Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Interview

Celestial Heavens had the chance to fire over several questions to Kuju Entertainment's Alastair Halsby and Richard Underhill about their role in creating the multiplayer component for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
Q: How do you plan to achieve balance in the final game? Via rock-paper-cissor matchups between the various classes, or a true balance that will allow a player to stand good chances against any other class?

A: That is indeed one of the hardest parts of my job. I started with a rough intention of rock-paper-scissors, but quickly realised that there was an important addition to the equation - that of range. In a game of both melee combat and spellcasting / archery, range is obviouslyvery important. This (amongst other reasons) meant that a simple rock-paper-scissors comparison isn't always useful - not to mention the fact that we have 5 classes instead of 3.

Balance in the final product comes about from careful analysis of what the characters are doing, and how they relate to each other. We look at core DPS (damage per second) ratiosto make sure classes are balanced initially, but our final balance comes from looking carefully at the statistics of people actually playing the game and making careful tweaks where we see a problem.

Personally,I feel I can take any class and do well with it against any other class. I sincerely hope others feel the same!