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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8762142" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If someone is declaring that a particular design goal is impossible--as Max explicitly did--then it should not matter whether it is in the context of video games or tabletop games or board games. Asymmetrical balance is a goal for essentially all multiplayer cooperative video games, and these are substantially bigger than D&D, making millions or billions of dollars.Perhaps you would prefer an example that is a roleplaying game, and thus more obviously directly applicable? Final Fantasy XIV is an extremely well-balanced game, despite having asymmetrical classes. The differences between the performance of the absolute highest-performing, top-tier jobs and the worst-performing jobs is....5.5%. That's it. Literally the entire spread of class performance in FFXIV right now is a window of 5.5%, and even that is only in the high-performance, bleeding-edge content. If you're just a casual player playing ordinary stuff? You'll almost never notice these differences. Skill, individual investment, and player preference vastly outweigh these concerns in anything other than "world first races" (trying to be the first group to complete difficult content) or "ultimate prog" (trying to advance through, and eventually beat, the specially-made ultra-brutal content.)The developers have set a reasonable standard of balance, and pay careful attention to the long-run performance of the various jobs. If there are issues, they can and will be addressed, and usually very quickly. Now, an MMO is both much more complex and much more editable than a pen-and-paper RPG, but the first is a boon (it's much easier to test!) and the second just means thorough testing is warranted.It is, 100%, possible to produce well-balanced, asymmetrical play experiences in video games, even ones explicitly rooted in D&D (anyone who's played the Final Fantasy series can identify D&D's influence on the franchise!) It is likewise possible to produce well-balanced, asymmetrical play experiences in tabletop games. This is not some unattainable goal off in the stratosphere, some lofty perfection that cannot be reached even in principle. It is practical, it can be done.</blockquote>

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