User talk:Raine Valen/Musings/Skillcraft

Shard tried to do this once, and failed horribly. The reason is because many game mechanics are very situational and thus very difficult to give a numerical value. The Fireball / Rodgort's Invocation example is simple enough, but how about something like Shield of Deflection or Spirit Bond? With only number tweaks, these skills are enough to hose entire teams. What about Diversion and Warmonger's Weapon, 2 skills that can already decide the course of the match? With greater customizability, these kind of skills can run out of control very quickly.

This is, however, an interesting thought. It reminds me a bit of Sacred, where you had to make sure through equipment an traits that the recharge times of your skills were close to their durations. For straightforward games that do not have over 1000 different skills that need to be balanced for a healthy PvP scene, such a system would be nice to play around with. I do not, however, see it as useful for any system that should value a player's skill. Koda 11:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I've always thought this was a decent idea, but not one that should be wholly relied on. Doing math is a great way to get an estimate, but for the most part, we as humans tend to misestimate the value of things, which throws everything off. It's also true that certain elements are valued differently in different situations; in that kind of a case, what standard do you use to balance things? The one where a skill is mostly useless unless it's overpowered, or the one where it's too powerful and sometimes useless? We all know how overpowered skills make a game unfun, but I think we don't talk enough about how weak skills detract from the game. I would absolutely love for shadowy burden to be viable, for example. -- Armond Warblade 19:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't read that as anything but "misunderstimate" anymore. –Jette 02:45, 20 December 2011 (UTC)