Qutsmnie
01-22-08, 01:47 AM
There is no balance. In regards to MMORPGs that thing that gets bantered around as the ultimate substance the driving force behind all gaming thought, balance; it doesn't exist.
I came to this conclusion when I was pondering how a rogue tanking could be unbalanced while entire groups of people doing away with the tank all together could be gaming. How could that be justice or some other such metaphysical goal? To focus on the rogue tanking while groups go on doing away with the entire role of the tank is like focusing on the ant hill in your back yard when your back yard is consumed by an entire mountain.
I suppose my conclusion was always lingering in the back of my head. Echoes of it in various ideas that I have had but never noticed their real conclusion. I said once long ago that balance was the point where nobody could make a convincing argument that things were unbalanced. But even then I still believed in balance. I just thought it was hard to see.
But not any more. I am sure there is no balance; there is only the perception of balance. It is a sophistry. A construction of rhetoric that has no more existance than those consumers that believe in it.
The devices of logic and science are perverted towards its end. But its only that. People sit in offices in San Diego making spread sheets prosuing it as if it exist but it doesn't. The only thing that matters is what people believe. If your customers believe it is balanced than it is. It is no more difficult than that. Their true goal though as producers of balance is always going to be the manufacturing of consent.
We run around these forums arguing about balance as if it is real and achievable when really it is just an argument about what ever fantasy we all want to agree with at the time.
In the end, I think the ultimate conclusion of the fact that balance does not exist and it is only the perception of balance that exist is that we are fully justified in arguing only for those things we desire in our game. Anything else would be a form of masochism.
There is no balance....
I came to this conclusion when I was pondering how a rogue tanking could be unbalanced while entire groups of people doing away with the tank all together could be gaming. How could that be justice or some other such metaphysical goal? To focus on the rogue tanking while groups go on doing away with the entire role of the tank is like focusing on the ant hill in your back yard when your back yard is consumed by an entire mountain.
I suppose my conclusion was always lingering in the back of my head. Echoes of it in various ideas that I have had but never noticed their real conclusion. I said once long ago that balance was the point where nobody could make a convincing argument that things were unbalanced. But even then I still believed in balance. I just thought it was hard to see.
But not any more. I am sure there is no balance; there is only the perception of balance. It is a sophistry. A construction of rhetoric that has no more existance than those consumers that believe in it.
The devices of logic and science are perverted towards its end. But its only that. People sit in offices in San Diego making spread sheets prosuing it as if it exist but it doesn't. The only thing that matters is what people believe. If your customers believe it is balanced than it is. It is no more difficult than that. Their true goal though as producers of balance is always going to be the manufacturing of consent.
We run around these forums arguing about balance as if it is real and achievable when really it is just an argument about what ever fantasy we all want to agree with at the time.
In the end, I think the ultimate conclusion of the fact that balance does not exist and it is only the perception of balance that exist is that we are fully justified in arguing only for those things we desire in our game. Anything else would be a form of masochism.
There is no balance....