Curse

Fril Estelin · Nov 12, 2008, 02:04 PM // 14:04

Hi,

I've read a few things scattered among threads about "balance", mainly in PvP but also in PvE too. One interesting comment was the "rock-paper-scissor(RPS)" game being a good basis for the "balance": each skill can be countered by another.

Is it a correct definition? Don't you need to consider whole builds? Furthermore, can you generalise the above RPS principle to hundreds of skills among 8 to 12 professions? How does game mechanics such as interrupt, spellcasting, melee damage (that can be AoE), AoE spells, shadow-stepping, degen/regen, conditions, etc. influence the "balance"?

I guess the question is slightly different in PvE, because you need to additionally balance the monsters, but you're still working on buildsets (except you have the monster skills to balance for the limited capabilities of AIs). Or is it the same as in PvP when you create 8builds to work together and counter other buildsets?

Feel free to remind us of how balanced the game was 3 years ago, or suggests how the current one could be "balanced". What would you do if tomorrow Anet offered you a full-time job with them and you have, say, 6 months to find a solution to balance the game (without any limit with what you can do)? (constraint: you have to be "realistic")

But PLEASE(!) do not use this thread to flame Anet, PvErs, NF, or any other stuff (or simply suggest that balance can be achieved by changing 2 or 3 skills...).

Disclaimer: I'm not a serious PvPer (but I love this part of the game), so let's not assume everyone here has hundreds of hours of GvG, played since 2005, or has rank 4 Glad. But of course, everyone is welcome here!

Trub · Nov 12, 2008, 02:17 PM // 14:17

Quote:

What is "balance" and can it be achieved?

That is similar to: "What is the meaning of life?"
j/k dammit.
I to am curious how ANet gathers data for 'what is balanced'.
Sorry, the wiki isn't a reliable source for player feedback...ANet desn't have an official gamer feedback site....no 24/7 GM in game.....
So yes, I too am curious about this.

RiKio · Nov 12, 2008, 02:32 PM // 14:32

Balance is a world devoid of Assassins, Ritualists, Dervishes and Paragons.

The Arching Healer · Nov 12, 2008, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Balanced is no b-spike, sway, hway or w/e lame.

Also a topic about balance: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10135810

Chucky333 · Nov 12, 2008, 02:55 PM // 14:55

Balance for me is when bad players can't beat better ones by running a certain build.
Bad players reaching the top 50 on the ladder running bloodspam is imbalance.
An OP skill or build for me is a skill or build that is more powerful or equally powerful to another skill or build but requires far less skill to use properly.
That's my view on what's balanced and what's not. GW was never perfectly balanced, no game is, but i think it's ok at the moment.

zwei2stein · Nov 12, 2008, 02:55 PM // 14:55

"Everything Feels Overpowered, but it is in fact all class/strategy choices pretty much equal." Illusion of imba. For people to whom it matters, game is ballanced as in there is no imba stuff while other can enjoy feeling powerfull and whatnot.

It is one of hardest things to achieve in game design, only Blizzard can pull this off reliably.

Productivity · Nov 12, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by RiKio

Balance is a world devoid of Assassins, Ritualists, Dervishes and Paragons.

This.

Arguably add Necromancers to that list.

Fril Estelin · Nov 12, 2008, 03:04 PM // 15:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by RiKio

Balance is a world devoid of Assassins, Ritualists, Dervishes and Paragons.

In other words, you think that balance is unachievable post-Prophecies?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Arching Healer

Balanced is no b-spike, sway, hway or w/e lame.

I'm trying to get to the core of the concept, not the "symptoms". But I guess the other thread you pointed me to refers to that (ty for the link), I'll take a good look and may suggest that this thread is not needed then.

Edit: from an initial reading, I wonder whether the view on balance is the same in TA, HA, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chucky333

Balance for me is when bad players can't beat better ones by running a certain build.

Isn't it rather a definition of "skill"? (remove "bad" and "good" from your sentence as it's redundant) Or do you mean balance is only achievable when swtiching builds doesn't change the overall outcome of games?

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

game is ballanced as in there is no imba stuff while other can enjoy feeling powerfull and whatnot.

This is only the inverse question: what is imba? One skill that kills? Two skills that kill from the same build or not? Three skills that prevent someone from playing?

wind fire and ice · Nov 12, 2008, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Remove dervs,sins and paragons(i like rits

) and remove all nf and eotn skills,then you have a balanced game.

Really though,the game is fairly balanced counting out afew op'd skills,but they dont effect game play that much.

The game isnt in the bad condition most people try to make it seem,theres an OP'd elite for every profession,so really every thing is balanced to each other.

eximiis · Nov 12, 2008, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Everything that is easy is imba.

Something that is hard to achive is balance. Back in the days, with 6 prof. = the best balance there was.

Mayda · Nov 12, 2008, 03:13 PM // 15:13

ballance is if you can find a reason to run a char other than "I <3<3<3 the look of the armor"

think the ballance is not in critic state, ofc there are preferred build and strategies, which are very viable, but theres always a way to fight them, so the ballance is guaranteed by the principles of making strategies and counterstrategies
this gonna work as long as theres something invincible, probably due to some ballance update

Shadowmoon · Nov 12, 2008, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by RiKio

Balance is a world devoid of Izzy.

fixed it for you

Fril Estelin · Nov 12, 2008, 03:22 PM // 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Arching Healer

Also a topic about balance: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10135810

It's funny because this thread mentions RPS in a way opposite to the one I used in the OP, but it seems it means different things (I meant to say that R, P and S are the 3 tactics Blame the Monks talks about, you're force to swtich between them constantly, while he thought of the "luck" aspect of the game).

I gather from this thread the idea that "builds that are flexible win or lose more based on in-game tactical decisions and less on build". So people think balance is achieved outside of the builds or GW skills? Or in other words, is the RL skill a "tactical" one?

I was tempted to ask: what about innovation? what about having an "imba" and still having an 8group that is balanced? How do you make the game evolved if you only want a limited number of possible builds?

zwei2stein · Nov 12, 2008, 03:30 PM // 15:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

This is only the inverse question: what is imba? One skill that kills? Two skills that kill from the same build or not? Three skills that prevent someone from playing?

Anything that scores reasonably high in these, while major offenders would score high in all of them, it not necessary.:

Ease of use - use requires little thought or understanding of game.
Power - amongst things that take equal player skill to execute, this is has exceptionally powerful outcomes.
Amount of usage - overshadows all other things in game, narrowing gameplay options for comunity.
Player Dependency - players depend solely on this for success. it is the only option for them to succeed in X. (this is more less sign of game game design that surrounds imba, but it is one of signs).

Deciding what exactly is root of "imba" is not usually easy thing unless it is very obvious.

Quaker · Nov 12, 2008, 03:39 PM // 15:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

... "rock-paper-scissor(RPS)" game being a good basis for the "balance": each skill can be countered by another.

Is it a correct definition? Don't you need to consider whole builds?

Yes, you do need to consider whole builds. It's not possible, or even desirable to try to "balance" all individual skills - how do you balance Rebirth, for example?

In PvP, the purpose of balance would be to allow a greater variety of classes and skills to be competitive. This can either be to keep 1 or 2 classes/builds from dominating, or conversely, to prevent 1 or 2 classes from being unusable. This would generally involve tweaking certain skills or skill-sets to make them more or less powerful in comparison to others.

In PvE, balance is a slightly different issue. In PvE you want to balance the player versus monster battles so that the game is just the right level of difficulty to make people want to play, but not too hard. There would be slightly different approaches to that for pay-to-play vs free-to-play.

Martin Alvito · Nov 12, 2008, 04:01 PM // 16:01

The linked thread is just dead wrong on what balance is.

Balance exists when there is a diversity of possible builds and strategies. In an ideal world, we'd have balance across all PvP formats (RA, TA, HA, HB, AB, GvG) simultaneously. There would be a large number of possible team concepts with different bars and strategies, none of which dominate any of the other possible strategies (ie: they tend to lose to some strategies while tending to beat others).

Degenerate builds (IWAY, bloodspike, etc.) are OK in a balanced meta so long as play skill determines the outcome. If the IWAY is very good, and you are a mediocre conventional build, you should lose to them in a balanced meta.

When degenerate builds become a problem is when they crowd out diversity. The issue with IWAY was that it put out more pressure than the conventional hex/condition builds of its day (when played well), and so it dominated those builds in the meta. There was no reason to play a classic degen strategy when you were certain to encounter an IWAY that would kill you before you killed them. That invalidated half the skills in the game, which was a bad thing.

Complaints about degenerate builds and the attendant lack of skill of their players are usually related to the fact that the skills learned playing a degenerate build didn't translate to other builds. So by the definition of "skill" set by the elite community playing more conventional builds, IWAY is "skilless" because it has a short learning curve and the play lessons learned don't translate to other build types. As a result, players complain about losing to "bad" players.

IMO, complaints about losses to "skilless players" running degenerate builds are related more to players refusing to take ownership for their own failures than anything else. If your team is losing to IWAY, play better or network better so you can play with better players. (Or fix your build so it fails less.) Pretty much the end of the story. The best teams won halls/made top 50 despite the existence of those builds in the meta.

What matters at the end of the day is that lots of strategies are viable. When that happens, you face lots of teams doing lots of different things, each match is unique, and playing becomes an intellectual challenge rather than the "IWAY IWAY bloodspike IWAY bloodspike bloodspike bloodspike IWAY" grind that HA was a couple of years ago.

SkekSister · Nov 12, 2008, 05:02 PM // 17:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

It is one of hardest things to achieve in game design, only Blizzard can pull this off reliably.

Hahaha that made my day. Did you ever try to PvP in Diablo2? or WoW? Clearly not...

The closest Blizz got was in SC or WC3. Those had their moments of balance, but still there were strategies with which bad players could own good ones.

Zerg rush!!!

Balance in any complex system is a dynamic process and almost never attains perfection. The best you can hope for is a shaky equilibrium continually tweaked to stop massively overpowered builds developing.

And in a massively multiplayer game even when you get that, a chunk of your user base will strongly disagree and tell you you haven't.

Test Me · Nov 12, 2008, 05:05 PM // 17:05

Balance is a waste of time mostly.

Most people think that a "balanced" world is when all are equal and therefore all is boring.

If I were to balance a game: I would equally imbalance each class or mechanic of the game. In this regard similar to RPS: R > S > P but P > R.

Why? Simple:
- it's boring not to have diversity
- overpowered diversity does not mean imbalance, as long as both sides are equally overpowered it's a perfect balance. Nature has the best examples: gazelles vs lions. They are both overpowered in different ways, very different and distinctive in what they do and what their role is and either can win a "fight".
- and lastly, to win a fight when the balance odds were against you rules in terms of fun. *Say* you know Eles are underpowered in a fight with a W, and you play and still win... that's making a strong statement about your skills in that game.

For ex.: Mesmers should totally own eles by making them useless (unable to cast a thing). Eles therefore should always be on the watch and know who to stay away from. However Eles should totally own W with their snares and range attacks. But to close the circle W should totally own Me, as they don't cast to attack and can't be interrupted. So then all of the sudden strategies are possible. W knows that if he doesn't do something about the Me in the opposing team, the Ele in his team is toast. Me knows that if he doesn't do anything about the ele in the enemy team the W in his team is toast.

So there you go, all overpowered but in a team. All with a clear specific role. If they suck at their role they give they make their team vulnerable in certain specific ways.

I am yet to see the game that achieves balance through imbalance and diversity (as nature does btw).

upier · Nov 12, 2008, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

What would you do if tomorrow Anet offered you a full-time job with them and you have, say, 6 months to find a solution to balance the game (without any limit with what you can do)? (constraint: you have to be "realistic")

The same thing they are doing.
Nothing.

I am getting paid for 6 months either way, right?

Alleji · Nov 12, 2008, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chucky333

GW was never perfectly balanced, no game is, but i think it's ok at the moment.

I would argue that Starcraft is perfectly balanced.

Yes, there are options that suck. Nobody ever makes scouts or valkyries (except Boxer, lol), but the three races are nonetheless matched perfectly, so the game is about 95% skill and 5% luck (your scarabs not hitting, for example).

Can't really apply that to GW, though, because what would you balance? Classes against each other? Not exactly the point of the game. Every skill individually? Impossible.

WoW, for example, attempts to balance classes (and fails at it pretty spectacularly). WoW devs' job is easier because every rogue and every mage have the same skills (with a few more granted by talents) and they only need to compare so much. The build flexibility in GW makes this kind of approach impossible because you can take any combination from two professions.

So, what exactly would you balance in GW? I don't know, but it sure as hell was done much better until Nightfall came out.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkekSister

The closest Blizz got was in SC or WC3. Those had their moments of balance, but still there were strategies with which bad players could own good ones.

Zerg rush!!!

not rly