Curse

tuna-fish_sushi · Nov 12, 2008, 05:45 PM // 17:45

Balance is to make Three clasess: "Warrior" "Caster" "Interrupter"
Warrior beats Interrupter
Caster beats Warrior
Interrupter beats Caster

(RPS FTW)

Now choose ^^

I could argue that a player being better then another player is NOT balanced. He has experience and knowledge of skill combinations that the other player does not. Balanced = everyone having an equal chance.

4thVariety · Nov 12, 2008, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Balance is the insane notion that any jumbled mess of a build is supposed to equally competitive. Balance is furthermore the even more insane idea that builds should not impact the results of a match, only a whacked version of "skill" (read: time previously spent playing the game) is to determine the winner.

With everyone naturally assuming that he/she runs "the best" build while having the "most skill", the only one to blame is an "unbalance" occurring in the game.

Reality is, that no matter how good you are, there are just some builds that take a huge gamble. Maybe you are especially vulnerable to some Bloodspike, either because of your build or because of how good you (do not) play. Then the team will loos based on whether they selected "rock, paper, or scissors". All the re-balancing of Izzy really does is try to remove all Rock-Paper-Scissor builds from the game. No matter what you choose, you are supposed to be on equal footing with "skill" being the decider. While that might be enticing for some players, it also makes sure that accessibility is at a minimum.

Snow Bunny · Nov 12, 2008, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Balance, as it were, means that there's a variety of options that can all defeat each other. You can't just use a "Win" key and blow the other team up.

Alright, [Frenzy] is an excellent example of a balanced skill. If you activate it, you're attempting to do more damage. It leaves you exquisitely vulnerable, however, and thus, it takes a keen awareness of how to use it and when to use it. If you just stay in Frenzy, someone's going to Eviscerate you for 300+ damage and you're close to dead.

The reason warriors are one of the more balanced classes is because of adrenaline, and how it has to be used. If you just activate your adrenal skills as they come up, you'll do a lot of un-directed pressure, but if you unload in the proper context, noticing when monks are low on energy or badly placed, then you win. In today's shitmeta, people use Warrior's Endurance, which allows them to spam 3 attacks and bypass the adrenal issue.

Balance in Guild Wars means you have to play skillfully to do well, and it is your skill and not your build that will win. Sure, you spec and play to your strengths and the strongest build you can, but a standard build composed of Warriors, monks, runners, and disruption should win the game.

Sinsplit is an epitome of build against play. Sinsplit showed that "Hey there, we can just use VoD mechanics and broken shadow steps to gank out your NPCs, which means you blow up at 20:00".

If you look at older build templates and compare them to WE/ED Eurospike, [Rawr] fortressway, TOF Paragon abuse, Sinsplit, or even (Please don't murder me Divine) dR's introduction of smiters, you see a definitive alienation from balance.

For example, old rangers used [Storm Chaser] and [distortion] for defense and skirmishing. Now, they have [natural stride], which is better than both.

The game became more about VoD and how to abuse it. When vD faced PnH in June '07, if you look at the builds, it's quite apparent that PnH's warriors got to swing through multiple layers of defense, only to see vD's SoD'd Melandru derv quickshot their NPCs for the win. [QQ] complained (and relatively justly) about [iQ] abusing spirits and aoe at VoD for epic offense and defense.

The game became about manipulating VoD, and it shouldn't be about that. Everyone should play to win, but the game should be decided by skill, not by build warsing for VoD. HA should not be about defense balling until you can AoE them to death, and HB should not be about jumping around the map until you decided to spike something.

When you have to spec for something, because you know it's so dominate everyone will play it, you have imbalance. When you have to play to your strengths, and think intelligently about what you're to play, because there are so many viable options out there that will take skill to use, you have balance.

Alleji · Nov 12, 2008, 06:13 PM // 18:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by tuna-fish_sushi

Balance is to make Three clasess: "Warrior" "Caster" "Interrupter"
Warrior beats Interrupter
Caster beats Warrior
Interrupter beats Caster

(RPS FTW)

Now choose ^^

I could argue that a player being better then another player is NOT balanced. He has experience and knowledge of skill combinations that the other player does not. Balanced = everyone having an equal chance.

That's a pretty bad "balance" because any individual game other than a mirror match would be imbalanced.

Balance is:
Warriors beats Interrupters, Casters, and other Warriors, because he's a better player.
(fill in the other two lines accordingly)

For a concrete example, once again, see Starcraft.

The problem is, there's more than three builds in GW.

Master Ketsu · Nov 12, 2008, 07:22 PM // 19:22

The first job I had in the game industry was as a normal QA tester in a publishing house, and we had what is probably the best definition of game balance I have heard.

The main thing to realize is that game balance is not one overall thing, there are two major parts to it.

First off is what we called "Functionality Balance". This is the kind of balancing that ensures each weapon/item/ability/whatever each has a purpose to it that is equally useful in comparison to each other. An ability that deals 500 damage to an enemy would be inferior to an ability that deals 1000, so to compensate you give the more powerful ability a downtime/recharge time or some sort of drawback. This is basically what the other people in this thread are saying with the "caster - warrior - interrupter" scenario. Each can be better then one in certain situations but still needs to be good in its own way. In this regard, GW is actually a pretty well balanced game in comparison to other ORPG's anyways.

The second, somewhat harder to understand, and IMO more important is called "The skill-gap". This is where you ensure the more powerful skills/abilities/weapons/whatever are the harder it is to use them. In other words, making sure that the game actually takes skill to play and making sure that there is a "gap" in usefulness between Good players and bad players. In general, features that increase the luck factor and require little input/attention to use degenerate the skill gap and features that give statistical reliability and require the player to give input/attention to the game will increase the gap.

Game#1
For instance, a simple game that consists of one ability that reads "Your target takes 1000 damage. 50% chance to deal an addition 3000 damage" in a game were players start with 4000 health would have a skill gap that looks like this:

Bad at the game<------n00b-Pro------>Good at the game

Since a game like that would rely almost entirely on luck, the gap between less skilled players and professional gamers would be very low. Its pretty hard to suck or be good at a game were you just press a button and it randomly wins/loses for you.

Game#2
In contrast, a simple game that consists of one ability that reads "Fire a laser that flies in the direction of your mouse cursor. This does 1000 damage and an additional +1000 damage if you obtain a headshot. This cannot fly through obstacles" and each player has 3000 health would have a skill gap more like this:

Bad at the game<n00b--------------Pro>Good at the game

Since the game requires a large amount of input and attention to the game to make sure you are firing without obstacles as well as paying attention to your position in addition to a consistent damage modifier ( as opposed to Game #1 were the damage is randomized automatically with no control to the player. ) the difference between good and bad players would much more noticeable.

...In regards to skill-gap balance, GW has been pretty piss poor ever since the release of nightfall. Paragons are the epitome of "Push buttons randomly, win mission". 12345 builds that can be played by a monkey rolling its forehead on the keyboard are not only viable but often the only thing that kills. 9-40 damage on a non adrenaline based weapon? LOLWUT CRITHITLUCKWEAPON FTW. The meta often comes down to a glorified rock paper scissors with "win buttons".

moriz · Nov 12, 2008, 08:05 PM // 20:05

game balance relies on multiple viable strategies, AS WELL AS some limitations on "all-in" strategies. it is in this last aspect where GW's balancing fails.

for example, what's the similarities between these skills:
[rodgort's [email protected]][[email protected]][liquid [email protected]][searing [email protected]][[email protected]]

well, they all do either fire damage, AoE, burning, or a combination of the three. also, all of these skills have relatively short casting and short recharge times. having one or even two of these skills available in the skillpool won't affect balance much (it's actually good for balance, since it gives more options). the problem occurs when all of them exists in the skillpool. suddenly, there's a very dangerous "all-in" build available: just run all of these skills on multiple characters with some way to sustain energy, and watch as they cause teams to omgwtfexplode from the overwhelming effect of straight damage, AoE, and burning all at once. if any of you doubt me on this, just look back at NF release and the rash of SF-way builds that it spawned.

another example would be the entire healing prayers attribute line. almost all the skills in that line involves healing for x number of health and/or heal y number of health given some condition. fortunately it became obvious that straight heals are very inefficient, so an all-in build of this nature is not a problem. this is also why out of the 30ish skills in that attribute line, only about 5 of them ever see regular play.

the explosion of skills, or more specifically, the explosion of skills with similar functions is ultimately what caused pvp balance to go down the drain for GW.

this is why a continuous state of nerfing/buffing won't work anymore for GW. at this point, it's much more effective to go with the M:TG strategy, which is to only allow builds to be made from a select pool of skills every season and change it up once a season ends.

GW can follow a similar strategy, with a pool of "essential skills" that will never change (for instance, you'll probably always want eviscerate, guardian, dshot etc in every pool) and a "monthly pool" of skills that varies each month. this will greatly curb all-in builds, and will probably result in better balancing.

IlikeGW · Nov 12, 2008, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Balancing is having goals for the functions in the game. Guild Wars doesn't really have any goals for its classes (other than perhaps monk who has to heal most of the time) so no I don't think it's ever balanced.

The game is super complex in terms of the sheer amount of combinations, and they seem to say basically ok, let it be primordial stew until someone invents a virus that's killing everything, then we'll nerf that virus. So it's not really balanced, more like killing out any strong builds so there's the appearance of security for others.

But real balance would require goals. They'd have to say: this is what an elementalist is for, extremely strong against this, this and this, and weak against this, this and this. Then they'd have to stick to the goals. Just doesn't happen. They nerf by the seat of outcry (6 months after it starts lol), not by any principle for classes at all.

Rhamia Darigaz · Nov 12, 2008, 08:58 PM // 20:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by tuna-fish_sushi

Balance is to make Three clasess: "Warrior" "Caster" "Interrupter"
Warrior beats Interrupter
Caster beats Warrior
Interrupter beats Caster

(RPS FTW)

Now choose ^^

I could argue that a player being better then another player is NOT balanced. He has experience and knowledge of skill combinations that the other player does not. Balanced = everyone having an equal chance.

/fail. games where better players do not have an advantage over shitty players are called "degenerate". degenerate games are bad, m'kay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Balance is the insane notion that any jumbled mess of a build is supposed to equally competitive.

no it isn't.

this guy's pretty much > you:

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Sirlin

A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable—especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.

note the difference between a reasonable number of options in high-level play and scrubs putting together random shit builds.

Torsen1 · Nov 12, 2008, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Balance is the insane notion that any jumbled mess of a build is supposed to equally competitive. Balance is furthermore the even more insane idea that builds should not impact the results of a match, only a whacked version of "skill" (read: time previously spent playing the game) is to determine the winner.

With everyone naturally assuming that he/she runs "the best" build while having the "most skill", the only one to blame is an "unbalance" occurring in the game.

Reality is, that no matter how good you are, there are just some builds that take a huge gamble. Maybe you are especially vulnerable to some Bloodspike, either because of your build or because of how good you (do not) play. Then the team will loos based on whether they selected "rock, paper, or scissors". All the re-balancing of Izzy really does is try to remove all Rock-Paper-Scissor builds from the game. No matter what you choose, you are supposed to be on equal footing with "skill" being the decider. While that might be enticing for some players, it also makes sure that accessibility is at a minimum.

Excellent points. No one seems to really know to what degree the developers want "bad" teams to beat "good" ones. There is some love for gimmicks simply because they let these players win and keep them playing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

game balance relies on multiple viable strategies, AS WELL AS some limitations on "all-in" strategies. it is in this last aspect where GW's balancing fails.

this is why a continuous state of nerfing/buffing won't work anymore for GW. at this point, it's much more effective to go with the M:TG strategy, which is to only allow builds to be made from a select pool of skills every season and change it up once a season ends.

Limited play would work quite well for maintaining fun gameplay without actually making skill changes. I mean, you can remove word of healing from play for a month without actually nerfing it, and shake things up.

I think that guildwars would achieve a "balance" only if there were more detailed statistics available for analyzing gameplay, such that efficient and non-efficient strategies were easily discovered. Given enough time without a single balance change (1year+), eventually all viable strategies would be uncovered, and it would be well known how these strategies interacted with each other. A more idealistic version of balance, where every skill in the game is equally viable, would be undesirable, as some skills are just a lot less fun.

Sleeper Service · Nov 12, 2008, 09:39 PM // 21:39

....balance in a GAME is where playing each class is as enjoyable as playing another, where playing one way ranging from basic ''hit and smash'' to cerebral (or even not fighting at all) is as entertaining as another.

it all of course goes to shit when PvP becomes all important and ''having fun'' becomes incompatible with ''pwning noobs'', there games like GW run into the problem not of balance but the very CORE of the game itself : is GW a build based game with RPG elements but WITHOUT the random (dice) factors, or is it a player skill (twitch reaction and meta following) based.

GWs trys to carter to both and fails miserably.

its a little better now since the pvp pve split but they need to be more drastic.

Bryant Again · Nov 12, 2008, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Balance is red, blue, green. Not rock, paper, scissors. Where each option is at no disadvantage, when no part of the match is decided at the start.

If you want a terrific example of the awful incarnation of R-P-S balance, check out Dawn of War. Nearly every match up is decided entirely by race, not player skill.

Chucky333 · Nov 12, 2008, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

Balance, as it were, means that there's a variety of options that can all defeat each other. You can't just use a "Win" key and blow the other team up.

Alright, [Frenzy] is an excellent example of a balanced skill. If you activate it, you're attempting to do more damage. It leaves you exquisitely vulnerable, however, and thus, it takes a keen awareness of how to use it and when to use it. If you just stay in Frenzy, someone's going to Eviscerate you for 300+ damage and you're close to dead.

The reason warriors are one of the more balanced classes is because of adrenaline, and how it has to be used. If you just activate your adrenal skills as they come up, you'll do a lot of un-directed pressure, but if you unload in the proper context, noticing when monks are low on energy or badly placed, then you win. In today's shitmeta, people use Warrior's Endurance, which allows them to spam 3 attacks and bypass the adrenal issue.

Balance in Guild Wars means you have to play skillfully to do well, and it is your skill and not your build that will win. Sure, you spec and play to your strengths and the strongest build you can, but a standard build composed of Warriors, monks, runners, and disruption should win the game.

Sinsplit is an epitome of build against play. Sinsplit showed that "Hey there, we can just use VoD mechanics and broken shadow steps to gank out your NPCs, which means you blow up at 20:00".

If you look at older build templates and compare them to WE/ED Eurospike, [Rawr] fortressway, TOF Paragon abuse, Sinsplit, or even (Please don't murder me Divine) dR's introduction of smiters, you see a definitive alienation from balance.

For example, old rangers used [Storm Chaser] and [distortion] for defense and skirmishing. Now, they have [natural stride], which is better than both.

The game became more about VoD and how to abuse it. When vD faced PnH in June '07, if you look at the builds, it's quite apparent that PnH's warriors got to swing through multiple layers of defense, only to see vD's SoD'd Melandru derv quickshot their NPCs for the win. [QQ] complained (and relatively justly) about [iQ] abusing spirits and aoe at VoD for epic offense and defense.

The game became about manipulating VoD, and it shouldn't be about that. Everyone should play to win, but the game should be decided by skill, not by build warsing for VoD. HA should not be about defense balling until you can AoE them to death, and HB should not be about jumping around the map until you decided to spike something.

When you have to spec for something, because you know it's so dominate everyone will play it, you have imbalance. When you have to play to your strengths, and think intelligently about what you're to play, because there are so many viable options out there that will take skill to use, you have balance.

This wins the thread and that was my post's point which was obviously better explained here, especially the paragraph that i bolded.
Frenzy really is the best example i could throw out to explain my point.
It's one of the most effective skills in the game, when it's used right, which takes some skill, awareness, and experience.
In the hands of a bad player frenzy will not only be ineffective but actually devastating to that player.
Now let's think of frenzy as a GvG team build and you get my point, good players with a balanced build (note this, i dont mean a bunch of good players running 8 mending wammos) SHOULD be able to beat ANY team of bad players (both skill wise and tactics wise) regardless of the build the bad players run, imbalance is when 7 necros roll top teams by rolling their head on the 1-8 buttons without even a basic 3,2,1.
And no i share no love for bloodspam and anyone who used it to get to the top of the ladder and a high champ rank and now acts like an elitist when in fact he's so bad he gets rolled in RA by some fail sin spike, true story.
When that happens you know izzy cant be assed to give a crap about GW.

Fril Estelin · Nov 12, 2008, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Guys, I'm reading all the answers and I am frankly amazed at their quality. It's brilliant, I think more people will bring more points to the discussion, because at the moment it's only looking at the GvG facet of GW (sure, it's all about the wars between guilds, yet there's more to GW). There's already the material to talk about how to bring back balance (apart from getting red of everything after Prophecies, which would be quite counter-productive for Anet).

May I ask that noone uses overloaded words such as "good/bad"? And I also think that words like "skill" and "expert/pro" are too vague without good definitions. One wonders if this amounts to the amount of experience (games played) and knowledge (skills known). Being skilled could possibly mean that you've played for a longer time, or is it simply mastering the basics of the game mechanics? To be an expert, do you need be know all ~1000 of GW skills? To be pro, do you need to have played 1000+ hours of GvG and "know your classics"?

What would be the ultimate proof of balance for you? Last, but not least, would your vision of balance last for months/years?

Bryant Again · Nov 12, 2008, 10:26 PM // 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

What would be the ultimate proof of balance for you? Last, but not least, would your vision of balance last for months/years?

Video game wise is probably StarCraft. It perfectly fits the definition of being red, blue, or green. Each race has different options, but no sense of one being greater than the other. As a Zerg player I wouldn't say "oh sweet I'm going against Terran! This'll be easier!", or otherwise for any other combination of races.

In all honesty, StarCraft is the closest you'll ever get to in terms of the video game equivalent of Chess. When put in such a context it becomes much more understandable when a game doesn't reach that state of balance.

Fril Estelin · Nov 12, 2008, 10:38 PM // 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Video game wise is probably StarCraft. It perfectly fits the definition of being red, blue, or green. Each race has different options, but no sense of one being greater than the other. As a Zerg player I wouldn't say "oh sweet I'm going against Terran! This'll be easier!", or otherwise for any other combination of races.

In all honesty, StarCraft is the closest you'll ever get to in terms of the video game equivalent of Chess. When put in such a context it becomes much more understandable when a game doesn't reach that state of balance.

I've seen SC and (more) SC2 videos but it seemed to me that it's a very nice (SC2 looks awesome) and revamped RPS. The SC2 devs were presenting each race unit by unit saying "this one is good against this one, but beaten by that one, that is then beaten by that one..."

Isn't the RGB they're talking about simply a different view of RPS? Meaning: instead of saying who wins against the other in a circle manner, you state 3 different tactics/game mechanics and this looks like a different situation, but it's equivalent to RPS.

I guess the perfect RGB system is the one where each clan/faction/profession can kill the two other ones? But how can this ever scale in a game with 6 to 12 professions? (I guess it cannot, we're moving from 2D chess to 3D chess here

) Furthermore, one player controls many units in SC, while it's only 8 skills in GW (and you don't have interrupts, dodging, etc.).

Add-on question: has SC managed to stay alive for long? Doesn't this kind of balance becomes boring after a while? Or maybe it doesn't because people consider it, like Sleeper Service said, like a fun game and spend some time on it from time to time to have fun?

moriz · Nov 12, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

starcraft has been around for 10 years. it is so popular in south korea, that it is considered a national sport, with viewership just below that of football (that's soccer for you americans). it's the kind of game that has an almost infinite depth in terms of strategy. every once in a while, a pro player will come out with a brilliant strategy that completely changes how a particular matchup is played. this has been going on for years... and SC has not received a balance update in years.

HawkofStorms · Nov 12, 2008, 10:58 PM // 22:58

Balance may NEVER be "perfect" in the sense that there will always be slightly more powerful builds.

However, just because "perfect" balance may never be achieved, doesn't mean that A.net shouldn't at least try to nerf CLEARLY overpowered stuff, like perma SF.

Alleji · Nov 12, 2008, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I've seen SC and (more) SC2 videos but it seemed to me that it's a very nice (SC2 looks awesome) and revamped RPS. The SC2 devs were presenting each race unit by unit saying "this one is good against this one, but beaten by that one, that is then beaten by that one..."

That's exactly how SC works. Every unit and every strategy has a counter. For example, goons beat vultures which beat zealots. The key is that every race has a counter available to every strategy every other race could possibly use. SC is RPS-balanced at unit level, but it's skill-balanced at player level.

Dark Dragon · Nov 12, 2008, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alleji

That's exactly how SC works. Every unit and every strategy has a counter. For example, goons beat vultures which beat zealots. The key is that every race has a counter available to every strategy every other race could possibly use. SC is RPS-balanced at unit level, but it's skill-balanced at player level.

Isn't this also vaguely true for GW that most builds have counter builds. The main issue with GW is that your builds are predetermined before the battle and therefore it should theoretically be possible to determine the winner without fighting just by looking at builds.

However a similar thought can also be said for SC with the winner decided before the fight. This deciding factor may simply be the tactic or build order one player takes that may dominate or succumb to the tactic of the other player. However the skillful element in SC is that tactics can be modified or changed in the middle of a fight or upon finding what tactic your opponent is using. Therefore the skill element is the ability for a player to adapt their play style.

With GW this is not possible because the builds are fixed and therefore no matter how skilled you are if you are playing against a build which counters your own in theory you should not be able to win that battle. Much the same as if you have a pack of vultures you will lose the battle to a pack of goons goons however with SC a lose in battle however you may not lose the war by changing what units you construct.

But as there is no such method of changing skills mid battle in GW there is no method of countering a counter build during the match.

DarkNecrid · Nov 12, 2008, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Quote:

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

Before I get into my post, I'd just address this. Being perfectly balanced doesn't really mean everything is of equal use. Take Chess for an example, both sides have equal units, but the Bishop is not as good as the Queen. The Queen is the best unit, and trumps all the other ones, and the Pawn is relatively the worst unit, yet it's still balanced. Just because X/Y/Z class isn't useful, doesn't mean the game isn't balanced, it just means that something has to be not good for the better balance of the game (like say, if all the Pawns had the Queen's movement ability, the game would suck.)

Balance in the way you mean it (not as a skill is balanced or a team is balanced), can be roughly defined as a healthy metagame where it isn't really Rock-Paper-Scissors. A lot of inexperienced people think PvP should be Rock-Paper-Scissors, but ultimately that doesn't work in a game like Guild Wars (in a game like StarCraft where you can change what you "throw" on a whim, it's okay.) and is bad for the game. Guild Wars R-P-S matches are decided within 5 minutes of the game starting, and that's boring.

PvPers ideally want a balanced metagame with a lot of healthy options, that isn't very Build Warsy. Right now you could technically dumb down the metagame to Rock-Rock-Paper. You have your popular broken builds (your Rocks) which do okay vs each other, and then you have that one guy who always throws Paper (stuff done just to counter Rock which is too specific and rare to throw Scissors against) which is pretty Build Wars and dumb. The great thing about Guild Wars is that skill comes through, so if you have 2 Rocks fighting each other, the game eventually ends with a winner. So roughly PvPers want Rock-Rock-Rock, each of the Rocks are different (build wise) but on equal footing and no one Rock clearly destroys another Rock due to skill choice.

The problem with this is there's a lot of specific hard counters, some of them are viable (the non-viable ones (shout hate) should stay that way), and a lot of classes that are detrimental to this thought process (Assassin, Ritualist, Dervish, Paragon, and Necromancer).

What made balance in the GWWC/GWFC era good was that it was Rock/Rock/Rock (or close enough to it). You had some gimmick builds that could win vs bad players, but good balanced builds always beat them (this is okay.), and a lot of balanced builds that weren't ever quite the same but still on equal footing close to each other.