We Will Never Forget What You Said De..never!

[Thrymm]

There's considerably more to it that that.  Time to obtain said weapon, for instance, clearly has a rather major place in balance in a loot based game like this.  Yet you didn't even mention it.

 

This is a strawman in the world of balance.

 

If gun A does 150 damage and gun B does 50 damage, gun A is better.  I'm sure nobody is going to dispute that.

 

If Gun B is standard issue, but Gun A requires living in the seventh circle of hell for a year while having corn chips shoved in your nostrils............sorry, Gun A IS STILL A BETTER GUN.  It may not be better enough to bother going through that, but that doesn't change that it is a better weapon and those with it are doing three times the damage and thus are three times as effective as those that didn't go through it.

 

Further, provided an item continues to be available, all items are 100% attainable.  Some may be more difficult than others, but all can be gotten, and over time all will be gotten, if a player so chooses.  Once the weapon saturates the player base, if it is more powerful based on the "hard to get" premise, that weapon suddenly becomes overpowered by comparison to the rest of the arsenal.

 

Throwing the "hard to get" card in there has nothing to do with balance.

[Liminal]

"Balance" is extremely subjective. No seriously, there actually isn't some mathematical formula sitting just outside the horizon that tells us what is balanced in the game and what is not. It's a conversation between one aspect of the game and in comparison to every other aspect of the game with a large amount of personal opinion thrown into the mix. Balance is the most gut-based math you can do, and no matter how much you refine something, someone is always going to have a different opinion on exactly where the difficulty should be at. 

I bring that up because I'm sick to death of seeing 35 paragraph rants about "game balance" that seem to think what they say is some undeniable proof. 

I wouldn't say "extremely". It's a bit subjective because no developer will ever be 100% unbiased, but the right way to approach balance is by taking an extensive and objective look at a whole group of things (guns for example) and see how they interact to the same situations. It's rarely done by one person alone, so personal biases are not usually that significant in the results.

The more time you take studying the elements you wish to balance, the better results you'll get. Of course, introducing new stuff every 2 weeks will make this very hard.

 

There is no mathematical formula sure, but in a pve game it's immensely easier to balance weapons than it is to balance champions in a MOBA for example, because you have a lot less variables to consider, and you are only worried about a few things like ttk, ammo economy (barely because of ammo mutation), self-damage, range, accuracy, etc. Those cannot be balanced by numbers because you are comparing apples to oranges, and t may be subjective at first, but after a bit of observation and analysis you are supposed to base this on statistics. Those statistics may come to individual preference in a player by player basis, but as a developer you don't care if Timmy likes the Quanta, you care that the Quanta sees as much use as the Boar Prime, because that means it's just as appealing to the average.

 

Subjective as it may be, it's objectively undeniable that some guns are worse than others. Or, for example, that Seekers are overpowered. That's how bad things are in Warframe.

 

Point is, it's better to try to balance all the time, even if you know you'll never achieve perfect equality, than to simply let things be.

[GeneralArmchair]

"2015 will be a year of quality for Warframe"-Steve Sinclair 2015

 

No matter what you say this year, what updates you release, what weapons you create and buffs you give, we will always come back to this quote.

 

We should leave this year will less grind, more lore, more balance, less bugs, better pvp, better weapons, better progression, Archwing overhauls, kubrow rewoks, better rewards, raids, better bosses, better parkour, better stealth and more co-op fun. So Tenno, i encourage you to challenge this years content and make sure DE never forgets to give us a whole 365 days of top notch quality.

Steve said one thing, but pwe and Sumpo have majority.

[Feallike]

HE SAID WE WOULD HAVE LORE ON WHAT TENNO ARE! NEVER FORGET THAT! AS LONG AS THAT HAPPENS THIS YEAR WILL BE A SUCCESS!!!!
 

(sorry for caps)

[Phatose]

This is a strawman in the world of balance.

 

If gun A does 150 damage and gun B does 50 damage, gun A is better.  I'm sure nobody is going to dispute that.

 

If Gun B is standard issue, but Gun A requires living in the seventh circle of hell for a year while having corn chips shoved in your nostrils............sorry, Gun A IS STILL A BETTER GUN.  It may not be better enough to bother going through that, but that doesn't change that it is a better weapon and those with it are doing three times the damage and thus are three times as effective as those that didn't go through it.

 

Further, provided an item continues to be available, all items are 100% attainable.  Some may be more difficult than others, but all can be gotten, and over time all will be gotten, if a player so chooses.  Once the weapon saturates the player base, if it is more powerful based on the "hard to get" premise, that weapon suddenly becomes overpowered by comparison to the rest of the arsenal.

 

Throwing the "hard to get" card in there has nothing to do with balance.

 

All you're describing is a very, very limited definition of balance where you've simply ignored most of the actual issues.  It's equivalent to saying "Battlecruisers in SC are unbalanced because they fly and do more damage then space marines."  Technically true, but useless in the terms of balance as gamers typical speak of, because you've ignored the costs.  Actual objectivity went straight out the window, and you're no longer dealing with balance as players typically use the word, but rather the idea that all things should be equal regardless of cost - including time.  That's just not balance.

 

So, no,not a strawman.  Not even close - It's balance in the big picture.  I'm really, not at all interested in the idea all guns should be equal - they shouldn't be.  Not even close to equal.  This is a progress based game, and later weapons should be better then earlier ones.