Here:Foundations of Balance and Diversity

Sounds to me like, even if the auto-balancing system is too crazy to be contemplated, there's a strong argument for the data-gathering component of such a system

It would be nice to know (or nice to know the developers know) which builds are popular/dominant, etc. Since it's a online game, it's not strictly necessary for these things to be discovered by human observation - the stats can be data-mined in the servers automatically.


To Silmor: Sounds like we're just coming from two different perpectives based on personal preference. I couldnt find anything to respond to in your last post, so I'll just agree to disagree and continue to try to contribute to this topic, from my own take on it.

Coming from a wc3/sc background I'm proud to say I understand only about 60% of this stuff

That's actually my point, which I might not have articulated fully. There's nothing wrong with doing anything to win, or abusing imbalances. However, a good game is one which causes such behaviour to result in gameplay which is fun, relatively balanced, flashy, and has variety. Bad games cause such behaviour to result in repetitive, overpowered, boring gameplay.

Thus, my statement that good games make Spike players play like Timmy/Johnnys.

Also, there's a point I want to bring up about Timmys... M:tG, being a card game, has nothing but big numbers to be "cool". However, video games have flashy graphics, sound and what not. So assuming that a video game "Timmy" mostly cares about spell effects and stuff rather than just the large numbers, I'm probably mostly a Timmy - most of my enjoyment comes from the experience of watching/feeling the things that I do rather than winning or losing.


In my reply to Silmor, I mentioned I was less interested in "balance" more than "variety". And, with the right numbers, cant those two skills be somewhat useful? I know blood renewal is very good for beginning pve, but it becomes irrelevant very quickly. (probably due to the fact that regen becomes less useful when health numbers get bigger, but the life sacrifice stays constant in relative cost.)


That's probably true for balance. But hardcore competitive players tend to have a pretty extreme perspective on what is fun/good and what isnt. So in a general sense of "improving the game" or "priorities for updates", I'm not sure that hardcore competitive players should be the only or most important group listened to.


Arg, gotta go back to work. It seems like I'm coming from a much different perspective than the others here. Given that this is a general topic, I hope that it means I have a valuable, different viewpoint, rather than just being irrelevant :P

Am I the only one that thinks a lot of problems could be solved with these two changes...

1. Nerf NR and FS.

2. Make Rend Enchantments have a 2 second casting time and a 10 second recharge.

Rend Enchantments should be, in my opinion, the best anti-enchantment spell in the game. Right now its casting time means only Mes/Ne can really use it, and its recharge means you will probably use it once before the issue is settled. It think there is a magic balance you can strike where Rend is good enough that if you bring 3 guys with Rend you will give Enchantment based teams a fit, but where Enchantments are still worth bringing.

Someone explain to me why enchantment removal should not be bad in general. I thought it was like healing vs dmg where healing is much more powerful as it should be.

The problem is that in this game, like many others, that proper enchantment stacking can make a team almost invinceable to the average group.

My favorite example of this is a game I played for several years, Shadowbane. In this game, you could literally stack so many buffs on an entire group, making your defense so incredibly high, that the average 'balanced' group did not have a chance. It is one of those things that crushes 90% of other groups right off the bat because they aren't specifically designed to take it out. Sure you can design a group to take it out (ie a counter), but if you aren't designed that way it is gg.

Basically the end game goal, in a perfect world, is to come to that perfect balance between healing/damage and buffs/debuffs, so that no combination of skills/classes just completely wrecks everything in its path before the match even started, and true skill in group design and playability can shine.

Competitive players are the ones least likely to hide balance abuses because they're using them. The newbies, who read about something imbalanced online or see it used on them, and then use it themselves, will want the imbalance kept so they can keep winning with it since they aren't able to figure out other good ways if it was nerfed. Competitive players don't like complete blowouts simply because of imbalances, no matter which side they're on.

If anet listened to the pvp scrubs of guild wars, you'd see warriors unable to heal themselves because it's overpowered, a max of 3 eles per group so they can't spike, etc.

Starcraft got balanced closer than anything else in it's class, and it's not because blizzard (the old, cool blizzard) listened to the money mappers. Mmm...starcraft seems more attractive than guild wars, despite many years of playing and only 4~ months and some odd days playing guild wars. Pgt is coming up soon it seems, which is good cause I don't feel like playing on gamei. Just what is anet doing?

It'll be interesting to see what you think. My view is that edenial numbers, coupled with signet of humility, are totally out of proportion both since it's easy, unlike interrupting, and the only way to counter is to use it yourself. There are ways to counter everything in the game, except energy denial. As an example, Natures Renewal can be 'countered' by not running enchants/hexes that either cast long, need to be maintained, or need to last long to be good. Energy denial counters everything, except maybe mass warriors (but even they won't live long without their monks). You can make a super defensive build that will be able to withstand sometimes even two teams at once, even with 5 offensive players each. You can make a holding build that will withstand any 'normal' team 1v1 long enough to hold the hall.

Heavy energy denial will crack it though where nothing else would. Those 8 monk teams with heal areas and seeds? Fear me spam and multiple copies of signet of weariness and edrain will make them look like they had the normal 3 monks after a couple minutes. The effect is not immediate, since the enemy has to get to low energy for it to matter, but when they are locked at <5, there's really nothing they can do especially if their energy regen skills are shutdown by signet of humility.

Guild Wars pvp is defensive based, but energy denial breaks this (as it is inherently an offensive move). Other than toning down the skills, or doing something about elites and signet of humility, I really don't know what could be done. Anti-energy denial? Pfft.

There are always going to be best strategies. This is natural and fine. You have the top build or a small set of top builds, slight variations upon them, and a host of other strategies that pray upon these top strategies. Nothing wrong with any of that.

Something is degenerately bad not when it's the best strategy (because there's always a best strategy given environmental constraints), but when the best counter to a strategy is to run that strategy yourself. Hence why Air Spike, despite its time as top dog, was inherently ok (there were lots of predatory strategies, Fertile Season chief amongst them), while Nature's Renewal spam is not ok (as teams that don't lose to Nature's Renewal are conspicuously similar to Nature's Renewal builds even if they don't run the skill themselves).

Putrid Explosion fails the same test as well.

Peace,
-CxE

Couple things here. First, BUMP this thread, better for people to see this than "OH NOES I GOT SCAMMED!"

Second, I'm glad we got that straightened out Ensign, good to know.

Blackace is once again correct in stating that class balance has been thrown out of the window with the advent of NR spamming Rangers. And as he has already mentioned, Arena Net is not willing to admit any error on their behalf, so what we are left with is having to sort out this mess ourselves.

When an entire skill line is pretty much unplayable in competetive PvP, there is something horribly wrong. What I'm talking about is the Protection Prayers line for monks. Almost all skills in that line are enchants. An entire line, made almost unplayable except under exceedingly favorable conditions. And mesmer and necro hexes as well.

NR has single handedly destroyed the balance of class and role in the game. Many teams are forgoing the utility builds of Necros and Mesmers, they are opting out of using edenial or disruption. Instead they just go with the spirit spamming smiter nonsense. Sure there are always new builds, but they don't mean a thing if they can't win due to some horribly broken and game ruining skill. There is a lack of diversity in the game as it is right now. Class balance is gone. No more Necros or Mesmers. And rarely does one see an elementalist that isn't Air in Tombs.
(Sad really, Earth and Water are so much more promising. One can make a team stand up to smites and eles without sweating, while the other effectively shuts down all healing ball and smite combos)

But don't forget, Arena Net does nothing wrong. They are always correct and their decisions are the best and are meant to ensure that the players enjoy the game. We love Arena Net.

EDIT: never mind I think I'll just bow out of this topic for now, suffice is to say, I enjoy discussions about skill balance on skill balance threads and I think the flames should go.

I'll give my own take on it. Something is degenerately wrong with the players, not the game, that can't beat a certain build. They're not good enough yet won't ever, ever admit it.

And I'll say again (as I've said 10 dozen times now) I am on a Spirit STRATEGY (NR) team, and we have been beaten by other teams that did not use the same strategy or build as we have.

The opposite is true. Competitive players will use whatever strategy it takes to win. Its not only ignorant and stupid, but also an insult to label us that use this build to win as "newbies" that won't be able to use another build if this one gets nerfed. Just because you aren't truely good enough at PvP to beat certain builds doesn't make everyone else a newbie.

1) Just because a build can be beaten does not mean it's not broken (overpowered). Read the excerpt I quoted from the article on M:tG deck balance. For one thing, the ratio between wins and losses does not have to be anywhere close to infinity (X wins/0 losses) for a build to be broken. Additionally, builds may have counterbuilds that are so focused that they're unviable against the rest of the field, which effectively means those counterbuilds will not succeed.

2) I don't mean to demean you or your team (my team certainly doesn't rank amongst the best, and I'm at best mediocre at PvP), but perhaps your build was not fully optimized? That could be a possible reason for your losses.

3) Coming from an M:tG background, I have played and played against many decks that were just better than anything else out there. This is not due to player error (player skill usually doesn't have as large an effect in M:tG games as it does in Guild Wars games, and some of the best players skillwise were playing other decks) or lack of innovation, but because the cards that deck uses are just too good to be countered by a different viable deck.

How many and which enchantments was that team running?

I've been on a team without any sort of static defense that's held the hall for over an hour.

I've been on a team that's held the hall with henchmen.

I've been on a full team that lost to a pug with a full compliment of henchmen.

That doesn't mean that you should do any of these things and expect them to work. Sometimes the low percentage plays pan out.


But let's go a bit deeper. Running a Nature's Renewal build does not mean running a spirit spamming build. You have likely been getting beaten by Nature's Renewal builds that were not being overt about their NR - they were simply builds that were hardened against the skill.

If you were losing to enchantment and hex heavy builds while running Nature's Renewal, then you can look at differences in player skill. This game isn't just build vs. build, a better team with a strategic disadvantage can overcome it with tight play and good tactics.

So you say you've lost to other builds while running Nature's Renewal? That's great. I've lost to henchies. Both data points are about as meaningful.

Peace,
-CxE

We have been beaten by other teams that have figured out how to beat NR without having to use it.

You really don't get why NR is unbalanced, do you? The problem is that not that we can't beat NR, the problem is that most enchantments and hexes are simply gimped by any NR team.

Praytell, how exactly would running Nature's Renewal help you beat a Nature's Renewal based team? It's a symmetrical effect. You *don't* drop Nature's Renewal against a Nature's Renewal team. If both teams are prepared to operate under Nature's Renewal the team that *doesn't* drop it is often at a distinct advantage. Hell, in an environment completely flooded with NR the optimal play is to *not* run Nature's Renewal and expect the other team to waste resources on the skill.

But since I have to tell you this I think it's abundantly clear why you're losing. The skill is retarded, but that doesn't mean that spamming it like a retard will autowin games for you.

Peace,
-CxE

Wow a well-researched and intelligent OP by Blackace. And all this time I thought you were just a jackass.

But seriously, lets not turn this into another one of a million NR flamethrower threads.

I think this post is the perfect example why we need definitions of "overpowered" in this thread fast. Else people like this will come in and claim that Ensign is a poor player because he cant beat NR. Yes, sure, NR is the "i win" button. ... . Sorry, but as people have pointed out, NR is not overpowered because you cant win against it. IT IS NOT an "i win" button. Instead, its an "i win" button against enchantments and hexes. That is the problem. Having NR wont make you win. Trying to fight it is stupid. Adjusting (hardening as Ensign puts it) means that you throw out lots of options a priori, no need to think about 3s hexes when NR will be out 24/7. Everyone can win under NR, because its symmetric. Its just that it recudes the pool of viable strategies. When you realize that NR is not a skill, but instead a law of nature (its always there), you will realize that "winning against it" is possible, but stupid. Thats why good players dont try to fight it, but embrace it. throwing lots of fun things out the window. And cry "overpowered" on the forums, because they want the fun options back.

NR is a broken skill that will be balanced due to its high publicity, I am just worried about all the more subtle imbalances in this game. Hopefully there taking a long time in balancing to play test all of these and we will see substantial improvement in this game soon.

But with everything else: sorrows furnace,chapter 2, planed tourney's, bug fixes (skill descriptions),Auction house, observer mode,balancing, and other various things it would seem that ANet has a lot on its plate. Hopefully it will figure what is truly most important and take care of it first.

Jesus christ, Blackace, you expect us to have the attention span to read all that?

...I'm somewhat flattered.

There has been one . http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0&postcount=41

you guys have yet to explain why enchantment removal isn't supposed to be worse than enchantment generation. I compared it to healing vs dmg. Every team has a monk. Every team should have enchantments. If there's a problem with healing balls, modify map victory conditions a little. In any case you have energy denial.


I think the only reason NR is so strong is because it (theoretically) affects both sides

you shouldn't be. It's very easy reading.

Another M:tG analogy.

Counterspells, aka Permission Decks are only viable when the counterspells available in the environment are cheaper than the average spell in the environment. Example: if all your counterspells cost 4 mana and you opponent's spells are 2 mana he is at a distinct advantage, assuming mana is equal for both players.

How does this relate to Guild Wars? Any removal, to be worth something, has to at least as efficient as the thing its countering. If healing wasn't more efficient than damage, no one would play monks, for instance. If every spot anti-enchantment spell has a 15 mana cost and 30 second recharge time; but every enchantment costs 10 mana and has a 20 second recharge time, who do you think will win in the long run?

Also, spot removal of enchantments in GW... sucks to be honest. In Magic the Gathering, you don't have to counter every spell. You only have to counter the ones that actually threaten your game plan. In Guild Wars, when you Shatter Enchantment, you don't get to pick which of the 6 enchantments the guy has on him you want to Shatter, you only get to pick the most recent one. This means you don't have the luxury of just Shattering the one's that bother you: you have to kill as many as it takes to get to the important ones. And as we've already established that, from a cost perspective, is a losing battle in the long run.

So where does that leave us? Spot removal is pretty awful, and mass removal, in the form of NR, is good that it makes enchantments and hexes worthless.

In Magic, the solution was to make all removal better than all threats and to make the game a battle over resources rather than a threat race (not to say that you can't play and win with aggressive strategies or combos, but I'm making a general point). This won't work, because the only real resource in GW is energy, and two energy denial builds going at it might not pass the "is this fun?" test that a good game should have.

edit: I also want to add, the reason the "resource fight" in Magic works is because there are multiple resources: mana, cards in hand, time and life. You can usually trade one for the other, which creates interesting strategic interactions. In GW, we only have one real resource, Energy. A few necro spells let you trade Life for energy, but for the most part, Energy is the only resource. Only having one resource to battle over makes the strategic interactions significantly less interesting.

One way to solve it, in my mind, is to give spells more alternative costs, beyond mana. Life sacrifices are a good start but there are others. Mark of Protection is a good example. With that spell we begin to see Time and "cards" becoming a resource. Building on that is the way to go to create real strategic choices in a resource war.

Note that recharge times are sort of like card advantage in that since you have only eight skills. Card advantage is good primarily because it gives you more options, and every skill that is unusable or recharging takes away from your options. Time is kind of like cast time and, in the case of (de)buffs, durations (which also has impact on cast time since you'll be casting the shorter (de)buffs more often, triggering the cast time). A skill that randomly disables another of your skills for X seconds for energy, life, or reduced cast time could be very interesting.

May I add to Zell and Dzan: you inditified life, energy, recast. How about bodies? they can be exploited (compare to gy in mtg). only thing, this resource is hardly manageble in GW, altough possible as the minionmaster build showed us.
Signet is another that comes to mind. For the ranger maybe the range-attackspeed tradeoff, similar for warrior. attackspeed can be crippled by necro's, boosted by war/rang. Maybe i'm going a bit to far with this all, but they are manageble in variable degrees.

Excellent Post Blackace, I like your new demeanor. Anet should be honored to have such well educated fans as those that have posted in this thread (excluding myself of course). I hope they eventually listen to you guys and see that following your free expert advise will secure a long shelf life for their game, and ignoring it will continue to drive people away. Kudos to Ensign as well.

The thread is going slightly of topic (and yes, i'm also to blame), so here an attempt to turn back to 'balance'.

source:http://www.guildwars.com/faq/default.html
Is it me, or am I the only one fearing severe balance issues on the possibility of adding new proffessions?

Every proffession has it's niche, and own interactions with the other proffessions. I simply don't see how they can add a proffessions without stepping on balanceproblems. (drawing the line with mtg: if there was ONE thing that hasn't changed over 10 years, it is the amount of colors able to play)

I personally see the classes as your cards, the colors being more what they actually do (melee, anti-whatever, disrupt etc...). I may be crazy, who knows. If they add new classes they would add more "cards" to your whatever color deck you make.

Example: They add, lets just say, an Assassin.
This would be clearly melee or short ranged, and one could classify it as anti caster and maybe anti melee, clearly not a tank or what not. So it will and could be countered with a ranger, or dibilitating mesmer, or just the brute force of a warrior. Judging by the name it would have to be sneaky, so if caught off guard it could be destroyed by any elementalist.

Now all the above comes from my own views, I have played MTG since Legends and I have seen things change time and again. I would maybe think of it as T1x new cards always coming in, just without the going out that occurs in mTG.

To the person who said Affinity ruled the T2 block until it got banned, and every deck HAD to pack anti affinity or it simply wouldn't be viable, you forgot one thing.

No matter how much artifact hate there was, Affinity was still dominant.
I guess that's how it is in Guild Wars.

Yes pyxis, Anet was so honored by his expertise that he is no longer an alpha tester.

Makkert brings up a good point, the new classes that will be added will mean more rebalancing of skills so that a certain class combo isn't overpowered. With most/all niches covered all that remains is the jack-of-all-trades class that every newbie will play.

Maybe I won't be playing GW then...

This really can't be said enough times. Everything currently that is in game should work like clockwork, the way it is suppose too, while limiting over-balanced situations as much as possible before a new class should even be considered....

Look here for one of the seminal articles about magic in regards to who should be on O and who should be on D. You will have to extrapolate to make it apply to Guild Wars PVP. http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3692

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/7977.html Is also a good discussion on the metagame and adjusting in it, again from a MTG prespective.

http://web.archive.org/web/200010292...eck_speed.html and http://web.archive.org/web/200010292...kbuilding.html is a listing of some of the first theory on building MTG decks, updating for guild wars team construction could prove valuable. I am assuming the active guilds are doing something similar with the building process.

....


that's exactly my point. It's NOT supposed to be efficient. Why do I feel like i'm speaking a different language?

Healing is the counter to damage. Healing is also a bit more difficult to use than damage, since the healer has to react to people taking damage and such. Therefore, healing should be more efficient than damage, or no one would use it.

Similarly, enchantment removal is the counter to enchantments. Enchantment removal is a bit more difficult to use than enchantments, and is generally more situational than enchantments are (enchantments can almost always be useful, but enchantment removal requires enchantments to be used by your opponent in order to be effective). Therefore, enchantment removal should be more efficient than enchantments, or no one would use it.

So enchantments are supposed to be uncounterable? Okay...

Methinks you feel like you're speaking a different language because the ideas you're trying to communicate simply do not make any sense, hence the rest of us have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

Peace,
-CxE

That is not a balanced situation, hence why you think no one understands you.

This is a common misconception carried over from pve environments where it should be overly difficult to break down defenses and healing should carry the weight from a force greater than its self in application. The parrallels arent difficult to find such as: damage versus removal, conditions versus removal, hexes versus removal, enchantments versus removal, and so on. However, the cross application of skills against things that arent directly parallel fall into the counter catagory, rather than than opposition catagory. For instance, use a enchantment to offset damage output and tip the favor on the side of damage removal. Then to maintain the balance the other team would use a method to remove the effect of the enchantment, by changing targets or removing it directly. In the instance of removing it directly, the removal would have to match the ability to be applied to the target as the enchantment was. Then to counter that, the target could withdraw or the team could interupt the removal or deny it. Failing that, have redundancy built into the team through the same or different skills.

Things that fall outside these catagories are wards, spirits, shouts, traps, interupts and other denial methods. These things have no real direct opposition, but only two of them holds enough sway to really throw the course of a battle in one direction or another. The rest have situational use and tip the favor of efficiency within the situations where they excell.

EDIT **** you forgot stances

I also come from a M:tG background and enjoy the parallel between the two. Hell it was, after all, an intial selling point for me and my friends into the game.

Enchant Removal is terribly weak and any who disagree with this need to do a comparative analysis of enchants vs. enchant removal. Selection, Recharge times, and sheer lack of skills (well if we had balanced removal we dont need the numbers). Anyways this isn't specifically about enchants vs. removal. We have beaten this line to death and know it needs to be re-assessed not only enchants vs. enchant removal ... but also vs. the potential outcome of buffing enchant removals. With stronger enchant removals necros could possibly stop being hit with the bat, but then be the new king of the castle. I remember a time in betas, when necros 'were' the most powerful in the game ... by release they were riding the other end. IMO, I think a necro profession should have the strongest enchant removal. I like rend and LC but I can't see myself utilizing a spot when I face a team ... (enchant heavy ... I cast rend ... they laugh and recast all enchants ... I wait for recharge time = disadvantage)

But back on to resources. Our resource pool in this game is not even balanced all that well. I agree with Blackace on energy is the most valuable resource in this game. A team running energy denial can effectively knock out 4 of 6 professions entirely. Something wrong there ... oh wait ... lets run BiP to keep em up ... BiP < Energy Denial.

I was just referred to this post, my appologies on hitting a few topics back, I just wanted to also add ... the metagame is always a part of anything you play, be it card's, chess (the 5 move win comes to mind here) or on the computer.

Kaylee Ann ... I kinda fear that too, but what I fear more is that chapter 2 will be more of (as stated on the previous page) a balancing for chapter 1 skillset plus chapter 1+2 ckillset ... wouldn't this 'force' people to buy chapter 2 to be competitive? Thus not holding true to there word? That is a bit of a fear I have for chapter 2, the professions to be introduced will likely be counters to eachother and perhaps (hoping) have been rigorously tested vs. current professions, attributes, and skills.

This is quite ignorant, to put it bluntly. You do not have to use a cookie cutter build (spike, healing ball, spirit spam, zealot's, whatever) to be successful in Tombs. It's noobish thinking to be a bandwagon team - "well, the current unstoppable build is spirit spam, we need to play spirit spam too to win" train of thought - unfortunately Tombs is filled with copycat teams with little or no originality.

Any particular build can be beat. The key to winning the HoH is to make a build that can counter the most popular builds, and still win outright on your own. The best teams react to dynamic battlefields successfully, not button mashing drones.