Oh man, Asmon is only one step away from reacting to every warhammer 40k faction now. I can only hope

As a Scorch main back in the glory days of titanfall 2 I loved it. The feeling of empowerment when you catch 2 enemy titans out in close quarters with your ult you know both of them were screaming "WHO THE FUCK USES SCORCH!" and that would bring the biggest smile to my face. Sure I got shit on the majority of the time but goddamn did it make me bust a fat gamer nut everytime it worked

Asmongold and Bricky at the same time is the best crossover I've ever seen

Bricky is one of my favorite people on KZfaq, hes such a chill dude

Asmongold reacting to Bricky's warhammer 40k factions videos would be awesome

I think balance and fun go hand in hand. Fun to play should also mean fun to play against.

The Sombra issue reminds me of getting stunned in D&D. The stun mechanic makes sense mechanically, but it's not fun to lose an entire turn without any way to overcome it.

Asmon discovering Bricky is something I never expected but IM ALL FOR IT LETS GO

starcraft 2 didn't have balance changes for a long time, but pro players can always come up with new play style that counters previously considered to be too overpowered strategy, to some degree you don't need to balance too often, people will come up with new play style, but also balance is needed to deal with some problematic issues.

I can relate to this video. I always loved playing Murky in HOTS. He was insanely squishy early game and your team had to support you in team fights, but if they did you would just stomp the enemy as soon as you hit level 20. Before that I played Lucio, but they nerfed his healing talent that let you double crossfade to reset amp it up's duration, so you basically cut your healing and speed boosts in half by losing that talent.

For me it depends on the game. Non-pvp games that are still competitive like diablo titles or pve mmos don't really bother me too much when there's a "meta" that's moderately more effective. It can be annoying when they are practically required to play the game, but not nearly as big of a train wreck when pvp games are unbalanced.

CSGO feels fun to me because of how high the skill cap is, everyone is the same character and has the same utility but you can always get better until you're the best in the world

The two major things worth bringing up is that one, balancing in multiplayer games like Overwatch is REQUIRED to enable the identities of differing characters to even really shine and be relevant. Sure widow might have a really important identity, but if she is the end all be all of an Overwatch meta it forces characters like Pharah out and makes the game overall way less diverse and interesting than if you change the balancing so different playstyles are viable. The other point is that while preserving a character's identity in balance is preferred, there are times it is not attainable because the identity itself is far too flawed to make sense. Take Doomfist, although he was bad for most of Overwatch 1, he was unfun to play against due to him being a Tankier dps one shot character that could rollout from 2 miles away and just kill you, it just wasn't engaging to play against and it made the game kind of feel like a horror game where you have to check every other corner and roof to not get oneshot. This is combined with the fact that his whole kit was a dps with cc. While having cc to combo people and a one shot in his fist was his major identity in Overwatch 1, in Overwatch 2 when both there is less of a focus on cc and in general oneshots like his didn't feel great in the game, it made sense to change his identity to fit the overall game more so that there is less frustration. (Again, I know doom was dogshit but I am just referring to his identity and playstyle) Yes we should preserve a character's identity all we can but there are simply times that it is not possible to do so while maintaining a healthy game for everyone else.

I absolutely love Bricky and his vids. They're usually on some speciifc game and I've found a lot of great games through him but sometimes he does general topic ones like this too

i think the only time balance > fun is if the game is meant to mainly be competitive. for example siege was fun because it’s prioritize being competitive over being fun and that’s what made it so enjoyable, granted it was very hard to get in to.

Balance should be desired and sought after, but it should not compromise fun and uniqueness

Bricky and Asmon is the crossover I didn’t know I needed

Asmon acting like a dad figure towards Bricky feels my heart with hope. :')

To be fair for Bricky, he stated very clearly what his idea of fun was and that was identity, while Asmon leans more to skill based fulfillment, where it's the interactions between the opponents instead of what your character wants to do.

WoW players cheering on how balance should be the priority are the same people complaining how every class in WoW feels the same, and how class identity is gone. Ultimately balanced games just turn into chess where everyone has the exact same tools, and that's not something MMOs should strive for. In my opinion being kinda OP is fine, as long as there are a lot of little ways for different classes to be OP in their own unqiue way.

When I was young I played for fun. Then during and after college I played for fulfillment. Liking the feeling of progress. But for many years already went back to playing for fun again.

they did change the firebase glacier map though. the moneymaker thing about it was not that the geth were easiest but that there was one spot at the back of it where the geth faction specifically was not able to spawn in a location where they could approach you from the back or sides, paired with the fact that you could pull approaching enemies over the cover to one-shot them and that the only elite enemy was a small threat that could neather teleport nor just turn up randomly behind you and one shot you. this was fixed by adding a part in the back of the map where enemies could spawn rendering the tactic void.

I'm glad he mentioned Mass Effect. My favourite single-player trilogy(even though he talked about the multiplayer aspect of it).

When I think about this I think of bf4 gadgets which where fun vs versatility, there's a lot of different gadgets but I'm gonna talk about the suav vs tug/mav. Suav can be used to kamikaze and counter snipe. Tug is goated in SND and pretty much every other mode. Mav is used to bully campers and pilots. Form over function their all great but some are just funnier to use.

I still miss scatter arrow. Yeah, the feet blasting was bad, but using it as intended to shoot around corners with he sonic arrow was super cool.

Razorfist had an interesting take: he said "hero" shooters/moba can't be perfectly balanced cause RPGs can't cause balance isn't the point. There are hardcore shooters with perfectly symmetrical maps and everyone getting the exact same loadout, but only a minority plays them. And for RPGs, you'll never "sell" one where all classes are the same, at least you won't make much money.

I get what Asmon is saying about pre-nerf Zaria. at times it would feel like I was throwing just because she was a meta Pick and I wasn't using her. but at the same time, it felt like it would have been scummy to use her because of that. it also felt like I would be admitting defeat by switching to her. like I gave up and just went with the meta because we were losing.

I think it's better to err on the side of having under-powered characters in asymmetric games, because in the worst case scenario where they are apparently useless there is a chance for players to discover things & make memorable plays with an underdog character.

I think both Asmond and Bricky made good points about negative press in games, but it's important to consider whether the game is free or not, if you only hear bad things about new world you're not gonna spend $50 on it, but league? it's free, your friends play it and you constantly hear about it, so yeah you're probably gonna make the mistake of playing league of legends

Oh wow didn't expect Asmon reacting to Bricky, what a time to be alive

I love how I can watch 2 of my favorite creators in one vid here. Feels good

Would love to see Asmon react to more of Bricky's stuff, the dude has some great Warhammer 40K vids

I'm happy to have been alive when asmon would watch bricky. Two of my favourite creators

Most of the time I play the thing that is fun for me. The problem comes if it’s not even remotely viable to play. You probably won’t have fun when the opponent has significant advantage. That’s the hard part in balancing games. You as a developer should make all the roles, characters etc to either be at least viable or to fill a certain purpose and also to be fun to play at the same time.

I'd disagree about the idea of changing it asap because something seems imbalance. Coming from Fighting Games scene, historically, many times a character are deemed as OP and people demand they to be nerfed, 4 months later no one talked about that anymore because people discovered that the character actually isn't as broken as they thought, it's just the scene hasn't adapted and found the counter to the character yet but instead of labbing it they decided to post on twitter instead.

oh man, just imagine a battle royale with the battle spectacle of 100 saiyans fighting eachother that is also built around the power of said characters.

good game balance is simply a way of delivering consistent fun for all players involved. Bad balance reduced risk vs reward (certain characters/weapons have less risk because they're more powerful), punishes investment into characters or playstyle, and disengages players by taking away their choice. reducing/changing character identity is a hard choice that must be made sometimes. The OW2 devs likely decided that OG doomfist's playstyle would hurt OW2 more than the removal of his DPS identity would.

Bricky and Asmon! This is awesome, love both creators and I hope Asmongold watches the 40k Factions because man are they legit interesting (even more so thanks to Bricky’s presentation style).

Of course the time the magnificent forehead , the Brick himself, comes up on this channel he has a douchy hairdo and starts with an overly long ad. The guy is worth watching, have done for a long time now. If this didn't convince you, the rest of his channel very much might. ^^

It is fun in the form of preserving the idenity of the character vs balancing in the form of homogenization, like in retail wow for exampel where every class have a stun, heal and shield now, where in classic every class felt unbalanced but very unique. I prefer the game being unbalanced but fun and classes feeling unique over making every class have similar abilities.

Definition of fun = I win. Definition of unbalanced = I lose.

fun comes before balance and my class is bad.

23:02 I mained akali since season 2, had massive success with her in ranked, made so many good memories playing her - only for riot to completely rework her (aka removed from the game). Ever since then I've never really played her, nor have I truly enjoyed playing the game again. Sometimes I wonder why I even played this champion for 5 years

9:20 roadhog in every single game/team. Meanwhile soj, reaper, kiriko, lucio and monke in owl LMAAAAOO

balance doesn’t rlly matter too much if it’s on a rotation between different things every once in a while for PvE. As for PvP, balance is everything

Man this video hits close to home - I have abt 3.5k on Doomfist in OW1 and I've been gm/t500 since s10. His unique game-play and the reward you would get out of his mastery was so satisfying and the main reason why I kept grinding the game. I was first concerned, but still intended to play him, whenever they announced Tank Doom would be a thing, but him just being complete dog tier at launch and lowering his skill ceiling by killing most intriguing techs us doom players would learn made it really demotivating for me to play. Which makes me really envious, since the majority of people are convinced (including me) that ow2 is a better game overall. I stopped playing during my climb at m1/low gm mmr, because I had enough of the unrewarding gameplay and cancerous community flaming you 24/7 for playing him. I played doom in all the metas at high elo in the past ,no matter the meta, I played it and even back then he was was dogshit in most metas and yet he still had something that made it fun and rewarding to play him , but yes while dooms gameplay is still unique it just didn't keep the fun that made me fall in love with him in ow1. And I know I'm not alone, ik so many OG doom players and high elo dooms and they eighter quit, or play diff characters. - Most who still grind the hero are streamers who probably would've quit the game/hero too if they didn't stream in the first place. :(

Never thought I would see asmondgold react to a bricky video been watching bricky for like 10 years now

25:05 that a good point. Warzone 1 had so many weapons but i remember when the DMRs were just massivly overpowered. nobody played any other weapon. Im glad they balanced it.

League is a great example, as you can get a character at the start of the season that’s great and fun to play, and end that season with that character having been changed 13 times and unplayable for half the season, only for them to revert and buff again and etc etc

Didn't expect to see a Bricky video on here

Torb was so much more fun when you could upgrade your turret. I like his new ult, but I want more fun interaction with the engineering sude of torb

The balancing of a fun VS Balance itself need a lot of balance or if it goes out of balance then you will have neither balance nor fun

Rest In Peace Techies in DotA 2 😢

video starts 2:59 i thought youtube's 10 second ad was already bad, but a 3min sponsor ad? jesus

Good to see bricky in any video

5:28 until the dude actually starts adressing the subject of the video.

The Asol league rework part left out a ton of context. Asol's rework is happening for three major reasons: (1) Flavor + Gameplay mismatch. He's league's giant fucking cosmic dragon and doesnt play like a dragon at all. Using league devs' internal metrics, they found that people ranked the character and flavor of Asol very high but ranked playing him in the bottom group. (2) He's gameplay pattern at high level didn't offer a lot of counterplay. His main damage(the comets) don't cost mana or have a significant cd, so he would just perma push lane uncontested and roam + his kit gives his roams insane angles over walls and a reliable giant aoe stun.(this is all before the gutted him to trash tier) (3) The comets mechanic wasn't practical to balance. You can't really fix how reliable/no counterplay they are without fundamentally changing them.

I wasn't expecting those words of wisdom out of Asmongold at 4:11 - 4:32

I would loose hours of my life just watching Asmon react to 40k lore

imo, the biggest balance imperfection in OW was getting rid of ALL stuns. i can see cree's stun due to his high damage output, but removing Mei and Brig's stun? thats half their kit... without it they aren't good anymore

I was saying this back in 1999 when Quake 3 arena came out and they made all the weapons into a vaguely similar hodge podge of projectile throwers for the sake of "balance". It's taken an entirely new generation of people to realize this.

Similar why I eventually quit Overwatch 1. After they did the rework for Mercy, someone who I absolutely loved to play, if I had EVER played another Support, it was constant insults and my other team members getting angry at me if I didn't. And at the end of the day, I really didn't anymore BECAUSE she was so strong after her rework, she didn't feel like the character that I used to enjoy.

Balance isn't always what people might perceive it as, like Scorch from TitanFall2 who is the worst titan but I had a lot of moments where I won a 1v3 as Scorch becouse I learned the character and knew how play it effectively, sometimes balance just depends on the player, wich comes back to ASol a character that had negative winrate for the longest time becouse it was really hard to use but the few people who learned the character had a personal positive winrate.

that ending got me so bad holy shit lmao putting on one of his own youtube videos during his stream while he's afk incredible

fun is subjective to the individual, like music, and for competitive players comes from competing in a balanced environment

Counter point to games with long time balancing that he mentioned like cs go or chess, those games are more about the meta game than game mechanics, they're much more about strategies and knowledge than just simply being able to shoot good or move pieces fast

There is an aimbot, it's called quitting casual games. Then you'll hit shots.

I see Sombra as a rouge in wow. Yeah, you always gotta a look out for those lol

God damn, Bricky.. that's a name I haven't heard in a LONG while. His "so you want to main" vidoes back in the day were damn good.

I love how he brought up akali, aurelion sol teemo but didnt aatrox becouse he is such interesting and complicated case

14:55 If it is so fun, why doesn't anyone play it anymore? If it was so fun, the gameplay should've spoke for itself and would continue to be played to this day by a massive amount of people. Nowadays, I think 2000 is the highest I've heard in the last few years. This isn't a comment about fun vs balanced, but I am saying it is a terrible example.

when we getting the next mount off havent had one in ages

The Aurelion Sol rework has not been released. He has no idea what effect it will have.

I don't think people play games for fulfillment. It is primarily for fun or relaxation. If you are playing games for fulfillment you need to get out more just saying.

No one’s gonna talk about that ‘kame-hame-ha’ huh

LoL was never the same for me after they reworked OG nidalee. I saw HotshotGG playing her, heard that pro play meta was to ban her anytime playing vs him, and anytime you didn’t he’d punish you so bad you’d def do it next time. This is when she was widely considered trash. No one would play her, and when they did they were always the weak link on the team. I modeled my play after him, practiced for MONTHS, and finally got to a point I was carrying or at least a top contributor on the team, every game. It was sooooo satisfying as a gameplay arc, being someone everyone started off underestimating and ended up eating, and it took so much time to fine tune… and then they reworked her and “buffed” her so everyone was playing her, but the old golden play style was no longer viable. Same with Wukong. Everyone thought he was trash at the beginning and I was wasting everyone with him. Then they buffed him and everyone started playing him, and it seemed so unnecessary. Now he’s so differently balanced he just doesn’t perform the same role anymore which I loved. I didn’t quit League, it quit me :c I put many years into it, but after getting rug pulled so many times it’s hard for me to get into to that level anymore. so ends my sad story, good day

Depends on the game and the reason why something is OP. I will always hate games that give advantage to someone who sunk 10k into it over someone who just paid base 60$. Slaughtering a whole party of 9 with my overgeared weak by default buff character in an MMO will always be one of my best gaming memories though.

Regarding League of Legends: Riots biggest problem is the way they changed designing new Champs a couple of years ago. Some Champs have mechanics that are just not fun to play against, or are inherently hard to balance. Also they started adding more and more stuff to abilities, comparing an old Champ vs a new Champ, the old Champ ability descriptions fit on a screen. For new ones, barely 2 do. Overcomplicating abilities and interactions with other abilities, passives, items, etc. makes those champs hard to master, and while they can be fun, the majority will never utilize their abilities even near to the possible level, while a few players do and make the champ extremely imbalanced. Also, the biggest problem in most competitive games is the few pro players (or highest ranked players) vs the massive amount of lower ranked players. Games are usually balanced for pro play even though its a fraction of a percent of total players. So >99% of players bite the dust when it comes to balance, leaving extremely broken champs untouched for ages because they're irrelevant for pro play, and on the other hand destroy champs which are overpowered in pro play so they become useless for almost all other players.

his favorite gun in destiny is a form of balance.

I think balance is all good and well but as long as it doesn't take away identity.

Is there a Hotplate add-on where I can use the heat from the laptop to cook and game at the same time

21:35 chess? Really, that's your pick for most balanced game? In the top level for chess, there is a huge imbalance between black and white and that's what makes it interesting. As white, you're expected to at least draw while as black, most times you hope for a draw. That's why someone winning as black in pro play is seen as a great thing as you did something against the odds. Chess is the perfect example where a game is fun because of its imbalance.

This balance seems to always happen to shotguns in wargames. They start out strong in close combat because you know being only close combat worthy. Yet every person using an assault rifle did not like this and said it was OP. As a shotgun user we trade our long range and medium range for clear advantage in close range. But even with those nerfs it wasn't enough and now we do just enough damage where we have to land a headshot in close combat to get that one shot kill or we have to land between 2-3 shots in to them to kill them. Meanwhile the assault rifle can empty the entire mag in to us before our third shot.

On the topic of fun vs balance, my favorite thing to do in any shooter is either run around with melee or a sidearm. Is it good? No. Is it balanced? Yes, because i'm at a disadvantage. Is it fun? For me.

Exactly the reason why i rarely play mp games. I used to play league and dota back in the day but now I can't even bring myself to watch them. Now i just play fromsoft titles and Monster hunter.

15:50 That's like the Gunlance in monster hunter

BALANCE: every class / hero should be able to kill / defend against any other class / hero

Its shotgun knees guy !

my definition of fun is anti-meta! killing someone thats fully "meta-decked" with some random/personal build is most fulfilling imo.

I just can't stand devs balancing games round the pro scene/top 2% of players. Perfect example of how balance can ruin fun.

I do wanna state something here Keeping the Identity of the heroes in check is something DotA does REALLY well!

I'v always loved Junkrat for his kit and playstyle and back in Overwatch Season 4 even tho he was so off-meta that people would instant scream at me, go afk, throw, LEAVE THE GAME in competitive when I picked Junkrat, I gave no fuck because I liked the game play and as a bonus I also got to listen to the reaction of the people previously trash talking me shutting up when they saw my 70% junkrat winrate. Managed to peak Top500. Not in all cases something which is unbalanced necessarily is unfun to play when it's core essence of what makes it fun is still there.

This is why I will love Borderlands 2 until the end of time. Yes Moneyshot is and was overpowered asf. But there was bore, anarchy, fleet, and bloodsplostion as well. Everybody (except Axton past tvhm) felt fun and powerful. I

Steak à la mode. New meta.

i like how he put the video on like how you would do for a dog so they dont get lonely.

It seems like Sombra is the reworked true stealth Akali of Overwatch. Fun to play probably but pisses people off.

One HUGE problem is when a game has real pros and high stakes competitions. The developers usually balance for the masses, not the pros. It makes truly competitive PvP games less entertaining for the spectator. There are a few games I didn't even play yet still watched the competitions. I stopped watching because the game was balanced for noobs.

28:14 ok but it was the most predictable attack and arguably one of the most avoidable. it was high DPS but dps doesnt mean squat if you arent being hit

I think it all falls down to what is considered fun and your targeted public, I mainly play for fun either if I win or not, because i'm looking for memorable experiences not win ratios, Asmongold's disagreements come from a stance that fullfillment in pvp comes mainly from winning (wich is true in most cases) while Bricky's stance resembles my taste. The problem nowadays is that games must care to "a wider public" to be profitable and end up monotonous and boring.

23:00 I miss the old baldie caster Swain and even the way he looked back then. I have an awesome "Northern Front Swain" skin that I no longer use, cause he's no longer the same caster champion I used to love playing.