Curse

Legendary Shiz · Oct 13, 2007, 08:15 PM // 20:15

I don't understand the point of people ripping on this post because it doesn't suggest any skill balance, when there are numerous threads already on that. Why be redundant and repost what you've already said, simply to validate the post in the minds of a few posters?

Frankly Ensign hit the nail on the head, anet fails at skill balancing. Maybe they have a different direction than the rest of the community that they want GW to go in, but to me there isn't much logic in that.

It's a shame, this is a great game and a great concept. But mismanagement is sending it to it's demise (depending on your perception, most believe it's been dead for awhile).

Lorekeeper · Oct 13, 2007, 08:20 PM // 20:20

The most frustrating thing is.

No matter how obvious their failures are (exhaustion on ritualists), no matter how soon they started making them (ether renewal), no matter how hard and how much and how often they receive good, constructive feedback (see fan forums/wiki).

They dont get better at balancing. They make the same mistakes. They fail to achieve the aims they claim to want to achieve, and in doing so they unfortunately make people believe they just dont know what they are doing anymore. What exactly goes on in their dialogue concerning game balance? If they are or were listening to the players concerns... and apparently several significant threads full of clear feedback were ''passed on'' to the developers attention, what explains the mysterious amount of buffs to obscure skills that will NEVER see play (buff healing from deaths charge/signet of midnight recharge buff????) and mysterious and clumsy decision to inflict almost permanent cracked armour on to paragons using one of the only things that can make them a viable option (without speccing an elite)?

They refuse to initiate a deeper form of communication between players and developers. There is such a massive vacuum between the people playing the game and those charged with making/maintaining the game, it really truly is no wonder why there is such a negative opinion directed against them now.

The teamwork achievable by a game's dedicated players and its developers can be an invaluable resource, and Anets failure to tap into or indeed recognise this resource is the ultimate source of their downfall and the amount of complaining that now occurs with regards to the games PvP.

i will never forget the words of the games skill balancer.

''there is no source of good constructive feedback''

when we were plagued by the stupidly boring hex build for almost half a year...

''now is your chance to show me what is wrong with hexes''

what hope has Anet got to rekindle its shattered relationship with its current or long gone PvP players?

none unless they show the will to own up for their lack of success in balancing the game and try to nurture some form of communication with the game community.

but with GW nearing its final legs, and with Anet staff clearly telling us they are full steam ahead on GWII developement, its just not going to happen.

but its not like it matters. Sales of GWII will not be affected in a significant way by the history of GWI PvP.

You see, accountability between a company and its customer is one of the any driving forces in a business, it usually drives a product or service to increasingly higher standards and allows the business a way to gauge its own success or failures.

Unfortunately, its much more profitable to show this sort of accountability towards the portion of GWI that sells the most.

Its not PvP.

pah01 · Oct 13, 2007, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Riotgear if you don't think ensigns post was constructive then you have not read it properly, or you are unaware that criticising errors and then explaining why they are in fact errors is constructive criticism.

One cannot understand how to balance the high end of guildwars pvp in gvg if one doesnt understand what the problems actually are.

Long Long ago in the mists of time Ensign himself wrote a masterful thread called "Why Nuking Sucks". In it he explained why warrior's were the only class capabale of killing things and providing a significan threat all of the time.

Arenenat then created the dervish. The dervish gets an avatar that make shim immune to 50% of warrior hate and control. He also gets to crit higher than any other weapon and can aoe on top of that. Are we seeing yet how bad arenanet fail?

Quote:

Originally Posted by riotgear

being constructive means suggesting actual solutions or starting points for solutions rather than simply pointing out failure.

Ensigns post doesnt have to offer specific solutions if the person/company doesnt even understand the problem in the first place. As an example if I was to teach a class second order differential equations I would first explain what they were before I started on teaching how to solve them. Thsi si exactly what we are seeing here.

Arenanet do not understand the core problems casuing all of the problems in pvp and their balance pretty much empahsises that point. Ensigns post is constructive as it explains why the balance failed and was specific about why certain skills like SOR should not be nerfed yet.

I would actually hope that Izzy came out and said "I understand what you mean now ensign I will get on solving this right THE F U C K now."

Joe

Seamus Finn · Oct 13, 2007, 08:40 PM // 20:40

I generally agree with the direction of the original post,but:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

No, actually, you didn't. You didn't address that at all. What you did do is manage to whittle the block vs. melee metagame down into an even simpler package of must-run skills and templates with even less room for variation.

Weren't the "alternatives" really just squeezing some passive defense on an offensive caster so you could fit another physical in place of the ele? I've seen some guilds still doing this and it seems to be working. I suppose you are valuing the SoD nerf a great deal since the ward melee nerf still makes the skill viable on most of the usual suspects and trickier on a mesmer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

This update alone took one of the few remaining options for a flexible, offensive/defensive templates, Shield of Regeneration, and dashed it against the rocks. Where are the skills that we are expected to use to stay alive on a split, pushing into NPCs? Where are the awesome utility skills that can dominate in a skirmish? Footnotes to a metagame that's degenerated to Monk runners on every team to prop up flimsy stand templates on a split.

Agreed on the splitting theory, but in reality, the SoR guy very quickly became a monk anyhow. The monk/derv hybrids that can spam cripples with rof spam provide snarring capacity as well and then you are really just looking at the differences between blurred vision/guardian. Also, the SoR guy has been contributing as much to killing offensive splitting as much as he may have been aiding it(and probably more). Since the creation of the character and its popularity, that many more teams started running varients of a monk runner and added a foundation of heals that when combined with snares punished aggressive splits by allowing all the powerhouse heal-less templates to collapse on them.

SoR is a monk elite. Once you slot it on someone it's really hard to make an offensive ganker out of the character, so you are really just running a monk to support your other two gankers and thus, that aspect of the meta isn't really changed much, in my opinion. You just run the rit or monk and get snares on the other two guys.

I have a suspision that the way Nightfall powercreep hurt split was more at the stand. With so much offensive output, combined with defensive capabilities, I think it becomes harder to have a stand team that can walk the line of turtling out when outmanned vs. packing the offense required to punish a poor split decision on the stand's team.

This is furthered by the problem that there is really one self-sufficient skirmisher template that can regularly add to a stand build,the apply ranger. The AoD guy can still threaten a base but he become a liability at the stand pretty quickly. The heal sig war is running a heal sig instead of another attack resulting a slightly gimpier stand war as well. Coupling these few solo-able templates with the existence of monks everywhere on the map has hurt a lot of splitting options.

ensoriki · Oct 13, 2007, 08:47 PM // 20:47

If you ever play AQ, go to the forums its a single player game yet
They have staff on their official forums dedicated to rebalancing with there own board to talk to.
The fans can go and suggest things to the KoO themselves (knights of Order) and quite a few times player suggestions have made a difference.

GW needs to open an official forums put in a Staff just for balance, put those forums in multiple languages

And listen.

Riotgear · Oct 13, 2007, 08:52 PM // 20:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

GW needs to open an official forums put in a Staff just for balance, put those forums in multiple languages

And listen.

They sort of do have an official forum, which is the official wiki.

Listen? No. As detailed on the first page:
- 35 entries in the "overpowered skills" section, counting Conjure and the SP bar as one line each.
- 8 of those were changed, one of which was a bug (Golden Fang Strike) and two of which were pretty useless (Aggressive Refrain, Wearying Strike).

Inde · Oct 13, 2007, 08:56 PM // 20:56

Everyone, this is not a thread debating all-things-ensign. Please stay on topic.

Razz L Dazzle · Oct 13, 2007, 09:32 PM // 21:32

I'm on the same page that Izzy and A-net don't know how to balance their game. Is some of the failure intentional? Yes, i believe it is. And i think this is because of the supreme desire to make money.

Look at one of the current successful runner builds: Mo/D . This build requires new GW:EN skills. My guild's flagger has been running the SoR bar and refused to by GW:EN for just a few skills since he doesn't pve, the pvp pack for GW:EN is still 50 dollars, even with such a small quantity of skills. Conspiracy, i don't think so. But is there incentive to push new skills to sell games, i'm quite sure thats part of what goes into "skill balance."

Each new game has brought over-powered skills because in order for successful pvp players to compete they need to have access to these new skills, therefore paying another 50 dollars to a happy A-net. Otherwise why would players buy new games if they could still compete on the same old skill bar year after year. It only takes a few "interesting" overpowered additions to stimulate new customers. Especially with people demanding you have a certain skill ready for play. Its only after the majority of people have bought the new expansions out of necessity, for some, that Izzy begins to try to rebuild/redesign overpowered skills. Tardy skill balances i wonder why. I know if i had the job of game balancer i'd try to adjust things much more frequently. Leaving overpowered garbage (too many to summarize) nobody likes, doesn't seem very smart unless its done for a reason.

At this point in time the skill balancing problems in Factions, Nightfall and GW:EN are too large to balance correctly. Unsolved problems have begat more problems without the underlying mechanics and issues solved first. It's the same idea if you and your girlfriend are having relationship problems, and you then decide the best way to deal with your problems is to have a baby and hope they work themselves out. A-Net just keeps having new babies and their problems are only growing worse exponentially. Each baby more screwed up than the last. So i see some of these updates as promoting customers to buy GW:EN on one hand, but of course trying to appease the community with an attempted balance.

People have to realize some people don't do their jobs well. Just because Izzy was appointed to his position does not mean he's the most qualified. I'm sure at the time the competition for a job at an unknown/unproven game company wasn't all that great. The game became successful and he reaped in the rewards of looking good. He can't only take the rewards but should also share in the blame. To tell if someone is good at their job its by analyzing how well they do when things go poorly and Izzy and A-net as a company have failed to correct the problems with Guild Wars pvp.

I have no confidence in anything being done correctly from this point on so, or before now to be honest, and i'll offer very little skill or meta advice as its ignored along with other constructive feedback. Andrew Patrick coming on to tell me he cares, "doesn't make me feel any more confident that A-net does." There's one thing to say you care because it your job to say so, and another to prove you understand and care by putting money and giving Izzy a team of highly educated professionals that are dedicated towards realizing guildwars potential, which many of us have seen. To say these people are already in place, you must be joking.

keast kannegaard · Oct 13, 2007, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Well think most of you overlook the most importend thing why we have a defensive metagame atm.

Imo VoD and ATs is the reason we have this defensive metagame. Before ATs there wasnt really any probs with defence, as ppl wanted to finish games faster, as the wanted more rating, so they took more offensive with them. But now we have:

Ladder play doesnt matter. There is no rewards for playing Ladder play. Tho this makes sure there arnt ladder grinding, it also makes ppl less likely to play offensive builds, as it doesnt matter how many guilds they meet.

In ATs there is the waiting times if you finish the game to fast. No one likes to wait 20 min to play the next game just because they won fast, if they can win just by exploiting VoD.

If ANet wanted ppl to play offensive, they would have placed some sort of Reward, like more faction, not that we need it, Reward Points, okay ppl will just farm those, or 2x rating, for finish the game before VoD.
But it seems ANet have another way to fix this, by making VoD come sooner.
I bet that within the next 6 months VoD will be at 15 min, wich would be logic as ppl playing for VoD anyway, so why not just get to VoD as soon as possible??? Well atleast that seems to be ANets politic anyway...

If i could change just 1 thing in GW GvG it would defently be VoD, as thats there i see all the probs coming from.
If they change VoD to start at 23 min NPC went out, at 26 min the guild lord was at the flag stand, both teams have 4 min to kill the guild lord, if the game didnt had a winner within 30 min it would be a Draw and non would get any rating.
Another option would be to simply remove VoD. The game ends at 30 min and if there arnt a winner before that its a draw and non gets any rating.

Personly i would like to see VoD be removed completly, because 2 frontliners cant kill fast enough to finish a game before 30 mim without VoD, atleast not in this meta, so ppl simply have to take more raw power or shutdown with them if they want to win.

VoD is the biggest prob atm and untill ppl stop making VoD builds, we will have this kind of defensive metagame. And nerfing offensive or defensive will not solve this.

But pls tell me if im wrong in any of this, because atm i see Guild Wars as a balance game with a broken game mechanic (VoD) in it.

Greedy Gus · Oct 13, 2007, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Some interesting quotes I think are fairly relevant from a study on deficient metacognition (in a variety of subjects):

"Incompetent individuals will suffer from deficient metacognitive skills, in that they will be less able than their more competent peers to recognize competence when they see it--be it their own or anyone else's."

"Incompetent individuals fail to gain insight into their own incompetence by observing the behavior of other people. Despite seeing the superior performances of their peers, bottom-quartile participants continued to hold the mistaken impression that they had performed just fine."

"Even if people receive negative feedback, they still must come to an accurate understanding of why that failure has occurred. The problem with failure is that it is subject to more attributional ambiguity than success. For success to occur, many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is sufficient. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that points to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor."

"Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it."

"The incompetent can gain insight about their shortcomings, but this comes (paradoxically) by making them more competent, thus providing them the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly."

---

Essentially, the plain fact that Arena.Net doesn't understand game balance is also very damaging in that they have a hard time understanding that they are failing at it. Which is why I think Ensign's post is spot-on and shouldn't be blasted for not having specific better balance options/reasoning. Those are secondary to actually gaining a better understanding of the issue itself, and coming to terms that their metacognitive skills are deficient in regard to game balance (ie. they don't know what they're doing).

Ensign · Oct 13, 2007, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Questions to answer, which I know have been answered in other threads, but might need to be brought together

Sounds good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

What needs to be done to restore the viability of split templates?

The restoration of high cost, high reward self defense and defensive disruption; skills with really high slot utility. Bring Troll Unguent and Healing Signet up to date on physicals. On casters, restore Weapon of Warding to something useful on a caster; buff Healing Breeze until it's viable.

Promote high-value offensive disruption. Casters lived and died on Gale in a split; hammering that skill effectively removed offensive casters from the split equation. Buff skills that couple damage with a useful effect as far as you can. Rework skills to couple damage with a useful effect - tack an effect onto vanilla or conditional DD skills, ala the Air and Blood lines; or front-load hexes from the Curses and Illusion lines so those characters aren't dead 8v8 characters outside dedicated hex builds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

What needs to be done to fix the current "your team explodes in 8 minutes unless you can keep a constant block web up" meta?

That meta is alive and well, just much narrower than before; you can't get creative with Ward Mesmers for more offense, or put cute secondaries on your Paragons if you want solid energy anymore.

Increase the value of active shutdown and damage mitigation; encourage short duration shutdown hexes and self-defense (stances) by pushing those skills. Nerf the hard counters to active prot and shutdown; Hex Eater Vortex is the grossest offender, making any sort of casual hexing of Warriors completely unviable; Rending Touch is coming up behind in ripping off any sort of preprot. Rework those disruptive characters so that they're more than one dimensional shutdown bots, see Curses and the disaster that's become.

Dramatically increase the ability to heal damage. Make it possible to deal with the massive amounts of incoming damage with strong heals instead of having to stop damage cold with layers of prot. Every Healing skill in Guild Wars is bad, with the exception of Light of Deliverance which is way too good. If the bars could go back up at all once someone took damage, such a high premium wouldn't have to be placed on keeping people from taking any damage at all in the first place.

Encourage other mechanisms for punching through defenses other than interrupting 1 second cast times and 321spiking when they are down. Buff Gale, Blackout, snares, short term daze effects, and the like to encourage extended pushes on a vulnerable team. Buff up energy management for midline across the board and make casters dependent upon it to re-introduce edenial and attrition to the game. ESurge and EBurn stopped being relevant skills when casters stopped using active emanagement; you can't edeny a Monk who runs entirely on his four pips, but you sure could back when he needed EDrain or OoB to keep up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

What needs to be done to improve variation in party healing?

The biggest problem skill in the game is Light of Deliverance (the second is Ward Against Melee). It is a hard, compact, cheap solution to any sort of non-focused damage; it is very difficult to address (Diversion, chained Signet of Humility, and 1s interrupts); it is effectively immune to all other sorts of disruption. You can't disrupt LoD with edenial or short term pressure on the character. If LoD is active, any sort of unfocused damage is a waste of time - even dual Energy Surges, post buff, are completely irrelevant if LoD is active. If LoD is shut down against a team with distributed damage, your team usually wipes in under 30 seconds.

Healing in general needs to stop being so abysmal so that LoD can go away. Heal Party needs to be buffed enough to be viable, yet be vulnerable to attrition. Every single other skill in the Healing line needs a buff. It needs to be possible to move bars up even in haphazard fashion even if your party heal is disrupted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Improvements need to be made, but if this patch is a gross misfire, then what are the real targets?

The real targets are LoD and Ward Against Melee; after that, "Watch Yourself!", Hex Eater Vortex, Avatar of Melandru, and Conjures.

But it's less about hitting those targets, and more about creating an environment where you *can* hit those targets without the game falling apart. As I mentioned in the original post, the trend of the game has been to remove alternatives with every successive patch; the real target is to reverse that, to allow a wider variety of builds, strategies, and tactics to achieve basic essential goals and put some diversity in the game. That means widespread buffs to a lot of forgotten mechanics.

There is one unchanging balance standard in Guild Wars; a Warrior with an Axe and Frenzy. The more skills and mechanics can compete with that gold standard, the better off the game is.

HolyHawk · Oct 13, 2007, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Any chances to merge all the valid skill/mechanic balance posts from Ensign and other players who have made pertinent points into a single one, categorize and organize all the points made so far, just to have some organized thread, since most of them degenerated half way?

By now I think it's pointless all effort into debating stuff and expecting something from the device team, but perhaps chewing the food until all they need to do is swallow could work. And I mean no disrespect to them, but this is really frustrating; there are issues that even clueless people can notice, yet nothing is done.

Besides, balance is not easy at all, and I agree with riot; if we are going to discuss balance, then we should be specific; players have posted their buff/nerf wishlists, we could start off from Ensign's pov, until we get a finished product. There are still top players posting/reading regularly here, and I believe they can contribute.

Zuranthium · Oct 13, 2007, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Rework skills to couple damage with a useful effect - tack an effect onto vanilla or conditional DD skills, ala the Air and Blood lines; or front-load hexes from the Curses and Illusion lines so those characters aren't dead 8v8 characters outside dedicated hex builds.

Definitely, although I think Ineptitude Mesmers already fit the bill you're looking for. They don't require a hex build to be useful at the stand and can split very well.

~Z

twicky_kid · Oct 13, 2007, 11:50 PM // 23:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The biggest problem skill in the game is Light of Deliverance

Yes single heals need way more power. Give Glimmer of Light GoH's power plz!!!!

Dodo The Extinct · Oct 14, 2007, 01:01 AM // 01:01

I truly hope a Dev posts on this thread.

Div · Oct 14, 2007, 01:57 AM // 01:57

Great post, as usual. Anet's attempts at creating diversity in builds usually end up in either
a) gimmicks or overpowered things (blades of steel, keystone signet)

or

b) destroys the diversity (many examples ensign gave, compactification of skills)

I know Anet's main focus is PvE and they don't want their skill balance to anger too many PvErs, but some of the balances don't even make sense at all.

And it's great that this information is getting shared with the devs, but their actions in the past year have shown that though they might be taking this information into considering, it's being heavily outweighed by all the suggestions by players who don't know what they're talking about and spam-posting in GWOnline, other ares of this forum, or Izzy's talk page. As much as they say they care (and maybe they do), their actions are not in line with their speech.

DreamWind · Oct 14, 2007, 07:11 AM // 07:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyHawk

Besides, balance is not easy at all, and I agree with riot; if we are going to discuss balance, then we should be specific; players have posted their buff/nerf wishlists, we could start off from Ensign's pov, until we get a finished product. There are still top players posting/reading regularly here, and I believe they can contribute.

Here is the problem...they have already contributed for years with no result. There have been many finished products, and none of them have come to fruition. Being specific has not done a damned thing but make the game continually worse over the course of around 2 years now.

Many of the posters here ARE top players who are frustrated that they know the game better than the creators, and there is nothing they can do about it.

As for the rest of the top players who aren't posting here, they all quit with the realization that Anet is, quite frankly (and sadly because of the potential they have on their hands), a joke when it comes to running a competitive game properly.

Falconer · Oct 14, 2007, 07:25 AM // 07:25

I pretty much agree on all points Ensign brings up... but really short of a foundational shakeup of the system, I sincerely doubt we'll get anything more than more 'tweaks'.

Also I disagree w/ Riotgear's and others assertions that he hasn't backed up his points.

Really, just to throw out a silly brainstorm... slow down melee slightly. EG: instead of 1.3s sword, knock it up to say 1.5s sword. Slow down scythes a bit and such. That would lessen their passive pressure by a noticable amount, That would be one way of addressing the fundamental need for blockweb. The simplification which got rid of evade didn't help either.

Re: some skills... gale was blatantly overpowered, it had been for ages. It was a crutch for way too many players and builds. There was nothing more frustrating than finding yourself gale 'interupted' by some fast cast mesmer for example. 3s knockdown is time you can't do ANYTHING. (can't kite, can't cast, can't attack, pray you have a defensive stance recycled...). I won't argue it's utility it had it in spades and it was definately effective. But it either needed a 1s cast time and a 2s duration or a 2s cast time and a 3s duration, it got the former.

Riotgear · Oct 14, 2007, 07:40 AM // 07:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Also I disagree w/ Riotgear's and others assertions that he hasn't backed up his points.

I didn't say that, I said that simply telling them "you don't get it, you screwed up" without really detailing what the correct course of action is does not solve anything. That's why I tried getting things back on track. Looks like I succeeded.

pah01 · Oct 14, 2007, 08:11 AM // 08:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

I didn't say that, I said that simply telling them "you don't get it, you screwed up" without really detailing what the correct course of action is does not solve anything. That's why I tried getting things back on track. Looks like I succeeded.

You were quite wrong to say what you did. Ensign explained quite well why anet messed up this time and with the way they update the game. I think its about time they started to understand what they mess up on as before one can be persuaded to take the correct course of action one must first undertsnad why its necessary.

Obs mode is filled with three warrior builds killing shit. This is back to square one.

Joe