Why Balance?

[Traderjill]

That's actually a good sign, there is new life and new perspectives coming to Anarchy Online. New blood always challenges the orthodoxy of entrenched ways be it an industry or an MMO-RPG. The fact that this is happening proves that there is hope for the game because fresh meat still finds it interesting enough to play.

When I stated that I run into a lot of people that don't know how to play I didn't necessarily mean new players. In fact, I would say the 80/20 rules applies to the response I get when I ask someone (that clearly doesn't understand how to use their toolset) if they're new. 75% say they're not new and have played for 3+ years and 15% are brand new (played for less than a year) with the other 10% being 1-3 years old. The problem with the lack of knowledge transfer isn't a new problem.. it has been happening for several years and made worse by the fact that once someone gets a single 220 toon they feel as if it exempts them from playing through the game again on a profession that is new to them. You don't learn much about profession tools when you sit afk at 2mts, afk on kite hill and leech in inf missions.

The best way to remove something from a public system isn't to actually delete anything but to add new things on-top. I am the principle designer of several industry public APIs and this one's a no-brainer: you don't remove stuff, you add new stuff that's better. This may include adding new abilities to all other professions, to the environment, or to the mobs themselves. This way you'll end-up with fewer ruffled feathers: if you give a man something he doesn't want, no harm done, but if you take something away from him that he does want, then harm is done. Please understand this is NOT an excuse to simplify and flatten the gameplay and make it more homogenous (e.g. alien armor modifiers). Removing things may improve the system, but it consequently kills the community that pays for it.

I could not agree with you more. This really applies to things like outside tank teams. There technically is no need to remove the ability for someone to OST if options put in game exceed what an OST team is able to do. We will naturally gravitate to that new thing and, as you stated, not feel upset that something we already had was taken away. The best way to counter the unintentional effects of AI armor isn't to delete or edit it but to put encounters in-game that require better gear than what AI armor offers. Essentially make the new encounters drop tiered armors that you have to obtain in order to beat the next part of the encounter. AI armor would then become a thing for lower level twinks but not a 'must-have' (use that loosely) for endgame toons.

[Originality]

I was teamed with a MA at ado hecks and asked for Mark of Peril and their reply was something like "That doesn't help me so I didn't get it.". Those type of players, when they hit 220, aren't going to be the folks using an Advy or Keeper tank instead of an Enfo or finding a way to utilize the skills of other professions. They can hardly pull of an encounter with the ideal team setup. And those of us that can pull off encounters with less than the ideal don't need to because we all know the deal and have a doc/enf/sold/crat on our accounts.

This could well have been me, sounds very familiar. Would've been quite a while ago if so. If it was, you're very wrong on the "type of player". However it was more I didn't spend the time looking for and going to get it while in the middle of lvling, than that I saw no reason to buy a buff that aids the team.. The person who asked didn't seem to care much though and had already decided I was "the devil" from an answer that I deemed slightly comedic. Be wary of looking for demons, you'll find more that way.

As for some of the stuff in this topic..
OP: You are right that diversity and strengths in different areas is what makes the classes unique and interesting. But if a class doesn't get teams or it's tool-set isn't particularly useful/strong enough at what it's supposed to do (especially when compared to other professions) then balance can be useful and beneficial. Balancing in this sense doesn't mean everybody has the same DPS or healing power, just they are given relatively equal amounts of (useful!) strengths and weaknesses.

Newer better stuff is what happened to AO and what killed most of the weapon and armour choices that existed in game. Adding better AI armour does not fix the issue, that's where AI armour comes from.. The issue is a lack of useful alternatives, not the specific armour that's most common/powerful right now. Adding more higher power weapons/armour to exceed what is already most powerful just accentuates the power gap between new/old. Sure, people might not complain as much if you don't remove anything, but it also isn't a way to fix it. You either nerf the thing that's vastly more powerful/overhaul everything else/add a whole games worth of new content of near comparable strength..

[Traderjill]

This could well have been me, sounds very familiar. Would've been quite a while ago if so. If it was, you're very wrong on the "type of player". However it was more I didn't spend the time looking for and going to get it while in the middle of lvling, than that I saw no reason to buy a buff that aids the team.. The person who asked didn't seem to care much though and had already decided I was "the devil" from an answer that I deemed slightly comedic. Be wary of looking for demons, you'll find more that way.

A MA without MoP saying "I haven't had a chance to get it." is completely different from one saying "I didn't get it because it doesn't help me, just the team." The first, happens. It happens to me even when I'm leveling a toon because levels fly by so quickly. The second is a person that clearly doesn't understand that a nano that increases the damage of the entire team is something they should get since it'll make their teaming experience go faster and generally smoother.

As for my reaction, it certainly wasn't me that you encountered because when someone tells me that they don't think a team enhancing buff is worth getting.. I don't argue with them. The most I'll say is what I said above "MoP increases the crit of your teammates and means we'll kill faster and probably safer." Outside of that, I just try to avoid teaming them in the future. Your game.. play it your way and I'll play it mine, is my general game philosophy.