User:Gigathrash/Flavor vs. Functionality

This is going to sound like quizzical, because he partly mostly inspired this. A skill is balanced when it fits into a system of checks and balance, EX: Skill 1 can be countered with skill 2, and skill 2 can be countered with skill 3, and skill 3 is countered with skill 1. For GW the same is true, but in a much larger sense. However, this only works in a PvP setting, and makes little to no sense in a campaign (PvE) setting. For instance, an example of a balance in a PvP setting is Magic:The Gathering. It has some massively overpowered cards, but it also has a universal leveler, Counterspell, this card can destroy the most powerful creature, to the most measliest of burn spells, however, it is a reaction, and reactions do not win games. Naturally a reaction is going to be useless on its own, because a reaction can only happen if an action takes place first. If someone builds their deck entirely out of counterspells and Islands they won't win any games, because they have no offense. Now, lets say that you are playing with this deck, and you have 7 other people on your team, 5 of them that do have offense, 2 of them are fully offense, and have no defense whatsoever. This deck suddenly becomes viable, because your team mates cover your inadequacies, so in a sense, this card/skill is balanced based on who and what you are fighting. If your opponent puts alot of energy into one skill, and you interrupt it, then the skill is a net gain, but if you're opponent focuses more on wide ranging effects, and short quick multiple skills, you will not be able to stop everything, and the skill is weakened. Now, lets look at a PvE setting, war. War is appropriate because instead of having the circle of power, it has a pyramid. No matter where you are, and what you do, eventually there will be something that beats everything else, and you are going to have a hell of a time beating it. EX: Infantry, will always be beaten by a tank, always, even if they sneak up on it and have massive numbers, the tank is going to cause much more damage to the infantry then the infantry are going to do to the tank before one or the other blows up. And it continues. A tank isn't going to beat a bomber, even if it can shoot straight up and has perfect aim, it just isn't going to happen. And a bomber can't beat an ion cannon from orbit, in fact nearly nothing can. The Ion Cannon is the cap stone so to say. This is why one strategy works everywhere in PvE, eventually someone is going to invent an Ion Cannon build, and everything anyone else does is just moot. In PvP this doesn't work, because someone will devise a way to defeat an ion cannon (get the fuck out of the way 1st, then figure out something from there). This leads us to another interesting point. And the title of this article, Flavor vs. Functionality. An example of heavy flavor is also from magic, Progenitus. This creature is huge. And it has protection from everything. EVERYTHING. It can't be blocked, it can't be removed, it can't be killed, heck, it's so big, YOU can't even do anything to it. This creature is the ion cannon of the Magic World. However, it doesn't see a huge amount of play, why? Because it can be countered with Counterspell. This is an example of functionality. Counterspell isn't a fun card to play, but its necessary when if you don't, your opponent is going to bite your head off with a huge ass hydra. Let's take an example from GW. Gaze of Fury, you will probably never see this skill in higher end PvP because a 2 second cast time is LONG. BUT, there is a place where you will want this skill, and probably don't want to do the mission without it, Sunjiang District HM. Killing the spirits in 2 seconds is alot of improvement over killing them in 20 or even more that it usually takes when you're fighting off afflicted and the spawned shiroken. This skill has huge flavor, its a specific counter to the one weakness in the opponent's armor. However, it has no functionality, because as soon as it is taking out from this context, it is virtually useless. GW is constantly sacrificing Flavor for Functionality. Flavor denotes a skill that has a unique effect, its effect should set it apart from the rest of the skills, and when you use the skill, you should get some picture in your mind of your character using this skill. A skill with alot of flavor should conjure up this image each time you use this skill. An example of a skill that sacrificed flavor for functionality is Ursan Blessing. When Ursan blessing was obtained in the blood washes blood quest, it had a huge amount of flavor, you conjured the image of your character surrounded by a spiritual blue glow, with spectral claws tearing the offending charr to peaces, and your character shouldering their way through a huge barrier, or blasting the immediate area with a huge roar of power, that scoured the land bare of offending enemies. However, the problem with this flavor is that it loses all flavor context if it is moved out of the northern shiverpeaks. Lets say that you used Ursanway in FoW, it conjures no flavor for you, why? Because there are no polar bears in the FoW. But you can take it out of the Northern shiverpeaks because of GW mechanics. Once it loses its flavor value, it has to rely on its functionality value, and it's functionality value is huge. It broke the circle of functionality, because besides from e-denial it had no counters, and simply steamrolled any and everything it encountered. This made it unbalanced. If Ursan blessing could only be used in the Northern Shiverpeaks, and possibly in the associated dungeons (Slaver's Exile excluded), I'm pretty sure that it would not have gotten nerfed, because it would have been judged on it's flavor value, which does not get nerfed. Functionality is the reason things get nerfed.