The most important part of game balance is what made D3 fail. The basic numerical and scaling numbers of players Vs monsters throughout the game. The core foundation of game balance in an RPG, is the math and tuning to make player survival and damage be in sync with progression Vs enemies.
The reason D3 failed at this, the game was boringly easy from normal to hell difficulty. Then almost impossible in NM difficulty. When an AAA company failed the fundamentals, I knew they had fucked up.
Numerical balancing and tuning is a time consuming job that requires lots of testing and changes. What resistances should this monster have, which makes sense for that monster? What abilities makes sense for this monster to have? How punishing should this ability be?
It gets even more complex when you add in the possible monsters inhabiting an area. As you then have to also balance and think about how these mobs are balanced together.
For example if one area has a pool of monsters present. And a possible combination is a void spider that reduces void resistance, and a monster shooting void mortars - that could be a deadly combo. There are a LOT of these minor things that can and will make ALL the difference in game balancing.
As someone with autism I sometimes get an insane obsession with what most people would probably call “insignificant details”. I can literally have problems sleeping, because I think a raptor mob is too weak for its level, and should logically have 45% bleed resist and not 20% bleed resist - and +4 melee damage. Or a scorpion that should have its AOE nerfed, but have faster autoattacks etc. (I think a game tester as a job would be perfect for me,).
Another thing with balance you mentioned that I disagree with:
WRONG. Damage is one factor. Availability for resistances, armor and other defensive stats from passives is a factor. Speed and mobility skills is a factor. All of these and more has to be taken into an overall account. Damage is just a minor cog in the machinery.
There will never be “true” balance. Imagine how boring it would be, if all classes have the same strengths and weaknesses. Balance isn’t about making classes and skills similar in gameplay aspects. It’s about making them dissimilar - but in a way that the player feels the differences are fairly balanced in weight.
As a very simple example. Mage with high damage, high resists, but low HP and armor. OR. A warrior with medium damage, medium resists, high HP and high armor.
Not only do the strengths and weaknesses need to be different, they are meant to be balanced as a whole package and not in individual elements. For both pure gameplay reasons and for roleplaying reasons, classes in RPGs need to be very different for the sake of preference of playstyle and theme.
If every class had the same DPS - the game would be poorly balanced. Not well balanced.
There is also the issue of a fallacy where people go, for example, “My class has bad AOE, it’s not fair! Look at X class - they have good AOE why can’t I have that?”. Completely failing to understand that though his class may have bad AOE, his class has this and that which is superior to the class he is comparing himself to.
In conclusion: Balance of classes is when every class’ total factors of dps, armor, resist, aoe, debuffs, buffs etc. etc. is fairly evened out as a WHOLE. NOT individually. If X class has insane survival, other stuff must be toned down.
As for player vs enemies. What devs needs to do is think “how crappy gear would it be possible to have at this level?” as a means to determine if even a player badly off at least stands a chance. While at the same time, if another player had insane luck and a good build - they should be steamrolling at the same lvl/area.
The window of opportunity between struggling and destroying everything, needs to be WIDE early game. And slowly, but surely, become NARROWER as you keep going. If horrible builds, or bad players can easily do all content - the game is too easy. But this problem needs to show its face slowly over time.
I’ll stop there, I could keep going forever about this. Balance defined by me is when bad builds, bad players, or bad gear (2/3) is punished severely as time goes on. Provides a good challenge for average build / skill / gear luck, and even good builds played by a good player with perfect gear - can die if they do several big mistakes in a row.
One last thing is that not all skills are supposed to be equally strong due to synergy with other skills or effects. Say I have an AOE nuke that covers a 6M radius dealing 600 damage, and you only have an AOE nuke that covers a 4M radius dealing 400 damage. It isn’t balanced in a vacuum. But say I don’t have another skill that interacts with my AOE nuke, while you have a curse that means your nuke on cursed enemies are stronger than mine.
Now we have a situation where ability A for me is stronger than ability A for you.
But for you, ability A is stronger when supported by ability B.
This means my skill is good, but low scaling potential for example…
… while your skill is worse, but through synergy and combo - is actually better.
You can NEVER LOOK AT AN INDIVIDUAL PART and say, that’s unbalanced. It’s a machinery and a complex one. It takes a lot of time, effort and work to balance. And the “simplest” things like “what resistances should this monster have in this level range?” are actually the hardest things to do right. Due to the sheer amount of factors so many small tunings affect.
I knew they messed up D3 when I was bored as hell through hell difficulty, game being so easy I was autopiloting like a drone. They failed at the most important aspect of game balance. The CORE values of player skills and monsters, in regards to scaling etc.
Ok NOW I’m done lol. I hope this was helpful somewhat. Let me know if you disagree with anything or if I misunderstood something. Like I said I have autism so sometimes I misinterpret the sentiment of arguments.
