Dev on melee vs ranged damage : LOTRO - Discussions

from: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php? ... ost3688236

Vastin
The Lord of the Rings Online Team
Turbine, Inc.

Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 115

Re: Melee Vs. Ranged damage

Comparing the lethality of all these different weapons in reality vs. a game is counterproductive - though it's always good for a giggle to see people arguing about how lethal a fireball is compared to phaser.

Real people don't have HP, and even our most sophisticated games lack most of the terrain and other physical factors that make live combat so complex and difficult to judge the outcome of. Five minutes in the woods with a paintball rifle will teach you more about 'real' combat than several months playing the best FPS, and then there's another big jump when it comes to real, lethal weapons and the psychological impact that those have on the battlefield...

As for how much DPS various classes put out, there's a difficult tension in these games regarding PvE (landscape) vs. PvE (Raid) vs. PvP.

In PvE landscape you generally want the ranged classes to do pretty high DPS, so that they have a chance to deal with multiple targets and counteract their relatively poor survivability and reduced DPS once engaged. That or they need tools to control engagement (CC) so that they can juggle multiple targets and keep them at range for longer periods.

In PvE Raid, balance would suggest that ranged DPS be lower on average than melee, as their survivability is generally better because they remain more mobile and less vulnerable to all kinds of special attacks/effects that the melee must contend with. However, I prefer dealing with this by altering the design of raid encounters to include a lot of adds, which tends to level the playing field between the different groups.

In PvP it's all kinds of trouble because the differences between trying to engage someone one-on-one vs group combat lead to enormous disparities in effectiveness - just as it does in real life. Engagement (the ability to effectively reach/attack your opponent at all) becomes a major issue as well, wheras it normally isn't in PvE unless you frequently employ CC/Kiting strategies against the mobs you are fighting.

In the end I philosophically advocate keeping a pretty level field for DPS for ALL classes (even healers and tanks!). Classes are better differentiated by other factors such as mitigation, CC, buffs, healing, engagement tools, etc. I don't really believe in specialized DPS classes. I feel they aren't a very good design, ultimately.