Balance plays an important role in MMORPGs, especially if you want to experience fair races for world firsts or battles in PvP. But in the past, it was much more common for players to create their own builds and even discover one or two errors in the process. But it is precisely moments like this that are remembered and made the games special, says Alexander Leitsch.
I’ve been playing MMORPGs almost exclusively since 2005 and thousands of memories have accumulated. However, the fair moments seldom stick in the head, but rather the curious and surprising situations stand out. And for me, that usually went hand in hand with creative skills.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a totally overpowered farm build with the summoner in Aion, a 100% dodge build in Last Chaos or the 55 HP monk in Guild Wars 1 – all these specs were never intended by the developers and probably would be today lead to a huge shitstorm.
But they make memories. Memories I’ll never have in a Final Fantasy XIV or New World because they don’t offer build variety of that nature.
Who is speaking here? Alex is the MMORPG expert on MeinMMO. He has spent thousands of hours in games like Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, New World or ESO and also tests (almost) every indie MMORPG on the market.
Old MMORPGs too often had elements that players could exploit
What are these creative builds? In 2007 – more than 2 years after the release – the 55 HP Monk became famous in Guild Wars 1.
Usually, players have at least 480 base lives and are actually trying to get extra lives, for example through runes on equipment. However, there are also runes that give additional attributes and deduct life points for them. And here some players developed a curious idea.
The Monk ability Guardian Spirit ensures that a player cannot lose more than 10% of their maximum life points. However, the fewer life points a character has, the less it needs to be healed.
Players managed to get their health down to 55, so they could only take a maximum of 6 damage. Other spells like Guarding Hands and Shield of Absorption reduced incoming damage by 5-15. So basically you got 0 damage as long as you could sustain the abilities.
Other crazy builds were also possible in Guild Wars 1, such as permanent immunity to spells, with which you could then tank difficult bosses or solo farm entire groups of enemies.
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My colleague Mark Sellner told me about another example in our joint podcast MMO News. Using a trick with scaling, he was able to create a 100% dodge build in Last Chaos. Although this only worked in PvE, he was able to defeat the hardest bosses solo – even if it sometimes took hours.
But there are other examples that come to mind:
Even in WoW there were big balance discussions, mostly related to the Paladin vs. Shaman situation. In vanilla times, the alliance couldn’t play shaman and the horde couldn’t play paladin. This had an impact on some World Firsts races and also on PvP.
But not only in MMORPGs the perfect balance is sometimes an obstacle. In LoL, for example, almost every new champion appears in a version that is too strong. However, that makes it interesting, so that many then want to try it out directly. Champions that spawn with good balance right away, like Rell, faded into obscurity pretty quickly and got a lot less attention.
Where are the 55 biggest MMORPGs currently? The Animal List 2023
Modern MMORPGs do without too many skills and are becoming more and more cautious
How does it look today? Many of the new and established MMORPGs have become more cautious and simpler.
Guild Wars 2, for example, has removed many class-specific buffs in recent years, which Mark also criticized in a column. This supposedly ensures more freedom in group composition, but at the same time it also causes boredom, because everyone can do everything.
In WoW, the number of talents and abilities has also been reduced over the years, although with Dragonflight there has now been a slight reversal.
In addition, a new MMORPG appeared with Lost Ark, which offers many classes, but in which each class can also do everything important. Anyone can jump, counter, dodge, and even large classes like the Berserker aren’t particularly sluggish or slow.
But for me, the prime examples of a lack of build variety are FFXIV and New World:
Without the variety of builds, an important core of role-playing games is lost for me: the freedom to create my own build. Yes, I also know that even with a lot of skills and freedom there will always be meta builds that I would even spread here on MeinMMO.
But sometimes there are still crazy creations or just a combo that is only cool in one scenario – but then really cool.
How do you see the issues of build diversity and balance? When was the last time you tinkered a build yourself for hours? And should there always be a perfect balance?
For the future there are some MMORPGs that promise more skills and build variety. We have collected the games in development for you:
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