It sounded like from what Estarra said on the other thread that she'd be willing to listen to a sufficiently clear and yet broad (to allow for creativity) definition of balance. I think, as I have mentioned before, that Lusternia would be better off it had such a definition. It does not have to be unchallengable and mine might not be the best one by consensus (either between everyone or people with experience with the main issues it affects) but I think it'll be a starting point for discussion until we can reach a good one. If we can do so, I think it will become easier to pinpoint complaints with Lusternia's skill, class and org balance, for people complaining about them and envoys fixing them. This would hopefully result in things getting fixed more promptly and in ways that actually correlate to the real problems they are intended to fix, which should make everyone happier in general.
Many aspects of these are too intertwined and I don't want to make a giant wall of text to bludgeon everyone with so I'll try and split it out into bulletpoints that you may find slightly redundant. I also may miss points because I don't plan essays/posts and the top of my head is only large enough to store 3 or 4 things at once without anything falling off. Also, since I am not necessarily arguing about facts of actual balance here so much as trying to get an underlying framework for said balance, my examples may vary between being accurate and totally fictional.

1. In a given solo fight no class should have an insurmountable advantage over any other. Ceteris paribus, you should be able to pair any two people from different classes up and expect either to win.
This one is pretty hard to actually figure out in practice because it is very rarely "ceteris paribus." Nonetheless I expect the general principle to be uncontroversial. If anyone wants to state that, say, a mage of equal skill, skills, credits etc. should always beat a knight I will expect a good reason as to why.

2. Every class should have a role of some kind in terms of general usefulness to their org in group combat or in general. This is hard for some people to grasp because it seems like everyone is useful in group combat. The main thing I'm stating here is this: every class should have skills that other classes don't that might affect the direction of group combat in a way that wouldn't apply if they were just ganking someone with unrelated spam going on. Guardians with beckon, bards with maze, knights with tackle, stealth monks with a couple skills (chaindrag is the obv one but there are related stealth ones) all count here.
I hope this will not be controversial, especially to anyone reading my two posts referenced above. A couple of the examples here may anger people (maze) and there will inevitably be some people that don't give a damn, but I don't think anyone could assert that it would be a bad thing if all guilds had a seperate use of some kind such that a side is glad to have them a long for a reason other than "they can whore staffcast over and over."

3. Every org should have a fair chance against every other org. Specifically, you should expect no org to have a skill that gives them a massive advantage over another org with no reasonable counters. Demesnes would fall under this category if an org didn't have mages/druids (they all do though, so it's harder to spot.) If you pressed me I would argue that a really good number for orgs to be considered "equal" at is something like a 10-man team with 2 members of each class, but since that's pretty rare you'll have to adjust that based on situations. The easiest way to generalise this is that there shouldn't be skills which alter the dynamic of group combat -too- significantly unless there are readily available counters to them.
Also intuitive, but almost as hard to spot as the first one. Some skills, like (I would argue) choke, still violate this principle as it's very easy to get into a scenario where this skill absolutely devastates another side with not much they can realistically do about it. I would consider this my weakest point - it needs expanding on to determine what kinds of things are and aren't acceptable and whether an org should expect to be screwed for missing a member of a certain class that they need to counteract another skill (if Glomdoring doesn't have a bard to dispell, maze is gonna give 'em significant trouble.)

4. Where two people are exactly equally matched in skill and so on, one side should not have a "wins over time" mechanic while the other lacks it.
Here's one I expect to be controversial, partly for valid reasons and partly from misunderstanding me. Basically, if Geb and I, being equally skilled, artied, decently-systemed etc. combatants, spar, should either of us die, and if so, what would you expect the cause to be? The way IRE combat is set up, where your natural state is "uninjured" and your goal is to maintain yourself at that state while preventing your opponent from doing so, is a little different to something like a console fighter where you expect someone to eventually lose. Nonetheless, you could realistically have it set up such that if a fight doesn't finish by normal means during a certain time period, one side loses based on some factor involved in the match. This would in fact be what happens here if such a ceteris paribus situation came up because someone would run out of health and run away. Unfortunately there a couple classes that break this rule. Fighting a Spiritsinger with ecology would be an exercise in futility if they cured well enough because you would eventually have to run away to sleep for a few minutes or else be passing out constantly and waiting for them to deliver the killing blow. This kind of lopsidedness is not balanced.

5. A class should not cost any more to reach a solid offence with than any other. What this specifically seems to translate to in Lusternia is classes with natively high damage output as part of their offence getting damage arties (warriors) but classes that are more affliction reliant (MDs) not getting affliction arties. Depending on what level the game is balanced around you either end up with unruned warriors complaining about not being able to defeat anyone with 0.5-0.7 of a clue, or with Thoros doing 3k damage combos and one-shotting vast swathes of people. Conversely, artifacts on mages, wiccans etc. have an existant but nowhere near as large impact. I make no claims as to where on this scale classes -should- be balanced, only that they should all be roughly in the same place.
This seems like a fairly good summary of people's complaints with this issue. Dispute tends to be more along the lines of whether knights are currently balanced around having crap weapons or super high wound-weapons (or somewhere inbetween.)

There were a couple of other things I wanted to mention but, as you would expect, I forgot. Might edit this later if I remember or if someone else brings them up.

I'm gonna quote your sig quote and say that you must be the collective consciousness of all forum posts, because that pretty much sums up anything that I would add to this thread.

Must disagree. If archetypes are designed to win over time, then they are the best classes in the hands of a competent fighter. If you are capable of stalling and tanking someone designed to win in a burst for long enough, you are going to win. There is not much they can do about this and it is not really related to skill on anything more than a basic level. Conversely, if everyone has access to win over time mechanics or no one does, skill is allowed to play a larger part again without one class winning by default.

Regarding the runes thing, I am not talking about the facts here, I'll let everyone else do that. But I think if you have a class that can artifact itself up from balanced to wtf, or from crap to balanced, everyone else should have that same restriction/potential advantage, since it doesn't make sense else.

Regarding the choke/etc., skills that are specific to group combat, or at least much better in group combat than solo, are a great way of making those classes desirable. This is (obviously) not a factor for solo combat but I strongly believe that guilds should always do more than solo combat and be valuable to their orgs that way.
Blocking is by no means useless in solo, but it's -very- useful in group combat and critical when fighting, say, beckoners. All guilds should have access to either a similar amount, or a different amount that adds up to a similar level of impact, on their orgs in fights that matter (which are almost never solo unless something happens like a warrior barges out a newbie while everyone's off-eq and pwns them out of the range of bard songs/demesnes.)
I think making them not be too overpowering just because they're interesting is critical because a hell of a lot of fights that matter are group combat. If one side is given a massive advantage not countered by an equally huge advantage for another org, it makes combat stale. Unilateral access to maze, choke and demesnes would all be uninteresting, so luckily each side has access to them. Note that these skills can be equally powerful by side and still different, they don't have to be the same. Demesne summon and willowisp were both slightly more threatening in their own contexts, though demsne summon was slightly better overall since you could always avoid willowisp (though you had to put in more effort) but could never avoid demesne summon. These things were eventually removed for being too disruptive (plz add willowisp back so the MDs have the correct number of Fae like you all promised!) though, which is also a great example of how skills shouldn't have too much impact like that just because they're interesting.

Game balance, one of the hardest and most delicate subjects to touch; simply because every person is going to have their own opinion about their archtype. For example, I think Celestines are overpowered. Once cast with heretic the only option is to run or put yourself in a state where you cannot be touched. (I tend to use ghost.) I don't think warriors, even with runes, are impossible to defeat. As a Nihilist I was able to deal with Geb (PRE DMP), and I've won several times, and so has he. I think the only way game balance would be solved is if the Divine put themselves in our shoes; "Oh crap, meh, Thoros just instakilled me from 4000 health. Something is wrong there." They then check the variables of why it happened. "Oh, he had puissance up, he has a few strength buffs...hmm..war blessing...ack, I'm enemied to Fain's Order and he has shrine vendetta up..and oh bugger my level 2 electric weakness against his electric runes."etc.

All of that may be correct, Thoros, but I think we need some underlying principles to make it easier for people to point out what principles of balance certain things are violating and notice things like if guilds are lacking in usefulness beyond their solo-ganking power (yes, I have an agenda here, but even if I didn't I think it'd all be valid!)

Unless you think the inquisition line violates a specific principle of balance here, or another one like "you shouldn't -have- to run away to avoid a skill" (and can back that up) that one is probably going to need relegated to debates of whether it's too good disproportionally to the skill needed to level it...or something. Not sure what angle you'd use to even attack that honestly.

Fyi, since you mentioned it, only one of those things (the elec resistance) is anything they can realistically be expected to deal with. You could argue that being squashed into a pulp by warriors should be a weakness of mugwumps and merians, but everything else is completely out of their control.

In group combat, yes. Group combat is total chaos, and if you die in 3 seconds something may or may not be wrong. However take it to a different perspective; would that same scenario have happened had it been 1 on 1? Being damage destroyed in group combat is different than in solo; using another example, if I am able to kill Shuyin in 4 hits in a group combat doesn't necessarily mean I could in a solo fight with him. There are other variables in play (too many to name, stuns/health sipping preventing afflictions/etc). I don't think any serious top tier combatant dies to damage by the huge damage dealing warriors that there are today. Though that is an imbalance to group combat, group combat won't ever be balance unfortunately.

This is the one point I really want to lend support to. It's one thing for a warrior to be better than other archetypes at attrition kills (which they aren't--those are monks), but it's another thing altogether when game balance basically says that, if an Aquamancer is fighting a warrior, the warrior wins if 1) the Aquamancer fails to keep up with afflictions, or 2) the Aquamancer doesn't kill quickly enough, when the Aquamancer's win condition is only the warrior failing to keep up with afflictions.

This doesn't mean that all archetypes should be equally suited to both. Soulless is a variation on the attrition kill, but it's still affliction-dependent. Geomancers and Cacophony have the hunger effect, which is not nearly as reliable as wounding. It's ok for attrition kills to be lopsided, but I don't think it's ok for certain archetypes to be written out of that altogether. Just like every guild has access to affliction kills in some way (except maybe Shofangi, which I imagine will get fixed), every guild should have access to attrition kills in some way. Or none should, which I don't see happening.

Note: If this post is too specific/tangential to the general discussion going on here Shiri feel free to remove it.

Thoros for the bolded section what decisions would you rather have to make in that situation so that you do not consider Celestines (that specific power) overpowered?

@shiri -- Re:'Every class should have a role of some kind in terms of general usefulness to their org in group combat or in general.'

I agree. In your example with maze, etc would you also add support skills like healing, zodiac spheres, meteor (damages to all enemies in the room)? Or do you specifically mean the combat support skills you mentioned.

@shiri -- Re: Winning over time/'Attrition kills'
I like the fact that some archetypes have a subset of strategies/kill conditions specific to them. I see where you are coming from. Yes, if you can tank the celestine burst affliction and he doesn't get away you will win, but I like the asymmetry.

Yes, I do count zodiac spheres as part of it. Healing would count except that it's pretty bad (I guess maybe with auras...I don't see it used much except for insomnia and the occasional newbie that thinks they're helpful farhealing instead of cursing/vining.)

@asymmetry: well, asymmetry is nice, but unless it's an "equal but different" kind of situation (which it isn't between "kills with burst" and "kills if they last long enough") it's not balanced.

I believe a druids demesne falls under lopsided due mainly to breaking groups. The only fix would probably be to alter the 'second elevation' aspect. I dont see that happening though.

Attrition through hunger is one thing, through sleep is another (you can eat food but you cant just decide to sleep in a fight) although a well set fighter wont be having too many problems against hunger.

Forgot rest of my comments, lost my thoughts.

You can't be expected to constantly carry around the amount of food you'd need to win an attrition war with a hungering person. Sleep is worse but hunger is bad.

Druid demesne is a lot less awful than mage demesne to deal with and all demesnes are technically counterable with your own mages which blunts their ginormous impact.

What about those of us who are trying to make our own system (and messing up rather badly)? Whose charas die in three hits?

Healing is also great for RP uses, thank you very much.



Edit: Forgive me. Hormonal.

Uh, you're still more useful nature cursing or vining a few times and dying in 3 hits than farhealing in 99% of situations, actually. Especially when you're not even farhealing so much as trying to cure clumsiness off everyone in a druid demesne...

And I didn't say it wasn't great for RP uses.

EDIT: And that's off-topic anyway. Back on topic people.

I think this brings up another aspect of balance. The only way you stand a chance against damage archetypes is if you have enough of a health pool to withstand the burst. If two combos kill you then no matter how skilled you are you are going to lose. Thus when talking about balance you also have to keep relative levels in mind.

I think we all want levels to matter, but there is always a risk of having them matter too much. Clearly a fifty level difference should have a large impact on a fight, but should a 5 level difference? This of course is even further impacted by the fact that levels 99 and 100 represent large jumps in power thus making them really act as multiple levels.

In a 1-1 fight of equal skill should a level 98 always lose to a level 99? How about a level 98 to a level 100? If you are level 80 should you stand no chance against an equal skilled 100? How about if you are 50?

Some artifacts also can be though of in this light, specifically ones that increase DMP or health (as in they effectively make you a higher level than you are for purposes of balance). The same could be said for buffs that are not self cast.

My 2 generic gold pieces: a game is balanced when you can pick up a game, choose any play style you like, and as long as you put the effort into learning yours and other player's abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, you can go toe-to-toe with anyone on your level.

Not nearly specific enough. Particularly when you start talking about "play style."

The key to any good RPG is offering players a variety of ways to approach the game. Do they want to be a damage sponge, a physical frail but powerful caster, or an agile thief, etc.

Lusternia offers six different classes, four different communes, four Knighthood specs, four Totems specs, three Psionics specs, two Illusions specs, two different Magics (High & Low), and two "mandatory" guild skills (Knighthood/Athletics for warriors, Kata/Stealth for Nekotai/Ninjakari, Wicca/Nature for wiccans, etc). So there's 24 ways to play a commune night, 16 for city warriors, etc etc etc. And then there's all the weapon selections and poison combos you can choose from.

When I say play style, I basically mean the way you want to define your character based on your skills and class.

I'm not going to argue that some classes are just plain better at fighting another because of their abilities, but if someone puts the effort into learning their class and skills, then they should logically be able to put up a good fight and win.