Curse

R.Shayne · Apr 18, 2008, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

If an extra 3 seconds on Splinter Weapon is causing an uproar there is no way to keep the PvP crowd calm for the sake of PvE balance.

PvP really has no hope.

Do you see how easy your aurgument is turned around? Until ANET decides to seperate PvP from PvE they each have to learn to live with each other. The 3 seconds on Barrage doesn't mean a thing to me because when Barrage starting only affecting 3 opponents it became less feasiable to me as a low level solo farm.

The nerfs limit the number of builds that are feasable for farming. I like variety and I like trying different things.

Gun Pierson · Apr 18, 2008, 04:26 PM // 16:26

I agree with pumpkin pie and the analysis Dr Strangelove made.

How did Magic the gathering did it, a game with thousands of spells?
They introduced different styles like type1 with overpowered cards, Type2 for balance. Sealed deck for balance and the surprise element. To keep the game fresh they released new spells to the game in the form of expansions. They covered many different player groups this way.

Anet has several ex Wizards of the Coasts (released MTG) employees in the dev team. What we see today is a good step in specialising the two big game formats in GW and possibly GW2, namely PvP and PvE. PvP should become more balanced while PvE can keep the PvE fun factor high.

The balancing of PvE is not the same as balancing PvP, they're two different playstyles within the game, hence they should be seperated and get specialised love.

Magikarp · Apr 18, 2008, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

If an extra 3 seconds on Splinter Weapon is causing an uproar there is no way to keep the PvE crowd calm for the sake of PvP balance.

PvE really has no hope. Either you're going to have overpowerred PvX skills ruining PvP that can't be touched or the PvE crowd will go berserk if anything is done to them, or you have absurd skills like Ursan/SY that cheapen any challenge the game could have. It does seem like the majority prefers the lack of challenge because they're making money so that route might as well be taken. Buff all the PvE skills to stupid levels so PvP can be balanced. It will please the majority which is apparently all skill balances are about until GW2 is here.

not true at all. reworking pve skills to make them more broken is simply making things worse.

1. you have to grind for most of the pve skills
2. not everyone owns all 4 games, especially gwen, which is where pve skills reign from...
3. trump pve skills would only force people into using more clonebuilds, and derail any forms of creativity outside of the X pve skills and 100-120 good general skills to choose from.....

imho....

buff old "crappy skills" into a usable rank. REWORK and recycle all of those "junk" skills into great skills, if not the best skills, even if only for a week. i know it would take some time for the devs to make happen, but think of the opportunities that would open... the horizons of different styles of gameplay for both pve AND pvp.... it would be like the GvG matches when Factions first came out.. so many builds, so many styles... you'd never see the same things twice.

nerf the broken stuff, nerf the skills the whiners talk about, whatever would "fix" pvp....

but rework and buff the 500+ skills missing from the game, and give them light.. just once... i think THAT would spur a WHOLE LOT of new play styles..

Magikarp · Apr 18, 2008, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gun Pierson

I agree with pumpkin pie and the analysis Dr Strangelove made.

How did Magic the gathering did it, a game with thousands of spells?
They introduced different styles like type1 with overpowered cards, Type2 for balance. Sealed deck for balance and the surprise element. To keep the game fresh they released new spells to the game in the form of expansions. They covered many different player groups this way.

Anet has several ex Wizards of the Coasts (released MTG) employees in the dev team. What we see today is a good step in specialising the two big game formats in GW and possibly GW2, namely PvP and PvE. PvP should become more balanced while PvE can keep the PvE fun factor high.

The balancing of PvE is not the same as balancing PvP, they're two different playstyles within the game, hence they should be seperated and get specialised love.

then we would need more pve skills. how boring is it to see so much ursan as is? either add more pve skills, or figure out a better way to balance what we have in general, or else both pve AND pvp will stay stuck with the current 100-120 usable skills we have.....

lyra_song · Apr 18, 2008, 04:35 PM // 16:35

Since i dont think anyone clicked the link i posted on page one. Do I win the thread yet?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

I really think this idea is good...it got buried, but its very simple and contextually important so im bumping it!

More examples with real skills. Im picking skills at random here.

Avatar of Balthazar: Elite Form. For 10...74...90 seconds, you gain +40 armor, you move 33% faster, and your attacks deal holy damage. This Skill is disabled for 120 seconds. If you are not in pvp, your attacks also have 15% armor penetration.

Thrill of Victory: Melee Attack. If this blow hits, and you have more Health than target foe you strike for +15...39...45 damage. If you are not in pvp and this attack is blocked, it recharges instantly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

This idea came in response to the "Why must everything be balanced thread?".

Basically its an idea to take existing skills, and modify them so that:

A) They can be tweaked for balance in PvP as neccessary.

and

B) Maintain usability in PvE.

-----------------------------

They can modify skills to have inherent anti-monster effects built into the skill.

heres some made up examples.

Decisive Stab. Sword Attack. This skill cannot be blocked. If it hits, it causes +_____ damage and bleeding. If it hits a Non-Ascended or Non-human fleshy target, that target suffers deep wound for ______.

Fifth Degree. Spell. This spell causes _____ damage and burning for ____ seconds. If it hits a Non-Ascended or Non-Human target, all foes in the area suffer burning for ____ seconds.

Richocheting Shot: Bow Attack. This skill cannot be blocked. If this attack hits a target with armor higher than 70, target and adjacent foes suffer ___ damage. If it hits a target with armor higher than (Put armor level of lvl 24 enemies here), target and all adjacent foes suffer deep wound for ____ seconds.

Do you see what i mean?

The first half of the skill is what is balanced for PvP. This is what is tweaked for PvP.
The second half of the skill is for PvE. This added damage or effect does not affect PvP and bolsters the skill for PvE.

---------------------------

Basically the modifier sentence is an anti-monster effect. By adding + damage or extended effect duration vs PvE only creatures, these skills will gain power without becoming overpowered in PvP.

To make sure it only affects PvE, the modifier has to stipulate characteristics that only affect monsters.

Such factors include:

Level: PvP characters will never be over level 20. So stipulating effects vs targets above level 20 is a good idea.
Species: PvP characters will always be human.
Special "Status": The equivalents of "ascension" are not available to monsters, therefore this kind of stipulation would also be good.
Boss status: A human PvP character will never be a boss character.

Of course there will have to be a few changes so that NPCs in PvP environments also fulfill the same status as human players, but other than that, what do you think?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

These "pve effects" are just to counter any nerfing that a skill may take due to PvP.

For example.

Searing flames gets further damage reduction to balance it in PvP. It sucks in PvE now? The modifier maintains the former damage by compensating for that nerf.

It becomes balanced in PvP and remains usable in PvE. And this also allows "crap skills" to actually be of some use by buffing them without overpowering them in PvP.

Then you would have a LARGER pool of usable skills instead of a few overpowered skills.

Toxage · Apr 18, 2008, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

[
Charr:
Deal +5% damage in melee.
Takes +10% more damage from elemental spells.
Charr racial attribute: +2% melee damage per level. (PvE/World PvP only)

Asura:
Deal +5% damage with elemental spells.
Takes +10% more damage from melee attacks.
Asura racial attribute: +2% elemental damage per level. (PvE/World PvP only)

The game would then be designed from the ground up with the powerful and key PvE skills in the racial traits lines. This includes solo farming skills, big AoE damage attack skills, and so on. They would remain relatively untouched, with very little reason for them to ever be rebalanced. They would essentially perform all of the key functions of the game more effectively than any core (non racial) skill.

You could have just written that.

You need to learn to use more concise writing.

I feel that this suggestion is horrible. Races should NOT get special abilities.

Let's take a look at how World of Warcraft's racials turned out...

If you want to be a Horde Main Tank you must roll a tauren for the stamina boost.

If you want to PvP as a warrior on horde you must be an orc for stun resist.

If you want to PvP as a warrior on alliance you must gnome for escape artist.

Simply put racials are a horrible idea, racials create better races for certain aspects. A race should never be better than another at PvE or PvP all races should be equally as good. I don't want to lose to someone because I didn't roll X race for Y racial and they did.

Longasc · Apr 18, 2008, 04:38 PM // 16:38

I think we need more quality pve balance.

The idea of being super powerful and thus having super fun in PvE is just wrong. Of course we are supposed to win in PvE, and have fun. But you do not entertain people by making things too easy to be enjoyable.

This is not alone the fault of PvP skills affecting PvE skills. This is one factor, the other is that ANet needs to work harder on their PvE content, too.

PvE got the hugh majority of new content, but they really gave a damn about "balanced, challenging" content. I would like to agree to Zweistein here: Strongly overpowered and uber-effective skills are fun in the short run, but the doom of the game in the middle or long run. They bore people to hell, too.

How to fix this, I would say "quick and dirty" is the only way as JR said. There is no point in totally changing GW1 now, but hopefully they got some ideas for GW2 how to avoid that.

They could watch Blizzard introduce a new class into WoW late this year, and see how they did that, if it worked or not.

I personally think they need fewer skills and them being effective and fun. Then we do not need major changes over and over. GW needs to be easier and simpler to balance, then we do not have this eternal cycle of balancing over and over. MMOs do not work without constant buffing or nerfing, but in GW it has become rampant.

And the last word goes to the usual Ursan stuff! :>
It is a wonder that this is allowed to exist, in any other game it would cause people to think WTF, it takes away ideas, builds, strategies and replaces them with the minimum, but hyper-efficient, options of the bear. You can still be better with a good non-bear team, but bears are blunt and work without any effort.

Dr Strangelove · Apr 18, 2008, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gun Pierson

The balancing of PvE is not the same as balancing PvP, they're two different playstyles within the game, hence they should be seperated.

And yet they're the same game, and require each other to do well. Here's an interesting interview on the failure of Fury. In particular, read this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Carpenter

People don’t like to lose and one of the main reasons they play games is to be successful and win. In Fury, even in the ideal case with an infinitely large player pop, all players are going to lose 50% of the time. Unfortunately, in extremely low pop scenarios, it’s a case of 80%-20% or even worse.

In the post release reviews, journalists were hopping in and getting matched against some of the best players in the game. This resulted in them being slaughtered which isn’t a fun experience for anyone, especially when you are learning a new game. Predictably, this meant the game was ‘stupid’ and not fun for anyone. This easily changes a person’s mindset so that they are no longer trying to find the good in the game and are instead looking for all the bad things.

Counteracting this issue has been a major focus for us leading up to Fury’s first content update. In a classic MMOG, you spend most of your time killing Mobs and occasionally PVP. When you do decide to PVP, if you get your ass kicked, you can go back to the safety of PVE. In Fury, that safety net doesn’t exist. So instead of going back to PVE, they quit the game and tell all their friends not to play. With Age of the Chosen, we’re beginning to add an essential safety net that will allow player to learn the game.

PvP needs PvE as a safety net and training wheels, or it will never take off. PvE needs PvP to add a competitive edge, and to draw in the hardcore gamers who control the market ( read my other thread on this if you want ). Seperating them is a good way to kill them both. Remember, essentially all PvPers play PvE.

Gun Pierson · Apr 18, 2008, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magikarp

then we would need more pve skills. how boring is it to see so much ursan as is? either add more pve skills, or figure out a better way to balance what we have in general, or else both pve AND pvp will stay stuck with the current 100-120 usable skills we have.....

Yes I understand where you're coming from but we're specifically talking about the balancing of PvE now, just to make that clear.
That said, I'm in favor of more spells and variety of builds. It will bring new life into the game. I don't wanne get into Ursan at this time as it's a complex exercise with both pros and cons.

@ Dr Strangleve: Look at the game and playerbase and groups now after 3 years of the PvP and PvE mariage, we're nowhere, everybody is pissed off these days it seems. In this game it's a bad combo. It's time for a refreshing change. People who want to play competively will always go PvP, others stay in PvE which seems to be a very large group. If PvP needs PvE, it's because it's not appealing enough, and that's I think the underlying fear some of the PvP players have, but PvE can't save you. Seperating them would only make each format stronger imo. If PvP gets more specialised with its own system of tutorials and arenas based on the skill of the player, we might see a positive change. I'm talking about a matchmaking system and not only for GvG.

Captain Bulldozer · Apr 18, 2008, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Here's my current thinking for GW2... I don't know how realistic this would be to implement, but I'm beginning to think we should just declare PvP and PvE different games. If we can have PvE only skills, why not have PvP only skills as well? In my opinion, the game could probably be made richer by declaring that no skill usable in PvE can be used in PvP, and no skill usable in PvP can be used in PvE. This thinking is based off the assumption that there are fundamentally two different types of player in GW, the PvE players and the PvP players. Yes of course we can all admit there is some cross-over here, but i find that as time goes on, a player tends to become exclusively one or the other (excepting in certain cases for the purposes of skill capture). Then a skill balance motivated by PvP (which seems to be the biggest reason for balances in general) does not significantly affect the other class of player. The fact is that in PvP skills need to be balanced, as you're fighting an opposing team of the same size, level and skill pool. In PvE this is almost never the case. In PvE you generally are fighting mobs which outnumber you, out level you and often have over-powered skills that you can not use ever. For this reason PvE skills NEED to be somewhat over-powered. This is in stark contrast to PvP where it is essential that skills be "balanced" to prevent one sidedness. Thus, in PvP the playing field is level from the beginning, and needs to be kept that way, and in PvE the playing field is stacked against you and thus you need beefed up skills and abilities. If this is the way the two different aspects really is, (as it seems to me) then trying to balance both simultaneously will ultimately fail in my opinion. Again, I don't know if my suggestion is really realistic or not, but I hope I've at least given the reader something to think about.

Magikarp · Apr 18, 2008, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gun Pierson

Yes I understand where you're coming from but we're specifically talking about the balancing of PvE now, just to make that clear.
That said, I'm in favor of more spells and variety of builds. It will bring new life into the game. I don't wanne get into Ursan at this time as it's a complex exercise with both pros and cons.

until people realize you cant have pve without pvp, and pvp without pve in order to maintain a balanced community, this game will continue to spiral... thats why i mentioned pvp balance synonymously....

Akolo · Apr 18, 2008, 04:46 PM // 16:46

problem is that people will always play that which gives them advantage and easy playtime. Balancing monster will only FORCE us to use pve skills, thus not taking variety in account and might aswell remove all skills that just arent good enough...

its the same thing now, you only need like 20 skills...
to have fun in pve, you need to have variety, to have variety, you need to have skill balance.

Magikarp · Apr 18, 2008, 04:48 PM // 16:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

My favorite thing about this game is (was) the constant skill changes. It's always fun to throw together new builds. Apparently that part of the game is dead now.

I'm against splitting for a couple reasons. First, random skill changes to PvE from PvP problems are fun. They keep things fresh and interesting. Second, I play both PvE and PvP. If the game modes were split, there would be no real way to play both, since they'd be two different games. I'd prefer not having to choose between two games I love.

imo this is the best way to sum up exactly how i feel about the game i've grown to really care about. i'm sure a lot of people would agree with Dr and I as well.....

Dr Strangelove · Apr 18, 2008, 05:04 PM // 17:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gun Pierson

People who want to play competively will always go PvP, others stay in PvE which seems to be a very large group. If PvP needs PvE, it's because it's not appealing enough, and that's I think the underlying fear some of the PvP players have, but PvE can't save you. Seperating them would only make each format stronger imo. If PvP gets more specialised with its own system of tutorials and arenas based on the skill of the player, we might see a positive change. I'm talking about a matchmaking system and not only for GvG.

What if I want to (and do) play both? People seem to forget that almost everyone who plays PvP extensively also plays PvE. All those tormented shields and fancy titles in observer mode come from somewhere, you know.

JR · Apr 18, 2008, 05:05 PM // 17:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toxage

Simply put racials are a horrible idea, racials create better races for certain aspects. A race should never be better than another at PvE or PvP all races should be equally as good. I don't want to lose to someone
because I didn't roll X race for Y racial and they did.

Then it begs the question; what is the point of multiple playable races at all? Are they purely aesthetic?

Personally I would rather see it as an additional and interesting dynamic to the game. To reiterate what has already been said multiple times, the racial traits do not need to favor a particular class. They could be additional armor against types of damage, cast time reductions, hex/condition duration reduction, speed increase, base armor increase, base HP increase... People apparently can't think any deeper into the idea than the examples I posted, which i'll admit weren't great.

Racthoh · Apr 18, 2008, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by R.Shayne

The nerfs limit the number of builds that are feasable for farming. I like variety and I like trying different things.

Farming is not all PvE is about and should have no weight in balance discussion. What one person does alone to get money should have no bearing on competitive team play, which is what this game is supposed to be about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magikarp

not true at all. reworking pve skills to make them more broken is simply making things worse.

1. you have to grind for most of the pve skills
2. not everyone owns all 4 games, especially gwen, which is where pve skills reign from...
3. trump pve skills would only force people into using more clonebuilds, and derail any forms of creativity outside of the X pve skills and 100-120 good general skills to choose from.....

I agree, making the PvE skills even stronger would be a terrible thing. I don't want to see it happen but what other choice does Anet have to add variety to PvE? I mean, look at this:

Quote:

This month's update is unique. It is a "temporary tournament update" targeted at the final cash-prize tournament, which will take place at the end of April. The skill changes are temporary and will be in effect for only two weeks. They are all geared toward addressing the most immediate issues with Guild Battles.

In order to reduce the possible negative impact on PvE play, we will be reverting the changes on May 1st. For future tournaments, we aim to focus on changes that will not impact PvE play at all.

Is THIS how the game is going to be from now on? For every monthly now we get two weeks of temporary changes for the GvG and HB ATs? So for half the month we have some kind of balance the other half we don't? That statement says "we don't want to anger PvE players". To make PvE players angry you nerf skills, which is why this change is temporary so after two weeks they can all be happy again. Yet when you look at those skill changes there is literally nothing that would dramatically affect PvE gameplay enough to warrant a skill reversal, but we're getting one anyway.

Anet's message is clear from that statement. They want PvErs to be happy which can only be achieve in numbers going up, or recharges, energy and cast times reduced. Their only option then is to buff PvE only skills so when we get these future temporary updates to PvX skills it really doesn't affect the PvE crowd too much.

Longasc · Apr 18, 2008, 05:12 PM // 17:12

The purely aesthetic thing could be extended to culture, lore, starting locations. More important for fully fleshed out MMOs, and GW is going into that direction.

The 10% stamina advantages of Taurens is a given, but it does not matter jack shit in the large picture. The same applies to one of the most powerful racials, the Will of the Forsaken and other more than average useful abilities of the Undead.

This really begs the question, why can WoW live with these racial discrepancies, but why would they spell doom for GW?

Gun Pierson · Apr 18, 2008, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magikarp

until people realize you cant have pve without pvp, and pvp without pve in order to maintain a balanced community, this game will continue to spiral... thats why i mentioned pvp balance synonymously....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

What if I want to (and do) play both? People seem to forget that almost everyone who plays PvP extensively also plays PvE. All those tormented shields and fancy titles in observer mode come from somewhere, you know.

But you can have PvP and PvE under the same title: GW(2). You will always have a choice what you wanne play, but that doesn't mean the skills need to be the same or many other things. On the contrary, skills need to be adjusted to the format as best as possible like in MTG which prooved to be working.

Gw started out with PvP as endgame in mind. This didn't work out as they expected, we have a massive PvE playerbase. So we have two segments of endgames in GW now. My view is that both need specialised care. Now, one tool fixes both balancing issues, while we need two or many more specialised tools.

The love relation between PvP and PvE didn't work out, but we can stay friends and achieve more sorta speak

lyra_song · Apr 18, 2008, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Then it begs the question; what is the point of multiple playable races at all? Are they purely aesthetic?

it would be simpler to balance if it was.

as i pointed out in my post a little back about Silencer, multiple "races" can be balanced if theres only 1 profession.

WoW is an example of how it is not balanced.

For me, i would be happy if it was only aesthetic.

It lets me choose how i want to look without sacrificing performance and efficacy.

Racial traits + Professions would create a deeper game, but it would inherently be harder to balance.

If it was balanced, i would definitely like a deeper game, but im happy with simple, if the deeper version was imba.

Another Felldspar · Apr 18, 2008, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Bulldozer

If we can have PvE only skills, why not have PvP only skills as well? In my opinion, the game could probably be made richer by declaring that no skill usable in PvE can be used in PvP, and no skill usable in PvP can be used in PvE.

Wow... Who gets Broadhead Arrow? What about Word of Healing? Frenzy?

I seriously hate the idea of separating the two play styles so that they no longer have any effect on each other. Skill updates are good for both styles. I mean, I understand the difficulty that the balancers have in trying to keep the game competitive -- I also understand the frustration that a nerf to some skills brings to PvE while at the same time giving some relief to PvP competition. But the game hasn't managed to keep people playing it for three years because the current methods suck. It's a great game. The connectedness contibutes to that.

Even if the two styles were separated there are still balance issues. The PvE skills are not balanced when you look at them by profession -- which would you choose: Triple Shot or Save Yourselves? There's Nothing to Fear or Never Rampage Alone? Necrosis is a deadly powerful and imbalanced skill -- so is Pain Inverter. Yet, the only PvE skill people are really bitching about is Ursan Blessing. I never hear anyone bitching about the skills that are too weak when compared to the others.

I hope they don't separate the two, but the notes on the update about PvP balances never affecting PvE skills aren't promising.