doom for almost a decade now, for every monster there are some weapons that work better then others depending on the situation.

It wasn't until Doom 2 came along and introduced the double barreled shotgun that all balance went straight out the window.

As I mention in my last post, some weapons are *supposed* to be over-powered. That's why they exist in the real world. If you give the player a lot of ammo for such a weapon, there should be a very good reason why. Although it's seriously fun to be coming to the end of one of the Doom episodes, knowing you'll get kitted out for the final boss fight and deciding to let loose on lower-level baddies with lots and lots and lots of over-kill.

 

[XT inc]

The whole point of balance lets guns devs spent hours building get the playtime they deserve as much as making the players not have to yell bullshit every 5 seconds. Blops feels pretty balanced I mean even if someone goes on a tirade and gets a hind. If your team isn't a pack of idiots you will get that thing down before it gets too many kills. Everyone has their preference of what gun they use and it has to fit into the game or else you get long range quick scoping sniper rifles that auto aim for a 1 hit kill.

 

[Tohron]

Not me, there's nothing worse than a multiplayer match that boils down to, "he got the death weapon first, he wins, we're screwed, might as well just give up now." In single player poorly balanced weapons discourage you from using other weapons. Why bother thinking your weapon choices through when you can just pick the murder everything one that allows you to breeze through even the hardest difficulty?

I think in single player, you can just balance that by making them overpowered in different ways - say, one weapon recharges your shields on a hit, another knocks down the guys you shoot it with, another floods the area with plasma causing continuous damage, etc. - basically, there would never be a single 'murder weapon' because all of them have limitations while utterly rocking in their area of specialization.

 

[Netrigan]

On what you said about CoD: The killstreaks are way over powered (at least in MW2 when they stacked) and that is why its so popular. People play cause they get a few killstreaks and think they're the best player ever. That's why I don't play lol

Pretty much my theory on it. People love feeling powerful in games. You could come in dead-last in that match, but if you managed to put together a decent kill streak and got a nice over-powered reward for it, you're going to have had a blast.

Granted, balance issues are important, no matter how much I mock them in my OP... but there's a lot of other factors in there. Sometimes you have to go with fun and let people enjoy a completely unbalanced reign of destruction.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Single player weapon balance is a terrible idea, but I can't think of any single player games that actually tried it. In old style multiplayer shooters unbalance was fine since everyone had a chance to grab the same guns, and to an extent its still fine when you get to choose your guns before hand. IDK if the way too powerful and way too easy to acquire killstreaks are good, though. For fighters its terrible though. One character being the go-to for everyone? How can that be anything but an absolute failure on the part of the game designers?

 

[Rednog]

Single player sure, it doesn't really effect anyone but yourself and it is your choice whether or not you want to use the item in question.
MP, no, I honestly can't see how you can argue that people should just have to learn to use the broken weapon instead of balancing the game. It pretty much is completely contradictory of your argument that you don't like balance because the other weapons are ones you don't want to shoot. The same can be said of OP weapons, for some people they just don't like the over powered guns and they don't like the style of play that is attached to said guns.
And when overpowered guns soon get annoying when everyone and their mother uses them, the most horrendous example of this is the AK47u, seriously go into any Firing Range or Nuketown server and everyone but maybe 1 or 2 people is using the damn thing. Seriously that gun alone has ruined both maps for me and anytime a server is rotating to either map I just quit and join another server. Join any random server that is nuketown 24/7 and you will find everyone using the damn gun and at least 1 or 2 hackers using the gun.

 

[Spygon]

If everybody uses the same weapon or character all the time a game gets very boring very quickly.Why have a game where you have a number of different weapons and charactersif everybody is only going to pick one anyway.

 

[NathLines]

I've always wanted a game without balance. Remember when you first get into a game and all of a sudde-HOLYSHIT WHAT IS THAT THING GET IT OFF ME OH GOD! Those kind of moments are so freakin' fun and I want a butt-load of them. No balance is the way to go if you want WTF-moments.

 

[manaman]

Weapon balance isn't needed for single player. It is needed for multiplayer. I am getting the impression from the OP that someone thinks weapon balance is all weapons being the same in all but appearance. Not really you can still have sniper rifles, which have a low rate of fire and thus become less useful in close range. You can have shotguns, which are powerful, but will not shoot halfway across the map. Etc.

What you see is weapons that don't exactly behave as they would in real life, but have strengths and weaknesses all their own. It keeps gameplay fun and exciting. After all how many times have you heard complaints about grenade spam, or what have you?