Does Anet Know How to Properly Balance a Metagame?

As has been the general trend in Anet's skill "balances" over the past two years of Guild Wars, we've seen that they tend to favor the complete axing of skills experiencing a vogue in order to introduce numerous buffs to other lesser-used skills.

The problem is, they tend to nerf these skills as well in a similar fashion, introducing a never ending cycle of nerfs which ultimately lowers the power curve.

If we look at a timeline of Anet's skill balances:

September 2005
March 2006
April 2006
June 2006
July 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
January 2007
February 2007

We notice a number of things:

As time has progressed since September 2005, the frequency of skill balances increases, from an initial gap of six months, to once a month during March and April, then again in June and July. Guildwars, of course, needed some of these updates, as it was becoming an increasingly competitive game, especially with the release of Factions around this time.

However, if we look at the general contents of the updates, we notice a trend in Anet's balancing tactics.

Rather than testing a skill or class in a current, competitive environment, studying its effects, and analyzing as to how best to balance the skill's power in order to maintain its usefulness, Anet prefers to outright annihilate a skill from competitive play.

When a skill or class enjoys a period of vogue, in which many people abuse it to dominate the metagame, Anet chooses to let the banhammer fall swift and hard upon its victims. It's never a good thing when something truly "broken" dominates a metagame, but the fact is, with updates as frequent as Anet crunches out, there is no time for a healthy metagame to develop.

Before I played Guildwars, I played Magic: The Gathering, and the two games have been noted for their strategic similarities. I played Magic during one of the most problematic times in the game's history, the Standard Seasons when Mirrodin Block was legal. Mirrodin gave rise to Ravager Affinity, one of the most broken archetypal decks in the game's history, and the Mirrodin Metagame was focused almost solely around being able to contend with and defeat the Ravager menace. This was an example of an unhealthy metagame, and Wizards of the Coast, heeding the calls of thousands of frustrated players, implemented one of the first Type 2 (Standard Format) bannings since six years prior, which all but removed Ravager Affinity from the metagame (but not after the deck had made a strong presence at most of the high level tournaments, including Worlds).

The point of the Magic anecdote, is that even in times of an unhealthy metagame, it is still important to let a counter-metagame emerge, especially in a game as versatile and unpredictable as Guild Wars. With so many skills available, it is impossible to create a build that will dominate 100% of its opponents.

However, with the frequent skill updates, Anet forces periods of so-called meta-metagames upon competitive players, in which a large number of people take to playing a gimmicky build, with the sole aim of winning matches. No gimmick build is unbeatable, but they do run a high challenge rating, and it is for this reason that they beat many teams (who are unprepared to deal with them). However, before the metagame can balance itself out, Anet swoops in with another skill balance, and suddenly, nobody knows what is viable anymore.

The only natural result of such an action is for people to play the next most powerful thing.

And then we're back to square one.

This is not the way you nurture a healthy metagame; rather, this is a great way to stunt its growth.

If you disagree with what I'm saying, I offer these cases as proof of Anet's unwillingness to let a defined metagame develop:

1. The Case of The Ritualist
Ritualists, since their inception, have been a misunderstood class. They can heal, but not as well as a monk; they can deal damage, but not as well as an elementalist; and generally only excel at very specific niche roles. However, when the Ritualist was released, the potency of the class' defensive spirits was incredible, to the point of being overpowered. God-forbid players actually learn how to counter spirit spamming Ritualists in GvG or HA, Anet swoops in, brandishing the banhammer, and completely annihilates the one thing the class was good at: spirits. In one move, Ritualist spirit effectiveness, energy management, and usefulness went straight down the tubes. Spawning Power, while not very good in general, has now become an essentially defunct attribute, as it provides a useless buff to skills that Ritualists no longer use. Sure, you might see a spirit spammer here or there, but the vast majority (the few there are), of modern ritualists specialize in Weapon Spells. Their primary attribute is a waste, their energy management is shit, and their general strategy is nonexistent. An overall wasted class.

2. The Paragon
In a manner similar to the Ritualist, the Paragon had a game-distorting effect during its introduction into the PVP metagame. With Motivation shouts able to supply the party with near-unlimited energy, a near-impenetrable armor rating, and great ranged DPS, the Paragon was quite broken on the battlefield. However, rather than test skills in order to lower effectiveness, while still maintaining usefulness, Anet strapped an atomic bomb to the collective heads of Paragons everywhere, and turned the ignition key. Within a month of Nightfall's release, several Paragon skills were nerfed into the ground; into complete and utter uselessness. This was effective at fixing the problem of broken Paragons... at the cost of pretty much killing a class.

3. The Mesmer
Now, I hate being the target of a well-timed diversion as much as the next guy, but for the sake of the game, Mesmers should not become any worse than Anet has unjustly made them. Mesmers are one of the most skill intensive classes to play, and Anet just keeps making their jobs harder with a neverending stream of unnecessary nerfs. Mesmers are a key part of the power balance in this game, as they prevent caster based builds from becoming too overwhelmingly powerful, as well as being adept at hampering enemy monks and disruption in general. The Mesmer's role in PVE is practically nonexistent, and it looks as if Anet wants to make them obsolete in PVP too. The reason I say this is because so many normal classes dip into x/Me in rder to use Inspiration energy management skills, that Anet has been nerfing such skills just by association! Drain Enchantment, Energy Drain, and Mantra of Recall have all been hit hard with nerfs, even though they were most commonly used on Monks! Its almost as if they don't want Inspiration being used for energy management, as everything the Monk class has EVER used for energy management has been nerfed in some way (Right up to Zealous Benediction). This unethical practice hurts classes who rely on x/Me for energy, and Mesmers themselves, who need energy as well!



Furthermore, the actual content of the skill updates is oftentimes dissapointing. Most of what a "skill update" constitutes is a general buffing of some numbers pertaining to some moderately-useful-yet-unplayed skills, an obliteration of a few popular skills from the current metagame, major buffing of some new skills Anet wants you to look at, and some general all-around number fudging.

However, this style of updating skills has a critical failure:

No matter how much you buff a shitty skill, it will not become viable. I don't care how long of a poison duration Poisoned Heart grants; the skill is garbage and I will never use it. Signet of Clumsiness got a damage buff? It's still nothing to throw a party over.

If Anet wants to push certain skills by nerfing ones that are currently good, I see this as an unwarranted attack on the creativity of the player, who ultimately decides what goes on his skillbar. Such moves on Anet's behalf would indicate that Anet would like to control the current metagame by pushing skills upon us. This is something I'm not okay with. I don't want to play in a metagame defined by the people who make the game; I want to create builds for myself and compete against other like-minded people. This is the freedom needed in order for a healthy metagame to mature and grow.


This isn't a response on the current debate over the SR nerf. While I have a necro, and play him from time to time, I'm not batty about the class, and I don't think it limits their effectiveness in PVP overall (after all, how often does Soul Reaping really trigger in gvg?)

I know I'm leaving out the PVE Perspective of this game, but we already know that Anet makes updates with only PVP in mind, so this is what my article is focused upon.


Guildwars is a fantastic game, and Anet continues to do a great job in maintaining and expanding it. However, they would do better to listen to their player base and put a little more thought into their skill balance changes. Nobody is perfect.

I agree, they seem to be making a lot of unnecessary nerfs every time a decent build come out, instead of letting people try to find counters for that build.

and i assume you are going to tell arenanet how they have to balance a game?

it has nothing to do with continuing nerf till its all to low in power.
arenanet mentioned before, they are looking for ways to make some under-used skills, beeing used more, thus they reduce power and duraction of the over-used skills.
for example, 90% of rangers use skill X, and 10% use skill Y
skill Y is similar but has a slightly different effect.
arenanet reduces power of skill X, and maybe buffs skill Y again
during the next months new builds come up and it is very well possible the balance between X and Y shifts totally to the other side.
then they have to re balance, by maybe powering x up a bit again.

i gave a simple example but of course these balances depend on a big number of factors, skills, enemy strenght, and many other variables.

so arenanet does not have a continuing nerf bat in their hands, they have an allmighty staff of balancing, which they use regularily and effectively on skills that are mostly overused.

remember the time Every pug used an MM?, now you still see mms, just no 100's of em anymore. which is good. diversity is good.
its not because its a good build that comes out, they nerf because 90% of the necros start using the same MM build. it means there are 100 necro skills that aren't used that often anymore, thus balancing needs to be done
either by buffing the unused, or nerfing the used.
and both happen, look at the changes they are not always those 'nerfs' you people complain about.

That has got to be the longest and best worded whine ever. When you create, develop, and publish the perfect game, let everyone know. they'll beat a path to your door.

Disclaimer: The following rant is not mostly directed towards Captain Robo, but to all the "Izzy wannabes" out there.
________________________

I'm so tired of people flashing trendy terms ("metagame", "nerf", "imba", ...) without really grasping the meaning, and trying to tell ANet how to "properly balance" the game when they are usually heavily biased towards their own preferred playstyle (PvE/PvP), biased towards their preferred profession and their beloved skills. They usually see only a very small portion of the game themselves, usually high-end PvP.

ANet is neutral, they don't favor any profession or build. Their objective is the overall good of the game, to keep it fun for veterans and casual players alike, PvP and PvE alike. They have access to all statistic data, can observe people playing, talk to many people, including experienced alpha/beta testers , read forums, ... When they change a skill they have to consider the impact on all areas of the game, consider the interaction with more than 1200 other skills, plus a few monster skills. You think that's easy? You seriously think you can do a better job at balancing the game than them? I dare you, try just one single balance update, and I bet you'd fail miserably. *) All hell would break loose on forums with people whining about the things you "nerfed" and complaining than you "ruined the game".



[edit]*) Nice example here. LOL, classic.[/edit]

Extremely well written. Kudos.

But what the hell is a "Metagame"?

And that entire "anecdote" was lost on me.

I've never played Magic: The Gathering in my life. I have no idea what half those references you mentioned actually mean. I expect im not the only one.

I would use a more well-understood reference next time.

I completely agree that alot/most of the nerfs which Anet make are pointless and/or unrequested.

But I also understand why they do it.

If they create a whole new profession, they arent going to fully understand its capabilities until their are made live. Once players start using them and they realise they are over-powered, they can observe and make changes.

And the reason why the frequency of nerfs has increased, is because there was a 1 year gap between prophercies and factions. Then all of a sudden we had another new compaign in the span of 6 months. Thats alot of new professions and skills to look after, and the inpact on the game will be dramatic and the full effects wont be seen instantly.

The main issue with skill nerfs in GWs, is the fact that they are driven by PvP.

If someone in PvP gets shirty about a skill, and can't be bothered to create a skill set to counter-act it, they start winging to Anet.

Then every other PvP player joins in, until Anet just caves in and nerfs the skill. They dont care about the effects on PvE or areas like FA.

GWs is a primarily PvP driven and influenced game and its unfair on us PvE players who have to endure the side-effects.

While I agree that spawning power and communing aren't the most useful attributes, I disagree that ritualists should be deemed 'a wasted class'.
Recently Rits got a lot of buff mainly to channeling and restoration, this has resulted to a lot of teams using ritualists as a support 'buffer' character, which I think is a pretty interesting thing.

Spirits are a broken mechanic to begin with, I'm glad A.net pretty much nerfed rit spirit spammers into the ground as they were simply too effective for the amount of 'skill' required. (Passive defense shouldn't be that strong)
A better change would be making spirits easier to counter (for instance by weakening them by a big amount) but fact is the nerf did was it was intended to do.

Disagree completely, the only skill that really got nerfed into being unplayable is energizing finale, this skill was simply ridiculous, I agree completely with the nerf. Paragons are still very potent in both support and damage output. Motivation did take a hit overall, but once again, it was mostly passive defense that got nerfed.

PvE mesmers aside I disagree, I would like to see inspiration unnerfed as well but the nerfs to the most commonly used Domination skills were justified and don't harm mesmers that much at all.

Diversion is simply too good to be spammed all the time, now you exactly have to put some thought into using it, instead of spamming it on recharge.

If you think mesmers are subpar in PvE you simply have no idea what you're talking about.


I pretty much agree with this, the overbuffing of skills is bad for the game, as could be seen with mindblast last week..

Though I'm still of the opinion that randomizing maps will make the game 10x as good even without any skillchanges.

agreed

If a skill is shit then it's underused for that reason. Reducing the effectivness of the most popular skills until they are more shitty than the shit skill is NOT the way to go.

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September 2005
March 2006
April 2006
June 2006
July 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
January 2007
February 2007
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Lots of balances and changes. What does it tell you?
a) The design is "fundamentally flawed" so patching holes is better than a total overhaul
b) It's evolution and things are meant to change
c) I don't care as long as I win and/or gain gold

ArenaNet does not just have someone think up a skill and immediately drop it into the game. They test it on the test server in both PvE and PvP. When they feel it's ready, they introduce it to the live server.

Then the fun begins. Their perfectly viable skill is exposed to the masses and used in ways ANet never considered. Usuallly, they do wait to see what counters are developed. Occasionally, as with the Paragon shout, the effect is so widespread that letting it run the course of a season would destroy high-level PvP.

ANet does not alter skills (nerf or buff) based on "whines" from forum posters. What a series of complaints about the same skill does is key their skill balance team to study the skill by watching the PvP and checking the statistics. They are trying to develop the "perfect" PvP world, where all builds are vulnerable to other builds, with wins dependent upon player/team skill and chance.

P.S. And, yes, most skill changes are driven by PvP. Not because ArenaNet cares more about PvP, but due to the fact that skills are more vital in PvP. There are very few non-elite areas in PvE where you need more than the basic skills to complete missions or quests.

And I don't PvP.

And kudos to the OP - it's refreshing to see a detailed, considered opinion.

Yea, because players are known to adapt, rather than whine and boycott the game until whatever FOTM is gets nerfed.

Does anyone remember, for example, how quickly everyone adapted to counter SF, and then Anet nerfed it without a reason...

Although you certainly have a point...didn't all hell break loose already on this SR one?

I was just thinking about this today. It seems to me that Anet will nerf some skills before the player base has had a chance to come up with a proper counter. This isn’t always the case, however. People were screaming for Anet to nerf Touch Rangers. Their response was that they believed that Touchers weren’t overpowered and that the players themselves would find a counter. They were right. Other times, it feels like a knee jerk reaction. They’ll nerf a build before we can come up with a counter.

Now, please understand that I am a very casual player. I don’t sit down and analyze skills and counter skills and so on. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, nerfs have little to no affect what so ever on me or how I play the game. My observation is based purely from casual player’s perspective.

Let them call you an armchair quarterback - I think you have thought more about this than any of your detractors.

Right or wrong, this is definitely the place to post your opinions, and at least you are doing exactly that, which is more than we can say about all the people saying that "the game is fine as it is". If they knew what they were talking about, then how do they explain all those past and future game changes? Oooooobviously the game is NOT fine the way it is, and needs to be changed, tweaked, and tuned. As it is, ANet generally uses a hammer instead of a sculpting awl, but that is a later topic.

And yes, we agree that the balancers at ANet do not think things through as well as they could. To all of you who need analysis with your news, he is saying that ANet nerfs faster than players adapt, and that given more time that counters to the "Builds of the Month" will emerge. If ANet nerfs before that happens, then it removes all incentive to find a counter build that will be useful for a very limited time. Wait it out, it will be nerfed, making counters useless. Get it? It stunts innovation, and encourages finding these deranged stackable loopholes to use!

And yes, you can use outside analogies to the situation here. It is not like ANet is doing something new. Heck, we can use football. Nickel and Dime defense, even football has trends and yes gimmicks that can dominate the game for periods of time, but football has always found ways to counter the trends. If ANet was running football, then they would be nerfing the game? What chaos would that have been?

Besides, has it occurred to you that the royal huge nerfhammer they use is really huge? Wouldn't it be say, smarter to make incremental changes instead of altering the whole game in one swoop? It is not like they have a deadline with a critical heart-transplant recipient who is going to die if not seen immediately.

Maybe they need a slow hand with an easy touch, not the hammer.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

I still wish they would balance skills differently for PvE and PvP but that's just asking for too much... I mean who in the world would waste an elite spot on "Incoming" in PvE?

Anet? Balanced metagame? Is this topic a joke??

>_<

Tetris' quote says it best.

People question Anet's way of balancing the metagame as if they were THE expert in the Guild Wars metagame, when they aren't. They may believe they are, but still, they are not.

Sure, some balances have affected you more than others, but the reason there is an increasing number of balances is that there have been two more sets of skills for an increasing number of professions, from Factions and Nightfall. You are balancing more skills than when you first started, so you may need more balances to ensure that the metagame is not ruined (in the eyes of Anet).

I realize that it is immensely difficult to create a skill balance that caters to everyone equally. Nowhere do I say, or even imply, that I could do a better job. This is just the nature of this beast.

However, if Anet is so open to statistical data, observing players, and reading forums, why have they turned a deaf ear to the large outcry over the Soul Reaping Nerf? I understand that they have to be firm in their position if they're adamant that this is for the good of the game, but I will personally never understand why they're choosing an eventual overhaul of the entire Necromancer skill library in order to facilitate the new change to Soul Reaping.

Seems like they've chosen the greater of two evils, I just hope it works out in the long run.


Ritualists now fit a role that doesn't pertain to their original purpose. Spawning Power needs some reworking if all they're good for these days is throwing around weapon spells. The Ritualist has always been a character that fits a very specific role, despite the fact that they have a great deal of skill flexibility. The point I'm trying to make is that Ritualists just don't outperform other classes at doing these things. Ritualists do not make as efficient healers as do monks; they have no protection skills, and much of the Restoration line is overcosted. Conversely, Ritualists do not have the damage output of an Elementalist, and they certainly don't have the applicable conditions (Blind, Burning) that would make them preferential over an Elementalist. With the Ritualist (and Paragon, to a slightly lesser extent), Anet has created a class that effectively serves no purpose. Its nothing new, and doesn't excel at anything anymore.

The class was overpowered at its release, but now, if anything, it's drastically underpowered. While the recent buffing trend to many Ritualist skills is a step in the right direction, its still going to be a while before they're good enough to become a balanced contending class.

[edit]I think I'm miscommunicating the point that I'm embittered by the skill updates: this is really not the case. My pet class is not destroyed by a few skill nerfs; and I consider myself a good enough player to adapt to any changing metagame. You do bring up a good point in that a majority of the skill updates came out around the release of the new campaigns, but allow me to bring up one classic example:

Since the inception of Guild Wars, it took them until March 2006 to nerf Gale Warriors and change the functionality of exhaustion. Gale Warriors, in my opinion, were some of the most difficult opponents to fight, and one of the character builds that I truly consider to be "broken." Gale Warriors were degenerate, yet it took them until one month prior to the release of Factions to do anything about it. Their dominance over the metagame warranted a nerf back then, but nothing was done about it in the entire span of nine months![edit]




Tabasco, you hit the nail right on the head. I apologize if I'm a bit longwinded, but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make.

That would be ungodly difficult to implement, but it is an excellent idea.

IMO
to see just the recent updates on where some professions recieved a buff on there skills and some others took a nerf it would seam to me that they are looking for the ballance, however the recent uproar that i have noticed isnt for the fact that SR is sooo overwhelming that changes needed to be made for it.
so disagree or agree with the change all you want isnt placeing a timer on one professions unique attribute and noone else kinda like placeing a bandaid on a severed limb?