GW2: How2Ballance without making PvE people whine.

First of all, I find the way this post is setup quite annoying and rather insulting.
I am a PvE player and don't whine as mentioned about, but as a Ranger, I cannot see why EW had to be nerfed in PvE just because PvPers whined about it.
That never made sense to me, and never will.

Calling all PvErs whiner is really crossing the line and just says more about the OP then what he wants to talk about.
Fact is, the needs of PvE and PvP players are different even with the same skills.
With GW as basis, the idea of skills adjustment as they are now, that is the way to move on.
Leave the PvE skills as they are, only balance the PvP skills. I can only agree, there should not be one set of skills in PvP that owns PvP, like good old IWAY. PvP is a game area where skill, use of them and tactics with teamplay decides the outcome.

I would even vote, that PvE should be reset to original skills and PvP skills should be the only onces balanced.

And furthermore, not only PvErs "whine", I heard my fair share of PvPers whine too.
So for another time, be adult, quit blaming people, do go after the issue as such.

/Santa

This is why I like ya, guru. You guys miss the entire point of threads/people's posts, instead quoting specific parts you dislike and go off on tirades about them. Bravo. <3

Probably a good idea. You cant just balance for PVP then expect it to work in PVE. A mob isn't just another team its a completely different set of opponents with higher stats, more dmg and much more primitive A.I hence the tactics to counter it are different.

Old mesmers might of been fairly balanced in PVP but in PVE they were not balanced as there role was nearly insignificant without AOE spells.

PVP balance does not map to PVE balance so GW2 should keep it separate.

If you agree with the above you might want to consider whether that means that PVP skill doesn't necessarily map to PVE.

impossible to avoid whining ;-)

In all honesty the biggest mistake that A-net ever did was not splitting the skills between PvP and PvE versions right from the get-go, or at least after Factions was released.

Here we go again, it's PvP'r against PvE'r all over again.. Yawn.. we've been here already, time to get a new record this one is broken.

You are forgetting that GW2 will be an all new game, so you have no idea on the quality of the PvE content. It seems to me that those who play PvP and post on Guru have very high opinions of themselves and what is right for the peons who play PvE. GW may have been a PvP oriented game to start with but not anymore, GW2 will probably revolve around the larger of the player bases.

The good news is that none of the current professions or skills have been confirmed for GW2! But the bad thing is races... (what if I want to look like one thing but have the advantages of another race!? hate that! I'll probably stay human though, I always play human).

Problem is PVE balance depends on no change while PVP balance depends on constant change.

The situation could be improved by properly adjusting creature skills when you alter the player skills.

It was the additional classes and skills that first caused imbalance followed by the PVP players developing new tactics and builds.

Since the players outnumber the developers they will always create the need for periodic rebalancing buffing nerfing call it what you will.

So the great idea stops the PvE people whining, now what to do about the PvP people?

Fine-tuning the balance of a game is hard enough on technical merits; the public relations part of balancing is even harder, because as a rule your most dedicated and vocal players do not want balance.

PvP is a bit easier from a wide view, as PvP players, at least on the surface, don't want power outliers in their game. However the feedback loop is difficult because your most vocal and successful players typically want to steer the game to favor builds and strategies they find most enjoyable, which if taken to extremes will stagnate the game. There's always a lot of complaints out of the PvP community about balance, but it is very difficult to distinguish which complaints are serious balance issues, and which are complaints about the game being open to more strategies than they like.

PvE balance is very hard to sell, because your PvE playerbase as a whole despises balance, even though it's necessary for the health of the game. For your most dedicated PvE players, the game is typically an achievement engine, and that is most fun when you can find some strategy that is akin to cheating and milk that for rewards. Balancing those strategies is in direct competition to their goals. However it is necessary to keep the reward structure of the game intact.

Your more casual players generally do not understand the balance of the game nearly as well, and balance changes that hit their characters tend to upset them because it makes their character go backwards in a character building game, and they often are not using things in an abusive way / do not understand why something needed to be toned down.

PvE balance is the art of balancing the interests of your hardcore players against your casual players, while keeping a meaningful reward and goal structure in place. When the power curve gets steeper, your hardcore players have more to grind for but your casual players have less access - more problematic in what is fundamentally a social game. Keeping both of those groups happy while restricting the power structure enough that your reward structure is still good - that there are still things to achieve and goals to chase - is even harder. Both groups of players want to get achievements, and want to make progress faster, but if you let them go too fast the achievements get watered down. Most balance changes to Guild Wars PvE have been to gross attacks on the reward structure.

The biggest failing of Guild Wars PvE is how this particular balance has gotten worse over time. Between overpowered skills that are required for particular characters, overpowered PvE skills that require title grind, and pricey consumables that increase power significantly, one of the biggest selling points of the game at release - that you can log in and play and contribute with the character you have, due to the low level cap, flat equipment curve and skill restrictions - has gradually gone away. This is the sort of PvE balance I'm hoping returns for Guild Wars 2, as this being balanced was the one truly unique thing Guild Wars PvE has going for it.

PvE never really needs skill balance. You balance PvE by changing the maps you play on and the monsters you fight. A change to a PvE skill changes the game for everyone, on every map, against every monster. Generally, PvE needs to be balanced/changed when players find patterns and exploits that allow them to accomplish far too much for so little effort. In these cases, simply adding a new monster or updating an existing one to combat this effect is much easier than anything else. If players find an area in which they can stand and blast monsters with 1 skill over and over, you don't need to nerf the skill, you just need to change the map, or change the monsters to attack that area with better effort.

Guild Wars' largest problem with PvP was that none of the maps were made for PvP. The Devs were always aware of this problem but little could be done. It's a f2p game and making competitive maps for 0.1% of your playerbase is expensive. The map makers made the maps to spec, a flag stand was added to it, some spawn locations, and that was the end of it. No competitive testing was done, and no changes ever happened to the maps. If you look back at the competitive history of GW GvG, how many skills were nerfed simply because they were imbalanced on one single map? In no other game (RTS, FPS) are the skills/units/weapons balanced around a single map. That is insanity. But it happened almost every month for GW. GW would have benefited all along if they re-balanced some of the maps, or thrown them out all-together. You can't go around and balance skills around one single map because it effects the balance of every other area in the game. In other competitive games like StarCraft, Quake, and Counter-Strike, the maps follow a very specific template. This means mechanically all maps behave the same, but look and feel completely different. It's not perfect, but it greatly increases your chance of having a balanced game. Note that in all of these games, a small % of maps are actually considered Competitive/Tournament worthy, and in GW, they forced us to play on 100% of all the GvG maps, even when they knew most were horribly balanced.

If a skill or strategy is OP on one map, but is pretty well balanced on all the others, nerf the map, not the skill or strategy. GW had it backwards, but I don't think GW2 will.

Tbh, this sounds like its on its way to becoming a QQ/rage/PvP vs PvE thread where none of the posts will be about the actually topic.

No for my 2 cents. For GW2. realeasing the PvP before PvE wouldnt work simply because even though there is a Solid PvP only aspect, PvP and PvE are intertwined in the game. so realeasing just the PvP would not work as it wouldnt really be all the PvP.

Yes to both. I came to this game from Madden, on the PC (R.I.P., PC Madden. Stopped after 08. The community is left to mod the game as best it can). We got one update for bugs, a marginal roster and picture update, both about 4 weeks after the game launch, and that was it. The game quickly fell into stasis, with no updates to rosters, drafts, teams, etc...and therefore little challenge. The evolutions in GW are part of what makes the game so fascinating: bars I've loved became weaker, useless, because of the nerfs. A bad thing? Only till I found something new.

And I really didn't like the split. The PvE only skills are sickly buffed variants of other skills. They reduced the need for team synergy, reduced the need for active experimentation, and reduced playing the game to PvE-skill steamrolling. I've actually begun to vanquish using guildies, H+H, but no PvE-only skills. Slower? perhaps. But a lot more intellectually stimulating.

So back to the OP. No, for as couple of reasons, some of which may be hard to articulate properly.

1. Marketing: PvE and role-playing and character "development" are still a large draw in these kinds of games. Not including PvE on the game's launch risks alienating a large part of the market, who could (unfairly?) perceive the game as being too PvP centric (let's leave the title GUILD Wars out of this, hmmmmkay?).

2. The split. If I understand some idea underneath your OP, then you would hope that this early release would actually PREVENT the need for a PvP / PvE split--that overpowered skills would get the nerf before there's a PvE to be overpowered in. I like the idea of not needing the split. But I fear that dropping the game early would lead to expectations of a split--because you've already split the playerbase. So the ones coming late might, instead of saying "oh. we get a balanced game 'cuz PvP tried these out for us," will say, "Oh, since these skills work one way in PvP, we'll get a tweaked mechanic soez we can roll in PvE." (I oversimplify, but I can't quite get this one out.)

3. dynamism: Many people claim to like that the game--the meta, and the PvE game--change. What many don't like is the sense that the changes are not in response to the community--whatever that community is. It's possible that saying 'hey, these work, let's leave it alone' will stagnate, not challenge, players as they develop GW2's meta.

If the articles that have come out so far are right, PvP in 2 will feel vastly different than PvP here in 1. Not sure, actually, how I feel about that. But I don't think a long-term prerelease PvP is the answer to the balance question.

Totally agree.

it seems to me most people who PvP seems to think thats the most important, which is to say retarded in the least, GW isnt complete without both PvP AND PvE, when i get bored with a mission or a quest, i go do some AB or HA, thats the whole point, the ability to change between those two. if you decide to get rid of one getting rid of PvP would be what they would do, it makes the most sence from their standpoint because the PvE player base is soo much bigger than the PvP one, no to say the PvP ones isnt important. for them what matters is money and they will always go with the larger player base.

In PvE balancing, one side complains. In PvP balancing, *both* sides complain.

But balance for one part of the game should never be disregarded. Variety and fairness needs to exist for players in *all* formats.

The difficulties for each have already been outlined.

In PvE balancing, one side complains when the game gets more balanced. In PvP balancing, one side complains because the game isn't balanced yet while the other side keeps complaining that the game is getting more balanced. That is...one side wants balance and the other doesn't. Shouldn't we be listening to the people who want balance?

As for the OP idea, I wouldn't mind it, because theres no way in hell im paying for GW2 PvE regardless. I doubt it would solve the problems of Anets incompetence when it comes to balance though (they do other things very well, but not balance by any stretch of the imagination).

The point was to show the fact that when only one side is vocal (ex: players, the people who are talking, vs the AI, who never talk), most on the other half is going to have a very hard time figuring out what's "balanced", leading to misconceptions that ANet is nerfing for no reason.

Fair enough. I'm an advocate of only buffs in PvE ever since the split anyways. People would probably stop whining that way. I've given up on Anet ever balancing PvP again, so they might as well make the majority of players happy.

In one of the interviews posted on this forum a few weeks back (and I think it was on the main GW website as well), a certain developer said that if they were starting over knowing what they know now, they'd have split PvE and PvP skills in specialized cases as they've just started doing. Expect that to have a major impact on the PvP/PvE balance work in GW2.