Curse

Trinity Fire Angel · Jun 26, 2008, 12:44 AM // 00:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

This would have been the optimal use of the split...

But unfortunately exactly what I predicted came true. I said it as soon as I heard the split was happening (and got flamed by various people on these forums). The split had ZERO to do with PvP balance. It has EVERYTHING to do with keeping PvE players shut up over balances that did almost nothing to affect their game, and then buffing the crap out of PvE so that people could grind for their HoM and buy Guild Wars 2.

this is exactly why has been happening... but PVE isn;t being buffed. it;s being reverted to old power levels from when everything was skewered due to PVP. personally, i would like the entire game to be reset so that every skill is set back to the first setting it had. Perhaps we should have a special "Revert All Skills" weekend. I would like to play against Monster AI the way it was intended for the builds they were originally given in PVE. I mean, the skills have changed... but their builds haven;t.

maybe we could have a reversion for PVP too... i mean ALL skills. just for a weekend.

Takida · Jun 26, 2008, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trinity Fire Angel

this is exactly why has been happening... but PVE isn;t being buffed. it;s being reverted to old power levels from when everything was skewered due to PVP. personally, i would like the entire game to be reset so that every skill is set back to the first setting it had. Perhaps we should have a special "Revert All Skills" weekend. I would like to play against Monster AI the way it was intended for the builds they were originally given in PVE. I mean, the skills have changed... but their builds haven;t.

maybe we could have a reversion for PVP too... i mean ALL skills. just for a weekend.

I would like this for pvp, Shouldnt hurt at all.

Revert everything in PvP just a weekend, without the Factions/Nightfall shit.

would be fun, but wont happen

erk · Jun 26, 2008, 03:04 AM // 03:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

...
The split had ZERO to do with PvP balance. It has EVERYTHING to do with keeping PvE players shut up over balances that did almost nothing to affect their game, and then buffing the crap out of PvE so that people could grind for their HoM and buy Guild Wars 2.

That's just like saying my glass is half full vs my glass is half empty.

A.net have made very little use of this split capability to date, will they bother to, who knows. I do think they should have gone further with the split technology and installed the ability to alter skills for a least the 3 basic team formats of PvP GvG, HA, TA all of which respond differently to skill changes.

The main problem with having 3 basic PvP team formats, is the differing pools of health, energy, adrenaline, and damage which are available to the team at any given time. The size and usage of each pool is influenced things like player numbers, the natural recharge rates, the consumption period each is to be spread over, and vary greatly between each of the 3 game types. On top of that we have factor in the replenishment boosts from healing, resurrection frequency, wells, auto attacks, and other skills, meaning lots of variables to consider!

Just the skill balancing portion is not a simple problem, secondary professions increase the permutations by several orders of magnitude, but fortunately many skills do roughly the same sort of things with "different skins" across the professions eg. Click on heal skill->Time wasted->Energy goes down->Red bar goes up at some predetermined rate.

GW has way too many skills to manually balance, if that's how A.net are attacking the problem then it explains a lot. They need software based on solid formulas to automate the bulk of the basic balance decisions.

The maths of course, has to first be worked out. The developers already know all the parameters that can be adjusted on a skill by looking the data tables they have created, so that's a good starting point. Give that information to some decent mathematicians, and see if they can come up with some balancing algorithms. It would probably save time if the mathematicians knew how to play the game well, but that's not essential if they are smart enough, and ask the right questions. It wouldn't solve the differing requirements of the 3 PvP team formats, but it should tabulate a lot of basic balance issues, and probably suggest a whole lot of changes that would get filed in Izzy's too much, too soon, too hard baskets.

DreamWind · Jun 26, 2008, 05:25 AM // 05:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

That's just like saying my glass is half full vs my glass is half empty.

I would agree with you...except for the fact that Anet has done all PvE buffs and almost nothing relevant in PvP so far...

erk · Jun 26, 2008, 05:42 AM // 05:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

I would agree with you...except for the fact that Anet has done all PvE buffs and almost nothing relevant in PvP so far...

Not quite so, on Update - Thursday, May 22, 2008:

Quote:

We are also reintroducing the PvP balance changes that we tested from April 17 – May 1, along with a few other tweaks to skills. These balance changes will apply only to PvP.

It's a start, there are now 31 PvP skills as a result of the new split system:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:PvP_skills

DreamWind · Jun 26, 2008, 07:19 AM // 07:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

Not quite so, on Update - Thursday, May 22, 2008:

Which many people agreed didn't do much relevant and fixed none of the major problems with PvP atm (bugs and dervishes and blah blah).

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

It's a start, there are now 31 PvP skills as a result of the new split system:
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:PvP_skills

The only reason "PvP skills" exist is because the same skills in PvE had to rebuffed to their old broken forms. It has nothing to do with making PvP more balanced by their existence.

Zabe · Jun 26, 2008, 01:23 PM // 13:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

This would have been the optimal use of the split...

But unfortunately exactly what I predicted came true. I said it as soon as I heard the split was happening (and got flamed by various people on these forums). The split had ZERO to do with PvP balance. It has EVERYTHING to do with keeping PvE players shut up over balances that did almost nothing to affect their game, and then buffing the crap out of PvE so that people could grind for their HoM and buy Guild Wars 2.

Well, ANet has always had great ideas and such. They just every single time fail at making them come true as great. This same shit happened with AT's etc. etc. etc.

Productivity · Jun 26, 2008, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Billiard

To me, what Izzy tries to do when he balances stuff is address the underlying problems without completely killing skills. The thing is, some things players don't like are not considered problems by him in terms of balance. Paragons were pretty bad back in the day, and I think he did a pretty good job toning them down but keeping them still viable in matches. Sins the same thing. He keeps working on Rits, but I think they are pretty close. I think though that Dervishes and Scythe mechanics are his focus now and they still need work.

While I can understand where he's coming from, the result of this attitude has been two years + of increasingly ridiculous gimmicks to deal with. Has the (finally) near balanced addition of ritualists, paragons and assassins been worth the two years of broken balance that we've had to deal with that has been derived from them and the broken balance that continues to be caused by dervishes?

If you ask me, I'd prefer to have never seen any of the expansion classes in PVP and forgo the opportunities that rit runners etc. offer now. You alluded to it, but Izzy's model only works in an environment where he can rapidly make changes. I think he would have been better off completely killing broken synergies and then (very) slowly buffing them back up to the point that they see play again would fit his current one balance a month environment.

What it boils down to is there has never been a consistant period where the game has been in a good state of balance since the release of Factions. The blame for that has to lay squarely at Izzy's feet and you can discuss the underlying reasons that are outside Izzy's control all you want, Izzy either through incompetance or stubbornmindedness refused to adapt to them, which has resulted in a seemingly endless chain of imbalanced crap being played in Guild Wars PVP.

Blame the Monks · Jun 26, 2008, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Billiard

I have talked with Ensign about this quite a bit in the past, which is one reason why I did the interview with him and Izzy: http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...illbalance.php

Back then Izzy and Ensign used to talk a lot about balance and what should be done. I think there might have been a time when Ensign would have considered working for ANet, but I think he actually has bigger plans and really wasn't all that interested. I'm trying to get him to come on the air (along with Izzy) for the Guru Challenge commentary. That should spark some discussion.

Anyway my experience from the Alpha was that even knowledgeable PvP players don't keep the whole picture in perspective when considering balance. Izzy solicited ideas for correcting some imbalanced stuff and all kinds of ideas where thrown out for fixing something, but a lot of them only addressed the symptoms and really didn't fix the problem.

To me, what Izzy tries to do when he balances stuff is address the underlying problems without completely killing skills. The thing is, some things players don't like are not considered problems by him in terms of balance. Paragons were pretty bad back in the day, and I think he did a pretty good job toning them down but keeping them still viable in matches. Sins the same thing. He keeps working on Rits, but I think they are pretty close. I think though that Dervishes and Scythe mechanics are his focus now and they still need work.

Yeah he takes his time doing things, in part because he gets limited dev time for GW changes now. So if he nerfs something too hard, he has to wait a whole cycle before he can bring it back some. Because of this, I think he is very conservative now in how he adjusts skills. Not because he really wants to take forever to get things into balance, but because he doesn't want to make things even worse and then have to wait a long time just to get back to where things were.

Billiard is such a shameless Anet apologist, especially when they obviously screwed up =P

The problem is that Izzy didn't understand what balance is. Balance is when players win by skill, not build. We all wanted multiple strategic options where player skill prevailed, but Izzy didn't. Izzy wanted build wars and a meta of rock/paper/scissor gimmicks, and his long history of random buffs/nerfs shows it. His goal was to shake up the meta, not realizing that each gimmick made the game worse. He thought as long as the meta was changing it was fresh and good, and it was balanced, much like paper/rock/scissors is balanced.

He was wrong, and the game became more and more about build wars and less about skill. That's why the skilled players left.

Billiard · Jun 26, 2008, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

Billiard is such a shameless Anet apologist, especially when they obviously screwed up =P

This is very true. I was talking to some folks there about this earlier in the week as I was kind of getting tired of always looking at the other side of these arguments, especially when ANet never does that themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

The problem is that Izzy didn't understand what balance is. Balance is when players win by skill, not build. We all wanted multiple strategic options where player skill prevailed, but Izzy didn't. Izzy wanted build wars and a meta of rock/paper/scissor gimmicks, and his long history of random buffs/nerfs shows it. His goal was to shake up the meta, not realizing that each gimmick made the game worse. He thought as long as the meta was changing it was fresh and good, and it was balanced, much like paper/rock/scissors is balanced.

He was wrong, and the game became more and more about build wars and less about skill. That's why the skilled players left.

I think this point is close to being correct but not quite there. As has been alluded to many times over the past year, the power creep of the expansions is what RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up balance. Before that, balance was actually pretty good and Izzy did have a hand in that - nerfs to gale warriors, ranger spike, spirit spam, etc. Plus the early changes to VoD and such so matches would not last forever.

But when the new classes came in, they really screwed all of that up. At the same time, his workload greatly changed as they began to work on GW2. So I don't think it's correct to say he doesn't know balance, otherwise we'd never have seen it pre-Factions. But it is fair to say that he has a hard time figuring out how to balance the new mechanics and power creep brought about by the expansions, and on top of that he has a lot less time to figure it out.

So while that really sucks now - and it really does - ANet is also committed to learning from the whole GW1 experiment. I would expect that they will approach expansions a lot differently in the future and try not to break balance so bad by introducing completely new mechanics.

FoxBat · Jun 26, 2008, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

The problem is that Izzy didn't understand what balance is. Balance is when players win by skill, not build. We all wanted multiple strategic options where player skill prevailed, but Izzy didn't. Izzy wanted build wars and a meta of rock/paper/scissor gimmicks, and his long history of random buffs/nerfs shows it. His goal was to shake up the meta, not realizing that each gimmick made the game worse. He thought as long as the meta was changing it was fresh and good, and it was balanced, much like paper/rock/scissors is balanced.
.

As long as you have build options, it's build wars.

Guild Wars is already a game where rank 500 conjure dervs are going to lose to rank 5 balanced. The complaint is that rank 6 conjure dervs will beat rank 5 balanced, but that's because the skill level of both players is close, that the build inevitably makes up the difference. As long as A) there are options for builds and B) the builds are actually significantly different from each other, how could it ever be any other way? The only reason the "Golden Era" people loved worked was due to the lack of build options, which seperated the skills of #6 vs #5 by eliminating builds altogether.

You have people that want a "chess-like" match of pure strategy/skill with mirrored pieces on one side, and you've got people following the CCG-style of rock-paper-scissors metagaming, and correctly guessing which to bring against who. (And yeah, enough people in the middle, like I guess Ensign.) But why would you plop down hundreds of skill choices if you just want 8-9 chess pieces for a strategic match?

Yeah there's enough examples of rank 500 builds beating rank 5, but all of them have been nerfed into the ground. For enough of GW's history this simply hasn't been the case. This is a far more playskill-determines-wins game than something like Magic which has professional players. The very fact that there are enough times in history where elite balanced builds win is what created all this disdain for anything remotely easy, no matter how original or diverse. And as mentioned, there are numerous competitive games with higher stakes that have far more of a luck/metagame factor to them than GW.

It's fine if "balance" to most of the GW elite is chess, but it's not a good match for the game's design vision.

Ec]-[oMaN · Jun 26, 2008, 06:36 PM // 18:36

Build wars was fine and dandy a while back, because you actually had like 10 broken team builds to run. Now that's not the case, so it's limited to run the only OP build, or take heavy counters to it, sry seems just as boring as people complaining they dont want GW to be like chess.

Blame the Monks · Jun 26, 2008, 08:34 PM // 20:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

As long as you have build options, it's build wars.

No its not. Massed dragoons isn't build wars, its a viable and balanced option that can be counted in a variety of ways. Build wars is if you brought the right skill, you autowin. Otherwise, you lose, regardless of skill.

@Billiard

There was some pretty good design work early in the game, and yes, the expansions ruined it. But who caused the expansion power creep? Izzy, by deciding the game needed to be more action packed (over strenuous objections of the alphas). But he nerfed defense and buffed offense, leading to blockway. What caused most of the gimmicks in the last year? Izzy deciding to randomly buff a skill without thinking it through, or deliberately injecting a gimmick into the game to keep it fresh. Its not like bad things just happened, its that anet made the decision not to support pvp and to ignore feedback. Izzy made the decision to introdice power creep, and izzy made the decision to amplify build wars. That's his fault, and his responsibility, and why I point the finger at him.

Hes not a bad guy, but I sincerely hope he isn't the balancer in GW2.

Div · Jun 26, 2008, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ec]-[oMaN

Build wars was fine and dandy a while back, because you actually had like 10 broken team builds to run. Now that's not the case, so it's limited to run the only OP build, or take heavy counters to it, sry seems just as boring as people complaining they dont want GW to be like chess.

Actually I'd say GW before was like chess, with the massive amounts of gimmicks or balanced builds a team could run (even half a year ago, there was dR balance, DF honor, rawrspike, eurospike, euro balance, vD balance, hexes, dervspike, sinfire, sineptitude, and the list goes on). Now it's reduced to dervsmite, water balance, and some variation of the two. We barely have enough builds for RPS, not to mention chess.

erk · Jun 26, 2008, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Which many people agreed didn't do much relevant and fixed none of the major problems with PvP atm (bugs and dervishes and blah blah).

The only reason "PvP skills" exist is because the same skills in PvE had to rebuffed to their old broken forms. It has nothing to do with making PvP more balanced by their existence.

Yeah, so the PvE skills when back to the way they were pre April 17th., and the PvP skills were mostly nerfs to help PvP. What else the skill split system supposed to do pray tell? Fixing the current problems is another issue altogether for a future update, but you first have to convince A.net there are still problems, good luck! The skill split system is in place and tested ok except for the pointless icon and notifications.

Channeling_Monk · Jun 29, 2008, 05:04 AM // 05:04

A truly balanced game has no metagame. That's what izzy fails to realize. He keeps saying "we want to push the metagame in X direction." Why do you want to do that? Variety means people will be running seemingly random things, and they will all be of relatively equal power levels. When you can't make a build based on the metagame, the result is that 100% of teams run effective, flexible builds.

Izzy doesn't even do Game Balances. He does Game Power Shifts. One thing becomes weakened and something else becomes broken, and we're stuck with a metagame of 2 or 3 builds every single time. We can see this in HA. Sway is almost gone, and ranger spike and SF spike have replaced it. Hexway is everywhere, even in TA.

His last problem is that he doesn't know what makes a skill good/bad because he doesn't play much. He thinks changing a number on the cast/recharge/activation or the scalable values will fix everything. SOmetimes it does, but a majority of the time, it's a problem with the skill itself, not the numbers on it. "Can't Touch This!" is a perfect example of that. You could make it last forever with infinite triggers, make it free and affect the whole party, and it would still be bad.

I stopped caring about GW2 when I heard izzy was going to balance it.

Killed u man · Jun 29, 2008, 05:07 AM // 05:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Channeling_Monk

"Can't Touch This!" is a perfect example of that. You could make it last forever with infinite triggers, make it free and affect the whole party, and it would still be bad..

Bye Bye Shock Warriors...

DarkNecrid · Jun 29, 2008, 07:38 AM // 07:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Bye Bye Shock Warriors...

It's bad because it doesn't cause them to fail as in lose energy. ie: if you have say, Shock, on skill #5 and Cant Touch This lasted for like 100 touch skills, and you set 20 keys to skill #5 in the config (lol), you could just mash them all and it would come out in a split second. It's really dumb. It should make you lose energy, at least.

Quote:

A truly balanced game has no metagame. That's what izzy fails to realize. He keeps saying "we want to push the metagame in X direction." Why do you want to do that? Variety means people will be running seemingly random things, and they will all be of relatively equal power levels. When you can't make a build based on the metagame, the result is that 100% of teams run effective, flexible builds.

This is really hard in this type of game tho, imo. I mean, the reason it works so well in StarCraft, where the metagame comes from the map and what your opponent is doing it (since it is ultimately a RPS game in unit structure, only better.) is because it's a RPS game where you can change the "build" constantly. If you see what your opponent is up to, you can instantly build a way against it. Whereas in Guild Wars there are these counters too, yet you can't see what you're fighting until it is possibly too late. Therefore StarCraft has a metagame (and yes, it is truly balanced) but the variety and direction comes from the map and reaction to the opposition.

There are too many counter based skills in Guild Wars to promote this same level of 100% team effective flexibility. Too many things only work vs spells, too many things work only vs signets, too many things only work etc etc etc. And you can't change yourself to beat that stuff with your skill bars until it is too late.

Its a near impossible thing to fix now, the best thing he can strive for is making a ton of balanced options, while removing gimmicks as much as possible.