So, how does balance work in Crucible? As in any competitive game, balance is important, but it’s kind of a vague and nebulous concept at the best of times. The most recent dispatch from the Amazon Game Studios development team may or may not assuage this, since it’s a quick overview of the high-end concepts going on within the work for balancing the game, but it will hopefully make it clear that there’s more at work than just changing numbers along the way.
Numbers matter, yes, but the entry explains that it’s also about giving each character strengths and weaknesses as well as considering the interplay. (If ranged damage is too low, are melee characters suddenly overpowered? If crowd control is too strong, does that diminish the need for damage?) The current targets for balance adjustments are Ajonah, Earl, Rahi, and Tosoa, but as the host of issues involved in any sort of balance changes should make clear, adjusting how things are balanced is a delicate operation. This is worth noting as the game made a bit of a splash when it went into launch only to be pulled back into beta testing.
Amazon also dropped another dev blog today, this one all about creatures:
We got so excited about sharing a peek behind the scenes, we wrote two blogs for this week. Take a look at some of our short- and long-term plans for the creatures of Crucible! https://t.co/pYe1NgAHIc
— Crucible (@PlayCrucible) August 11, 2020
