Curse

Mr. G · May 07, 2009, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Quote:

Someone said a balanced game was stale. Thats not true, and if you think thats balance then you don't even know what the word means.

That was me, I was refering to the fact that this random roll of buffs/nerfs is far more interesting than perfect balance. Lets be honest, perfect balance will never be acheived in GW, the nearest we'll get is a Rock/Paper/Scissors system.

I'd rather random skills being altered (no matter how annoying) and opening up other avenues than having a "balanced" game where the options may be fair, but limited.

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So with the limited amount of people on the panel maintaining this aspect of the game you'd figure they would pluck a select few from the community, to discuss and play test skill tweaks like it was back in 2005-2006. Wouldn't cost a dime for Anet.

and you really think these suggestions would be made fairly without bias?

Grj · May 07, 2009, 04:17 PM // 16:17

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Originally Posted by Still Number One

People obviously don't see the advantages that PvP can bring to this game that PvE can not. One of the main reasons people are buying PvP based accounts and other accounts is for the XTH. This is proven when all of you say, IDC about the skill update I just want my points. You wouldn't get your points if it wasn't for the high end gvgers and HBers. So yea, tell us to shut up, we'll quit your little game and you can have fun not having XTH rewards.

I got news for you, if all these players left the ladder people would still get XTH points because other PvP/PvE'ers will just take their place.

Mr. G · May 07, 2009, 04:18 PM // 16:18

Actually I'm fairly sure with less people on the ladder it would be easier to get it right

FengShuiDove · May 07, 2009, 05:06 PM // 17:06

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Originally Posted by Chocobo1

And the moaning etc is all in the hope that eventually we will get listened to and some needed changes will take place.

Because it's worked well so far this last 4 years? Oh... wait...

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Originally Posted by Chocobo1

It's ok, you just stick your zoo :3.

Sure, I'll stick to my enjoyment of the game and you can stick to playing something you apparently hate to play and minimalizing my arguments.

It's apparent that you're insatiable, and therefore no longer worth my time to exchange rebuttals with.

And for the record, we're all hoping for a pleasant and useful skill balance, PvP and/or PvP. There's no reason for anyone to become so angry with a game, though, and the manner of discussion makes a world of difference when coming to an acceptable compromise/balance.

aapo · May 07, 2009, 06:43 PM // 18:43

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Originally Posted by ele pl

11. Anyone know cool game with good pvp balance?

- Chess.

slowerpoke · May 07, 2009, 06:52 PM // 18:52

Look on the bright side, they coulda delayed it till next month or after

Longasc · May 07, 2009, 06:53 PM // 18:53

Even if they would make a skill update that some "experts" 100% agree upon, the game would not get significantly better. Neither in PvE nor PvP.

Skill maintenance does not equal content, it is just mixing the cards again.

Who really thinks even a near perfect skill balance is going to make GW PvP or PvE more popular, revitalize the game and suddenly turn GW into the Garden of Eden?

It is foolish to wait for a game update in the hope it turns out to be the messias. As if most people here did not experience enough of these skill balances.

Bug John · May 07, 2009, 06:55 PM // 18:55

so, are wells the new overpowered meta ?

[well of power] / [well of blood] > [protective was kaolai] ?

slowerpoke · May 07, 2009, 07:01 PM // 19:01

balance the more powerful wells with higher sac
or for each active well, increase the recharge

wells would have been better if they provided the opposite effect to any enemies standing in them (well of blood -6 health degen, well of power -2 energy degen)

Bof · May 07, 2009, 07:07 PM // 19:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Number One

People obviously don't see the advantages that PvP can bring to this game that PvE can not. One of the main reasons people are buying PvP based accounts and other accounts is for the XTH. This is proven when all of you say, IDC about the skill update I just want my points. You wouldn't get your points if it wasn't for the high end gvgers and HBers. So yea, tell us to shut up, we'll quit your little game and you can have fun not having XTH rewards.

And since guild wars doesn't have a monthly fee, they need money. Do you wanna know what the best possible way for Anet to make money off of guild wars would be? To have competitive tournaments focused around GvG that brought in outside sponsors. Competitive gaming is becoming a large market. Just look at the MLG tournaments for some games. If Guild Wars balanced GvG correctly, they would bring a lot more interest into this game which would grab the attention of sponsors. Sorry to inform you, PvE does not have the ability to do this. Only PvP does.

That is why ANET hasn't completely given up on the PvP community like some of you suggest they should. They realize it has the possibility to make them a lot of money. They are just dumb and have no knowledge of how to execute it, and then get their feelings hurt when we yell at them about it.

And if you think all of what I am saying is crap just look back at the guru tourney. Pretty sure they got sponsors for that so they could supply RL prizes. If Anet played their cards right, times that sponsor ship ten-fold. They'd be making good money and the PvP player base would be competing for real prizes and competition would be at an all time high.

$100,000 tournament. Andrew Patrick who played for rawr and develops the game nerfs the meta 1 day before the tournament. Guess who won the tournament.

People want balance, but there are 2000+ skills in the game. There is always going to be a meta and people that are better at it than others. From what I read, PvP wants fun competitive play. Yet, they whine when someone is better than them. You see it all the time (lameway,capway,overpowered,etc).

Yes, it is boring to run the same build over and over, but if it works it works. PvE deals with the same thing. Running Sab/Discord/Roj way is boring as hell. UWsc FoWsc all that stuff is boring as hell. Do I need to go into Vaetir and Raptor farming?

If Anet was going to balance everything and keep it balanced, they would have to update every 5 days (complete guess but my point is across). IMO way too much work to keep it up. If I was in that situation of choosing you (the players) or myself (Anet). I would end this by saying, "RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you and have a nice day" like they have for the past 4 years.

No I am not apart of Anet dont get me wrong.

XTH has made a lot of money for ANet and NCsoft alike, however you still get people QQing about the 3.5 Million+ Zkeys coming in per month.

As other have said time and time again, you piss 1 person off and make another happy... never ending cycle.

It comes down to the fact that it would be way too much work for a game that does not charge a monthly fee for income to implement the necessary skill changes to balance.

Sponsorship is a good idea, but it is easily exploited and has been by the Devs. Another thing would be that the people QQing in here that cannot win would still be QQing even it was balanced because they STILL CANNOT WIN.

Alleji · May 07, 2009, 07:07 PM // 19:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

Who really thinks even a near perfect skill balance is going to make GW PvP or PvE more popular?

<--

And pretty much anyone who plays PvP.

(Would be nice if they removed stupid game types from HoH too)

Hi I'm Regem · May 07, 2009, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. G

That was me, I was refering to the fact that this random roll of buffs/nerfs is far more interesting than perfect balance. Lets be honest, perfect balance will never be acheived in GW, the nearest we'll get is a Rock/Paper/Scissors system.

I'd rather random skills being altered (no matter how annoying) and opening up other avenues than having a "balanced" game where the options may be fair, but limited.

See you still don't understand what balance means. Balance isn't everyone run ranger mesmer ele midline with 2 shock warriors 2 mnks and rit flagger.....

You said open up other avenues? Imbalance only closes them. Look at it this way. As a game approaches Balance, the amount of runable builds on that game approaches infinity. I had to put that in somewhat the terms of finding limits, hopefully that gets it across. and rock paper scissors system is a joke...lolololololol......

They would have been doing a very good job had they not made these random *monkey throwing poo at a wall of skills* buffs.

Hi I'm Regem · May 07, 2009, 07:23 PM // 19:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bof

$100,000 tournament. Andrew Patrick who played for rawr and develops the game nerfs the meta 1 day before the tournament. Guess who won the tournament.

People want balance, but there are 2000+ skills in the game. There is always going to be a meta and people that are better at it than others. From what I read, PvP wants fun competitive play. Yet, they whine when someone is better than them. You see it all the time (lameway,capway,overpowered,etc).

Yes, it is boring to run the same build over and over, but if it works it works. PvE deals with the same thing. Running Sab/Discord/Roj way is boring as hell. UWsc FoWsc all that stuff is boring as hell. Do I need to go into Vaetir and Raptor farming?

If Anet was going to balance everything and keep it balanced, they would have to update every 5 days (complete guess but my point is across). IMO way too much work to keep it up. If I was in that situation of choosing you (the players) or myself (Anet). I would end this by saying, "RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you and have a nice day" like they have for the past 4 years.

No I am not apart of Anet dont get me wrong.

XTH has made a lot of money for ANet and NCsoft alike, however you still get people QQing about the 3.5 Million+ Zkeys coming in per month.

As other have said time and time again, you piss 1 person off and make another happy... never ending cycle.

It comes down to the fact that it would be way too much work for a game that does not charge a monthly fee for income to implement the necessary skill changes to balance.

Sponsorship is a good idea, but it is easily exploited and has been by the Devs. Another thing would be that the people QQing in here that cannot win would still be QQing even it was balanced because they STILL CANNOT WIN.

Game balance isn't nerfing all the random skills you made stronger in a dartboard buff, nor is it just totally destroying builds everyone run. Its about locking down all the broken IDEAS behind the skills, and that way you will be brought to the correct nerfs. You won't have to do this every 5 days. The main problem was the fact that there are too many different copies of defensive skills, which were and are needed because of all the broken offensive capabilities. You nerf things off concepts...mass removals are dumb and broken (ala PnH nerf please). Most mass aplicant skills are dumb and broken (ie. lingering curse). Any skillbar that can do multiple things at once is dumb and broken - (ie the smiter that has spike damage, party healing, warrior buffs, and aegis removal). Nerf things that are so blnatanly strong it causes a team to want to bring 20 layers of defense, and nerf the 20 layers of defense. They've done a good job nerfing defense in the past from what i see, i mean ward down....paragons down....smiters boon....finally....down. Random buffs on skills like linger did not help...and rit party heals have been running around without nerfs for far too long.

The thing is, you don't just nerf some shit wait for some more broken shit and nerf it. You get nowhere. You nerf concepts that cause broken shit, aka mass removals, 20 copies of party heals, passive defense, mass applicant skills, all these super powerful skills. You get nowhere by nerfing what everyone is running,because usualy everyone is running something in response to the heavy amount of defense or running heavy defense because of certain current broken offensive or defensive skills. The thing is you don't get anywhere targeting shit that people are running, you have to target the source of the problems. It is very possible for them to get better game balance.

I don't understand why its alot of work, i think it just takes some thought...I don't know how long coding takes, but if they can make other updates on time i assume they can do this one. You really just can't afford to throw some poop at a wall to see the next buff when you are on the verge of having a very good update.

Dronte · May 07, 2009, 07:23 PM // 19:23

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Originally Posted by Wyat Hawke

Time to bring out the good ol' dartboard again!

(Edit: Can't really remember who first posted this, but it was during the UB-rage-period...)

lmao flare is on the list too

Orange Milk · May 07, 2009, 07:45 PM // 19:45

If thqts the update then I guess I'll be PvEing for a awhile.

Aegis = stupid on that page, so you can technically stop a spike dead every 30 seconds, fun stuff. I guess it would work against bad teams that spike every minute of so.

EVERY Shadow step needs it's range nerfed, not buffed.

So they made a skill that lets you summon Minions with no corpse so now they wanna make wells with no corpses. Someone on the Dev team sure likes to play Necro but hates the corpse restrictions to some of their favorite skills.

Major face palm in the works coming up.

garethporlest18 · May 07, 2009, 08:02 PM // 20:02

Shouldn't there be an update happening? o.o

Krill · May 07, 2009, 08:05 PM // 20:05

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Originally Posted by Ghost Dog

Newsflash, you will never be satisfied with what they do so stop, just stop you spoiled little babies.

You are 10% of the community, PvE players didn't get a discount they payed what you payed, PvP has EXCLUSIVELY held the update resources for well over a year now (resources that by all rights shouldn't exist any longer).

By "exclusive" you mean Izzy doing some random shit in his spare time and largely ignoring the few players he does interact with? Nice joke, let's put your theory to the test.

March 2008 - Major skill buffing
April 2008 - Major skill balancing
May 2008 - Dartboard buffs and minor skill balancing
June 2008 - Dartboard buffs and minor skill balancing
July 2008 - Nerfs to shadow steps and minor skill balancing
August 2008 - Minor skill balancing
September 2008 - Major elite skill buffing and minor skill balancing
October 2008 - Dartboard buffs and minor skill balancing
November 2008 - Major PvE update and no PvP skill balancing
December 2008 - Major elite skill buffing
January 2009 - No update (one skill change)
February 2009- Minor skill balancing relating to one build mostly
March 2009 - Dartboard buffs and minor skill balancing
April 2009 - Major PvE update and no skill balancing

April 2008 was the last major skill balancing and since then there have been 2 major elite skill buff updates and at least 4 updates with dartboard buffs to non-elite skills. Let's not forget that the major skill buffing and dartboard buffs were also meant to please PvE players, while there have also been two major updates completely devoted to PvE.

Long story short, PvP players are not being unreasonable to ask for a major update devoted to skill balancing. Not a random skill buffing, a comprehensive skill balancing. Additionally, there hasn't been any effort to tweak GvG mechanics since the overhaul in August, HA could really use a map rotation change and addressing of heroes and TA is completely dead.

blah blah

Martin Alvito · May 07, 2009, 08:34 PM // 20:34

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Originally Posted by Bof

It comes down to the fact that it would be way too much work for a game that does not charge a monthly fee for income to implement the necessary skill changes to balance.

The problem isn't that it's too much work. The problem appears to be that the devs have no theory with which to simplify the job. There is clearly no operational definition of "broken skill". If there were, skills like Lingering Curse and PnH that fail any possible litmus test would already be gone. There is no excuse for the persistence of these skills in their present form for five months.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "We introduced too many skills for it to be possible to balance the game" argument, but the simple fact of the matter is that ways to achieve balance still exist. Once they realized this problem, the devs could have implemented rotating limited formats (eg: no Nightfall-only skills) for GvG to create manageable skill sets that could actually be balanced.

The lack of standards for what a "healthy" meta should look like further complicates matters. The community is splintered into multiple camps that continue to argue over the definition of a healthy meta, and those camps all demand different things. At some point, ANet needed to decide what their vision for the game was and communicate it to the player base to standardize player expectations.

Some sample schools of thought:

1) The game is "balanced" when the classic build archetype of 2 W, Me, 2x Mo, runner, and two other midliners (either a ranger and a caster or two casters) is the only sensible thing to run in GvG. Otherwise it's Build Wars, and that's unacceptable. Skill is defined by who presses keys and clicks buttons best. Top players all run the same build and tactics. Periodically, someone has a good idea and the "standard" tactics alter subtly.

Classic position of those that have been in the GvG community for a while. Always struck me as a self-serving effort to standardize bars so that you have a job and so that you can guest people easily. Still, this is the sort of game the FPS crowd generally wants - perform the same job all day every day. Meshes well with observer mode such that the community can define "good" and "bad" play easily, because people run the same bars.

2) The game is "balanced" when the number of viable build archetypes is greatest. You get good matchups and bad matchups. Skill is defined by executing plans to deal with the bad matchups and win anyway.

This is the Magic: the Gathering crowd's idea of balance. The larger the proportion of skills that see use, the better. Cookie cutter bars are bad; substituting a single skill or two in your team build regularly to keep up with changing frequencies of adversary builds is essential. Ability to press keys well is helpful, but trumped by adaptability.

3) The game is "balanced" when the game is RPS. Ex: In GvG, split, 8v8 and spike builds should all be viable. Split beats spike, but loses to good 8v8 teams that can counter split. 8v8 loses to spike and has to try to split it.

A blend of the above two approaches. Some diversity of builds is preferred here, but bars for the archetypes are standardized and judging player skill is thus relatively easy. You can only lose to Build Wars if you play one style to the exclusion of all others. Tactics remain more or less standardized, but tactics are sharply different when facing each archetype. Innovation occurs in the form of subtle changes to the team builds of the archetypes.

You cannot please all of the above camps. The only sensible solution is to define an objective early on, communicate the objective to the players, and work to maximize it. The disappointed players leave, but you'll get a larger exodus in the long run by disappointing all three camps.

DeBron · May 07, 2009, 08:41 PM // 20:41

So, how about that May 7th update.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by garethporlest18

Shouldn't there be an update happening? o.o

Mmhmm . . .

moriz · May 07, 2009, 08:58 PM // 20:58

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If I was the guy working at ANET, I wouldn't spend a minute to help this pitiful community.

If you were the guy working at anet with this attitude, you most certainly won't spend a minute on this issue, because you'll last less than a minute.