Curse

Aug 11, 2005, 09:52 PM // 21:52

Lately I've been getting tired of seeing posts against PvP players that follow the same dull, ignorant patterns. Namely: "If you dont like the game leave", "every skill works your just n00b", "stop complaining about Nature's Renewal because I have a build that can beat it and I'm not telling", or my favorite "First it was War/Mo, then Air Ganks, and now Rangers. Well everyone thought Rangers sucked and now you want to nerf my class. Oh noe5!!!shift+1!!!!"

Well, this post is here for two reasons. First, to give some insight on where I, and some others draw views of balance. How we come to the conclusion that some things are broken, trash, fair, or just make no sense at all. Secondly, I can't remember the last time we've actually had a serious discussion on game mechanics around here(I have a strong feeling these stopped when the game went retail). Decent-top competitive players from other games, or those who understand how games work and how metagames evolve may know about the websites I'm about to link to. These sites are fundamental for those who are not familar with the processes of balance, or how competitive players think. One site also helps see where the differences between Casual and Competitive players are clearly outlined. Read these before going on, as they may help you understand things much more.

Sirlin's Site
One of the most well known sites about gaming. Read the entire "Multiplayer Games" section, and the "Play to Win" section asap. It'll save me a lot of time outlining trivial details to this discussion.

Timmy, Johnny, and Spike

Good stuff from the MTG creators. I'm sure ArenaNet knows about this. It outlines the 3 basic kinds of players pretty well.

Gamasutra
You'll find a wealth of information about making games here, and a lot of articles from game developers themselves.

ThisandThat
Old School TGH discussions, back when that forum wasn't in the state it was now, and it was the center of intelligent discussion. Sadly, most of the people in those discussions have not been seen for ages, or already quit.

***Extra interesting reading thanks to Zelc***

An MTG view of what "overpowered" is considered

When Cards go Bad

Now that you've got the required reading under your belt, let's get started. The first order of the day:

Options and Restrictions

For a game to be competitive at the PvP level, players must feel like they are actually doing something. Whether this is damage, disruption, healing, ganking, or ressurecting every player must feel like they are important. To help with this ideal, Guild Wars has skills that overlap in these areas that are slightly different and are further split into which classes can do them. Next, they some of these skills are better than other by default, and are further balanced by the 3 powers that be: Cost, Cast Time, and Rechare Time.

I'm going to sidestep a bit here and point out something I just wrote to give new players a little insight here. Some skills are going to be better than others no matter what. There are a few reasons for this, even though it may not be so easy to see. First of all, you can only have 8 skills on your skill bar. This means that if your role is calling for energy debiliation, and you're a Mesmer, well you have a good 10 or so skills that deny energy. Well, you have to pick a few and the skill mechanics themselves along with "the powers that be" determine what gets picked. Surely, a good player and a new player have different ideas on what gets picked, but this explains why we say some skills are bad.

Well, if every class has so many options why don't they all function the same. The answer is simple-restrictions. The thing is, every class can't be the best at everything, and someone has to be bad at something so that there is a point to using that class. In essence, every class has a niche that they are going to excel in and unless that niche is destroyed through bad profession
balancing(Necromancers), metagame advancement(Warriors) or skill balance(Elementalist) then every class has a chance to be played at the highest levels of competition. Restrictions give classes advantages in areas to make them the "optimal" choice when skimmed. Example, if you were looking for the best class for damage dealing, most would tell you it's the Elementalist. Which, by looking at a skill listing would seem true. However, this ignores the fact that Physical Damage dealers have a tremendous amount of buffs available to them, where as Elemental Damage has only 1. It also explains why Warriors are so easy to counter(more on that later).

Interestingly, ArenaNet has put in a way to break restrictions and expand options-dual classing. You can just override weaknesses of classes by combining them with something else. ArenaNet did think ahead however by giving each class enough advantages and disadvantages, along with Primary Attributes and Elite Skills to keep some sanity in the game. Well, two out of three isn't too bad.

Options and restrictions. The basics to creating builds and assigning roles. Now to move on to something better: Proffesion balance.

Proffesion Balance

To even the most casual player, the classes are pretty balanced when it comes to what they have the option to do. Every proffesion can do damage, everyone can heal, and everyone has defensive mechanisms. ArenaNet also has them seperated nicely too.

There are 3 primary damage dealing classes:
Warriors-Physical Melee.the best damage sustained damage dealing class if there are no adrenaline problems
Rangers-moderate ranged physical damage. Sustained because of Expertise and is on par with Elementalist damage due to numerous buffs and disruption.
Elementalists-high ranged damage. Not easy to buff their damage, and they depend on Energy. But they spike well and don't suffer from diminishing returns like Warrior groups do.

The 3 other classes are the best when dealing with offensive and defensive support. At the most basic levels:

Necromancers-can remove conditions(from self) and enchantments
Mesmer-can remove enchantments and hexes
Monks-can remove hexes and conditions

So, looking at those lists it's pretty balanced. Every class has something unique to them in those respects. However, here is where balance becoems an issue. Earlier I stated that every class is balanced to the most casual of players as long as they have options. The problem is, if the option you have isn't that good due to proffesion, skill or metagame reasoning then people will not play with it. Since we are talking about professions I'm going to outline the Necromancer.

Why doesn't this profession see much use at high levels of play except for a few skills? Well, Soul Reaping isn't that good for PvP. The energy comes at times that you can not control, and being that the best way to benefit from Soul Reaping is a snowball effect(chain casting deaths with increasing momentum) it doesn't bode well in most PvP areas. The exception to the rule is Putrid Explosion on Dias/Altar maps since it will be a death snowball.

Secondly, the Necromancer has the most efficient options for Enchantment Removal9ignoring Natures Renewal). This isn't saying much since just about everything is on a horrible recast timer, and it explains why before the current NR craze enchantment loaded builds ran wild. Besides Rend Enchantments and Lingering Curse everything else doesnt see much play.

The third reason you dont see them very much is because their skills arent balanced well. More on this in the next area.

When a class has too many disadvantages in area, they start to become extinct. Sometimes, they can be saved by the metagame. Sometimes mechanically they are just too bad to have any use when compared to the other classes and the options when using them become small. For the Necromancer it's not only the problem with the options the class has itself in terms of roles, but also the skills themselves have issues.

Skill Balance

The reason why Necro skills, especially in Blood Magic dont get much use with a few exceptions: Sacrifice costs arent balanced. Well, actually they are. You see, the sacrifice costs for skills are somewhat balanced vs each other. Blood Ritual vs Blood is Power, Dark Pact vs Touch of Agony. Blood Renewal vs god knows what. Anyway, the reason that you dont see many offensive necros is because the damage they do isn't on par with the damage dealers. Dark Pact isn't worth taking over an Ele thats using Water Trident or Lightning Strike. Why do I want armor ignoring damage through Shadow Strike when I can have Obsidian Flame? Health steals arent that good in 8v8 due to monks being all over the place, and being that you are rarely a priority target half your potential usefulness goes out the window. So not only are the skills balanced vs others in their attribute line, they have to be balanced vs skills from other classes when basic roles are in question. Once again, there is a problem to complicate matters.

Elite skills ruin everything. The links to the old TGH discussions will highlight the forewarned problems. Now you have another thing to balance. Skills have to be balanced vs skills in their attribute/class, vs other skills from other classes, and now vs Elite Skills. To make matters worse, being that you can only use one at a time and they have to be captured in PvE/bought with Skill Points and have a gold border-many people in the playerbase think they are automatically the best skills in the game. The fact that they are "rare" in PvE still has people thinking thats why they are called Elite and they dont know it's a balancing mechanism. Then after a few months are shoving the system down everyone's throats they put changed Arcane Mimicry to it's current version and Spirit Spammers everywhere rejoiced. Now couple all the above with the fact that Elite Skills have to be balanced vs themselves also and you see some nasty balance issues.

There is one area where Elite Skills shine though. Energy Managament. Anyone thats serious about being good in this game knows how valuable energy denial is. 5 of the 6 classes function on energy, and taking it away is one of the quickest routes to victory. Arenanet made almost all the insane Energy Management options Elite Skills. They got it mostly right though, except for Ether Renewal. Remember what I said about skill needing to be balanced vs skill within their own line and class(Ether Prodigy, attunements), skills from other classes(Blessed Sig, Mantras, Energy Tap), and other Elite Skills(Energy Drain, Bip, Peace and Harmony, VIM!, Marks Wager). Well, along with doing math on the skills and checking the metagame will show you where some of the good players draw conclusions as to how this skill is insane.

Thats enough for now. I've covered the beginnings of where I want this stuff to get started. Next time, I'll go into the following areas mostly about counters: Why there are so many Warrior counters, why Nature's Renewal is broken, how come we dont like Mind Wrack and Wastrels Worry, Stances being overpowered to the point of downright brokeness, who forgot to turn off Zealot's Fire, why Fire Magic isn't that good in PvP and why it's better to test skills and be wary of skill descriptions. I may include a piece on why the skill grind is bad, and even a history lesson of the Gem system and the Skill Charms system.Till then, I'm going to take a nap.

Zelc · Aug 11, 2005, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Personally, I have a more tolerant view towards broken skills, which I believe came from my background playing Magic: the Gathering. Notably, I played through the Onslaught-Mirrordin and part of the Mirrordin-Kamigawa T2 scenes. During this time, a deck "build" called Affinity ruled the roost. It utilized undercosted artifacts (a type of card) to quickly smash the opponent. In response, all decks began packing cards that countered artifacts. The existence of Affinity basically made any deck that could not effectively deal with artifacts unviable. In addition, non-Affinity decks had to be very careful about using artifacts themselves, because of the sheer amount of artifact hate in the metagame.

Despite this, however, "builds" that could hold their own against Affinity sprung up, and while the metagame wasn't as diverse as it could have been without Affinity's strength, there were many different deck "builds" floating around and winning tournaments. Not only that, but strategic build-creating was still present even in Affinity as different people sought to tweak their build in ways to give themselves an advantage against othe Affinity decs. I still had quite a bit of fun playing during this time.

Overpowered decks were not limited to that one instance. In Apocalypse-Odyssey, we had Upheaval-Psychatog decks that basically sought to prevent the opponent from doing anything important while it builds up a huge amount of resources and then wins. It was definitely the best deck of the period. In Odyssey-Onslaught, UG Madness used a mechanic to churn out undercosted creatures and was arguably the best deck at the time. The larger formats were more balanced, but that was due to the sheer amount of cards available for them. When Guild Wars gets another two or three expansions of skills, it might get to the point where just about everything has a counter and there is no overpowered build. Right now, due to the limited amount of skills and the newness of the game, things will not be perfectly balanced.

However, there were times when cards needed to be banned. In Type 1, where every card could be used, there were incidents where certain cards allowed for overpowered decks. They were eventually restricted (max 1 copy of that card per deck instead of the usual 4), but it took a while for them to be banned. In fact, Gush, a card that allowed the user to draw cards and at times reuse resources was restricted only after the deck it powered had been around for around a month. This was in an environment where there were multiple cards that could serve as back-up counters to various strategies, and this involved a card that was not itself a counter to anything. In the case of Nature's Renewal, there currently aren't enough back-up counters to enchantments that are good enough. The balance changes that must be made should be meticulously considered before being implemented, or we'll go right back to an unbalanced metagame.

It's true that there are balance issues with this game, but these issues do not eliminate strategic choices made before and on the battlefield, and they certainly do not eliminate the fun in PvP. Changes need to be made to fix these balance issues, but let's give Arena.Net some time, k? <cliche>Rome wasn't built in a day</cliche>.

Aug 11, 2005, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Anet has had over a year to get some things right. Sure, there are plans to balance certain things posted on the alpha forums. But there are still some oddball profession issues and skill issues that stick out like a sore thumb. While I was still in the alpha, it's the "attitiude" that there are some things that they just wont touch that is annoying.

They want to leave some things for the playbase to figure out, which is fine. But there are things that they just wont figure out, and not listening to your hardcore players wont help the situation either.

The balance issues in this game do eliminate strategic choices before the match has begun. For the easiest example, just watch Natures Renewal. Frontloaded enchantments, most hexes that need to stick to be effective, enchantment based Energy Management and enchantment based attack buffs are all but gone at the moment. With that in mind, the amount of options left for killing teams comes down to Rangers and Warriors unless you feel like putting Energy Drain and BiP on Eles, which come with their own issues. So now that everyone knows what everyone else isn't willing to run-or in other words whats currently safe and whats suicide everyone plays in the microcosm known as the Natures Renewal environment. What does it say? If you want enchantment and hex based gameplay go to the Arena for hope. Thats definetly what I call eliminating strategic choices before even starting the match. Good post nonetheless.

taion · Aug 11, 2005, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Two things:

1) I don't see your point with damage necros. One of the top American guilds runs damage-focused necros, which seems to constitute prima facie evidence that necro damage is usable.
2) In my opinion, the reason the metagame sucks right now is that skills like ER, Oath Shot, and Rituals are balanced as Spike skills instead of Johnny skills. Clearly Oath Shot and ER are very fun combo pieces, but we see with things like Tolarian Academy that combo pieces are hard to balance near an adequate competitive level. The problem with Nature Rituals is identical -- because their effects are symmetric, they have to be more powerful than skills affecting only the other team, because otherwise there's no real point in using them over the asymmetric skills. For the Magic analogy, consider Stax -- this card wasn't especially unbalanced given it affecting both players, but games often got a lot less fun after it came out. The same is true of QZ and to a lesser extent NR. Their impact on gameplay with regard to balance is more a consequence of the necessity to balance symmetric effects above asymmetric ones. This makes the whole ritual system as it stands a bit of a nightmare.

Ensign · Aug 11, 2005, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by taion

1) I don't see your point with damage necros. One of the top American guilds runs damage-focused necros, which seems to constitute prima facie evidence that necro damage is usable.

Necro damage is usable, it's just balanced to take the health gain into account. Under most circumstances, that health gain simply does not matter, and Necro damage is poor because of it. If you can make use of that health gain, through good use of health sacrifice skills for example, then Blood nukes start to be attractive.

I'll propose that those characters are not run because they are optimal nukers, but because they fill other roles in their build in addition to being good enough nukers to justify the slot.

Peace,
-CxE

Aug 12, 2005, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by taion

1) I don't see your point with damage necros. One of the top American guilds runs damage-focused necros, which seems to constitute prima facie evidence that necro damage is usable.

That actually doesn't auto-prove that damage based necros are good. For it to be a viable strat that mows down a variety of others the build and its variations would have to be consistently doing well vs other good teams to be respected. The problem with that is the ladder is pretty much crap, and there are a bunch of bad teams within the top 50 that doesn't help the case much either. If they've found an armor-ignoring build that can break down even the best Healing Seed, Prot Booner and OoB powered monk centered defenses I'd probably believe that the build is that good.

Zeru · Aug 12, 2005, 12:37 AM // 00:37

This post seems like a good place to clear up the common misconceptions about how things work, which there are quite a few in gwg posters. There's a lot of people who really don't understand how warriors work and are claiming they are underpowered. Quality discussions seem to be semi-rare around here. Hopefully this one stays this way.

First look at warriors vs rangers vs eles. Eles deliver the best spike damage but run out of steam the fastest (with the exception of the broken ether renewal). Rangers can deliver pretty decent dps with stuff like Melandrus arrows and never run out of steam but on the other hand they have only one way to spike and that's with Quick Shot, which requires a whole build tailored to it. In other words, they are generally stuck on a constant dps level. Warriors have the flexibility of both. They can save up adren and unleash it at once with frenzy on (adren spiking) or they can spend adren as it comes and sustain a higher dps than rangers.

Now if you take a warrior to random arena with just warrior skills, you'll quickly find that their dps is not all that great and that they can't spike well. However, there is another element to warriors and rangers that eles do not have, as blackace mentioned. You can buff stack warriors and rangers and amplify their damage tremendously. Orders, Conjures, Strength of Honor, and Judges Insight all accomplish this purpose (preparations as well for rangers). When you throw these on a ranger or especially warrior, they become just scary damage machines.

A buffed hammer warrior can solo a monk single handedly because of knockdowns (within the span of two kds the monk will be dead). Hammers, due to swing time and skills, achieve the weakest dps of all weapons. To make up for that, they have knockdowns, making them 'always useful' rather than sword/axe, which really need a buff to shine. I believe that if you buff a sword or axe warrior enough they can also solo a monk (assuming the monk isn't completely tailored for self heals using something like AoF). If you know anything about GW balance, you know that monks need to be able to outheal damage in order for them to be useful. Because you can buff stack a warrior to out dps a monks hps, warriors have to have some way to be stopped outside of healing.

Warriors have by far the most counters than anything else. Ward against Melee, Aegis, Guardian, Empathy, Price of Failure, Spirit shackles (to some extent), soothing images, sympathetic visage, shadow of fear, and enfeebling blood to name a few. Now some of those suck (empathy and pof in that list), others are simply amazing (WaM). Most of those work against Rangers, but some such as Sof/EB work best vs warriors because they clump up when surrounding a single target. There was a rather large thread awhile back where people were complaining that warriors have too many counters and therefore are bad. Some skills which are countered are above, others induce things like weakness or blindness, which are severely harmful to ones dps output. However, through an able team, most of those counters are limited at best. Mend ailment absolutely owns blind inducing skills in terms of energy. Blinding Flash is 15, mend is 5. Throw dirt is cheap with expertise but has a long recharge. In a war of weakness/blind inducing vs removing, the removal will win (only exception being signet of midnight, which is elite). As I've already hinted at, warriors need to have this many weaknesses in order to be kept in check. Otherwise they will just tear through the enemy defense with their absurd damage potential and force the enemy team to attack the warriors or die. Warrior vs warrior hate balance, NR excluding, seems to be pretty well balanced to me.

Energy denial is imo a pretty big issue. When concerning shutdown, you have a couple of choices: hexes like guilt/shame (screwed somewhat by NR), interrupts like power leak, and energy denial like edrain. But I honestly don't see that these are balanced at all. Energy Drain, Debilitating Shot, and Fear me! are the top 3 energy denial skills and can be tailored to make edenial far stronger than normal shutdown. With interrupts you have to be skilled and react fast. Doesn't leave much room for errors without something like arcane connundrum on. Hexes are vulnerable to removal. A big part of that is that like Blackace said, energy management skills are mostly elite and those that aren't elite (like attunements) are not the greatest thing. And the best way to shutdown an elite is with signet of humility.

I don't believe there are any counters, besides ranger interrupts/cof/leech sig to sig humility, and nothing you can do once it's up. It's free, and normally you can disable someone's elite slightly less than 3/4 of the time. Now, with stuff like edrain/offering that requires precise timing or otherwise it's affect is little. On the other hand, with QZ (screws up balance greatly imo, since many things are balanced by recharge times) you can keep their elite permanently disabled. With proper sig humility use, you can keep any good energy management methods shut out completely, and there's really no other counter to strong edenial builds incorporating debilitating shot+echo, edrain+arcane echo, fear me+echo, and signet of weariness besides using it yourself. It seems to be stronger than normal shutdown, and that's where a balance issue may lie. I would like to see others thoughts on this.

sleazeh · Aug 12, 2005, 12:39 AM // 00:39

I don't have the background or history that some of you do with the game, as I have only been playing since retail release. However, some thoughts nonetheless:
If we are to assume that the goal that the collective "we" are striving for is to reward those with certain intangibles, like skill (outisde of the game definition), intelligence, intuition, etc., with success, over those players who do not possess those intangibles to the same degree, I think we need to examine how - operationally - success is currently achieved.
Success can be defined as victory in PvP, mission completion in PvE, or perhaps even as being a valued member of a team or group.
I'm sure I am excluding certain aspects of play, but in my mind the relative "ability" of a player can be seen to essentially fall into one or the other (or perhaps some combination) of two categories; the strategic and creative combination of skills seems to be an integral design feature, as is the player's ability to read and react to a dynamic situation in "real time".
As to determining skill bar makeup, and crafting team builds, with experience comes advantage, as it should be. But also with forethought and intelligence, unique or unusal, yet successful skill or team combinations can be achieved by a reasonably new(er) player. As such, diversity is achieved through a blend of experience and creativity.
So too a player's ability to react to a situation, to "read the play", to borrow a sporting analogy, improves with time and practice. Even though this is not a FPS, some of the same skills apply, particularly in PvP, with regards to processing information quickly, corresponding twitch reflex reaction, picking out targets rapidly, attacking, defending.

At least, I believe that, from the game designer's perspective, this was how "success" was meant to be achieved.

From my perspective, alot of the allure of competing and developing my skills, game knowledge, and experience so as to give myself and my team the greatest propsensity for success is hampered by both the metagame knowledge that myself and so many others possess as well as a "mis-balance" of a few skills and their corresponding team builds. Although I am by no means a regular in the Hall of Heroes, I know that my and my team's success will be determined by our ability to execute - by rote - one or the other of a set of teambuilds that currently have no effective counter. Victory seems to be, more often than not, defined as the team that either executes the same routine more efficiently or flawlessly than the other team's ability to execute the very same routine, or else the team that has better access to metagame information.

It's complete foolishness, from the point of view of being competitive in PvP, to enter a team that does not run one of a few certain builds. Quite simply, any "success" you may achieve will be shortlived. Understandably, most/all teams that wish to be competitive run those builds, which rely on an individual's ability to perform - again, by rote - the same limited and specific role within the greater context better or quicker than your counterpart on the opposing side.

Certainly this situation does not foster growth, experimentation, or longevity, as it's essentially a closed system. There is a learning curve to aquire the neccessary skill to execute in a competitive format, the gameplay experience plateaus rapidly, which in turn fosters ennui and departure, leaving room for new players who have completed the learning curve to step into the vacated role.

It may sound corny, but I kinda yearn for there to be a place for the creative, quick reflex and quick minded, experienced player at the victory podium that isn't a function of their ability to slot into a pre-given position on a pre-given team composition. What makes a really good air spiker, or spirit ranger, or smiting elmo? Or even worse, 105 monk in PvE? Success, within certain contexts, are their province based not on the intangibles referred to above by rather by virtue of metagame knowledge of the situational application of each build.

I've played the game for many hundreds of hours, enjoyed it immensely, and feel that I have had my 50 dollar investment returned to me a hundredfold already, with the promise of more to come. For that, the game and its developers have my loyalty and great support. But I do believe a critical reassment of the underlying principles of how in-game success is conceptualised versus how it is currently achieved, and a corresponding redefining of certain skills, and the intra-team combination of said skills, is required.

Otherwise we have exactly what we have now. Which is that success is defined, after acquiring a base level of skill and game knowledge, as the ability to follow a template.

Phades · Aug 12, 2005, 12:59 AM // 00:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

Now if you take a warrior to random arena with just warrior skills, you'll quickly find that their dps is not all that great and that they can't spike well. However, there is another element to warriors and rangers that eles do not have, as blackace mentioned. You can buff stack warriors and rangers and amplify their damage tremendously. Orders, Conjures, Strength of Honor, and Judges Insight all accomplish this purpose (preparations as well for rangers). When you throw these on a ranger or especially warrior, they become just scary damage machines.

That would make them situationally good, due to the fact that the enchantments can be removed rendering them back to the sub-par damage dealing levels. In the instance of offense loaded buff stacked warriors could be used against them as indirect time bombs for damage through mesmer, necro, and ranger means. This would be opposed to trying to use those means as a way to break defensive loaded buff stacked teams and not even scratching the surface.

The same could be said for elementalist energy management skills being weak versus enchantment removal as well, but the elementalist is not totally dependant on those energy management means in order to be effective. The duration of uptime changes, but the effect applied per cast is the same and just as immediate when felt, unlike the physical damage users.

It would be a very different story if all sides of the equasion had the same style of hurdles to overcome or enhancement options to choose from.

Zeru · Aug 12, 2005, 06:32 AM // 06:32

One of those spells I listed is a maintained enchant (soh). The others are constant recast, especially the orders. Conjures suffer from long downtimes if removed though.

The thing is that enchants vs removal sucks. There are many chafe enchants, making single enchant strips (like shatter and strip) crappy for that purpose. The things like Rend or Lingering have horrible recharge and cost respectively. Chilly is still a single enchant strip, making it bad outside of an anti-healing ball (mediocre at that). WotP is too situational to be of use. This is also quite a large problem that needs to be addressed as soon as idiotic renewal is nerfed.

Unless you severely gimp your team so that everyone carries rend or lingering you will have to make a choice: aim for the buffed warriors, and forced constant recasts (which with things like JI or orders you will be anyway, not a big issue), or aim for the monks who will be defensively stacked as well, because you won't be able to do both. You probably will only be able to annoy 2 or so targets given reasonable limits of a normal build (i,e not many /n). I say annoy because you will lose a removal vs buff war eventually.

Phades · Aug 12, 2005, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Nah, with the layers you are talking about on an offensive build like the warrior support you could think outside the box and just use it as a means to bypass armor and spike out the damage source. As an alternative just one shot it with lingering and remain behind the standard anti-warrior defenses. Granted, it wont keep orders down, as they are designed to be chained. In this instance, i am merely taking the position of proactive damage disruption against the standard passive/reactive style. The sources of the enchants arent really relevant, as they just have to cycle through recasting or choose to heal the target or themselves depending on where the focus of the other team's offense lies opposed to the focus of the support style spells.

Against defensive style buff builds it wont really do anything, but that is more the nature of the buffs involved, that need to be re-tuned if NR ever gets changed.

Makkert · Aug 12, 2005, 08:40 AM // 08:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelc

Personally, I have a more tolerant view towards broken skills, which I believe came from my background playing Magic: the Gathering. Notably, I played through the Onslaught-Mirrordin and part of the Mirrordin-Kamigawa T2 scenes.
<snip>.

there are a few remarks here..
1) in the end, affinity was CASTRATED to the bone by killing (banning) an incredible 7 (or was it 8?) cards (compare to 7-8 skills). This was done because the format was not 'fun anymore' as stated by R&D. Altough the stats showed there was a reasonable rock-scissors-paper environment (X beats Y, Y beats Z, Z beats X), the grieve it brought to the game was deemed intolerable. Spiritspam is quite a grieve technique also.

2) the environment existed of a bigger pool. 7 sets during Affinity's horror-reign vs 1 in GW now. A bigger pool usually means more options to find a suitable couter to something. Yes, you can argue that chances of a killercombo also increase. But more diversity means also more things to react with.

An interesting read Blackace, will browse your articles. Looking forward to the next post. As for Spike-Johnny-Timmy: yeah, they certainly are here. Altough i must add here that Timmy is NOT equal to noob. This is a common misunderstanding. Just to clarify.

Louis · Aug 12, 2005, 11:30 AM // 11:30

One of the most informative thread I've ever read concerning GW. I come froma background of T1 MTG tournament (had all the moxes and broken cards)/ T2 (was able to create creative AND winning decks). I was an excellent player (I paid my first University year playing and winning MTG tournaments) so balancing issues are extremely important to play.

I appreciate your input as it wraps up what I thought of GW so far.

Thank you again!
-Louis

Auntie I · Aug 12, 2005, 01:25 PM // 13:25

OK, just before my head explodes with all this information I want to say that this has been extreme helpful to me in explaining what I've been struggling to define. The contrast between the "Play to Win" style and the "Play to Play" style is something I've been debating to myself for some time.
Overall I think Arenanet has done a pretty good job balancing the game, however having said that I do think that Nature's Renewal is overpowered. Using a specific build is a part of the metagame for just about any game. Play only breaks down when there is only 1 build that works. Spirit Spam builds are entirely too close to that for my intellectual comfort. On the other hand I look forward to seeing where the game goes next.

Thank you Blackace for your work putting this together. I look forward to reading the additional topics you mentioned.

Nash · Aug 12, 2005, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Nice to see intelligent posts again. I am inclinded to agree with what has been said.

The balance issues have, in addition to ruining the diversity and fairness, also created noskill builds that require no thought to play, where you mainly jusy mash the same button over and over. Sprit spam builds (and before that it was healing balls) are also incredibly frustrating and boring to play against even when winning, because they just take long and mess you up so much, by blocking and changing how your skills work. I doubt ArenaNet intended rituals to be used to build walls etc when they made them spirits, the point was probably to make the rituals counterable by any team (killing the spirit) rather than having just a single skill in the game to remove them (and a trash one at that). Of course, with Oath Shot thrown in the mix, and the collective efforts of countless members of the PvP community, we ended up with the perversion that today is the spirit spam.

Aracos79 · Aug 12, 2005, 02:28 PM // 14:28

As a former Magic player myself, I figured I would keep with the metaphor to make my own comparison. While I can't comment on post Mirrodin environments, I can certainly think of one example that I believe more closely resembles the current problems in Guild Wars. If any of you can remember back to the Extended environment about 4 or 5 years ago, before the mass rotation of Ice Age/5th edition from the format, there was a deck called Trix that absolutely dominated the format. It basically became a case of "either play Trix, or play a deck that can only beat Trix".

It was very similar to what we're seeing in GW right now with spirit spam/NR builds. You either play them, or play to beat just them. And like 5 years ago, when WotC/DCI did NOTHING to stop Trix, ANet has to this point done nothing to stop spamming/NR builds.

That article about Timmy, Johnny, and Spike is a VERY good article that really helps to illustrate the different points of view that go into gaming. If you haven't yet, please do give it a read.

Diomedes · Aug 12, 2005, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Blackace,
I've enjoyed your post and I've been sure to read the links you mentioned. As I have a long history with chess, Starcraft, CCGs, and an assortment of fighting games, these are issues that I am not entirely unfamiliar with. However I find this an interesting quote:

Quote:

Elite skills ruin everything. The links to the old TGH discussions will highlight the forewarned problems. Now you have another thing to balance. Skills have to be balanced vs skills in their attribute/class, vs other skills from other classes, and now vs Elite Skills. To make matters worse, being that you can only use one at a time and they have to be captured in PvE/bought with Skill Points and have a gold border-many people in the playerbase think they are automatically the best skills in the game. The fact that they are "rare" in PvE still has people thinking thats why they are called Elite and they dont know it's a balancing mechanism. Then after a few months are shoving the system down everyone's throats they put changed Arcane Mimicry to it's current version and Spirit Spammers everywhere rejoiced. Now couple all the above with the fact that Elite Skills have to be balanced vs themselves also and you see some nasty balance issues.

in light of this quote from Sirlin (http://sirlin.net/Features/feature_GameBalancePart1.htm)

Quote:

The Capcom Principle

Capcom has a really interesting take on game balance. “Back in the day” they might have tried a more…traditional method of balancing, but these days I’m convinced they have a rather unique way of doing things. Here’s the Capcom Principle of Balance:

Give every character something “so good that it’s broken.” Include so much variety that by the time anyone ever figures out which broken thing actually does ruin the game—the game will be dead by then anyway.

Clever, really. They understand balance vs. variety well. They create as much variety as possible, making balancing so impossible, that not only can they not do really do it, but even the huge gaming audience is faced with a task that takes at least a year to sort out.

It would seem to me, that Anet with elites has engaged in what Sirlin would call, "The Capcom Principle." As far as how people feel about gold borders and rareness and such, I feel that's beside the point (if the discussion is balance, then people's perceptions are a separate issue). If I understand your argument correctly (and please speak up if I don't), you're claim that adding another level of balance is a problem. In some of TGH posts, the argument seemed to be that making a skill "elite" was a poor method of employing balance, and that it lead to degenerate game play (yes, glib summaries I know).

Now, if the argument is that adding another thing to balance is a problem, then doesn't that simply restate the very balance vs diversity argument that has been rehashed on the sites you mentioned plus many others ad nauseum? Shouldn't the answer be, "Yes, it does make balancing more difficult, but we can try and work through that?" A reply may be, "But lo, a balance issue and it has gone unresolved!" To which I would feel a just response would be, "The the problem lies with ANet not taking action rather than that the idea of having elites are the problem."

So then, I would like to try and talk about TGH argument that this is a poor method of balance and leads to degenerate game play.

Quote:

by Charles Ensign: http://guild-hall.net/forum/showthre...4&page=1&pp=25

Under this assumption, a character no longer has eight equal skills, but seven equal skills and 'a ringer', their one skill that is better than all of the others - by design! Does this add to, or detract from gameplay?

The most obvious consequence of this sort of Elite skill distinction is how it constricts character design. Since one of your skills is so much better than the others, a character that hopes to win will do their best to maximize their power - often, by using their 'Elite Skill' as often as possible. This shifts the game away from being about choosing the right skills and applying them as appropriate in a timely fashion, and towards the monotony of maximizing your effectiveness by using the same skill over and over. This was most recently demonstrated by the ubiquitousness of the 'BiPbot', a character whose main purpose in the party was to cast their one Elite skill, Blood is Power, over and over again.

I hear this point and it makes a good deal of sense, however I believe that this may be an instance where the words "better" and "different" may be applicable. I would argue that many games involve super moves. The Sirlin articles constantly mention Marvel vs Capcap 2 (a great game btw) where you have a power bar that builds up allowing you to unleash a super move (but not all the time). In a similar way, a queen in much stronger than a pawn in chess. It is in essence a "super piece", but you only get one of them and it may be difficult to position well. I would argue that this may be a case where "elites" or "super moves" /unarguably/ can bring /focus/ to a strategy. I will agree with Ensign on that. However I'm not sure that bringing focus is a bad thing so much as it is a different thing. Now mind you, Ensign may be writing about how elite skills used to be. I started playing at retail and hence do not know all the incarnations that this game has been through.

Quote:

I'd bet it rests in no small part on the shoulders of Martyr, which would turn into a 'cure all status effects' skill if one had access to a simple status removal skill. Thus, a skill that just about all of us would expect to be in the game cannot be, because it would combo with this abusively good niche skill.

The other effect is how powerful, specific effects like this force characters into roles. Martyr, again, is a culprit. Status effects are powerful weapons in Guild Wars, and there isn't a good way to deal with massive status effects - except for Martyr! This effect is so powerful, so generally useful, and so unique that every party needs a Martyr.

First, I realize that martyr and other skills have clearly changed since this was posted. However, I would ask if this wasn't a general balance issue rather than an argument against the idea of elite skills. If every party needs one, then isn't it a sign that other skills either (a) are not balanced or (b) not balanced with the presence of Martyr? In either case, isn't that a balance issue, not a problem with more powerful skills that bring focus to a build? And if the answer to (a) and/or (b) is yes, then that simply means that the game needs more work, not that elites must be tossed (see my comment above).

Quote:

As is, all of the 'cross-class' skills have to compete with 'overpowered' skills for the 'Elite Skill' slot, which pretty much relegates them to the trash bin. If you really want to be good against melee, don't rely upon your Ranger skills - use your other class to buff up that matchup. Weaker general skills would at least be worth looking at when building your character. As is, Throw Dirt is the laughing stock of the Guild Wars community. Make it a general skill - tone it down, even - and people might seriously consider using it.

I actually disagree the most with this part. Having one skill that is a cross-class skill so to speak is, IMHO, a /good/ thing for the meta game. Here's a good excerpt from Sirlin that speaks to the issue (I'm using this website as it seems to be a respected source in this discussion).

Quote:

http://sirlin.net/Features/feature_Yomi.htm
Example of Yomi Layer 3 from Virtua Fighter 3
Let’s say Akira knocks down Pai. As Pai gets up, she can either do a rising attack (these attacks have the absolute highest priority in the game) or she can do nothing. A high rising attack will stop any attack that Akira does as she gets up, but if Akira expects this, he can block and retaliate with a guaranteed throw. Pai does the rising kick and Akira predicts this and blocks. Now the guessing game begins.

Akira would like to do his most damaging throw (that’s his m), and be done with it. Even though the throw is guaranteed here, all throws can be escaped for zero damage if the defender expects the throw and enters the throw reverse command. The throw is guaranteed to “start” but Pai might reverse it. In fact, Pai is well aware that a throw is guaranteed here (it’s common knowledge), and it’s only obvious that Akria will do his most damaging throw. After all, this situation has happened a hundred times before against a hundred Akiras and they all do the same thing. It’s really conditioning, not strategy, that tells Pai she needs to do a throw escape here (that’s her c1). In fact, it will become her natural, unthinking reaction after a while.

Akira is tired of having his throw escaped again and again. He decides to be tricky by doing one of his very slow, powerful moves such as a double palm, a reverse body check, a two fisted strike, or a shoulder ram (we’ll just lump all those into c2). Why does a big, slow move work in this situation? First of all, if Pai does her throw escape and there is no throw to escape, the escape becomes a throw attempt. If her opponent is out of range or otherwise unthrowable for some reason, her throw attempt becomes a throw whiff. She grabs the air and is vulnerable for a moment. One important rule in VF is that you cannot throw an opponent during the startup phase or the hitting phase of a move. So if Akira does a big, powerful move, he is totally unthrowable until after the hitting phase of the move is over and he enters recovery (retracting his arm or leg).

Back to our story. Akira is tired of getting his throw escaped all day, so he does standard counter to any throw: a big, powerful move. This c2 move does a decent amount of damage, by the way. The next time this whole situation arises, Pai doesn’t know what to do. Her instincts tell her to reverse the throw, but if she does, she is vulverable to Akira’s slow, powerful move. Rather than go for the standard reverse, Pai does her c3 move: she simply blocks. By blocking, she’ll take no damage from the Akira’s powerful move, and depending on exactly which move it was, she’ll probably be able to retaliate.

I would argue that in some respect, cross-class skills are the yomi layer 3 of GW. When you see a class combo, you have a reasonable idea of what you're going to see coming out of it. However the inclusion (and restriction) of just a few abilities that break this rule allow players to escape the trap of having their strategies guessed after I observe your class and the first few skills you use.

Anyhow, thanks for the post Blackace, I hope to hear more on the subject and some feedback what I may or may not be understanding about the game at this moment.

-Diomedes

FengShuiBundi · Aug 12, 2005, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Great post blackace, I'm especially pleased that you outlined the misconception that many players have about elite skills. Many really do believe that they are "rare".

I do look forward to your ideas about WW and MW. I remember the 10+ page thread over at TGH about the same thing. It was a very convincing arguement then and still is now.

As already mentioned, enchants vs enchant removal shows the obvious flaws of the enchant removal system. Low Cost, Fast Recharge v. High Cost, High Recharge, Situational spells. The disparity is quite obvious and must be addressed. Had it not been for the NR mess we would still be talking about enchant removal problems.

Speaking of which... any build or skill that has no counter other than running it yourself is broken and must be fixed in order to maintain balance in the game.

Ensign · Aug 12, 2005, 08:43 PM // 20:43

My big problem with elites now is how they're implemented. On one level, elites let them push the envelope with powerful, unique effects without opening themselves up to as much degeneracy. Skills like Illusionary Weaponry or Tainted Flesh or Martyr or the like do unique, powerful things, and if elites followed that template I'd like the mechanic a lot more.

The problem is twofold. The first is that they didn't just make elites the province of unique effects, but instead lumped in cool, unique effects with straight up overpowered stuff that everyone wants - energy and cooldown management. Why's this a problem? Because while the former tends to alter builds to create unique and interesting strategies, the latter just get plopped into every powerful build, period. If you're building a Mesmer around an elite you can get some solid, creative builds - if you're just making a powerful Mesmer based upon his normal skill selection, you're going to run Energy Drain 90+% of the time.

My other complaint stems from this, that elites destroy diversity. Powerful normal skills with unique effects, at least historically, have gotten slapped with the elite tag to break up combos. While that's a brainless solution to the problem, I dislike seeing dozens of excellent skills that would be fun to play with, but I cannot justify running over Energy Drain / Ether Renewal / Blood Is Power / whatever. With normal skills, there are some underpowered but unique effects that slip in on the 7th or 8th slots of a build because they fit right. Elites don't have that option.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diomedes

I would argue that this may be a case where "elites" or "super moves" /unarguably/ can bring /focus/ to a strategy.

I agree with this, but I think the emphesis needs to be on the word *can*, and that comes down to implementation. I think that if the elite skill mechanic had been loaded up with powerful, unique effects that pulled characters in different directions, I'd like the mechanic a lot more - while those effects could still be in the game without the mechanic, you could make them that much more powerful, and thus actually desirable instead of fringe, due to the elite mechanic.

Problem comes from the implementation. Skills were not designed to be elites initially - they just grabbed some of the best skills in the game at the time and slapped the tag on them, buffing up several in the process. On top of that, not all elites fall into the interesting category. There are quite a few elites that are simply overpowered, general effects, and got the tag slapped onto them because of it. These skills don't generate any sort of creativity, and in many ways defocus strategies because 1) your most powerful skill is nice and vanilla and broken, and 2) the most interesting, focused effects are hedged out because of the elite mechanic. The prime offender here is Energy Drain. Sure, there are a bunch of interesting skills you might want to run, but oftentimes just grabbing the Drain and cranking up your energy, and with it the effectiveness of all your other skills, is the best option. This doesn't bring focus to a strategy, or show of any of the strengths of the elite mechanic at all. All it did was put some degenerately good skills into the game and let you pretend that they're balanced because you can only run one.

So yes, the mechanic *can* be a good thing. I touched on how to make it a good thing in one of my posts on TGH. As it currently stands, though, the mechanic is not living up to its potential and that's simply a fundamental failure in the implementation.

But enough about that, I'm sick of this topic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FengShuiBundi

As already mentioned, enchants vs enchant removal shows the obvious flaws of the enchant removal system. Low Cost, Fast Recharge v. High Cost, High Recharge, Situational spells. The disparity is quite obvious and must be addressed.

Obvious? OBVIOUS? Oh, that's how it goes now, right? After months and months of pointing out the "obvious" fact on these boards and being told to shut up by the alphas who know better and who say that enchantment removal is fine, it's now "obvious" that there's a huge problem with the state of enchantment removal.

What people consider obvious now was not considered obvious at all three months ago. While I'm pleased by the change I can't help but express a bit of frustration over how invisible the process seems to have been.

Peace,
-CxE

Diomedes · Aug 12, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Quote:

But enough about that, I'm sick of this topic.

Thanks for the input, didn't mean to beat a dead horse with you, I was just trying to participate in the discussion that blackace started

-Diomedes