Dungeons and Dragons Wiki talk:Article Balance/Archive2

Rules:
 * "Support" votes only, no "Oppose" or "Neutral" votes. If you don't want it, don't vote for it.
 * You add your support vote to a scheme by adding a new bullet point and your signature.
 * You can vote for however many of the following naming conventions you want. Including all of them, though that's about the same as not voting at all in the end.
 * If there is no clear runaway winner, the top 2 or 3 will get a single vote runoff.
 * If you want to comment on a scheme in particular, there's a section for that. Keep it out of the votes please. This would include comments along the lines of "I'm for this, except I'd want X different" or similar qualifiers of a supporting vote.

Current Scheme
Monk / Fighter / Rogue / Wizard

Votes

 * Tarkisflux Talk 04:26, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Foxwarrior 05:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Havvy 06:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Franken Kesey 06:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Eiji-kun 18:52, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments
The default. Better than some choices on here.

Updated Class Names
Monk / Barbarian / Warblade / Wizard

''Note: This option includes additional replacement options, including Monk -> Soulblade, and Wizard -> Druid / CoDzilla. If selected, an additional vote to determine exact replacements will happen.''

Votes

 * Tarkisflux Talk 04:26, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Foxwarrior 05:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ghostwheel 05:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Havvy 06:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * MisterSinister 20:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Aarnott 15:47, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Eiji-kun 18:52, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Franken Kesey 19:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments
I prefer the Power level one over this personally, if it comes down to between them, or if my vote would tip the balance to a choice between the two, I'll go with that one. --Ghostwheel 05:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Don't we have a better monk level class than monk? --Havvy 06:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Soulknife would be an excellent example. And so many people who don't understand how psionics work / hate psionics that it wouldn't offend anyone :-P --Ghostwheel 06:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd support the Soulknife change as well. Hell, is there a replacement wizard level class while we're at it? - Tarkisflux Talk 20:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Druid? They're a lot more inherently wizard-level than the wizard is, I think, and can be less easily screwed over by the DM, and can rectify their own mistakes more easily as well. --Ghostwheel 21:09, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Druid is something I would be fine with, actually. They are certainly more wizard-level than wizard, but at the same time, the whole CoDZilla meme has given it a lot more cred. Which might help. - MisterSinister 22:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd actually be fine with CoDZilla even, as it says more about what is expected at that level than Druid does. - Tarkisflux Talk 16:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * This is my third choice, unless wizard is changed. --Franken Kesey 19:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Story Scope Scheme
Mortal / Daring / Heroic / Legendary

Votes

 * Tarkisflux Talk 04:26, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ghostwheel 05:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Havvy 06:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Franken Kesey 16:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Spazalicious Chaos 21:58, April 22 2012

Comments
If Daring was replaced with something more meaningful I would prefer this over the current system. --Franken Kesey 06:11, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Fox has a similar complaint about Mortal. Well, maybe not 'similar', since I'm not sure he would support it even if that were corrected, but yeah. Suggestions are still welcome. - Tarkisflux Talk 06:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * What if it was Common / Expert / Heroic / Legendary? --Franken Kesey 17:39, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Common is unlikely to satisfy Fox's complaint, as there's nothing "common" about being immortal and able to punch someone and kill them a week later, or being able to generate a sword with your mind. And Expert is also the name of a class, and probably not a good fit in this setup. I'd suggest Daring / Heroic / Legendary / Mythic or even Heroic / Superhuman / Legendary / Mythic instead. - Tarkisflux Talk 20:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem with all of these that I see is that these words (vaguely) describe absolute levels of power. However, even a commoner can throw the universe if they're high enough level. Balance points describe more of a coefficient than a value. --Foxwarrior 21:04, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * A very good point. Whatever it is they're describing (which I would argue is not even power), they describe it in absolute terms. They describe points, not progressions. --DanielDraco 00:21, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * As I have pointed out before, I do not believe that any one balance point can live in a vacuum; it would be impossible for a earth-like world to support a number of 20th level wizards without serious logic holes. Thus, these power ranges should be used to describe the kind of world needed to support them, like Realistic/Fairy Tale/Epic/Game of Gods for example.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 05:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * And here I thought your "realistic" rules were just bad because of flaws in your design skills. Now I see that you don't know what "realistic" means.
 * Anyways, I have a simple test for deciding whether the Monk-level replacement name is terribly inaccurate: the Tome Fighter test &mdash; if the word describes a Tome Fighter better than it describes a Monk, it probably shouldn't be the name for Monk-level. --Foxwarrior 10:04, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be unrealistic for most of the DnD rules to apply for an Earth-like world. DnD and realism cannot be synonymous. The universe of DnD is a multiverse, for better or worse. Even a high number of 20th level commoners would throw off the balance of an Earth-like world, where humans of legend tend to cap off at level six. The game was originally designed for going through dungeon floors killing as many monsters as possible grabbing as much loot as possible. If realism was included, the first or second fight would kill you outright most of the time.


 * Furthermore, the names have to be reasonable to a person who has not even considered the idea that there is stronger abilities than one-hit kills. Having your balance be called Fairy Tale (what does that even mean?*) would confuse most people...heck is confuses me. Using epic is straight out (as is any other term already defined such as paragon) due to its non-balance connotations. Game of Gods would lead to most DMs flat out refusing such material straight out, even after an explanation. It also would cause those who don't understand it to create post-archivist-with-cheese level material.


 * * If by fairy tale, you mean WoD level or the idea that powerful abilities must be restricted to lore, that describes something completely different than what the balance points are trying to achieve. WoD can be of all levels, and restricted to lore doesn't describe power. --Havvy 14:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Alpha/Numeric Class Ranking Scheme
Class-D / Class-C / Class-B / Class-A

''Note: This category currently includes all variants like "Range-D" or "Type-B". If selected, an additional vote to determine exact replacements will happen.''

Votes

 * Foxwarrior 05:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * DanielDraco 05:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Power Level Ranking Scheme
Very Low / Low / Moderate / High

''Note: This option also includes the alternate L/M/H/VH progression. If selected, an additional vote to determine exact the replacement will happen.''

Votes

 * Foxwarrior 05:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ghostwheel 05:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * DanielDraco 05:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * MisterSinister 20:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Aarnott 15:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Jay Freedman 05:05, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Eiji-kun 18:52, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Stryker 20:29, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ganteka Future 20:35, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments
I prefer this overall - honestly, this combined with some actual benchmarks indicates things about power level far more clearly than naming classes, which are subject to all kinds of religious logic and stupid. Additionally, retards will be retards, and if they wanna think that their monk is High power level, it'll be identical as to them thinking that rogue-level content is overpowered because rogues are overpowered - you're just transferring the problem, not really solving it. - MisterSinister 21:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I waited a long time on this, as I've been up in the air a bit, but after some thought, I came to the conclusion that we already use this sort of system when trying to describe stuff about DnD in general ("Yeah, we just started playing a high power campaign"). If tacking on the class name example on the front didn't sound clunky, it might be a decent option (Very Low Monk for example) if it didn't sound like it was implying something within the class itself. Oh well. -Ganteka Future 20:35, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Objections to "Power" Scale
Was wondering, what objections/why do people not like the Very Low->High power level/range/point/whatever option? It seems to give the clearest indication of what each one is, without actually giving bad connotations to each one. --Ghostwheel 09:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Feels generic and boring...just like tier 1 through tier 6 feels generic and boring. For something we have on every homebrew article, I feel that quality would be improved by using the domain-specific language to our advantage. Granted, I have no studies proving that this is the case, only my personal anecdotal knowledge. --Havvy 15:24, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Using domain-specific language makes it more idiosyncratic though. It makes it less accessible for outsiders. Do we really want that? Standardization is often a good thing, because it means everyone is speaking the same language. If we use standard terminology for describing how one thing compares to another thing (i.e., numerical rankings or superlatives and comparatives), people will more easily figure out what the hell we're talking about. EDIT: Also, naming them those so it isn't "boring" reminds me of Starbucks naming their sizes Venti, Grande, and Tall, a decision which is profoundly pretentious and just means that there is now an extra translation step involved in figuring out what the hell I want to order. --DanielDraco 19:33, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * No matter what naming convention we go with, the names themselves are already going to contain enough hidden information as to necessitate reading about how the system works. As such, the translation step is required already. Making it so that we use domain-specific language also means that we effect the idea that these are comparisons between material. To farther add my anecdote to the conversation, every single time I see the tier system used, I have to do a mental translation to which classes are being compared to in the first place. You only learn the system once, and the learning has to occur no matter what, so make it easy to learn but also easy to think about. --Havvy 02:32, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure the Starbucks analogy is entirely fair, given that it would be more similar to us naming the balance points (in order from Monk to Wizard as they are presently labelled) "Awesome, Super-Awesome, Super-duper-awesome, and Super-duper-mega-awesome." All those are generally synonymous with each other and thus don't actually tell you anything. In this case, I personally feel that "Low, Moderate, High, etc." does not convey the same level of ambiguity. - TG Cid 03:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Upon seeing "Low, Moderate, High" the user can assume that some 'options' are better than others. Upon seeing "Fighter, Rogue, Wizard" the user can assume that some 'classes' are better than others.  ...So what do you want the user to assume?  That some 'options' are better than others.  Or that some 'classes' are better than others.  Where do you want them to start their research into Game Balance.  Thats what I noticed.  --Jay Freedman 05:11, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I've finally decided to vote, with votes for the status quo, the modified status quo (soulknife, warblade, druid, etc), and low to high versions. The way I see it, like spoke above there will be a learning curve regardless, so the trick is making it as small as possible.  To that end, low-high is pretty straight forward.  The others (status quo and modified) end up being obvious in the sense that the example classes should be generally accepted as being strong or weak.  By far, I think I can say most people think monks are weak, CoDzillas are beasts, etc... to the point that they're memes.  Yeah, you do sometimes get the oddball Giamonk type who has a warped view, but I don't think they are statistically large enough to matter.  -- Eiji-kun 05:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Voting System
I'm not saying we should reset this vote and change to this right now (EDIT: although if people are down for that, I'm all for it), but in the future, for polls where a user can give multiple votes, may I suggest we use instant-runoff voting? It intrinsically allows for the sort of "I like this better than other options, but please don't count my vote if it means X will lose" contingencies that people are wanting to use here, and it isn't terribly hard to count. --DanielDraco 00:31, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It looks like we have a complicated tie between Power Level and Updated Class Names, since a number of people may want to change their vote in order to see one win. In interest of simplicity, I propose we have a run-off with only those two choices, and each person can only vote for one of them. We can wait a few more days to make sure that no other category catches up, but we should start thinking about doing that. --Ghostwheel 19:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That's the intention, but I figure we'll wait another week or so before setting that up. In the interest in speeding things from there though, we'll probably do some subcategory voting at the same time. So even though you can only vote for one naming convention, you could get your voting for changing monk to soulknife or VL/L/M/H over L/M/H/VH over with at the same time. - Tarkisflux Talk 19:54, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I fear that that may lead to the same sorts of contingencies -- e.g., "I prefer Updated Class Names, unless CoDzilla becomes a level, in which case I'd rather have Power Levels." It may be best to throw all the options in one pot and determine the winner with the aforementioned instant-runoff system. --DanielDraco 17:25, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * There's 23 variations under the updated class names umbrella. 15 of them don't include CoDzilla. I'm willing to offend the people who would be willing to rank those 15 in some order of preference and then put power levels beneath those. Someone is going be on the losing side of the vote and offended anyway. Pick your choice and vote for determining shape of both anyway seems the best bet given the pile of choices on the table. For a vote like we just finished, sure, we probably should have gone with the instant-runoff method. But the coming one has a lot of very similar options, and isn't as good a fit. - Tarkisflux Talk 20:19, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. --DanielDraco 04:01, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Displaying the Rating
Regardless of what system is used after this vote is resolved, we should probably modify the Author template to display the rating differently, for clarity purposes of course. I'm not quite sure how to pull this off best (visually as well as technically), but having it display all the ranges within the template, with the ones that the article isn't being smaller and with the one that it is being bolded (something like Rating: Monk↔Fighter↔ Rogue ↔Wizard ). Why? Well, to show where the article stands up in the whole scale. Granted, we still want people to click on those names as links and read about the scale, I think that will help clarify some things for people from the start, regardless of what the ranges are called. Thoughts on this? --Ganteka Future 21:45, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I think that's a fantastic idea. Full support from me. --DanielDraco 04:00, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Bump
Like the section header says, this is a bump. Voting closes in a couple of days. If you wanted to weigh in and haven't yet done so, hurry it up. - Tarkisflux Talk 03:13, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Regardless of how it goes, I like Guntank's rating thingy, where it has the list and one is bolded/bigger and links to the BP page. Does anyone want to change/remove their votes from what they are at the moment? If not, it looks like power level's gonna be the thing that goes. --Ghostwheel 04:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * 9 to 8 is not a "clear runaway winner", and anyone pulling votes at this point would look a bit petty I think. So I'm still planning on taking the top two and moving into the next round, barring a bunch of new voters popping in and voting something up. I expect Power Ranking is the thing that goes from there anyway. We'll see what happens when votes aren't split though. - Tarkisflux Talk 04:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)