EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Can you point out where I said this in the post you quoted? I don't see it anywhere in what I have said on this thread.
Teams are not made of identical people: therefore, balance can only mean being identical and nothing else. What else was this supposed to mean?In team sports where one team is cooperating against another there is not generally balance between the individual players, yet the players on a team all cooperate towards a common goal. This is true whether we are talking about professional football or sandlot baseball.
Teammates in some card games can have different power: therefore, balance can only mean uniformity and nothing else. What else was this example supposed to mean?Same with card games like Pinochle where a team of 2 cooperates against another team of 2 and on the team that won the bid there is generally a very disproportionate power relationship between the players with the biding player typically having a much stronger hand than the non-bidding player being in a supporting role. The non-bidding player usually intentionally weakens his own hand to strengthen the bidding players hand. Yet they cooperate to win the round together.
Here you explicitly use the word "parity." What else could you mean here, other than that being balanced must mean being uniform and identical?Those are a few examples of cooperative games where there is not parity between individuals cooperating.
As for the rest of the points, player skill is a wholly separate consideration--and I absolutely, fundamentally disagree with your core assertion. No amount of player skill is going to let a Fighter player rewrite in-game reality. Unless you can show some other way for Fighter players to perform feats that affect the game world to a degree similar to casting wish? I would absolutely love to hear it--that would be a conclusive slam-dunk against casters being grossly overpowered!
And I'm saying it's both wrong-headed and actively bad for the game to outright punish players who like Fighters by enforcing that their characters MUST be weak, and likewise to reward players simply because they like playing Wizards.I am not attacking anything and one of things I suggested - having experienced players play Fighters and noobs play more powerful classes like Wizards - is actually an example of attempting to achieve "asymmetrical" balance by pairing players with an advantage in the game with characters that are at a disadvantage.
Because that's what actually happens in practice. Repeatedly.