Curse

Asplode · Jan 04, 2009, 01:34 PM // 13:34

For my amusement, please clearly define this "skill" word you so casually use to fill every void in your logic.

Take your time; I'll wait.

Also, recommended reading:
www.sirlin.net

moriz · Jan 04, 2009, 02:26 PM // 14:26

skill: a proficiency in execution of strategy and/or tactics and/or creative usage of resources. may or may not have any effect in the outcome of a match.

xDusT II · Jan 04, 2009, 02:45 PM // 14:45

Skill is consistent luck

Forgotton200 · Jan 04, 2009, 02:51 PM // 14:51

Skill = power level imo.

Master Fuhon · Jan 04, 2009, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asplode

Also, recommended reading:
www.sirlin.net

Point out something specific to look at. Hopefully, you are not referring to his attempts to explain psychology or life (play to win, etc). Sirlin knows the game mechanics and logical side of things, but he only focuses on half of the knowledge base. He also has consistently balked at the idea of developing his own ideas in fields where he has criticized other people for the work they do. He sticks to his niche and his following is a bunch of gamers who equally neglect developing themselves into multi-dimensional people.

The definition of skill can be very straightforward: I call it the capacity to perform an activity to achieve expected results. I would add that 'skill' is minimally influenced by input, and this allows the output to be consistent or desirable. The only exception to this is if you define someone as having a skill in something, and then expect them to achieve the objective under a handicap of the abilities used to perform that skill. Another example, skill at losing is not defined as losing often; it would be defined as losing even when someone else is trying as hard as they can to allow you to win.

People have been arguing forever about balance, not skill. Balance is what makes some skills allow people to win, and other skills useless. The arguments wouldn't go on forever if people agreed on balance. Balance can be many things.

Balance can be an equal distribution of reward between different 'skills'. First there are the must-have skills of gaming: quickness of reaction and processing objectives, high speed access to memory, hand muscle memory, ability to perform parallel activity, etc. The people who design the builds use basic math (comparing damage skills to life totals), pattern recognition skills (combining abilities together), and basic reasoning abilities (choosing the better class to play as). There are basic social skills in multiplayer games, like group leading, cooperation, listening, and performing under stress and with the stigma of public failure. Games aren't 'skill balanced' because they don't reward muscle memory for other body parts, emotion recognition skills, more robust memories (someone who remembers every detail of a hex skill instead of knowing just not to cast), and someone who does things better sequentially, and billions of other useful skills in the real world. Game designers cannot design games around skills they don't have; it's futile to ask them to reward you for all the abilities you have. Games often reward brute speed of brain processing (not always accuracy).

Balance can also be equality between tactical style, and the game could have objectives that reward all styles. Offense is as potent as defense. Team fighting is as potent as splitting 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 etc. Grinding matches against weaker opponents can be as rewarding as defeating a few quality opponents. Preparation can at least be as effective as playing. Make killing require a combination of dealing out pressure, shutdown, and attacking vulnerable targets. Make surviving a combination of handling pressure, overcoming shutdown, and protecting vulnerable targets. Make teams have a composition of hex, condition, heal, mitigation, physical, caster, ranged, melee, etc.

The last part of balance is recognizing the different types of people who will be playing the game and offer something for them. Have every class all playable in team, solo, pvp, and pve. Offer something for the types of MMO players: achievement, exploration, socialization, competition, etc. There are those who pve only, pve only, and those who mix both who need a place to play the game they want to. There are those who want skirmish, team, AI assistance, dueling, tournament, important NPC killing objectives, area capping, kill count, sealed deck, etc.

Balance doesn't have to be impossible. What skills should a game require? Make it require them in equal amounts. What tactics does the game support? Make them equally rewarding to perform. What types of people do you want playing the game? Offer something worthwhile for all of them. If you do things by following some general type of goal, you can get to that goal or somewhere close. If you do things without direction or purpose, someone with direction or purpose will decide where you end up. Random skill adjustment changes will do nothing to change what players (who have goals) will do with the game.

You always balance a game at the highest levels, before you waste time fiddling around with numbers.

urania · Jan 04, 2009, 11:38 PM // 23:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChopChop

ANet unlike other companies does not charge its players money each month to play, so it makes no financial sense for them to pour massive amounts of money into just 1 small part of GW1.

And secondly this is the greater reason, whatever you think izzy does, an actual change involves many more people, balance group discussions making sure changes do not affect other parts of the game in negative ways, programmer time to do skill function changes, QA testing, translator time (GW is in 8? languages).
All this adds up, and all the people involved needs to be payed wages, and taken off other projects, it is a larger commitment to make a 'simple' change than people give it credit for, and anet does not make money from its players every month.

indeed we dont pay money to play, yet the player community eventually creates reputation for a certain game and if its a good one it thus attracts new players and so on and so fort, no?
the game is called GUILD WARS after all, so if (ironically) its title already is about its pvp, and not its pve aspect, it would make sense its reputation would resolve mostly around that..

last but not least, indeed there's a whole bunch of other ppl taking part in balancing, yet why exactly do they have to make things worse? imho spamming palm strike on recharge to get jaden's so-called pressure up is not what pvp is..its pve.
training 1 target till it just dies cuz of damage overload (recent TA builds are highly oriented towards that, thanks to ling curse and prage/WE) is what i see in pve, not pvp. - yet, a monk's build can hardly change (and take real prots) because it then has to ditch its own defense, which results merely in the monk getting trained instead of the (usually targetted) necro.
i dont think such random skill buffs promote anything good, unless button-mash is ur cup of tea.

@Master Fuhon, i'd say balance is a combination of all those definitions.

Div · Jan 05, 2009, 06:37 AM // 06:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

its still an abuse. get the point?

It was more of a counter to the split build that we played during the swiss rounds, where we had 2W/2E/R/Me/2Mo and took advantage of the fact that we have 5-6 damage dealers and they only had 4 healers at that point. Running smiters made it so they could have as many healers as we had damage in the previous match, and would've been a great advantage because of the healing power of boon if we didn't predict that and run dervspike. Too bad I'm bad so we still lost.

pah01 · Jan 05, 2009, 06:40 AM // 06:40

Those who say that izzy doesn't have the time to balance properly are wrong. I would expect izzy to undertsnad the game better than I do after having been the professional skill balancer.

The problem is that Izzy never really understood the game.

If he ever had at one point understood it he would never have buffed primal rage to its current condition. The very idea of a 33% IAS and IMS is stupid in the extreme.

X Cytherea X · Jan 05, 2009, 08:25 AM // 08:25

skill = those little colored pictures you put into your slots, that do something when you click them.

DreamWind · Jan 05, 2009, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

The problem is the community is always crying for a balanced build that can beat everything if played well. People don't like to lose to "gimmicks" and want a chance to be able to win when outbuilt.

Am I the only one who doesn't see a problem with this? One of the biggest problems in Guild Wars is that a guild can completely outskill their opponent and still lose to being outbuilt. I don't think the game should ever be like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

The question I pose is how can pressure ever exist if this is seen as the "perfect balanced build" and every time a build comes along that out pressures this, it is nefed out of play? How can pressure ever become mainstream if whenever it wipes the build with the lowest healing available it's scaled down?

Buff/nerf builds so they can compete but not completely dominate? I think more people should talk about the amount of viable builds when talking about balance. To me there should be MANY viable builds. The problem is that the game is stale because it is a constant flux of 2-3 build metas, instead of having one 20-30 build meta. Just my opinion.

Master Fuhon · Jan 05, 2009, 09:44 PM // 21:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Am I the only one who doesn't see a problem with this? One of the biggest problems in Guild Wars is that a guild can completely outskill their opponent and still lose to being outbuilt. I don't think the game should ever be like that.

Guild wars was made out of the components of two types of games. These are games that reward skill and games that reward preparation.

Preparation is what you find in an RTS. No matter what skill you have, if you brought the wrong units to the fight, you lose. Of course, the only response is to rebuild the army and guess what the opponent will have the next time.

Skill is what you find in an FPS. Everyone has the same abilities so there is little need for preparation, other than understanding maps. The difference between a win or loss is how you play differently.

The original design of guild wars was not 'skill' based but preparation based, and MMOs are usually this way. If you had trouble in a pve area, you would take the rock-paper-scissors combination that outbuilt an opponent. That's how pvp was always going to work also. If they wanted it more skill based, they needed to give everyone access to the same skills.

I think there is a way to offset the preparation aspect of the game. It is to somehow give players a limited ability to change character build dynamically in a game. You can make this the result of some pvp action (dying, killing something, or capping something); probably nothing drastic, at first either allowing only a full bar change or the swapping of a few skills. Guild wars already has this, as most games with talent refunds do; but it plays out like an RTS match several months/years long instead of in just one battle. If you lose a battle, you come back the next month and try to outbuild someone. From interviews, that was how the designers described how they expected the game to function and for the meta to change.

LightningHell · Jan 07, 2009, 02:55 AM // 02:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Preparation is what you find in an RTS. No matter what skill you have, if you brought the wrong units to the fight, you lose. Of course, the only response is to rebuild the army and guess what the opponent will have the next time.

Methinks RTSes are more complicated than that.

Master Fuhon · Jan 07, 2009, 06:42 AM // 06:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningHell

Methinks RTSes are more complicated than that.

That's because video games are not cut and dry and built around theories. They are made by people that tinker and do things based on feel. RTS is a game where you can plan out several steps at once and give fancy names to strategies because people use them so often. You might have something going if you are talking about actions-per-minute making gameplay more complicated, i'm sure that's what distinguishes the difference between real-time strategy and just strategy (like a chess game). You probably have a good point that I meant to use the word strategy instead of RTS.

You outgame someone in a strategy game at the planning table, if you don't have plans you lose. Even if a brand new situation comes up, you don't wing it and make one move after the other. You have a plan for a series of moves coming up. Again, video games are not cut and dry formula based.

The original RTS is real life war, although it doesn't play out in real time because army building is done decades earlier. That's what I use to set my definition, not some game from the last few decades. Just try to bring improperly trained units in real war, or people who don't know how to use the terrain. Individual skill doesn't matter, specialized skill does. Take a proud all-purpose trained combat troop; if he doesn't out equip his heavily specialized enemy, he loses.

But to elaborate on a point, if you are beating an opponent who appears to outmatch you in a strategy contest, you are offsetting the rule-set with knowledge base. This is like when people shoot down low flying helicopters with standard anti-tank weaponry.

Edit: Most of what the genre defines as real-time strategy I would define as accelerated-time. Technically to call Starcraft the definition of RTS is false because every game is played in the 'real' time of the game player. Hence, we should define games on their own standard of time. Accelerated-time being the term I use for games with pace sped up faster than real time. So are we talking about ATS games?

Edwards · Jan 07, 2009, 07:00 AM // 07:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

That's because video games are not cut and dry and built around theories. They are made by people that tinker and do things based on feel. RTS is a game where you can plan out several steps at once and give fancy names to strategies because people use them so often. You might have something going if you are talking about actions-per-minute making gameplay more complicated, i'm sure that's what distinguishes the difference between real-time strategy and just strategy (like a chess game). You probably have a good point that I meant to use the word strategy instead of RTS.

You outgame someone in a strategy game at the planning table, if you don't have plans you lose. Even if a brand new situation comes up, you don't wing it and make one move after the other. You have a plan for a series of moves coming up. Again, video games are not cut and dry formula based.

The original RTS is real life war, although it doesn't play out in real time because army building is done decades earlier. That's what I use to set my definition, not some game from the last few decades. Just try to bring improperly trained units in real war, or people who don't know how to use the terrain. Individual skill doesn't matter, specialized skill does. Take a proud all-purpose trained combat troop; if he doesn't out equip his heavily specialized enemy, he loses.

But to elaborate on a point, if you are beating an opponent who appears to outmatch you in a strategy contest, you are offsetting the rule-set with knowledge base. This is like when people shoot down low flying helicopters with standard anti-tank weaponry.

Edit: Most of what the genre defines as real-time strategy I would define as accelerated-time. Technically to call Starcraft the definition of RTS is false because every game is played in the 'real' time of the game player. Hence, we should define games on their own standard of time. Accelerated-time being the term I use for games with pace sped up faster than real time. So are we talking about ATS games?

What you're trying to say, I think, is that assuming equal skill in an RTS style match up, the better prepared team will always win.

Translating this into GW, if my guild, for example, went into a match against say, [rawr], no matter how much we had them outbuilt, we would most likely lose, because we don't have a level of skill and experience that is in any way comparable. However, if two guilds of relatively equal skill level go into a match together, assuming that neither side makes any stupid mistakes or uncharacteristically brilliant plays, the team with the better build will win.

tigros · Jan 07, 2009, 11:10 AM // 11:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

So in summary, Izzy does a fine job at what he needs to do. He RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOs up sometimes but usually fixes it quite quickly. Guildwars is still the most competative PvP RPG on the market today. Izzy does listen, and does ignore bad suggestions but occationaly misses important ones. If you put ensign in izzys shoes and made him work on another game 10 hours a day and do the balancing job of a 5 man team in his freetime while maintaining a real life, the results would most likely be the same.

QFT

It's so easy to accuse from outside the fence that I won't even bother to pick on everyone and try to prove you wrong...

All this honor bullshit and all this rage and flame caused by everyone's failure to win is mind boggling. There will always be a loser pointing his/her finger at the winner and whine. It's human nature, but please grow up and learn to live with it.

I admire rawr because they do their best to win, and so far, despite all the flame they get for being bad or whatever, they've achieved more than any of the flamers will most probably achieve in terms of results. Also, as opposed to most of you, they do argument their positions and also give something back to the community, that is... you. I guess you should learn from them and stop flaming them...

King Of Da Beasts · Jan 10, 2009, 08:28 AM // 08:28

What's wrong with our current meta?

I mean sure, there are some pretty powerful things. Hero smite way is huge pressure, hex's and condition pressure kill hard, and Palm Strike sins are extremely good.

But I remember those days where we spent EVERY GAME idling under "defense ways" with 1000 copies of Aegis and Defensive Anthem and LoD etc etc.

I've been GvG'ing a lot recently, and come up against Hex Pressure, Smiteway (Hero's) and even a "balanced" build. And it's a lot more fun having to play differently to each of these teams, and adapting our strategies in order to beat them, instead of having the same style and same game ALL THE TIME.

Guild Wars is better when people die, people split, people move and people KILL.

Ec]-[oMaN · Jan 10, 2009, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by King Of Da Beasts

But I remember those days where we spent EVERY GAME idling under "defense ways" with 1000 copies of Aegis and Defensive Anthem and LoD etc etc.

I remember those days too, and you could still win games in 4mins. If what people really want is diversity let's go back to early early release Nightfall. Should be no complaints right?
I don't really recall 1 build metas for a while now. There's always been around 4 build metas for some time.

Refer to the "toning things down" thread, and the thread "Greedy Gus" created months ago.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10261870
For a long time now we've been in the "power creep" balance update era. Things of the past that have already gone through nerfs are being buffed again to dumb level's. For example [Hidden Caltrops] was buffed to a ridiculous level because it wasn't being used and could open the window for sins to use this skill as it applies a hex and later creates a cripple, perfect for many chains. Fact of the matter is Sins still never used it, and caster started to instead. Later it was nerfed but is still being used and you can't even push flagger runner's now with melee because of it. Nice dynamic/aspect gone from the game.

We could go on and on about stupid buffs, [Blinding Surge] was nerfed into the ground, then later was buffed 200% over its' former self. [Mark of Insecurity] and [Palm Strike], what sin in their right mind would run hidden caltrops now? No one would, just that silly flagger.

ensoriki · Jan 11, 2009, 04:36 AM // 04:36

Sins don't bring enough to the table to justify bringing them.
If a sin has some good utility just use a sin as a secondary and be done with it. Ya I blame izzy for that, shoot me for being unappreciative,though I find im justified in that, considering my main profession goes in and out of favor like some cheap hooker.

Also we are complaining with primal rage?
WTF?
I find this absurd, it's quite obvious I must be sleeping since I'm missing the crisis here.
What are the linebackers doing (if your running em) to stop the Primal Rage warriors that's so ineffective??

shit wtf is the water ele/cripshot ranger/jesus/linebacker/Whoever doing.

Nemo the Capitalist · Jan 12, 2009, 07:27 PM // 19:27

........get a life stop playing gw.....yes izzy sucks.....but keep in mind they are making gw 2.....

and its a "free online game"

if you want better go to WoW...etc Warhammer

Q Q

phan · Jan 12, 2009, 08:29 PM // 20:29

Stop blaiming Izzy ; if you know how hard he works for this dead game well ok .
Remember the "Leaked site" before the first big elite skill update.. well it's izzy that worked for that while's currently hired for Gw2 ; Izzy talks with 'top'-players and ofc this pisses ra / ab / ha players off .

Imho skill balancing could go a tad Quicker and he should avoid doing this like mastery and ps ;

My ideas : pr ims to 25% - lc to 25% - p&h to 3/4 cast time add 3..8 healing for each hex / condition removed ; leave rangers alone ;

Ps , the guru skilloutlay for hidden caltrops says : For 20 seconds ... when hit while moving this hex ends and you recieve damage / cripple

Wasn't this a great skill ? apply hex ; bulls ; dismember on kd'ed target finish off .
It probably didn't work like that else i probably would of noticed Oo can anyone explain this to me pls x)