Well, I don't think they probably actually go out of their way to deliberately pick one class to be better than the others at release. But they definitely also don't go out of the way to create balanced classes either. SWTOR beta'd for something like 6 months. Everyone was telling them in beta how ridiculous some of the classes (i.e. SIs and JCs) were, but they did practically nothing at all about it. Things like operative burst being too high is semi-explainable because they didn't put in the burst abilities until late into beta. A lot of the other stuff is simply not explainable if they were interested in creating balanced classes.


Consider things like the smuggler aoe mezz being on a 90 second cooldown and the operative on a 60 second cooldown, despite being mirrors in every other way (other than animations, which is a whole nother issue I could write paragraphs on..). That is a 5 minute database fix max. They've been told about it for months. They probably got literally hundreds of bug reports about it. But they still haven't fixed it.


MMO developers arn't dummies. They know most people don't give a fig about class balance at release. SWTOR's developers were undoubtedly aware they were releasing SIs ridiculously overtuned. Whether they made a deliberate choice not to fix a class they accidentally made overpowered or a deliberate choice to make it OP from the beginning seems like a distinction without a difference.

 

-----signature-----

I have heard over powered claims about all classes except the warrior/knight.


I don't think that is by accident but in this case it has more to do with the relative draw of the classes from a RP standpoint. It was a much bigger threat to SWTOR to have some classes ignored. The most likely scenario is they make balance decisions based on how many people are playing the class.

 

-----signature-----

The SI is by far the most popular class right now so that seems unlikely.


Although who knows, maybe that didn't happen until people realized they were overpowered.


Which sorta plays into my previous point. If you have unbalanced classes you have a fairly large segment of the MMO population who will reroll the more powerful class to pwn face. That extends the amount of time they stay subscribed substantially.


Particularly at launch there is a strong incentive to encourage people to reroll characters because it delays them getting to 50 which gives you more time to create max level content you didn't have at release. This is also why MMOs never launch with faction change services. They want to get as many people as possible to just reroll entirely. You will not see them put in a faction or server change service to deal with the huge population imbalance for a few more months, until they think they've got everyone who is going to reroll to already reroll. Then they will try to at least get 20 bucks from the other people.

So the idea is that a bunch of people reroll SI and this results in them playing and paying longer?


I think the obvious answer is that the SI is just a class that lends itself to a lot of awesomeness being heaped into it by an overzealous designer who is more interested in making a fun and cool class than balancing it.


Try and design an MMO class where you are responsible for making it fun to play. I think the class just lends itself to a designer getting a bit out of hand. Same thing happens with stealth classes and hybrids.


I can buy into the idea that they don't care if there is an imbalance but I don't see how imbalancing the SI helps them sell copies other than the fact that it is a fun class to play and a lot of people are playing it.

 

-----signature-----

because enough people will keep hopping from class to class as long as it's the FOTM. so they never get tired and continue paying as long as they can make the next overpowered class.

 

-----signature-----

^ a real game developer speaks!

 

-----signature-----

Does that really work? I think it doesn't hurt at launch to have a good class but large swings in balance helping subs is a stretch.


When they nerfed the BW in WAR I don't think that made people want to play more.

 

-----signature-----

That may be how these things start. But BW isn't so dumb they didn't realize what they had done a long time before launch. It had to have been a concious decision not to fix things.


There is a reason you don't usually see overpowered classes nerfed until several months after release. It isn't that they can't respond more quickly. Look how fast all devs respond to gamebreaking exploits. Typical turn around time is 1-2 days. It isn't a coincidence they wait until most of the FOTMers have already bandwagoned on before they fix things.

I deffinitely think that they hold off as long as they can on nerfs but that is for obvious reasons. Intentionally having a FOTM is possible but I think it is more likely that the rule of thumb is to err on the side of overpowered which inherently leads to a FOTM scenario.


I don't think they mind the reroll scenario for the reasons you gave and they may not work hard to avoid it because of the reasons you said but I don't think they are doing it on purpose.

 

-----signature-----