EA, Mythic, and layoffs

Another round of layoffs has landed at Electronic Arts. 1500 in number. Reports say 80 people at Mythic were part of the culling. My hearts go out to those who lost their jobs in this round, and my prayers for a quick recovery and rapid re-employment finds you.

Equitable Differences

In competitive games, games where players are constantly vying against others for successful completion of a goal, most developers seek to attain an equilibrium in the power scales of whatever is in the player’s hand. Whether a cooperative platform where both players have equal strengths so that neither has the advantage and both can feel contributory, or in a fighting game, where powers and attacks need to be balanced in terms of speed, strength, or difficulty in handling. In MMOs this strive for balance is seen between classes in both PvE and PvP games. However, something unique to the PvP world is difficulty of objectives.

Obviously in a PvP MMO both sides have to fight the other player, so classes need to be balanced for direct conflict. Whether the balance is done for small skirmish, one on one, or large-scale needs to be decided ahead of time. If you’ve been around the MMO block long enough, you know what I’m aiming at here. WAR is obviously for large-scale, and to a lesser degree, small skirmish. One on one fights are not where Mythic decided to put the fulcrum of their see-saw they call balance. Given all that, PvP games such as WAR  have another area of balance that requires an equitable difference, PvE encounters.