The Eternal PvP Balance Issue (Destiny)

by kapowaz, Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 05:49 (3609 days ago) @ Schooly D

From the sounds of things, what you're encountering is the perennial problem of balancing an MMO game between PvP and PvE game modes. Various different MMOs have had different approaches to solving this problem, but one pattern is apparent: where the game lets you take your abilities directly across from PvE to a PvP environment, certain classes and abilities are simply game-breakingly overpowered.

A perfect example would be the spellcasting classes in WoW in Vanilla WoW; as they acquired more and more powerful gear from the PvE game, they would become more and more powerful ‘glass cannons’ that could kill other classes very quickly with only a couple of spells, whilst those other classes (even those whose signature strength was survivability) were powerless to stop them.

Nearly five expansions later and this problem is still one that Blizzard haven't solved despite numerous tweaks, and finally they have started to take the gloves off the alternative approach: spells and abilities have different behaviours in PvP to PvE. This is how Guild Wars works (apparently; I've not played it myself) and it would seem to make the most sense for Destiny, too.

This is disappointing news indeed.