Game Balance - Merely Hype?

That's some holier-than-thou nonsense. I think you made up some imaginary issue so that you could talk down to "the twinks." You did the same in this thread. It seems a lot like you're just hysterical about evil twinks, and very eager to let everyone know that you certainly aren't one yourself. I mean, you necroed a thread from January 2020 to do so, and then made a new thread afterwards to do the same. When people talk about imbalance, they're usually talking about some specific game mechanic that's poorly implemented, or classes and skills that are clearly too good or not good enough. There aren't cliques of devious twinks who are wringing their hands about losing their favorite spell. You made that up in order to feel superior.

There are real imbalances in the game. Things like fighter being pretty much objectively inferior to raider, for instance, which people will point out when discussing the heavy combat classes. There isn't some underworld of Machiavellian twinks manipulating the discourse on game balance to suit their own goals. Miscreant, one of the most popular classes, was just recently nerfed and I haven't seen so much as a single complaint about that. I don't recall any elementalists losing spells since the magick subclasses were introduced. In fact, nerfs almost never happen in this game. Sometimes there are major changes to the way things work, like the new classes, but this game doesn't have a tradition of systematic nerfs. Judging by the summary of the recent Player-Staff Meeting, there were precisely zero questions about balance. It just wasn't brought up by anyone.

It's ridiculous to dismiss all talk of game balance as just twinks looking for advantages. That's a really unintelligent take. For a game with permadeath and FFA PvP, Armageddon's playerbase is remarkably tolerant of balance changes. They'll discuss problems with the game's coded systems because that's what players of any game will do, but your fantasy about butthurt twinks is just that, a self-flattering fantasy that you made up because it let you tell imaginary people that they aren't as virtuous as you.

And no, Arm players didn't famously chant "paper is fine, nerf scissors." I've never heard that once since I started playing in like 2004. It's a tongue-in-cheek gamer phrase that was probably coined by players of Everquest or World of Warcraft or something. Before the new classes, Armageddon went for years and years without any significant changes to classes or races. The skill lists that are posted in this forum's code section were leaked almost twenty years ago and remained 98% accurate up until the old classes were phased out entirely. This game does not have a history of nerfing things, nor a tradition of players demanding nerfs. You made that up.