[Dev Update] Shadow Form Balance Changes - 2 July 2008

I hear this "argument" a lot around here, and it's never valid. Consider the people who want a challenge. I'm guessing 9 out of 10 of those people are not going to find any satisfaction in having to deliberately handicap themselves to create the challenge. They want the challenge to be presented to them, and the fun lies in working out strategies, and using all available tools at their disposal - with no arbitrary restrictions that they have to invent - to overcome the challenge.

You cannot expect players to have to create their own abitrary rules and restrictions in order to find a playing environment in which they can have fun. It just doesn't work like that.

True.

I believe it's possible to have a balanced game that isn't insane to play. See Starcraft for example. Prophecies was a massive hit and it was relatively challenging in comparison to now.

A better way would be to have plenty of content to satisfy both groups of players. I don't see imposing artificial challenges as something that would be widely used. It just doesn't have that sense of accomplishment that you get from giving it your all on something tougher to do.

Hmm, I'm not too sure what the real world economy has to do with this. If it is related to declining budgets spent on video games, I think this would actually benefit GW. For those who have bought it already, it's already been paid for. If not, the game is still one of the highest entertainment value per dollar spent in my opinion.

If GW's largest customer base is composed of casual players, I doubt that a few skill nerfs and whatnot would seriously deter them from playing. Heck, I'm not too sure all of them know how the changes would affect the game. Maybe it's just that I can't see true casual players grinding for, say, the Norn title for a skill to rampage all over the higher-end areas of the game. On that note, why would such players play in hard mode rather than normal if they can't handle it without overpowering skills? It's the same content. If it's for the rewards, then... =/ Rewards should be earnt, not handed out.

Well, it works the other way aswell, you can't expect 19/20 players to missout on part of the game just so 1/20 can be satisfied.

And please consider the people who don't want a challenge that will take hours straight without breaks. Not to mention the hours spent just getting a group that wants to do a particular area at a particular time.

Fine, I'll present thee with the hardest challenge of it all, there's this skill called Ursan Blessing. Learn to deal with it.

So....I can't expect you to create an arbitrary rule and restriction for yourself even though you just did, and called it 'don't use ursan'... and you'd rather it be an enforced rule for everyone because you lack the will power to do so yourself so you can have fun?

Besides, who are you do determine if an opinion-based argument is valid or not in this case? Pretty much all the arguments here are based on personal opinion, and not only hard cold facts. Although I'd prefer UB not to be nerfed until they actually fix the real underlying problem with PvE, which is the imbalance of profession efficiency in each area, I don't find the arguments from either side _INVALID_.. I may not AGREE with some of the arguments... but they're not invalid....they just tend to involve 'solutions' I don't like (aside for the trolls, or the ones that think their opinion is everything)

People find Ursan boring. It's just a Warrior with no counters and no margin of error based on grinding a title.

As for gimping yourself, let's say someone is running 1500 meters. They don't find it challenging any more. Hey, I know, that guy should cut one of his legs off, maybe then he'll find it more challenging!

Making the game harder for yourself doesn't make it more fun. Taking the stongest possible thing while staying with your playstyle, and the bitch role being easy as 1-2-3 (In a literal sense), isn't fun. At least not for me. The least that should be done is removing the strength of the skill being determined by the title itself.

Ignoring for a moment if making something more challenging for yourself is the same as cutting your own leg off... what you're saying is you'd rather SOMEONE ELSE cut your leg off for you just so its not you doing it for yourself.

There I fixed that for you, you see not all people share your views on Ursan.

And that's exactly what you're trying to say with making it harder for yourself.

You are the spectator, I am the runner.
I find the run boring and not challenging at all. You suggest for me to cut my leg off (Gimping myself), for more challenge.

That doesn't change the challenge. That just nullifies me.

In the case of a game of movement, it is. Running requires legs. With only one leg it's difficult to do so.

Cutting your leg off is making it more challenging for you. How it can't be is beyond me.

Well I really do feel sorry for whoever thinks mashing their keyboard is fun. Sounds like they have the Rage Virus or something. And yeah, some people do. Some people don't. Why would it need a fix if it only needs common sense to look at it and understand it that way?

Oh, and by the way... It's also motivation. Without a goal there would be no motivation.

I personally find school boring for the same reason people find certain work boring, but the end goal is the want.

There you just described about 60-70% of the worlds video games ( and they sell well)
Each to his/her own, thank God that we all have diffrent views and opinions on things.

Actually no
YOU suggested the gimping.
All I suggest is that you gimp ONLY yourself instead of EVERYONE since you wanted the challenge.

The cold hard facts are that Guild Wars has went from an epic somewhat balanced game to a completely inbalanced grinder game over the course of 2-3 years. The only reason the game is set up this way today is because they want everybody to buy Guild Wars 2. There are no opinions involved.

Whether something is balanced or not is an opinion in itself. Everyone's opinion on whether something is balanced or not is different. I mean, we're not talking about whether the two sides of a weighing scale is equal here... there's too many factors involved.

However, the fact that it now has a lot of grind (titles) versus none before is cold truth, and that they want everybody to buy GW2 is *most likely* fact (unless they were crazy). Unless the developers themselves give you a reason why its setup this way now.. you can only speculate... while it may most likely be truth, its still an opinion.

I don't have to "deal" with anything. Where exactly did I say I care about nerfing Ursan?

Uhhh...what? Where did I say anything of the sort?

For your information, I use Ursan because it's there and it gets the job done. It's a tool I use to overcome a challenge.

I don't quite understand how you managed to misread my post so badly. The whole point of my post wasn't to bitch about Ursan, it's to explain the futility of the "If you find a game too easy, make it artificially harder for yourself" argument.

You are assuming that I care about Ursan, or that I am finding the game too easy, whereas all I was doing was making a simple generic point about games design.

It's a rubbish argument. It's like the poster above said. Do you honestly feel that telling the bored, unchallenged 1500 metre runner that he needs to chop his right leg off in order to find a worthy running opponent is something that is going to be met with a positive response?

This argument doesn't work because nowhere is it stipulated that buying Guild Wars guarantees you access to 100% of the content, nor is complete access mandatory to enjoying the game.

Good for you.

If you absolutely didn't care about something, you would not post in a thread about it, simple fact..... unless you're so bored and have nothing else to do in your life aside from posting about something you don't care about.

Also, you need better writing skills then. Aside from the fact that your post does not in anyway look like 'just a post about a simple game design, (which is silly because the game market would be *quite* different if all people wanted were hard challenges in everything) arguing the 'futility' of an argument is just an exercise in futility itself. The fact that its an 'argument' is that.. its.. kinda arguable :P

yes, because if he finds it too easy and boring, he should go do something else rather than complain about the sport being too easy for himself. I find YOUR argument rubbish, but then, that's MY opinion, and not YOURS.

And no where is it stipulated that the game will remain challenging years after release.... and I can think of a gazillion other silly things that aren't stipulated anywhere.

Its just a simple mentality, as I've explained in a different post somewhere. When people pay a recurring fee for something, the mentality is most of them don't expect to enjoy it all anyway. But when they pay a one-time fee for something, they tend to expect to be able to enjoy it all eventually.

They keep going this way as you can still use the permasin those without won't bother to buy GW2 as I am having strong reservations about it.It is getting harder to fill one of my goals.

A.net made a place like this , you click on the little boat and choose Great Temple of Balthazar , any arena there is much more challenging than pve ever was , is and will be no matter which skills A.net nerfs or buffs. Fighting an AI enemy can never be challenging in the long run. Those who don't wanna accept this little fact and want "challenging" pve are those who are ruining the game. GW's design is rather simple : PvE-casual fun , PvP-challenging fun. A.net can't make pve more challenging for the older players without making it significantly harder for those who are beginning the game. And those who just bought the game are enabling us to play it too.

And nowhere does it say that GW will provide unlimited challenges to those who have finished the game either, does it?

There has to be a balance between offering challenges for those who do nothing but play GW and those who play for the fun of it as a recreation.

I never stated that there should always be a challenge. And implying that good players spend all of their time playing Guild Wars is a nice insult but unfortunately not true. Nice try though.

C'mon you know as well as I do that the good players don't bother with forums, only the mediocre ones like us two come here.

Please stop claiming that I give a toss about Ursan to the extent that you think I do, because I don't. I do however, "care" about Guild Wars in the sense that I have an interest in it (because it's a fun game that I've spent a long time playing) - thus I read the forums and post randomly where it takes my fancy.

Bollocks. Where in my original post is it implied that my post is Ursan specific, other than where it happens to be posted in the forums? It's a generic statement. You make too many assumptions.

Agreed with one exception... I don't think you can say it's invalid even if it's inaccurate. As far as I'm concerned, the elite missions and especially HM should be far more difficult than they are now, in addition to there being fewer "god builds" to deal with difficult areas. It's inevitable that as time passes, people will discover new "rigged" and overpowered builds that put old ones to shame. I recognize ANet's efforts in especially the more recent skill balances to try and prevent a few select skills/builds from being too strong. The inherent problem with game balance right now is that GW has slowly been changing from a more tactical and strategic game (utility > direct power) into a more simplified system favoring direct damage. I don't read the Dev notes typically, but I recall after one wave of changes (which significantly nerfed Mesmer hexes and other professions' defensive abilities) where I read the changes were to encourage "faster gameplay" which to me sounds like less thinking, more button mashing. This progression has led to the increase in power of gimmick builds (especially in PvP) and need in PvE parties for very specific builds, where in the past only certain roles had to be maintained. The more difficult areas of the game have become easier due to new EoTN skills such as Ursan, and skill changes designed to help the average player as well as the high-ender (ex WoH buff). The areas themselves have been left alone (with the exception of the recent UW nerf) and as such are no longer difficult. The same applies to HM.

Keep the easy and hard areas separate, keep PvE as-is except make HM harder, and the elite missions once again elite. Let the casual gamers have their fun, and give us back the challenge of the high-end areas.

I agree. However, GW lacks a real high-end PvE difficulty mode, so the game fails to strike that vaunted 'balance'.

Self-gimping doesn't happen because there's no reward for doing so. The RPG gaming model revolves around giving players something to do, and then rewarding them for doing it. If the elite areas didn't drop better items, few would bother doing them. If Vanquishing and Cartography didn't net titles, few would bother clearing and mapping every area. For the same reason, few will gimp themselves if the game provides no incentive. With few exceptions, people don't just want challenges - they want challenges with rewards. This is what the "just gimp yourself" camp has always failed to appreciate.

So the question is, how does that affect game design decisions? Well, ideally, you want something in your game for everyone, from the dumbest newbie to the most no-life hardcore veteran. But there's a problem: anything you design for the newbies isn't going to satisfy the veteran, and anything you design for the veteran will be out of reach of the newbies. What to do?

The answer to this problem has generally been: 1) graduated difficulty levels and 2) encouraging player improvement. The first answer is pretty obvious and almost universally used. I personally think that GW's implementation is poor because HM is just more rewards without substantially higher difficulty, but overall the concept is sound. The second answer is less obvious and more difficult to control, but the reasoning should be intuitive: the more you can shrink the gap between your worst and best players, the more people you can reach with the same content.

A key difference between the good games and the bad games is how they go about implementing the above solutions. Good games provide a gentle learning curve to ease new players into the game and nudge them towards better play, but keep the high-end of the curve very high so there's lots of headroom for meaningful play. The bad games just flatten the curve so that there's relatively little difference between the low and high ends; sometimes the line is closer to the high end, in which case you end up with a punishing game that nobody wants to play (this is akin to "toss them in the water and see if they drown"), but more often the line is closer to the low end, which results in an easy and shallow game that offers nothing for good players (this is akin to holding back the brightest students of your class). GW, unfortunately, is in the second camp, using various 'enhancements' to flatten the curve.

PvP manages to sidestep some of the issues inherent in PvE, simply because the difficulty depends on your competition, and as long as the underlying mechanics of the game provide enough complexity and depth, the competitive drive of your players will end up doing the rest. But both sides of the game benefit from having a better playerbase, and the only way to do that is to ease progress and give people something to reach for - in short, you have to dangle carrots in front of the player, not empty the sack of carrots at their feet.

Burts Cancel
What you are describing is Prophecies, it had the right learning curve, Factions and Nightfall never really had much of that, and we see the difference in player style between those who started with Factions or Nightfall before buying (hopefully) Prophecies.

But once again there was the element of keeping the "veterans" happy and they where at the time the majority and most bought the new chapters so that proved right at the time.

Where GW is today we the "veterans" don't bring in much revenue, where as the new players do, so implementing skills like Shadow Form and PvE skills make it possible for new players to "catch up".
Personally I don't have a problem with that, there is still plenty to do for me, and if not I can always delete a char and try something new.
You compare it to holding back the brightest student, but at the same time that student have to let go as well, you can only learn so much in each class before it gets to be repetition.

I'm not to fussed by this update as I was never overly loot hungry.Heck thats why I played GW to begin with and.....

...seems to sum it up quite nicely for the majority of Sins I know.

My only point of contention would be to ask why Anet buffed SF in the first place as they'd have to be idiots to not have seen the obvious repercussions on the economy as a whole and the amount of players that would merely farm ecto to attain in-game rewards and titles.

The outcome was obvious hence the logic baffles me.

In saying on behalf of many of my guildies and GW friends thanks for the easy cash, loot, titles and armor Anet.

Ya wallies.

The problems you bring up are tied into the revenue model, and the development of GW2, both of which result in fewer content updates for GW1, and thus a gradual stagnation of the game. Neither really has anything to do with designing a good game.

I recognize the harsh realities of having to make money off of your games, and allowing business considerations to drive design decisions. We could criticize Anet for selling out to the newbies and squandering a great game in the process, but the reality is that it happens all the time out of necessity. I don't know the guaranteed recipe for making great games and great profits at the same time - if I did, I'd be in the business myself.

But if you want to talk business models, you know, I hear WoW is doing pretty well.

I think this is a misconception. I think there is a near perfect balance out there for any game based on the mechanics and structure of the game. This is particularly true in games with competitive aspects (like Chess or Guild Wars).

That being said, this perfect balance has probably never been achieved, but I feel confident saying it exists and should be strived for. I also feel confident saying that many things in Guild Wars are very inbalanced.

Heres the problem...Guild Wars was (as stated by Regina Buenaobra) meant to be a normal video game! IE: you play it, beat it, and move on or buy the next chapter. The only endgame Guild Wars was supposed to have was PvP (if the player so chose to do that). The game was never supposed to have the endless title grind and inbalanced farm endgame that it has now.

WoW has its portion of the market, GW tried doing things differently and by most measures succeeded. In the end, the chapter model didn't pan out that well.

However, MMOs as a genre are very driven by loyalty. In the case of WoW, loyalty drives subscriptions. In the case of GW, it brings repeat business. Both are critical, so while I don't have access to their market research and sales figures, I think it's safe to say that pissing off their players is not good for business.

You don't really need to "catch up" when most of the rewards in this game are nothing but bling.

"Perfect balance" does not need to be achieved for balance updates to improve the game.

I think it panned out well enough. It sold a lot of copies anyways. The problem is there are a lot of people who want Guild Wars to be something its not, and Anet obliged. Guild Wars succeeded being different...it won't succeed trying to be something its not and competing on other games' terms.

Of course. But when you get people saying "nobody knows what balance is its just an opinion", then nothing is ever going to get done. If anybody at Anet has that mindset I call for instafire.

My theory and this is Just a Conspiracy theory........ they buffed it because they wanted to Nerf it a long time ago and maybe they saw this skill as a Mistake, IMO there was no reason to buff a skill that powerful unless you wanted a QQ reaction from the Community giving you the right the Nerf the skill with out a huge uproar, if they had Nerf it a few months ago they would have gotten an uproar, but the rebellion is small, and they might give it another Nerf because people can still farm ectos and the price has dropped again, now this is all theory no real proof, but they Used the QQers to justify there nerf that they had no balls to do in the first place.

I disagree that GW has a flat curve near the low end. Set Ursan et al off to the side for a minute. GW has a very nasty learning curve indeed. It's much more of a sink-or-swim approach. Of all the games I've ever played, no game makes it so easy to fail so completely as GW. If you doubt that for a moment, go grab a (non-Ursan) PUG in the nearest town.

Now, let's consider Ursan. It doesn't flatten the curve; it completely bypasses it. Ursan users haven't learned anything. They are no closer to mastering GW than when they put Ursan on their bar. So I don't think it's accurate to say that they've ascended a very flat curve near the bottom -- because they haven't really ascended anything at all. I think it's a telling sign about the (over-)steepness of the learning curve that a-net felt they had to bypass it with Ursan instead of making it less steep.

Chthon, you're making a pretty subtle distinction between bypassing the curve vs. flattening it. After some thought, I don't entirely disagree with your reasoning, but at the same time I think the practical end-result is the same. Making the learning curve irrelevant is ultimately the same as flattening it because the players don't need to learn anything to succeed. The fact that you could take a different, harder path to the same success is largely irrelevant in the face of a total lack of incentive to do so.

If we ignore PvE skills and cons, then I'm inclined to agree that GW has a sharper learning curve than most other RPGs (which, incidentally, is why I didn't dispute Stockholm's characterization of Prophecies above). Even assuming, arguendo, that GW's low end is unreasonably difficult, the correct response isn't the introduction of PvE skills and cons - it's to flatten out the difficulty at the lower end and design missions to teach players to play (and more importantly, think about) the game correctly. The introduction of PvE skills and cons actually has the opposite effect of what we want - rather than easing the learning curve at the low end, it has disproportionate effect at the high end, dragging down the entire curve and rendering the game trivial and shallow almost universally.

... What?

You tell me I suggested the gimping, then you yourself suggest I gimp myself.

Who is or is not gimping theirself is not the point. The point is it's stupidity to do so.


Did I?

What other games have such flawed mechanics you can bash about with such good results? Yes, there are some, but please do point me to a site which shows a game like that.

Balance is pretty easy to define. Maybe it's an opinion if you're asking people who only care about making sure their own characters and favorite builds don't get nerfed, but for everyone else, it's simply a matter of producing a broad set of options and reconciling reality with the game's design goals.

According to Regina it's their top project right now, so they know it's broken. I don't think they felt they had to bypass it as much as they released it overpowered and have been really slow to address it.

Cue conspiracy theory about how they're deliberately being lazy to sell more EOTN boxes.

I think you need to do some more research on the economics of the video game industry.

Yes, GuildWars has changed.

I know that back in the days, people where crying about runners. Runners were destroying the game and making too much gold.

Anet read this and thought they find tbe solution.

"You require r3 Sunspear to proceed"

In PvE, balance is rough parity between character classes. This is demonstrated by ANY build that is clearly superior to or dominant over others. There are a few such builds in the current PvE meta.

This doesn't always indicate that a nerf is called for, sometimes the culprit build is properly powered, and it's the other classes that need buffed. But that's not usually the case. Usually it's just one skill/build that needs toned down because it compromises the viability of competing builds/classes.

However, there's one thing that's been missing from this thread, including the OP from Sha:

PvE, like PvP, needs constant maintainence.

This is where Anet has failed BADLY.

If PvE had been maintained, we wouldn't be in a state where there are four or more overpowered builds in PvE at the same time. That's inexcusable.

Skills need to be constantly rebalanced in PvE as much as PvP. Maybe the PvE meta isn't as sensitive as PvP, and so updates aren't as urgent, but purely PvE rebalances still need to happen at reasonable intervals....and they don't.

Monsters/zones need rebalanced as build are developed. Anet can't foresee all possibilities when zones are created, clever builds and powercreep require zones/monsters to get rebalanced when revolutionary builds come into existance.

BOTH of the two previous cases require the developers to be aware of the PvE meta...to play with veteran PvE guilds and watch how they do things...to understand what can be changed and what cannot. I can't say for sure on this point, but I've never heard about the developers playing with ANY PvE guild to see how we do things...and I've played with practically every high-end PvEer out there, plus Ensign and co. Maybe they do, and I'm out of the loop, but I've never heard about it, and I heard about a lot.

Finally, PvE (and PvP) need new content. We need it delivered on a regular schedule, every few weeks for minor content and every few months for major content. Then that content needs to be maintained along with everything else. It's a daunting task for sure, but that new content brings in new revenue. When was the last new content for GW? EotN. Anet must not be hurting for money.

New maps and dungeons equals more revenue. These are extremely easy to generate at this point in GW history. All the groundwork has been laid already. And yet, we have a serious lack of content problem. If GW was being run as a business, this would be inexcusable. I can only guess that GW is just an experiment and/or capital raising venture to fund GW2. We aren't getting rebalances and new content because the developers just don't want to work on GW anymore. I've worked at a software developing company and I can definitively state that developers HATE maintaining existing software. Once it's made and the major bugs fixed, they want to move on to something else. That attitude is fundamentally incompatible with a long-term MMO.

I agree with Carinae , PvE needs balance. If not the monsters , at least the professions need to be put on equal ground.

Except that it doesn't for GW.

Content costs money to make so unless they sell these maps and dungeons individually it's cost with no income. If they were to add/sell new content every month or so, we end up with what is effectively a subscription system.

There's an important difference between selling content updates and a subscription system: the subscription system requires you to pay a monthly fee regardless of your in-game activity, whereas content updates are only paid for when (and if) you want them.

I've often wondered how the GW business model compares to Blizzard's non-MMO games played over Battle.net. In some ways, they're very similar: you pay for the game upfront, and have access to unlimited online play without subscription. I assume that GW's server/bandwidth costs far exceed that of B.net; on the other hand, each of Blizzard's games have had just one expansion, and have been played on B.net for around a decade. If we consider each franchise as one "game", then Diablo has sold two games and one expansion (IIRC, Hellfire was not developed by Blizzard), Starcraft has sold one game and one expansion, and Warcraft has sold three games and two expansions (again, ignoring WoW).

The main problem, I think, is that GW attempts to be an MMO without MMO-like revenue. While the game was active, Anet updated the game fairly frequently (certainly much more frequently that Blizzard updated their games) and gave out significant free content updates, with the assumption that these updates would pay for themselves in the form of more players. This is almost certainly a weaker form of revenue than the MMO subscription model, and generally fails to directly benefit from the customer loyalty that it cultivates.

The addition of grind to GW I found somewhat counter-intuitive given their business model. I don't know their cost structure for servers/bandwidth, but it always appeared to me that the optimum profit point is for somebody to buy all of their games and then not play them. While this can't be expected to happen in real life, the concept is that because you get all of your revenue up-front, you want people to give you their money and then play as little as possible.

At this point, people will argue that you need to keep people playing so they'll buy the next expansion or game; I don't find this argument credible. Getting people to buy the next game doesn't require that you keep them playing your current game - it requires impressing them enough to convince them that you make quality games, and that the next one will be worth buying. I stopped playing GW for half a year between Prophecies and Factions, but I still ended up buying Factions and Nightfall. Similarly, I don't play Blizzard games non-stop between their sequels, but I always buy the next game in the franchise because Blizzard's track record gives me confidence that any game I buy from them will be money well-spent.

Ironically in my case, the addition of grind and their mishandling of PvE/PvP has made me generally less impressed with GW and Anet than if they had just left the game alone. I used to believe that Anet was onto something different, and I would actually have bought GW2 without reconsideration if they had stuck to their guns. Now, I'm forced to seriously think about whether I trust Anet with GW2.