Curse

Thom Bangalter · Aug 30, 2006, 06:48 PM // 18:48

an unstable metagame is great for players. I remember when I used to play magic: the gathering. I stopped around the time the psychatog build was used in all tournaments. basically, you either ran that particular build, or you ran the one used to counter it. not exactly fun. an unstable metagame means both you have no idea what's coming, and that in fact it DOES come down to individual skill, because your build should hopefully be able to outplay the other teams.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 30, 2006, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

an unstable metagame is great for players. I remember when I used to play magic: the gathering. I stopped around the time the psychatog build was used in all tournaments. basically, you either ran that particular build, or you ran the one used to counter it. not exactly fun. an unstable metagame means both you have no idea what's coming, and that in fact it DOES come down to individual skill, because your build should hopefully be able to outplay the other teams.

I don't think a stable metagame necessarily means a single build dominates everything. Rather, I think it means that everyone understands the possible components of any build. There was some decent build variety in the OOB-gale-surge days, but it was made up of aspects everyone understood. You knew what a Gale warrior was, its counters, and what it could be expected to do. You knew what a surger was, how to counter it, and what it could be expected to do. Ect.

In an unstable metagame, people are constantly coming up with new templates and skill interactions. Going into a given match there's a good chance you'll meet something that nobody's dealt with or knows how to counter. Even if the enemy's decisions in the match aren't as good as yours, they'll still be able to win purely on the strength of their build.

Fun is a very subjective term.

Elaine Donnerbalken · Aug 30, 2006, 09:24 PM // 21:24

I don't know if i was misunderstood, so I'll try to clarify.

I don't favorize perfect counters, and I think that "balanced" builds are an effort to stand up against as many possible enemies as good as possible, without specializing in defeating a certain build.

My point is that if the diversity of builds becomes to big, there could be the scenario that you don't stand _any_ (or a laughable small, foes can suck allways) chance against an enemy simply because your balanced build couldn't equip the necessesary skills to counter their build due to lack of skillslots.

I don't want GW to become rock-paper-scissors, I don't want to _only_ gamble.

(For clarification, with "SB/RI" builds i meant generally builds that need more or less effort in form of skillslots to stand a chance against it, without these skillslots being (very?) useful for most of the other enemies you'll meet (or other builds of the "SB/RI" kind) .)

To end this post apologies if i misunderstood your answers, I'm starting to lose confidence in my english.

Thom Bangalter · Aug 30, 2006, 09:44 PM // 21:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I don't think a stable metagame necessarily means a single build dominates everything. Rather, I think it means that everyone understands the possible components of any build. There was some decent build variety in the OOB-gale-surge days, but it was made up of aspects everyone understood. You knew what a Gale warrior was, its counters, and what it could be expected to do. You knew what a surger was, how to counter it, and what it could be expected to do. Ect.

In an unstable metagame, people are constantly coming up with new templates and skill interactions. Going into a given match there's a good chance you'll meet something that nobody's dealt with or knows how to counter. Even if the enemy's decisions in the match aren't as good as yours, they'll still be able to win purely on the strength of their build.

Fun is a very subjective term.

You seem to reinforce my point when it comes to the OOB-Gale-surge days. You ran the counters for it, or you ran the build, etc. You knew exactly what was coming. In the unstable metagame, you have builds, as you said, that nobody's dealt with. But why is this a bad thing? You still have the option to outplay them, but if the build dominates yours, then prematch decision making on their part was (arguably) better than yours. I think the gameplay is a bit more interesting in this part, in that you may get rolled by odd builds that you haven't seen before, but I think that's a benefit of having a large skillset to choose from.

Perhaps if the game sticks around, we'll see a rise in the formats where only certain skills are allowed; this requires a bit more ingenuity on the part of Anet to get the players behind it and make it work, something I don't see happening unless the servers are up for like 10 years.

you're right though, Fun is a subjective term.

Greedy Gus · Aug 30, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

In an unstable metagame, people are constantly coming up with new templates and skill interactions. Going into a given match there's a good chance you'll meet something that nobody's dealt with or knows how to counter.

I'm pretty sure there's a great chance you'll meet an enemy using damage to attempt to kill you, through either spike, split, or pressure based offense.

Who the fork cares what skills they bring? You're going to bring some healing, prot, enchant removal, hex removal, condition removal, one or two splittable characters, a few interrupts, and some physical shutdown regardless of what they have, because that's applicable to every build. A balanced build isn't designed to counter every single skill in the game, it's designed to be able to deal with every single higher level concept, like damage, enchants, hexes, degen, split, etc.

timmyw29 · Aug 30, 2006, 11:21 PM // 23:21

Being able to counter every one of those things doesn't necessarily mean you've countered a skill combination that includes them.
Example: Shadow form assassins. They use enchantments, but your everyday enchant strips don't cut it. You have to use non-spell enchant strips, AoE enchant strips, don't you?

I think this is what Squidget may have been referring to. Skill combinations that yes, involve higher-level concepts, but have the extra edge against whatever you're likely to throw at them.

rii · Aug 31, 2006, 10:44 AM // 10:44

Agreeing with Gus, no matter how many skills there are the majority of builds can be easily pigeonholed into spike, pressure, gank, etc, etc, and the specifics of it doesn't make much difference. If you don't know what skills do then frankly you can't expect to be beating people - but there is no inherent flaw in this. If you don't know what skills do and how they are being applied IMO you deserve to loose. The last time I saw anything truly inventive was SB/RI interaction, and didn't understand what was going on until I looked a bit harder. Since then there has been nothing truly 'different', it has just been another way of doing the same thing.

As for shadow form assassins, then arguing from the point of enchantment removal is obvioulsy hard, since most people just don't bring that kind of removal. But thats not shadow forms only aspect, if they are running the 'constant' shadow form variant arcane echo and arcane mimicry are far from invunerable to interrupts (as an example) and if they aren't, then the assassin is weak outside of his elite. I may be wrong, but doesn't blackout work through shadow form, being a skill not a spell/attack? That can be used to disrupt their chains, etc. Digression, though. Most builds have different styles of attack but defence against them for most 'toolbox' builds is the same.

Wasteland Squidget · Aug 31, 2006, 11:37 AM // 11:37

I think the classes introduced in Nightfall probably will require some different skill counters. Obviously the skills themselves will still fit into the categories Gus outlined, but that doesn't mean their interactions won't require unique counters in build.

The most obvious of these is the Dervish, which (judging from the preview weekend) seems to be built as a caster with DDs that are actually worth using. If Dervish DDs become a serious form of pressure damage, you'll need to bring a lot of Dervish-specific counters in order to fight a Dervish-based offense. Right now you bring enough warrior hate to survive under warrior pressure, and enough disruption (in various forms) to interfere with enemy spikes. The Dervish adds a third kind of defense you need to pack into a build.

While I don't think it will become game-breaking for a while, I think it's inevitable that you'll see builds in Nightfall which require build-specific counters. The less you know about the builds you're going to run into, the more general counters you have to pack into your build. Even 'balanced' builds have things they're going to be weaker or stronger at dealing with.

Vermilion Okeanos · Aug 31, 2006, 01:35 PM // 13:35

It wouldn't matter that everyone got a different version of SB/RI while you have no counter, because your own build should be just as powerful without being a SB/RI counter. Use your build to the most advantageous.

There are no build that is good at doing every single thing out there. (due to limited slots)

Now it will be up to the player to find the most important priority in each mode, and make a build that suit it. The best part being, there are 50+ different answers to that.

hyro yamaguchi · Sep 01, 2006, 03:14 PM // 15:14

Ok let me compare this thing to something; soccer;

A soccer team can have 11 überplayers and still lose; look at Brasil this WC!

Why? Because soccer, like Guildwars, is about teamplay;

1 good player doesn't make a team good; nor do 8 good players. Well...that's not exactly true; let's say we got 8 interrupters (to keep things easy). Every single one of those interrupters may be very good at interrupting, but no team player. The team will lose. Now 8 common skilled interrupters who team play; they will win.

So? You ask me why are you telling this old news?

Beacause; even if there are überbuilds, it will always be the team that teamplays best which will be victorious. And this teamplay is applyable to every single build; no mather what builds are out there great team players will stay great team players.

And if everyone has the same build, the person who can play this build the best; as a team, wins. Unstable or not; it doesn't mather; Skill beats everything.