Curse

Riotgear · Jun 18, 2008, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Saying rock-paper-scissors is balanced is like saying baseball games should flip a coin at the start of the match to give one team a 10-run lead, which is fine because coin flips are balanced.

Kaon · Jun 18, 2008, 02:11 PM // 14:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Agreed, but at the same time it's also the most imbalanced. One autobeats another which autobeats another which autobeats the first. Balanced on a meta level (as all three options are equally as powerful) but not on a micro level (because of the very one sided nature of the options). It's like Guild Wars with omega hex builds, omega physical and omega spike. Hex beats phsyical which beats spike which beats hex. Not a game I think any of us want to play.

Exactly, which is why rock paper scissors is actually the least balanced game in existance, because it features a world of 3 overpowered objects and leaves playerskill completely out of it. Counters can be fine, but they should never be too strong. I don't want 1 skill like Shields up used to do control an entire build. Rock paper scissors is just absolutely terrible.

Snowball arena had rock paper scissors balance in it, and we all know its a piece of crap because of that. Any moment you try to take it serious you get RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed because the odds will work against you one moment or another. Sometimes my team would be many times better than the opponent, but being grenth and picking up 9 fake presents and having all presents spawn near opponents just doesn't help. These are all random factors derived from the basics of RPS: chance.

And that is why izzy is bad, he buffs randomly without purpose, and in any other case he tries to make the game like rps.

Just another story to finish this off: When Izzy buffed pious assault to 0,5s activation and deepwound everyone was like, WTF?! When he came to IRC and people asked him about it he said: Prove to me that it's overpowered and i'll nerf it. That's the way he balances things... A skill that has no use but to be useless or overpowered (as we saw a month later with dervspike). Two months later he buffed the ranger attack skills creating turretrangers. One footnote on this is that instead of reverting the skills back to the way they used to be he just nerfed them into shit, I used to have a really cool ranger build that got absolutely RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed over because of this shit, and i know there's a lot of pvers/abers that think the same.

Now there are all these conditionbuffs. Fragility, barbed spear, barbed arrows, fevered dreams. Why doesn't izzy understand that these skills have no use in gvg unless in a true gimmick? Symbolic strike too.

Problem. · Jun 18, 2008, 02:45 PM // 14:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Agreed, but at the same time it's also the most imbalanced. One autobeats another which autobeats another which autobeats the first. Balanced on a meta level (as all three options are equally as powerful) but not on a micro level (because of the very one sided nature of the options). It's like Guild Wars with omega hex builds, omega physical and omega spike. Hex beats phsyical which beats spike which beats hex. Not a game I think any of us want to play.

You're right, the main point I was trying to get at was that everything is viable on a macro level, which is what Guild Wars needs to aim for. However, considering Guild Wars' complexity, contrary to the simplicity of rock paper scissors, things need to be done on the micro level as well to ensure both balance and viability.

diff · Jun 18, 2008, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Saying rock-paper-scissors is balanced is like saying baseball games should flip a coin at the start of the match to give one team a 10-run lead, which is fine because coin flips are balanced.

You underestimate RPS a lot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors

DarkNecrid · Jun 18, 2008, 05:47 PM // 17:47

RPS is balanced in-so-far-as that every option has an equal chance of winning & losing on the physical level, however due to psychological and mental factors, the game becomes largely imbalanced.

ie: if GW became truly R-P-S, and the three options were either Hex, Damage, or Defense, and Hex > Damage, Damage > Defense, Defense > Hex (random example), everyone would immediately take Damage vs rawr, yet since rawr is expecting everyone to take Damage, they take Hex, yet someone might expect rawr to take Hex, so they take defense....etc.

You see? It becomes a skillless guessing game.

Greedy Gus · Jun 18, 2008, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

It's the easy way out of balancing games, used by M:TG as a well known example.

Instead of actually trying to achieve complete balace (which is tricky but generally more rewarding) you just cycle the meta with buffs and nerfs that aren't really aimed at achieving 'balance' at all. It prevents the game from becoming stale, but at the same time you can never reach the peak of balance that a game like Guild Wars really needs to be competitive.

Yep. There was actually a promotional interview with Jeff Strain just before Factions came out, where he 'explained' balance:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Strain

"There is no state of perfect balance. There is no time ever in the future of this game where we're going to say 'We have achieved perfect balance, so we're done with that.' To us, balance is something that can go stale over time. Even if you achieve balance, 6 months down the road if you have not changed it at all, then it starts to go stale.

So very recently, we released a new live build that overhauled a lot of the older skills. What we were starting to see was that over time, people had developed their favorites, and there was kind of a general analysis of which ones were the best or which builds were the best. So what we did was we went through all of the 450 existing core skills and identified skills that were really cool, but weren't being used very often, and we refreshed them. We made them more powerful, or we tweaked them a little bit to make them more useful in more diverse circumstances. And as expected, it has completely refreshed the game balance. So, game balance is not something you either have or don't have; it's something that's either fresh or stale. We do view it as a living, breathing entity of its own, and we change it regularly and will continue to do that."

Just another unfortunate example of design views catering to casual play (RA mindset) at the cost of a good competitive environment. Personally, I'm much more of a fan of the Starcraft style of balance, where they did aim for "perfect balance" and decided to be "done with that". They left keeping the game 'fresh' up to the korean map-makers (experts are king, not izzy) and individual players/strategies coming and going.

If you're interested, the skill update he was referring to was the big one after GWWC that killed off gale wars, oob monks, etc.: http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game_updates/20060302

around · Jun 18, 2008, 06:56 PM // 18:56

I don't mind the occasional big shake up, where a whole load of skills suddenly get rebalanced, as long as nothing after the shake is excessively unbalanced and stays that way.

ANet fail at the bolded part.

Master Fuhon · Jun 18, 2008, 07:18 PM // 19:18

Rock, paper, scissors (RPS) always needs to come up with balance discussions of games. RPS is the holy grail of Real time strategy (RTS) game balance. And there's a reason why it works, because every opponent is capable of dynamically generating the rocks, paper, and scissors, in the same way that every hand is capable of doing so (in other words they are self-sufficient and changeable). Trying to do this in an MMO is like playing RPS with an elephant (paw = rock), dolphin (flipper = paper), and a crab (claw = scissors). Neither can change the shape of the object at any point, so they go on hoping they never face each other. The RPS balance breaks down at the point where is costs too many resources to generate a counter, or in the case where you add more players and two rocks can smash paper.

Ways of dealing damage are the rock/paper/scissors. As we know in guild wars, rock = physical, paper = hex, and scissors = spike. The problem is that there is a fourth combination that no one speaks about. No hand = defense (the object than can't kill or be killed). By not throwing down a hand, you prolong the game forever, and you don't get beaten. You can't deny the existence of the no hand tactic because things like monks are vital to rpg play. I believe no hand is an auto-lose in RPS, but if I bring up the animal analogy again, the snake is pissed he loses every time because he has no freaking hands.

The thing about RTS is that when you send a rock against the opponent's paper, you lose the rock but you don't lose the match. And you play the random generation game again hoping for better results and hoping you learned something about an opponent (that's also why I would never agree to a best of 1 RPS). I'm not sure of the best way to encourage dynamic RPS generation during matches aside from making every class most effective with a self sufficient build (If 8 guys can snare, the one who doesn't take snare removal is screwed. That probably would be too much like RA). Or having an expected build requirement of two rocks, two paper, two scissors, and two no hands (which would kill off group buffing skills, secondary skills make this a problem).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Strain

So, game balance is not something you either have or don't have; it's something that's either fresh or stale.

As vague as he tries to stay in that quote, (in context) this is too self-delusional for my liking. I think I'm going to expect more imbalance since it is so "fresh".

Kaon · Jun 18, 2008, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Wow people stop throwing walls of texts at it, the bulletpoint is just that RPS sucks and is bad for the game. No need to waste pages of this thread on it, or just make a seperate thread about it. The other bulletpoint of course is that izzy is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing terrible at his job and needs to be fired

.

Riotgear · Jun 19, 2008, 05:15 AM // 05:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Now there are all these conditionbuffs. Fragility, barbed spear, barbed arrows, fevered dreams. Why doesn't izzy understand that these skills have no use in gvg unless in a true gimmick? Symbolic strike too.

I've seen more than a few people say that a major reason they wouldn't run a second ranger is because of redundancy, especially with Apply from the fact that Barbed was so bad.

Barbed Spear did not need a buff.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jun 19, 2008, 07:28 AM // 07:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

I've seen more than a few people say that a major reason they wouldn't run a second ranger is because of redundancy, especially with Apply from the fact that Barbed was so bad.

The major reason most guilds don't run a second ranger is because most guilds barely have 1 half decent ranger, let alone 2.

Also, rangers suck at vod.

Burton2000 · Jun 19, 2008, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Buurrrninng arrow!!

I dunno having a ranger to d-shot stuff at vod is nice and can win games. Also, you can always split your ranger at vod to pull off their rit or npcs if they dont have a ranger.

Kaon · Jun 19, 2008, 06:36 PM // 18:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burton2000

Buurrrninng arrow!!

I dunno having a ranger to d-shot stuff at vod is nice and can win games. Also, you can always split your ranger at vod to pull off their rit or npcs if they dont have a ranger.

And while you're pulling npcs their extra paragon/signetmesmer/warrior at the stand will wtfpwn the rest of your team.

Legendary Shiz · Jun 19, 2008, 07:05 PM // 19:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

The major reason most guilds don't run a second ranger is because most guilds barely have 1 half decent ranger, let alone 2.

Also, rangers suck at vod.

Quoted For Truth