Curse

Ensign · Oct 13, 2007, 10:16 AM // 10:16

Arena.net does not understand why the game is the way it is, at all. They are caught in a destructive cycle of symptomatic balance changes without addressing the core problems at all, with the all too predictable result of the game continuing to rot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Net

In this update, we addressed the melee-overload-versus-block-overload struggle we're seeing in Guild Battles right now.

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.

I will spell this out so that I am abundantly clear.

Melee and physical damage dealers are the *only* available way to kill anyone with any consistency on a competitive level. There is *no* alternative. This is not a matter of a couple of skills being that much better than everything else, it is a consistent theme that physical damage dealers are on a tier unto themselves when it comes to dealing damage. The game has almost always been this way.

Pervasive, party-wide, distributed damage prevention is the only way to survive several physical attackers. Localized prot effects are less effective as more physicals are put into a build, and countermeasures to those defenses have been and continue to be buffed; active shutdown of those physicals continues to be nerfed, despite huge additions of anti-shutdown tools in Nightfall. Party-wide defense, particularly party-wide block, is one of the worst mechanics in the game - it's also the only viable one left.

The changes made did *nothing* to address these problems. The changes made actually reinforce these problems further, and only served to remove variety by compressing the viable party defense into fewer skills and templates. The way out of this metagame is to add alternatives. You don't add alternatives - you *remove* them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Net

Some of our goals were to increase the viability of split tactics

How? What exactly did you do that is going to help with that goal?

Aggressive splitting in Guild Wars is hard. It entails, at best, pushing into very unfavorable terrain, an enemy base, taking fire, and focusing a significant amount of offensive capacity onto killing NPCs. If the defending team can mirror your movement and get back in time, you are always fighting at a huge disadvantage as an aggressive split team; not only are you taking NPC fire, but while your opponents are focusing their offense on killing your players, you have to be focusing on NPCs if you want to accomplish anything with your push at all.

The key to an offensive split has always been the availability of *durable*, *flexible* offensive templates, in the form of strong defensive skills that could be pumped as necessary on an otherwise offensive character. The classic example is Healing Signet on a Warrior - in a small fight, Healing Signet, on top of the Warrior's natural armor, allow him to survive without the defensive framework of his team long enough to accomplish something.

Skills like Healing Signet have been badly outclassed by Nightfall power creep. Alternatives that did keep up with the power creep have been systematically picked out to receive substantial nerfs. 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.

You can say you want to increase the viability of split tactics, but the fact of the matter is, your actions work to *reduce* their viability.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Net

reduce the effectiveness of a defensive "block web,"

At that, you did succeed. However, since you did nothing to address the *need* for a block web, teams need to devote more resources on fewer templates to stand up to a similar offensive threat, reducing the variety of viable builds in the metagame. Do you count that as progress? What is going to spring up and suddenly become viable because of the Ward nerf?

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Net

decrease the effectiveness of some spike-oriented melee skills

Spiking has taken on a renewed significance in Guild Wars in recent months. As the game was rebalanced away from active defenses, and the ability of a team to wear down a defense disruptively has similarly been eroded, 321spiking has asserted itself as one of only two consistent ways to punch through defenses in Guild Wars (the other being a flurry of interrupts from at least 3 serious interrupting characters to knock out all of the must-counter skills).

While I won't knock hits to spike skills, particularly some of the grosser ones introduced with Nightfall, the question must be asked: why are 321spike teams dominating the metagame? What happened to the strategic pushes characterizing the active korean playstyle that dominated the top of the game before Nightfall? I can guarantee you that the answer is not that Agonizing Chop is too good of a spike skill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by A.Net

reestablish caster pressure and area-of-effect damage, while not overpowering pure spike builds.

Casters are in this nasty place in Guild Wars. Unlike physicals, casters have to spend energy to inflict damage that really isn't all that impressive in the grand scheme of things; also, unlike physicals, they usually have to forsake using a useful effect when using that time and energy to do damage. However, since the entire reason you have a caster on your team in the first place is for the useful effects - otherwise, you'd just run a physical - it follows that the effects are of primary importance, with damage being either a useful secondary effect on a skill that pushes it over the top, or something that you make use of with spare time and energy if all of your utility needs have been met.

When it comes to balancing casters, A.Net has taken a consistent path with little variance - punish the energy. Above all else, when a caster is too good the energy needed to cast his most important spells invariably goes up. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it is the *exact opposite* of the way things would need to be balanced to encourage caster pressure. I'll repeat it for emphasis - the only reason a caster is put in a build is for his utility skills. If you are ever making a caster choose between utility and damage, utility always wins. If the only way you balance utility is to continue to increase the energy burden of that utility, the ability of a caster to deal damage is going nowhere but *down*.

If you wanted to encourage caster pressure in the physical-dominated damage paradigm, there are exactly two viable courses of action. One is to deal damage in-line with all of the essential utility; skills like many Water snares and Shatter Enchantment are some of the best offensive caster spells in the game for that exact reason. The other option is to restrict the utility in other ways than its energy cost, giving a caster 'spare' energy for offensive skills even after doing his defensive jobs. The current methodology of cranking up the energy costs until a caster stops doing damage, and then stops working entirely, does a fine job of squeezing overpowered casters out of the environment, but only encourages 'caster pressure' in fantasyland.

Essentially, there is a refusal to address the principal drivers of the metagame, while alternatives are whittled away at until everyone is playing the same one dimensional stuff while the company looks on incredulously. You can draw your own conclusions as to why this is, but the upshot is that A.Net fails at game balance. If anyone is in a position to balance a game in the future, I suggest you take a good, hard look at what is causing unfun balance issues in your game; furthermore, you should put a lot of thought into just what the consequences of a given change are going to be. Because without that knowledge or foresight, you might as well just be flailing around in the dark with a chainsaw.

Sab · Oct 13, 2007, 11:17 AM // 11:17

Another epic post. But can the devs actually take Ensign's advice on board this time? The whole "we're listening" thing is getting a little tiring.

Shuuda · Oct 13, 2007, 11:19 AM // 11:19

Decent post, but why don't you trying putting it somewhere better, like Izzy's talk page, at least then you may get somekind of answer.

DreamRunner · Oct 13, 2007, 11:30 AM // 11:30

Good post.

After this skill update, its pretty clear that that a.net is listening is absolute bull. They're actually going backwards.

Despozblehero · Oct 13, 2007, 11:37 AM // 11:37

Very good post. Its exactly everything that needed to be said, perfectly, and I would think most of the ideas here are common sense... but then we get these skill "balances," and I think real hard about ANET's ability to use common sense... and then I sigh and shake my head...

Therlun · Oct 13, 2007, 12:50 PM // 12:50

Where are those quotes from?

jaeharys targaryen · Oct 13, 2007, 01:04 PM // 13:04

awesome................

lacasner · Oct 13, 2007, 01:05 PM // 13:05

Quote:

When it comes to balancing casters, A.Net has taken a consistent path with little variance - punish the energy. Above all else, when a caster is too good the energy needed to cast his most important spells invariably goes up. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it is the *exact opposite* of the way things would need to be balanced to encourage caster pressure. I'll repeat it for emphasis - the only reason a caster is put in a build is for his utility skills. If you are ever making a caster choose between utility and damage, utility always wins. If the only way you balance utility is to continue to increase the energy burden of that utility, the ability of a caster to deal damage is going nowhere but *down*.

If you wanted to encourage caster pressure in the physical-dominated damage paradigm, there are exactly two viable courses of action. One is to deal damage in-line with all of the essential utility; skills like many Water snares and Shatter Enchantment are some of the best offensive caster spells in the game for that exact reason. The other option is to restrict the utility in other ways than its energy cost, giving a caster 'spare' energy for offensive skills even after doing his defensive jobs. The current methodology of cranking up the energy costs until a caster stops doing damage, and then stops working entirely, does a fine job of squeezing overpowered casters out of the environment, but only encourages 'caster pressure' in fantasyland.

This is true, and it just saddens me how mesmers have taken such a beating all these months and never got the updates they truly needed.

Blame the Monks · Oct 13, 2007, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Its true.

Skill balances have demonstrated a consistently poor understanding of the game for a long time. What's worse, there is a complete ignoring of people who accurately predict how things will play out and why. People in the pvp community pointed out almost all of the serious problems in gvg months, even years ago with clarity and consensus. Izzy has still chosen to strike out on his own (i thought giving casters 1/4 second casts would make them better at pressure).

GW was a great platform ruined by mismanagement.

Riotgear · Oct 13, 2007, 05:17 PM // 17:17

While I mostly agree, I don't think this thread has any chance of helping anything because it doesn't suggest any changes, it's just a bitch-out thread.

Questions to answer, which I know have been answered in other threads, but might need to be brought together:
- What needs to be done to restore the viability of split templates?
- 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? Or rather, since the block web got nerfed, "your team explodes in 8 minutes unless you can make the other team explode in 8 minutes?"
- What needs to be done to improve variation in party healing?

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

moriz · Oct 13, 2007, 05:20 PM // 17:20

like ensign mentioned in his other thread, the key to getting rid of the defense web and NOT cause teams to blow up in 6 minutes is to nerf the offensive skills. specifically, warrior paragon and dervish damage output.

now i dare andrew patrick to post in here and tells everyone that izzy is reading this (but in reality ignoring it completely).

Melody Cross · Oct 13, 2007, 06:41 PM // 18:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Questions to answer, which I know have been answered in other threads, but might need to be brought together:
- What needs to be done to restore the viability of split templates?
- 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? Or rather, since the block web got nerfed, "your team explodes in 8 minutes unless you can make the other team explode in 8 minutes?"
- What needs to be done to improve variation in party healing?

-Improve self-heals to compensate. Not self prot, self healing. Overprotted runners are part of the problem, imo, because they can keep a split team busy at the sacrifice of morale boosts (and with vodway making boosts less relevant, flagstand teams can afford to ignore morale almost completely, sadly, can afford to ignore all but the most aggressive splits completely, since they will /pwn the other teams NPCs seconds after they reach the flag stand). As long as players can throw "godmode" on themselves and keep it there for a sufficent ammoutn of time, there will be a disadvantage to splitting.
-buff caster damage to become a viable threat by reducing energy cost and recycle for pressure skills. I'm not endorsing an SFway meta, but caster pressure is lacking in this game unless you can chain a team to one spot for extended periods of time (ie: HA alter maps). At the same time, nerf melee damage to compensate.
-improved effectivness of monk elites to remove midline dependency. Monks have suffered more than any other class due to this continued powercreep. I run LoD, that doesn't mean I like it. Focused target elites and skills ned to be buffed in the monk line, not ignored anymore.

If monks can manage the red bars and the condits better, midline utility emphasis disappears. If they can keep the team up with less support, midlines can focus on more damage and less utility. Buffs to energy manamgemnt will elt monks continue to cast through pressure, and become less reliant on a single skill per 8v8 (GoLE for GvG; Channeling for HA).

Will these thing happen? Absolutly not. An easy monk farming build seems to be more Anets concern than balancing backlines to counter frontline damage. Thats not intended as a shot; its just something I believe.

GGs

Captain Robo · Oct 13, 2007, 06:57 PM // 18:57

My Rant from APRIL (Please don't resurrect the thread)

Yup, I think the question has been answered. They really don't know what they're doing.

Apok Omen · Oct 13, 2007, 07:00 PM // 19:00

The problem is that Izzy is gonna balance skills so that the skills that should NEVER see the light of day do. He likes gimmicks and promotes fast-killing. To him, its his call and his judgement, and the sad thing is that its true.

Once he recalls back to the days of Prophecies, where Warrior and Ranger damage always had the last laugh, and that casters are just there to help the Physical damage push through the layers of defence, then he can see where he went wrong and fix it.

At the moment, all I see is caster-dominance, where Physicals have to wait 4 minutes just to hit something. Anet, with this update, made a wrong turn; they simply nerfed block layers and is now waiting to see the effect. Then they continue to buff up disenchant, offensive spells, and useless skills, but never seem to focus on utility. Thanks to QQ'ers, who seem to think that utility is a bad thing, Anet went along with it, not seeing the truth.

I remember a time when Anet actually posted their thoughts and experiments before actually sending them out, to ask for our advice. That was a good thing. Some of the EotN skills got refixed after we got to have our say, and we saved ourselves from a month or two of exploitation and gimmicks.

But now, they rely too much on the threads from QQ'ers (this is more of a realization post from Ensign) and worry too much about making them happy again. Once they get over the fact that they can't please everyone, then the healing can finally begin.

Phades · Oct 13, 2007, 07:13 PM // 19:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

While I mostly agree, I don't think this thread has any chance of helping anything because it doesn't suggest any changes, it's just a bitch-out thread.

Questions to answer, which I know have been answered in other threads, but might need to be brought together:
- What needs to be done to restore the viability of split templates?
- 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? Or rather, since the block web got nerfed, "your team explodes in 8 minutes unless you can make the other team explode in 8 minutes?"
- What needs to be done to improve variation in party healing?

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

See any other post he has made over the past few years to answer any of your questions. Just stringing in more links into a thread that prefaces, yet again, a rising frustration of a long time player who's suggestions have been ignored for years seems rather pointless given the current situation don't you think?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shuuda

Because, like Riotgear said, this is just another bitch-out thread, barely any different from others we see. I'd rather see A-net hire someone who is less whine, and more solutions.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.... Then again, that seems to be ANET's stance on things as well. You will probably continue to play the game longer than Ensign will with that attitude.

He could have easily continued with an outline that would strech with pages of information that has been gathered over hte years, but most people like yourself, would simply have their eyes glaze over with the first ad-hoc quote and stop reading the concepts being put forth instead of worrying about the actual quantites of each meteric there in. Seriosuly, if you arent even bothered to look at the wallet, why would you care how much is in it?

Then again, i cant tell if you think if its a "decent post" or "just another bitch thread" at this point either...

Riotgear · Oct 13, 2007, 07:19 PM // 19:19

This is definitely the exception and not the rule. Most of Ensign's thread have been very analytical and very constructive. The thread on why Ritualists were gimmicky, for example, pointed out things that work and contrasted them to Ritualist abilities to show what the problems were.

This one isn't doing that. The problem with melee overload and the drift to 123spike isn't Agonizing Chop.... but what is it? Party healing needs to be better.... but how? Healing Signet and similar abilities are getting floored by Nightfall power creep.... like what?

This is by far the most non-specific non-constructive thread I've seen him post to date, and it sounds like the final words of someone who's essentially given up. Not that I can blame him, balance lately has been painfully incompetant, but bitch-out threads accomplish precisely nothing.

Personally, I see the balance problem is having a couple major components:
- Addressing problems on the surface rather than fixing what's breaking them. An example would be GoLE, which has been spawning broken metas ever since it was buffed. Leadership's been breaking a lot of things.

- Overattachment. Deadly Paradox isn't getting nerfed because "it makes shitty skills usable." See the first point on that one. Melandru isn't getting nerfed because "it's neat." Balance has been overly oriented towards making things viable while disregarding whether or not they're making a positive contribution to the game, which has forced a lot of degenerate crap into the foreground.

- Inaction. I just browsed Izzy's talk page, and there are 35 entries in the "overpowered skills" section, counting Conjure and the SP bar as one line each. Of those, 8 received some form of adjustment. Granted, many of them are absurd (i.e. Reversal of Fortune, Hammer Bash), but it's obvious that complaints are only selectively being addressed. (Also, of those 8, one was a bug fix [Golden Fang Strike], 2 effectively did nothing [Aggressive Refrain, Wearying Strike])

Warskull · Oct 13, 2007, 07:38 PM // 19:38

You raise good points, but ultimately you are just restating something the PvP community has known for a very long time.

Melody Cross · Oct 13, 2007, 07:46 PM // 19:46

On topic: I'd like to see VoD changed back to a higher time limit, to endorse splits and other non-flag stand tactics that take time to emplement.

GGs

Riotgear · Oct 13, 2007, 07:48 PM // 19:48

Being constructive does not mean downplaying criticism or strictly pointing out things that worked well, being constructive means suggesting actual solutions or starting points for solutions rather than simply pointing out failure.

I pointed out several problems that need to be addressed. The problems with the current meta are pretty varied, but most of the problems across the varying formats come down to a few things:
- Tree form is too good, and Wearying Strike is too good with it.
- Paragons are too difficult to disrupt and harass.
- GoLE is breaking the cost balance on spells.
- Deadly Paradox, Recall, Shadow Prison spike, and Rampage as One are retarded.
- Heal Party doesn't work any more so everyone has to pile all of their chips on LoD.

Zui · Oct 13, 2007, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Good post. You really can't say it's not constructive, either. Yeah, so it's a post that is telling ANET they're retarded and don't know what they're doing, but it's true, isn't it? Additionally, what would be the point in suggesting balance changes? ANET doesn't listen to the community. You tell them rit spike is imba, and they wait months before fixing it. You tell them ritualists as they were first introduced make games last forever and suck as a class, and it takes them forever to 'fix' that too... You tell them Soul Reaping is IMBA, and how long does it take for them to 'fix' it? Etc.

They don't listen to players. They think players don't know what they're doing -- don't ask me why, but they do. They want to make their own balance changes, and to be honest, I think someone in the community suggesting a change makes them less likely to implement it. Additionally, they don't think about what they're doing -- Lamentation anyone?

Basically, telling ANET how to fix their game hasn't worked in the past. Why should it work now? Seriously, if Ensign suggests skill changes all that will happen is someone who reads the forums will send it on to someone else who will either not read it, or read it and go "ok so we better not change any of these things soon, or in the way suggested, otherwise it'll look like we don't know what we're doing, and the players understand game balance way more than we do."

I think the only way to get ANET to stop failing at balance (and I don't think it will ever happen, mind you), would be to get them to understand they don't know what they RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO they're doing, but that they only think they do. Then again, as they're busy with GW2 even if they do come to understand this I doubt we'll see much change.