Curse

Ensign · Oct 05, 2007, 05:36 PM // 17:36

I see a lot of threads, here and elsewhere, talking about specific balance changes and I feel like most of those are the generic 'nerf what's popular, buff what isn't' haphazard balancing suggestions. I don't think people really understand what happened to really change the flavor of the game.

It all stems from Nightfall really. Nightfall made one really big change to the game - it made it much, much easier to kill people with a very palpable power creep. Elementalists went from being strictly blind bots to real damage threats; Mesmers stopped messing and just plain blew people up for a time. Midlines gained Paragons which punched people in the face; Rangers gained a means to do damage. Melee damage, particularly melee spike damage, skyrocketed between Dervishes and a ton of new fast melee attacks for compressing damage. Balance updates since then have toned back the caster damage somewhat, but the physical damage continues to go nowhere but up. Pre-Nightfall, your standard Eviscerate -> Executioner's spike dealt 150 damage plus a Deep Wound; your modern Executioners/Eviscerate/Agonizing Conjure Warrior spikes for over 260 damage plus a Deep Wound.

The net effect has been to change the priority of a build. While before a team had to carefully tailor an offense to find a way to score kills, now a team has to carefully tailor their defense to survive the onslaught of damage coming in, lest they blow up in 30 seconds or less.

Another part of the equation is how teams simply cannot afford to take damage anymore. As the amount of damage has continued to go up, Monks continue to have to try and keep pace with Heal Other, Dwayna's Kiss, and Gift of Health, which is a joke, there's no way those can even pretend to keep up. The old off-Monk Heal Party was obsolesced by strong self condition removal; the only skill that's even remotely efficient in the current environment is Light of Deliverance. Teams are hopelessly dependent upon that skill now to keep their bars up; just look at what happens to a team that has LoD Distracted. If their massive defensive web holds for the duration, things will look a little ugly but they recover; if the web was in bad shape, the team will probably wipe from losing LoD.

As boring as passive defense is you simply need a good amount of it to survive. Without a plethora of block and evade, physicals will simply rock your bars down and there isn't any way in the game to get them back up. It isn't that people necessarily want huge passive webs; if they weren't needed to survive, people would be eager to fit in stronger split tools or utility skills. But you really can't do so; teams that try and make strong split builds, or build for utility instead of overloading on physical shutdown find that when they inevitably do have to fight 8v8 they blow up over and over again.

Not to mention that the piles of block and passive physical defense are incredible against the even-larger archer mobs at VoD. A team with a full selection of passive physical defense can aggressively push into archer balls to wipe NPCs without fear; a team without all that defense blows up.

Any approach to dealing with passive defense cannot focus on exclusively on the defenses themselves. Key to getting out of this mess is rebalancing the 'red bars go down' and the 'red bars go up' aspects of the game; the ridiculous spike damage that physicals can put out needs to be toned down, and healing needs realistic alternatives to reduce dependence on LoD. Without doing that, nerfs to passive defenses will only require teams to pack even more of it into their builds to survive, while even further cementing overwhelming physical damage as the driving force of the metagame.

Blame the Monks · Oct 05, 2007, 06:00 PM // 18:00

In sum -- more mesmer effects and window of opportunity, less raw damage and overload.

kvndoom · Oct 05, 2007, 06:14 PM // 18:14

Anet's feeling that thye just HAD to put out hundreds of new skills with each expansion caused a lot of this. They could have introduced the new classes, focused heavily on them, and just given a few skills to the old classes. But "everybody gets XXX new skills" was a recipe for disaster from the start. It takes months and months to find every viable (or broken) skill combination, and of course people are going to run it until it gets nerfed. And when poblems are found, it usually takes too long before they are adjusted. People play to win, I dare say moreso than they play to actually have fun.

And some buffs just don't make a lot of sense. Buffing Conjures looks good on paper, but they benefit secondaries far more than they will ever benefit Ele's. I don't remember the last time I saw a warrior use Heal Sig in GVG. Dump Tactics, let the monk do the healing, I'm-a murder machine! Critical Chop got nerfed, and not long thereafter Agonizing Chop got buffed to take its place. Same damage bonus, same 1/2 second cast, and low enough adrenaline that it's going to be ready after Evis and Exec if the target is still alive. I still look at that and think "huh???"

Builds get stagnant because they are too good to not play. Nobody's going to take less than optimal damage because it's the "honorable" thing to do. Again, play to win. And as a result, people have to bring more defense to not get steamrolled. Had Anet bothered to do periodic small skill updates, no one would be asking for a huge fix-all update which of course will hit some things too hard and buff others too much. What sucks is that they worry too much about the negative feedback they'll get from pure PVE'ers (I play both facets myself) if their overpowered build gets broken because of PVP balance. I mean wow, I can take my Warrior out and kill 200 monsters in Hard Mode by myself. Am I really supposed to complain if suddenly I can't do that anymore? PVE causes an entitlement attitude, and that fuels outrage when what people feel they are entitled to is taken away or changed. Good lord, when Soul Reaping got nerfed, every minion master who ever played Guild Wars was crying bloody murder. They were entitled to unlimited energy.

I don't know where to start, really, but Anet needs to start SOMEWHERE.

Ec]-[oMaN · Oct 05, 2007, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Ensign again sums it up, nicely done.

Sun Fired Blank · Oct 05, 2007, 06:44 PM // 18:44

I think the greater problem is that Nightfall has pretty much broken the format, maybe beyond repair. It really boils down to a such a huge improvement in overwhelmingly defensive and offensive options that you have improvement for subtle tactical options and no way to balance anything else. Most nerfs try to indirectly solve the problem, and I doubt anyone argues that a nerf to Deadly Paradox, Defensive Anthem or Avatar of Melandru is a bad thing, but it still doesn't fix the conceptual, overarcing issue, and I don't see what will. If you're a Magic: the Gathering fan, think of Nightfall as Urza's Block and Eye of the North as Mercadian Masques. That's exactly the kind of mess that we're in right now.

Zabe · Oct 05, 2007, 06:54 PM // 18:54

Agree. Just hoping that Andrew popups here and says "This will be shown to the devs." which I don't believe, but you can live in hope always.

Lorekeeper · Oct 05, 2007, 07:15 PM // 19:15

ive mirrored ensigns sentiments in some of my posts, so i am pretty much in total agreement with him.

ill just add the following.

game balance as dedicated PvPers would like with priority given to gameplay that rewards truly good players and encourages players to keep trying to reach higher and higher levels of play just doesnt sell as well as a game that is balanced for the casual gamer in mind who instead would like a priority given to gameplay that is easy to pick up, in which time spent does not equal success, in which they do not need to spend hours upon hours playing in order to compete with the hardcore crowd.

what i am basically saying is that whether its due to the general markets inexperience with marketing a profitable game based on its PvP credentials or whether they just dont care, Anet is running a business with the need to sell its game.

but 4 million copies of GW was not a result of its PvP gameplay.

Power creep seems to sell and the way PvP has been treated this casual crowd hungry for e-titles and grind can dapple in a bit of 'PvP' without it feeling completely foreign. Perhaps it would have been better for us to have found a game which marketed itself to PvPers like us instead of pandering to the masses.

In all honesty, that people care enough to post their thoughts on achieving proper PvP balance is just testimony to the potential that GW has never, and probably will never reach. Its some miracle that people still hope. Or maybe we just dont have anything better to do :P

DreamWind · Oct 05, 2007, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I win at Guild Wars balance

Yep. I still vote for putting PvP back to Prophecies only. The game has gotten progressively more unplayable for me since then, to a point of completely unplayable today. Of course, we know this situation will never happen, but I honestly can't see the game ever being balanced again through conventional means.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

If you're a Magic: the Gathering fan, think of Nightfall as Urza's Block and Eye of the North as Mercadian Masques. That's exactly the kind of mess that we're in right now.

Nice comparison. So you are saying Nightfall was the set that broke the game, and Gwen was the set where Anet set "oops we screwed up" and are really widening the PvP/PvP gap.

The only problem I see is that I doubt Anet even REALIZES how bad they screwed up. I don't think they realize how much Nightfall broke their game. And at this point, even if they DID realize, I don't think they care because they sell copies to PvE players now. Tragedy.

Sab · Oct 05, 2007, 07:43 PM // 19:43

As much as I agree, this is a problem that needs a complete skill overhaul. I doubt that's ever going to happen. The best I can hope for now are small updates that fixes problems for the short term, but considering the devs have failed to even do that, I'm just waiting for the devs to post, "We're listening, but we won't actually do anything."

Sun Fired Blank · Oct 05, 2007, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Dreamwind: I think they realize and they care, but their overall power and interest is limited. With the decline of PvP, the greater profitability and interest of PvE and the steady development of GW2, it doesn't make any real sense to focus on PvP. The simple fact is that PvP in Guild Wars is well past its heyday. They aren't moving more copies because of PvP, nor are they moving fewer copies because of the PvP. In short, really, why should they bother with PvP? If you think folks at A-Net are ignorant and uncaring, I think that's a mistake. But I think in the grand scheme of things, we're not important enough to deserve any great consideration anymore from the powers that be, and that most of the lower-hierarchy folks have very limited power.

As I think the core of the problem is a business decision influencing a design decision, my opinion is that your only way to seriously express your sentiments and hope for a change if they don't care to make one is to inform the public of my consternation and the company (ArenaNet and NcSoft) of your displeasure. Let's be frank, the MMORPG market is very competitive, and there's no simply reason to stick to something that you don't like. When a friend asked me for a video game timesink, I told him that I wasn't interested in anything on the market. Had he asked me the question earlier, I would have given him a different answer that probably involved Guild Wars. But I don't imagine that Guild Wars can hold a flame to the MMORPGs coming out over the next year; in fact, several are going to be available in the next few months, and I'm eagerly awaiting new beta reports and reviews.

Hyper Cutter · Oct 05, 2007, 09:28 PM // 21:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Elementalists went from being strictly blind bots to real damage threats;

Isn't doing damage what the class was designed for in the first place?

imo, them being reduced to blind-spamming psuedo-monks pre-Nightfall was pretty pathetic...

I Angra I · Oct 05, 2007, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Please, ANet, for the love of god, listen to this man and fix PvP.

Or at least don't screw up GW2's PvP.

Billiard · Oct 05, 2007, 09:53 PM // 21:53

Nice thoughtful post Ensign. I'll pass this on to some folks.

Sinful Doom · Oct 05, 2007, 10:25 PM // 22:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

Dreamwind: I think they realize and they care, but their overall power and interest is limited. With the decline of PvP, the greater profitability and interest of PvE and the steady development of GW2, it doesn't make any real sense to focus on PvP. The simple fact is that PvP in Guild Wars is well past its heyday. They aren't moving more copies because of PvP, nor are they moving fewer copies because of the PvP. In short, really, why should they bother with PvP?

With Nightfalls and Factions "breaking" PvP so badly most of the "old school" PvP'ers finally became so fed up they simply quit the game. Those of us still here trying to play in this mess in all likelyhood dont endorse Guildwars as a quality PvP game to friends or potential new customers. So who is really to blame for the decline of interest in PvP and PvP related sales, the players or Anet?

Sun Fired Blank · Oct 05, 2007, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Where did I blame the players?

DutchSmurf · Oct 05, 2007, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sinful Doom

With Nightfalls and Factions "breaking" PvP so badly most of the "old school" PvP'ers finally became so fed up they simply quit the game. Those of us still here trying to play in this mess in all likelyhood dont endorse Guildwars as a quality PvP game to friends or potential new customers. So who is really to blame for the decline of interest in PvP and PvP related sales, the players or Anet?

Well, to be really honest, I can think of many reasons why I won't suggest GW to friends as a PvP game. And game balance is on the list. But not even close to the top. More like something to add to the end. Like "oh yes, the balance is bad too". The game has bigger problems then skill balance. Always had. And Anet seems to be doing the right thing and not wasting too many resources to something that can't be fixed. Really, ask yourself. If the game was perfectly balanced at the moment, would you suggest it to a friend then?

wuzzman · Oct 05, 2007, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Well Ensign comes out of hiding to tell us(well since the rant against hexway), Nerf big damage and nerf some defense while you at it. The meta has finally come full circle. Back in the days of propherices when melee pressure was the only way to kill anything and teams double up on the defense (3 wards on 1 ele....) to keep the steamrolling from being hot and heavy. It could be debatable whether or not teams really needed all that defense, but there was no punishment (just like now) for bringing all that defense, since 2 shock warriors has been and always will be all you need to kill anything really(meaning a very defensive build could still score kills at VoD). Just like in those days players had very few defensive options(blinding flash being the only skill able to keep up with an adreline spiking warrior) and even fewer offensive options, making matches 90% predictable and made over staking on one particular defense a very good build making strategy. The power may have scaled but the defense keeps up. Even if you were to remove ALL added skills players will quickly find how useful bring 3 ultitlty ele's are again...

The pvp community has lost its importance and I don't see anet pulling a 180 degree turn toward a pvp community that probably will never return to its hayday.

Greedy Gus · Oct 05, 2007, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

The meta has finally come full circle. Back in the days of propherices when melee pressure was the only way to kill anything and teams double up on the defense (3 wards on 1 ele....) to keep the steamrolling from being hot and heavy. It could be debatable whether or not teams really needed all that defense, but there was no punishment (just like now) for bringing all that defense, since 2 shock warriors has been and always will be all you need to kill anything really(meaning a very defensive build could still score kills at VoD). Just like in those days players had very few defensive options(blinding flash being the only skill able to keep up with an adreline spiking warrior) and even fewer offensive options, making matches 90% predictable and made over staking on one particular defense a very good build making strategy. The power may have scaled but the defense keeps up. Even if you were to remove ALL added skills players will quickly find how useful bring 3 ultitlty ele's are again...

It's strange, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about in regard to top GvG in the past, yet you seem to talk about it in almost every post.

just rude · Oct 06, 2007, 12:13 AM // 00:13

hire ensign.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

Well Ensign comes out of hiding to tell us(well since the rant against hexway), Nerf big damage and nerf some defense while you at it. The meta has finally come full circle. Back in the days of propherices when melee pressure was the only way to kill anything and teams double up on the defense (3 wards on 1 ele....)

Which 3 was that, here is the list avail in prophs.

WaM
WoF
WaH
WaE

I know it was WaH, WaE, WoF....wait

kvndoom · Oct 06, 2007, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Well Gaile just posted in Riverside that skill updates will roll live next week, so we'll see.

Early predictions:

Dwarven Battle Stance will be reduced to 5 energy.
Expose Defenses will get a 20 second recharge. (pokes Ensign in the ribs)