GW2: How2Ballance without making PvE people whine.

If Anet wanted, they could make any mob unbeatable by giving them the perfect skill combinations. All executed with perfect reaction time.

However, who would ever enjoy an unbeatable game? Ever played Ikaruga?

What would be the point of crafting an unbeatable AI? That would just promote finding ways to abuse the game to beat it, rather than playing tactically.

I seriously doubt people in favor of balanced, synergized groups are asking for every mob pack on the radar to be a full party-sized super-AI group of death. As you said, that would not exactly be fun.

Unless it was a final boss-group fight in the endgame or something.

skipping past all the PvE vs. PvP nonsense that's going on in this thread and concentrating on the topic of balance. I'm a PvE'r and never touch PvP, so don't think this is biased towards PvP, but having a PvP beta to balance skills for the whole game to start with is a pretty good idea.

From what I understand, they're planning on a smoother transition between PvE and PvP in GW2, so I don't think splitting skills is one of the options they will have.

PvE players will know that most of PvE revolves around tank'n'spank tactics. The PvE game evolves, but only to different tank'n'spank tactics (ie. instead of a warrior with fire ele's, we now have permasin's with cryers or RoJ's). Having a game with skills balanced for PvP would most likely reduce the effectiveness of this tactic as it obviously is not valid in PvP. PvE players would therefore be forced to run balanced builds and actually think about what how they play the game.

Yes, in the current game PvE players would whine that the game is too challenging without their perma's and AoE damage, but this thread isn't about the current game. Starting fresh with GW2 players would not be starting with the game they have had and would be adjusting their play for a new game anyways. Don't start GW2 with available tank'n'spank tactics and people can't complain that it has been taken away. Make the average PvE player think about how they play and they'll find it easier to join in PvP should they choose to.

because the PvP portion of the game is what gave us the PvE... it came first and deleting that portion of the game would break the PvE

The OP is pretty good in pinpointing how the chronology really matters, because people get attached to things before they're balanced properly. I think the obvious flaw is how to pull off implementing that timeline realistically, and clearly there are tons of different viewpoints on what should be done (so few responses even addressing the original point). But at least it generated some other good posts.

You mean which came first, the chicken or the egg ? I was only kidding by the /delete comment but how can you honestly say deleting pvp would break pve ? Thats an insane comment. Actually, if Guild Wars never had pvp it still would be a great game and the time spent trying to balance the 1 billion skills we have, we could of had a ton of more content added to the game.

Check out this 2 page article and perhaps some can be enlightened. It absolutely 100% true and it has already been proven.

http://www.massively.com/2009/04/15/...essful-honest/

If guild wars did not have PvP based design it would be Yet Another Cookie Cutter MMO. And seriously crappy game.

PvP served as handbrake against diku mud insanity. Insanely dumb thigs like increasing level cap and making levels matter. Hard to reach equipment that matters. No protection prayers ... all that stupid stuff.

It has done it well. GWs PvE was interesting for me because it was PvP ballanced PvE. A gem in stinking dump of MMO games. Sigh.

That article has no relevance regarding this game, as PvP wasn't a tacked-on afterthought, but designed as an INTEGRAL PART of the game. Unlocking runes, the array of varied foes, the slower pace to learn the intricacies of your character, henchies being such crap that you are encouraged to play in TEAMS...all designed to learn the mechanics of your character and of the game, essential to playing good PvP. Despite this, they still were able to write a decent storyline and make PvE challenging and fun. As for WAR, if anything, the whole game was incomplete. It felt too small, as a whole, and had more leaks than the Titanic regarding memory usage, all for character mechanics that looked as stilted as LotRO.

Yes, you don't NEED PvP to be a successful MMO. I would argue, however, that all that made the original GW unique would be lost if PvP weren't an integral aspect of the game. The point of World vs World is the same as CM's/AB in GW: to give the average PvE player a taste of PvP and, if they want, to make the transition easier. The fact that, above a certain level, the benefits in power will drop(as in a player at level 80 wouldn't be far under a level 95, as opposed to the difference between a level 80 and a level 60). There are a lot of people not playing GW much anymore, who are hoping GW2 will bring back that complete game that was there when GW was released.

The games the article mentions do not have PvP, they have PKing. Guild Wars has PvP, you can only engage in combat against others who want to engage in combat, in a controlled environment as well. It wasn't tacked on as an after-thought or expansion pack, the game had PvP before it had PvE, and it was planned all along that the game would have both with as much integration as possible. The entire first campaign was designed to teach you how to get better at team work and your class to ready you for PvP. Some of the PvE missions were even based around PvP maps to teach you how to do things.

It's been said in numerous articles that GW's PvE was always designed from the ground up to get casual players and PvEers ready for PvP. They weren't trying to force everyone to PvP, they were just trying to make it as friendly as possible for people to try out and experiment in. Almost all PvEers don't like PvP just because they are afraid. Afraid someone on their team might get mad at them, afraid they'll die, afraid someone on the other team will make fun of them. It's too bad because as much as you like PvE, you'd like PvP 100x more if only you gave it an honest effort.

I lol'ed at some here that think making mobs with human-like AI would solve everything.

It doesn't.

People are not all alike.

People do not always play to win. People do not always look for challenges. People do not always want a difficult opponent.

Despite the label on GWs being the PVP game it supposedly is, the game also has to generate enough interest among the less "gaming" inclined.

It is afterall a business, this game. A cash cow.

GW mechanics are clearly PvP-influenced. The strictly limited attribute/skill system, item homogeneity, lack of consumable items like health/mana potions, etc. all point to PvP balancing.

The "perfect AI is no fun" argument is a strawman. The point is to make the AI play like humans, rather than like AIs. Strictly PvE tactics like tanking should never have worked in the first place. Any human player would ignore the invincible guy and go straight for the delicious squishies in the backline.

If PvE were more like "PvP with AI opponents", there would never have been any need for PvE/PvP split; anything that balanced PvP would also have balanced PvE. People would also have felt more comfortable with the PvE-PvP transition, because PvP would just be the same stuff you did in PvE (just with human opponents instead of AI ones). I've always wondered why PvE content was so different from PvP, if PvP was supposed to be the real GW endgame.

That also means that PvE needs to be constantly rebalanced to counter what players run. PvP does this "automatically" through the player-controlled metagame, but the monsters in PvE don't have this capability. The easiest way to tone down PvE abuse is to have monsters run hard counters to popular PvE builds; sure, this takes more effort than tweaking numbers on a few "overpowered" skills, but it's generally a more elegant and effective solution.

The point is, if you're going to design a game where PvP is a fairly large part of the deal, why make PvE so drastically different?

You can't have human-like AI because it is too expensive computationally. Each machine must run hundreds of instances, each with dozens of monsters `active` at any given time. There is a reason MMO's and online action RPG's always have bad AI, because it's all technology allows for.

Guild Wars will never be balanced because of the amount of skills the game currently has. It is seriously too much work at this point to try to balance everything and not to mention no matter what skill update Arenanet has done, pvpers has never liked any of it from the get go. The best thing to do is do with what we have and show more interest in Guild Wars 2 because if Guild Wars 2 isn't a success do you actually think people will be coming back to the same ole same ole Guild Wars ?

human-like AI would mean unpredictable and prone to messing up. As far as i know, no AI ever messes up at what it's supposed to do.

GW was really balanced towards the end of its first year, during the first tournament season. It's not even my opinion, it's an easily proven fact, because every decent guild at the time had 3-5 builds they'd run every night. Rarely did a guild run a build more than 1-2 times before changing to a completely different build. Te had 4 solid builds and 1 iffy, and after every match we would randomly change to another build. It was by far the best time in GvG history to play, it was GW at it's absolute peak. Factions ruined it, although unintentionally, and it would never recover.

Sorry...but I don't want to have 10 minutes "matches" with every mob I come across. If I want to play a strategy game I think I'll reinstall starcraft.

epiphany. I've got it.
get this...
NO SKILLS! just auto attacking. Super balanced, no worries about future skill balances either.

What are you playing for? This is the complete wrong game for character-building, loot farming, or power trading. If you just want a fantasy genre level grinder with no monthly fee, then you're part of the crowd whose $50 should be taken from and ignored.

Less human like, more hero-like. Even the Zaishen can function with their terrible bars.

It's a step away from creating 'challenge' by pumping monster stats and then filling a zone with supercharged mobs. Players end up exploiting the obvious weak point (ie: bladed aatxe) - I'd rather see synergized skill bars rather than double stats and monster skills.

Don't put words in my mouth. I was responding to those people thinking super AI = balance.

This is what I was talking about, people play RPG for the adventure, aka Role-Playing. There's no way to have a PvE that can be balanced in a PvP way unless Anet can create the perfect AI, in which afterward they might as well remove the PvE portion and just make a small arena where players fight AIs for 10 minutes, just like those ridiculously long GvG matches. Then GW becomes a RTS game with RPG elements...

You're overthinking it. Moderately intelligent play is easy to fake in GW; the heroes do a pretty good job already (at least compared to the average player). With monsters, the AI programmer has the additional advantage of knowing the skillbar ahead of time. You'd need some additional targetting rules since there isn't a player calling targets for them, but that can be pretty rudimentary - avoid targets that use particular tanking skills, prioritize targets that use certain skills (disruption, healing, etc.), etc. Heck, just having monsters spread out and ignore the permatank would be a huge improvement over what we have now.

Build failure chance into the AI. It should be trivial to have the AI "mess up" some percentage of the time when doing certain activities.

Yes I have.
And Ikaruga is for Pussies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL-CyuVD_Uw

This is more of my game.
Mushihimesama is one of the best, albeit, most challenging shmups ever.
And I just love the insect theme since I'm a big buy boy :P


It's possible, and I've beaten it. Lern2smallhitboxandusebombswisely

You must have four brains and build in bullet time.
And precognition.

Everything is beatable, given enough time and dedication...the only problem is if ANet wants GW to have a playerbase of 1,000,000 or 1,000.

The thing is there are people that likes to be able to tank and spank, steam roll mobs with a single tactic all the time, use a single bar all the time. And their numbers aren't small either.

A-net wouldn't have sold as many copies if they didn't go down the same path despite contradicting with the game's initial concept.

That's just how business is.

The split is the best thing that happened.

Skill balances costs money. GWs aren't subscription based. That sums it all up.

Most profitable for Anet in the current situation would be a constant influx of new players who buy all the chapters wile old schoolers leave because they just take bandwith and spend no more money.

I know the zoins keep me hooked, but i havent spend money on GW in two years. So basically the last update is good for the players but bad commerce.

Then make it so people can steamroll in PvE. Does anybody have a problem with this anymore? I see a bunch of people going on endlessly about "yea well the majority wants this so thats the way it should be blah blah blah". Fine...then I should be able to steamroll PvE because that is sadly what the majority wants. The majority of people who bought Guild Wars bought it because they thought it was something it wasn't. The real challenge has always been PvP anyways...Anet would be better served spending their time balancing PvP properly because PvE players in general are easy to please.

Replace the word "best" with the word "worst" and I absolutely agree with you.

Which is why the best PvP games in the history of the world have free updates, are balanced, and aren't subscription based. Yep that sums it all up perfectly.

I would love to start a team of 8 permaforms go into an area, aggroing the first mob they see - and wondering why the mob doesn't do anything besides buff themselves and kite. Once I see that, I'll know GW has taken a huge step in the right direction.

But sadly, this is now going to really hurt the game more than help it. More and more players have become far too accustomed to the AI, and any steps to make the enemies more intelligent would piss off far too vocal a crowd. ANet should've fixed this way back when 55's started, but they only did nerfs in the form of hitting skills themselves.

...But then again, what do they have to lose if they *did* go through with these changes?

What any gamer wants is being able to enjoy their game, be able to hit stuff and enjoy it, and this is already easily accomplished. The farming portion of the playerbase and the people who want "no work win all" aren't in that majority. Sure, people want their game dumbed down and be able to win it...but that's what Normal mode, and "Easy" difficulties in other games in general, provides.

As a sidenote, I think Starcraft has been the last game to come out that's been actually balanced. I don't think I've heard of anything even as structurely sound since it's release sans pre Factions GW

I think there hasn't been a balanced game since pong.

No wait, it may actually make a difference if you play left or right.
There are people out there who cant stand to play a fighting game from the right because they like to be on the left etc.

I disagree (sadly). The majority of the population are people who want to be able to succeed no matter what they do. They want a failproof game to take away from the stresses of real life where failure happens. They want to be able to succeed in hard mode so they feel accomplished. They don't want to be able to not access areas because they suck. They get enough of that in real life. They want to be able to do EVERYTHING "because it is a game and I'm here to have fun".

This has become clear to me through years of gaming and just by reading forums like these. There is almost zero PvE players who want balance, especially through nerfs. They only want buffs that make the game easier and "open up options". If you are a person who says Anet should cater to the majority, then this is simply the future and you have to ask yourself why they shouldn't proceed with it.

Gw and Sc in the same sentence. OMY!

How is it known where the majority player mostly resides?
How is it known what the majority player does?
What they play? *How* they play? Do they *still* play, and if not why not? Etc.?

A lot of questions that are near impossible to answer, but why do you think people buy games?

Are most really gonna pick it up and say "holy crap I want everything I hope it's easy!" or "oh gees that looks pretty, I wonder how it is playing a Warrior?"?

People just want to have fun, and fortunately that fun isn't terribly specific and they usually look at the here and now. When it comes to games, people are generally easy to please, satisfy, and fulfill. In this sense Guild Wars simply nails it: It runs smooth and can look really decent on low-end PCs, smooth controls, solid animation, and simply fun combat.

Granted things get more messy as you go further more into the depth...but that's not what games are for. The casual player - the majority player - just wants hit things without too much difficulty. This has become clear to me through years of gaming and reading the WoW forums (haw).

Bring on the fun pve and casual pvp. I just want "On line gaming with no fees." Not "Cutting edge, Darwinian balls to the wall competition in wich only the top tier players are allowed to speak."

Maybe we need some kind of special arena for the elitists? Rank eight gladiator and the same on hero, or you won't get in. There they can get together, play only amongst themselves and marvell in their own greatness wile looking down on the pve'ing cattle below. Preferably on a mountaintop setting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYsCd...om=PL&index=17

PvE is about developing your character. People play to get phat loot and the cool stuff and want content. Blizzard knows this and want to go all the way with D3. What did Anet do? Exactly the opposite. They first intruduced anti farming code, followed by loot scaling. The result was a decrease in the fun factor concerning pve. Anet thinks the way you farm is more important than the actual loot.

PvP is more about competitive play. The fun is to be found in beating other players so balance is important to make it somewhat fair or people will leave. Matchmaking systems are wanted too. The reward is usualy a rank on the ladder and what not.

A split between PvP and PvE is inevitable as there are conflicting expectations.

Why would you play a 'competitive online role playing game' then? Play a game that suits you from the start, and don't bring mob rule down on the unique factors of Guild Wars.

I'd suggest RuneScape, but you might find the fact that people with higher stats than you can do more things offensive.

They have that style PvP. They are Competitive Missions, Random Arenas and Alliance Battles. You can go in there, be casual, have fun using crazy builds or test potential ones, and, if you are good enough, and win enough RA, you go into Team Arenas or get with a decent PvP guild, where you can compete in GvG and HA. If you want "EVERYTHING GIVEN TO MEEEE!!! NAONAONAO!!!!", as Avarre said, get an RPG; but I wish people would quit saying Anet, or any other publisher, HAS to make a game fit to theirs, and everyone else's, idea of what a game should be. That's how bad games are made, and how great ones become the same vanilla package as the others.

Would GW still be around today if it was purely pvp from the beginning?

Depends. Is Demigod doing well?

why yes, its doing excellent
that being said, its not purely a pvp game and has a single player campaign.

It would die a slow horrible death if that was the case.

Of course it would, because the only reason the PvP failed was because Anet listened to the PvEers. It was the PvEers who demanded UAS be taken out of the retail game, it was the PvEers who demanded that their PvE characters be more powerful in PvP, it was the PvEers who whined that the original faction rate was too much, it was the PvEers who prevented the faction rates from being increased to a realistic level. The PvEers ruined the PvP in this game more so than any other single reason.

If this game was PvP-only, none of this would have happened and GW would still be the successful Competitive PvP RPG game like it once was.



If you want to make the most money, make an addicting PvE game and charge people insane amounts of money to play it. Build your game around the same mechanics that causes degenerate gamblers to piss away their kids college money on a horse named Gluestick at the local track. Target all of the neurological deficiencies of a degenerate compulsive person and gets them uncontrollably addicted to your game. These games are not fun, they are designed to make it always appear you are just about to start having fun.

If you want to make a game people actually play 10 years after it was released, make a Competitive PvP game with some integrated PvE which helps people learn the game.

Every RTS and FPS is a PvP game with integrated PvE. Few people buy FPS or RTS games for the story, most buy them to play through the story once, and then spend the next 10 years beating the poo out of other people online, entering tournaments, and following the community. Counter-Strike, Quake, StarCraft, all have massive healthy communities fueling the games.

Final Fantasy Online has managed 500k subs for 4 years, though that wont last much longer as it's past it's prime. Lineage, released over 11 years ago, peaked at 3,250,000 players and currently still has over 1,000,000 players. Lineage is a 10-year game. Lineage has a massive healthy active community of players. You wont even remember FFO existed in 6 years. Lineage was a PvP game right from the start. It's main/original draw was it's comprehensive castle siege and political aspects.