From Neverend

• Mage balance:
  • High magic resistance or high physical resistance
  • High magic resistance or high attack power
  • High mana pool or high attack power
  • High tanking or high attack power
  • Distributed AoE or single target
  • Higher power manual aim or lower power auto aim
  • Average magic and melee attack
  • Slow powerful attack, medium average attack, or weak fast attack
  • Element specialization or generalist
  • School specialization or generalist
  • Magic weapon specialist
  • Party support vs solo
  • Accuracy vs speed
  • Accuracy vs strength
  • Speed vs strength
  • Range vs accuracy
  • Range vs strength
  • Range vs speed
• Fighter balance:
  • High tank or high damage
  • Distributed AoE or single target
  • Melee focus or average attack magic
  • Melee focus or average heal magic
  • High magic attack with light melee
  • High mana pool with light melee
  • Average magic and melee attack
  • Slow powerful attack, medium average attack, or weak fast attack
  • Weapon specialization or generalist
  • Technique specialization or generalist
  • Magic weapon specialist
  • Party support vs solo
  • Accuracy vs speed
  • Accuracy vs strength
  • Speed vs strength
  • Range vs accuracy
  • Range vs strength
  • Range vs speed
• Archer balance:
  • Distributed AoE or single target
  • Slow powerful attack, medium average attack, or weak fast attack
  • Arrow specialization or generalist
  • Bow specialization or generalist
  • Poison arrow focus
  • Magic arrow focus
  • Close range vs long range
  • Enemy combat vs siege combat
  • Party support vs solo
  • Average magic and average attack
  • Strong magic and weak attack
  • Tank with low attack
  • Accuracy vs speed
  • Accuracy vs strength
  • Speed vs strength
  • Range vs accuracy
  • Range vs strength
  • Range vs speed

[edit] ==

Balance is is the contrast between safety vs risk, solo play and party based play, defense vs offense, generalization vs specialization, and longetivity vs greater reward.

Players can select skills that complement their ability to play solo and PVP solo, but in selecting those skills, they lose the advantage of specialized skills that will allow them to do better in combat. Likewise, one who specializes will be weaker in certain areas wich can be exploited, and thus better suited towards parties that offer support.

Parties of players who have generic "soloing" traits will tend to survival decently but take longer in combat than a specialized party. Specialized parties also gain greater rewards due to the higher risk and challenge level of monsters they face.

At the player level, soloing is possible when a player balances skills to complement himself, such as defense and healing. A party minded player will choose skills that are far more effective and complement other members.

At the party level, players who "keep it safe" will survive but not get through monsters as effectively.

At the battlefield level, a mix of soloing "generic" characters and party based "specialized" characters lies in the middle of the scale between an entirely "safe" defensive army and an entirely "risky" offensive army.

[edit] Rewards

Challenge level provides greater rewards than defeating weaker enemies. Weaker enemies can be killed more frequently to farm low level drops. Players should seek out more challenging monsters for better rewards, which can include armor, weapons, food, potions, temporary items, rare items, materials, magic items, etc.

[edit] Issues

While grouping against powerful monsters is fun, there are always issues of realism in most games. If you're fighting a high level rabbit, shouldn't you still be able to defeat it easily? The only "real" indicator would be if it were visually faster, dodged moves more often, or had a "vorpal bunny" attack that really was deadly, rather than simply having tons of hitpoints and attack points.

Realistically, you should be able to kill an animal with a gun in one or two shots. An arrow might rake 2-5 (or 1 for a head shot), a sword might take 1-4 strokes to kill something.

Some monsters might not even be able to harm you. A squirrel wouldn't do much, or a rabbit, or a rat. In an RPG you'd be taking 0-1 HP in damage. But for some reason an MMORPG makes creatures take several minutes to kill with several attacks from several different players. Again, a high level MMORPG rabbit is just a rabbit with enough hit points and damage to equal a player in armor with a sword.

What is challenging about monsters? Sure, a raging behemoth, bull, or mad horse would be a challenge to a skilled swordfighter. What about an elephant? Do you need a tribe of spearthrowers or can you stab at it and drink healing potions the whole time?

Of course, realism isn't necessarily fun. No one likes a game where anything can kill you in three hits. Think of a single player game where you have to save and reload constantly for each enemy just because it can kill you "realistically."

The cinematic approach works well, where creatures snarl and threaten, where attacks are based on intimidation and dodging until the fatal blow is delivered. Monsters in movies die a lot quicker than their RPG counterparts, generally do to a weak spot, fatal blow, or skill of the attacker. The "battle" would be mostly dodging, parrying, avoiding, blocking, rolling, ducking, deflecting, countering, or a power struggle.

Let's say you have a real sword, bow and arrow, spear, and hand gun. Ten feet away is a wolf, bear, deer, raptor. How does it react to you, and how do you react to it?

maybe you could simulate this by using two types of hit points, one measures how well your defense is up and is reduced before taking physical damage, maybe you can raise your defense value with side effects, for instance skills or just by hitting the enemy yourself, it would also rise with time if not hit again the second would be the classical hit points, this can be fairly low now since you wont take much hits on your body anymore this could work similiar as in space sims where you have shields to avoid damage.

I dont even think this would change gameplay significantly but could provide a lot of atmosphere