Curse

Vaga · Sep 18, 2007, 02:59 PM // 14:59

Sealed deck is hardly the last chance at a balanced game, Guild Wars is pretty balanced right now considering everyone pretty much runs the same build. The problem with it is that the meta build everyone runs is boring to play since it's just a defensive ball which means people don't want to play GW which makes it die.

It's funny that people say evil ran a good AoD sin when last of master got raped all the time because he was bad. The best users of AoD sins were WM and QQ. You could easily deal with the dual assassin splits by sending 2 guys back...AoD was only good because of its collapsing power. Assassins may have been slightly overpowered but if AoD was nerfed to radar range back then I would say that they would have been pretty balanced in terms of utility vs damage.

Jaen · Sep 18, 2007, 07:19 PM // 19:19

Meta is always changing. It is changing right now with ways to deal with defense stack.

Sealed deck play would be a nice OPTION (read: OPTION) for players who want to play with a limited skill pool and want playstyles dictated for them, but I'm sure there are players out there who enjoy their freedom in evolving their builds to deal with the evolving meta.

I think it's kinda interesting how so many players on GURU instantly think they can do a better job of balancing the game than Isaiah can. A lot of posters here don't even have the high end PvP experience. Watching matches on OBS and playing them are very different things.

I'm not saying Isaiah is performing flawlessly and should not be criticized, but consider the pressure you'd be under if you put your sole name out there as the person responsible for balance.

Hindsight is 20/20 and it's easy to criticize decisions when you're not in the driver's seat.

greyf0x_f0x · Sep 18, 2007, 08:29 PM // 20:29

I think a far more promising concept than a "Global Sealed Deck" would be a player designed "Local Sealed Deck".

Let players create their own sealed decks for individual matches or tournaments etc.

The problem with limiting the skill pool, is that there will always be an argument to leave skills in, and to take skills out. I think it would be pretty hard for ANet to make the definitive "Skill Set", I also think it'd be pretty daft to try.

Buuuut, the moment you let players set the limits themselves, you open up a world of possibilities.

Of course they'd need to make a slightly different way of scrimmaging. Possible a hybrid between an alliance/guild scrimmage, crossed between a full on ranked ladder match. Call it a "Friendly" or somthing. And give people the ability to modifiy certain aspects of the match.

Heck, you could even add more variables, increase/decrease the time untill VoD, Limit team size... all kinds of crazy shizzle. It'd be similar to the way that in many FPS/RTS games, you can have "custom" matches, which are simply for fun, and give players the ability to modify game mechanics outside of their normal opperation.

Jaen · Sep 19, 2007, 01:21 AM // 01:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by greyf0x_f0x

I think a far more promising concept than a "Global Sealed Deck" would be a player designed "Local Sealed Deck".

Let players create their own sealed decks for individual matches or tournaments etc.

The problem with limiting the skill pool, is that there will always be an argument to leave skills in, and to take skills out. I think it would be pretty hard for ANet to make the definitive "Skill Set", I also think it'd be pretty daft to try.

Buuuut, the moment you let players set the limits themselves, you open up a world of possibilities.

Of course they'd need to make a slightly different way of scrimmaging. Possible a hybrid between an alliance/guild scrimmage, crossed between a full on ranked ladder match. Call it a "Friendly" or somthing. And give people the ability to modifiy certain aspects of the match.

Heck, you could even add more variables, increase/decrease the time untill VoD, Limit team size... all kinds of crazy shizzle. It'd be similar to the way that in many FPS/RTS games, you can have "custom" matches, which are simply for fun, and give players the ability to modify game mechanics outside of their normal opperation.

This idea has merit but has two immediate problems that I can see.

1) The game is probably not coded/setup in a way that they can allow players to modify these variables easily. With most of the stuff done server-side I'm willing to bet there'd be a fair amount of work needed to accomodate match customization of this level.

2) Popular opinion is that PvP player base is small and shrinking rather than growing, adding more game types or the potential to change such settings risks dividing the existing player base into more sub-groups which lessen the amount of matches. Under the best case scenario a new standard would be agreed upon by the majority of the community but to achieve this end, it's probably a better idea to get ANET to modify the existing standard instead.

Vaga · Sep 19, 2007, 07:21 AM // 07:21

It's pretty clear that a lot of people could do a better job than Izzy at balancing the game and quite frankly I'm surprised that Anet hasn't bothered to hire someone who played GW competitively to do the skill balancing for GW2.

At the end of the day Izzy's actions speak far louder than his constant excuses for why he can't do this and that. After GW had been out for a significant amount of time and had two world championships Izzy created skills like searing flames, wearying strike, and avatar and grenth. In his time he also created fundamentally flawed classes in ritualists and paragons. The metagame was hexes for months and has only recently been replaced by a defensive ball. All this while people like Ensign have been telling him exactly what needs to be changed to put GW in the right direction.

pah01 · Sep 19, 2007, 03:15 PM // 15:15

to be fair i dont think it was izzys fault that the rit/sin etc are so bad for the game. That is a development decsion that cant be just him.

That said if i was izzy i would have asked Jeff Strain to fire the developer who came up with the following skills.

Rampage as One, Avatar of anything, energising finale, shadow prison.