Guild Wars 2

I disagree. They have made many large changes in the professions. The problem I see, is that posters tend to claim the changes are bad or pretend they do not occur simply because the changes made were not the specific ones the said poster wants themselves.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I disagree. They have made many large changes in the professions. The problem I see, is that posters tend to claim the changes are bad or pretend they do not occur simply because the changes made were not the specific ones the said poster wants themselves.

Trait number shuffling, reshuffling, more reshuffling and text corrections are not anywhere near “large changes to professions” for a “AAA” development team running a “AAA” mmo.

The problem is lack of development not the players. Go read the thread “Balance, iteration and wrongdoing” in this subsection to open your mind a bit.

No. Although the complete skill and trait functionality changes are. The fact is, they made some total changes to many skills and traits. As well as adding totally new ones. Simply because you suggest they have done none of that, doesn’t make it true my friend.

Play to win, don’t be a Scrub..

i wish it can be in large scaled matches..
cuz of there is no support from anet to large scale fights as, there is no adaptation to game mechanic for large scale fights and there is no have Offical mode(offical ranks, offical maps) for it.. no competition.. so i made my new char names with bla bla,, scrub, holysh 1t, holycrab, holycrap.. at least it puts a smile on face

“Balance is Subjective”

What is this? Degenerate game design for people who think tic-tac-toe is DEEP?

Balance is ANYTHING BUT subjective. That’s kind of why its a job. There’s art to it, but there’s also PROCESS. And process is by far the more important element of herding a game system.

Players are subjective, because the sum total of their experience (their sample size) will never amount to anything larger than a rounding error at the scope at which this game operates. And so their input/feedback tends towards the deeply personal rather than addressing the environment as a whole – its not worthless, but man do you have to filter it thoroughly. In fact about the most important things a single player can do are A- find and report an exploit, and B- create a build that so blows the performance curve that it virtually IS an exploit. All this sniveling about other people’s builds/play, that’s pretty much garbage compared to what a Dev can pull directly from the game itself with a half decent set of database queries. Please, do go on wasting your breath doing it though. If it makes you happy wasting your breath.

If you think a build you’ve encountered is OP here’s what you actually need to do to get it nerfed:

PLAY IT.

Put more data into the system about it and draw attention through the metrics gathering that it’s a bit above the line — assuming that in your hands it actually is above the line and you didn’t just get schooled by a better player in the first place.

Nike.2631:

“Balance is Subjective”

What is this? Degenerate game design for people who think tic-tac-toe is DEEP?

Balance is ANYTHING BUT subjective. That’s kind of why its a job. There’s art to it, but there’s also PROCESS. And process is by far the more important element of herding a game system.

Players are subjective, because the sum total of their experience (their sample size) will never amount to anything larger than a rounding error at the scope at which this game operates. And so their input/feedback tends towards the deeply personal rather than addressing the environment as a whole – its not worthless, but man do you have to filter it thoroughly. In fact about the most important things a single player can do are A- find and report an exploit, and B- create a build that so blows the performance curve that it virtually IS an exploit. All this sniveling about other people’s builds/play, that’s pretty much garbage compared to what a Dev can pull directly from the game itself with a half decent set of database queries. Please, do go on wasting your breath doing it though. If it makes you happy wasting your breath.

If you think a build you’ve encountered is OP here’s what you actually need to do to get it nerfed:

PLAY IT.

Put more data into the system about it and draw attention through the metrics gathering that it’s a bit above the line — assuming that in your hands it actually is above the line and you didn’t just get schooled by a better player in the first place.

And could you kindly do this for me? Stop being such a narcissist and actually realise that a MMORPG is nothing without the players. Actually it’s right there in the acronym “Massive Multiplayer”. Next time you come onto forums where people discuss things based on their experiences realise that we are a community not “data”.

Funny you should mention narcissism and “but we’re so special, we miniscule few who post on the forums” in the same breath. “We’re the Players, and you should ask how high when we say ‘jump’.” You’ll find the word “Massively” in that same genre category you pointed to. And if you read what I said you’ll see that I mentioned good designers don’t disregard feedback – they just put it into a much larger context.

I’ve had this exact conversation from your seat in a CDI discussing drop rates and player experience vs. statistically expected behavior. But the first thing most people playing in PvP modes throw out the window is that when the system is working right you should lose a lot. I mean a whole lot. Like 5 times out of every 10 encounters . So when people drop by to complain that they’re losing, unless its part of a Massively Multiplayer trend (the kind that’s easily spotted from the metrics) the sensible Dev just smiles and goes about his business. Assuming they’ve read the post at all. Our last red name post here was what? Almost 3 months ago?

Nike.2631:

But the first thing most people playing in PvP modes throw out the window is that when the system is working right you should lose a lot. I mean a whole lot. Like 5 times out of every 10 encounters

That is true, and was a major issue for Starcraft II when it released.

The matchmaking was so good that it managed to get players to a near-perfect 50% win/loss chance. In fact that’s essentially what it tries to do: If you win 60% of your fights, it matches you against continuously higher opponents until you either a) qualify for a league rank-up or b) your win-rate is down to 50% again, then it eases up if you drop below 50%.

But here’s the real issue with it: Red traffic light syndrome.

Because while Blizzard was proud as hell that they made a near-perfect win/loss ratio matchmaker, the players were complaining hard that they were losing “most of the time”.

Because that’s what happens. We remember the bad moments much more vividly than the good ones. In win/loss percentages, we don’t consider 50% balanced. We just… don’t.
I remember reading somewhere that on average players will state they win/lose evenly if they actually win ~70% of matches. Now, ofc you can’t make a matchmaker for that, which means that any good non-pub-stomp-enabling matching system can and will make you feel unhappy. It’s in the nature of how we perceive it.

The really tricky thing is to make players not feel like they’re losing until the score screen. That way, they mostly get enjoyment out of it. They’ll still be unhappy that they lose “most of the time”, ofc.

Carighan.6758:

Nike.2631:

But the first thing most people playing in PvP modes throw out the window is that when the system is working right you should lose a lot. I mean a whole lot. Like 5 times out of every 10 encounters

That is true, and was a major issue for Starcraft II when it released.

The matchmaking was so good that it managed to get players to a near-perfect 50% win/loss chance. In fact that’s essentially what it tries to do: If you win 60% of your fights, it matches you against continuously higher opponents until you either a) qualify for a league rank-up or b) your win-rate is down to 50% again, then it eases up if you drop below 50%.

But here’s the real issue with it: Red traffic light syndrome.

Because while Blizzard was proud as hell that they made a near-perfect win/loss ratio matchmaker, the players were complaining hard that they were losing “most of the time”.

Because that’s what happens. We remember the bad moments much more vividly than the good ones. In win/loss percentages, we don’t consider 50% balanced. We just… don’t.
I remember reading somewhere that on average players will state they win/lose evenly if they actually win ~70% of matches. Now, ofc you can’t make a matchmaker for that, which means that any good non-pub-stomp-enabling matching system can and will make you feel unhappy. It’s in the nature of how we perceive it.

The really tricky thing is to make players not feel like they’re losing until the score screen. That way, they mostly get enjoyment out of it. They’ll still be unhappy that they lose “most of the time”, ofc.

Very good point Carighan because the way we experience competition is by winning or losing. But also Nike I understand that by being too subjective in our opinions of balance is bad feedback. By making the pvp combat challenging but also not too hard to learn creates a diverse pvp community.

The problem is when the game is objectively balanced completely without any player feedback then it becomes very unpopular quickly. This is why Balance is subjective because players who pvp want to have fun which is highly subjective. This is just my opinions of course because I’m sure that general balance is much harder than it seems.

Its not a good point at all.
In a balanced and skillful game you are supposed to lose 9 times out of 10 or win 9 times out of 10 against the same opponent.

If you lose half of the times, you either are on the same skill of your opponent but more possibly skill doesn t have any role in the game.

LordByron.8369:

Its not a good point at all.
In a balanced and skillful game you are supposed to lose 9 times out of 10 or win 9 times out of 10 against the same opponent.

If you lose half of the times, you either are on the same skill of your opponent but more possibly skill doesn t have any role in the game.

Only you don’t click “Queue me against ‘ricky’” in the queue screen.
The Matchmaker purposely tries to match you so your final win/loss ratio comes out to 50/50, while trying to “diverge” as little as possible (meaning it tries to do this via matching you against slightly stronger or slightly weaker people).

Notice the important point, it never tries to match you against people of your skill much. Ultimately it’d be supposed to do that, but it’s in no hurry because first it has to get you to 50%, and a constant influx of new players and existent players returning from breaks (or going onto them) keeps the setup in turmoil and the system needing to push people up or down in percentages.

Now if, as you say, you’d reliably lose or win against these people with virtually no chance of fighting back, then that’d be no fun for anyone. Which is why, even though Starcraft II is an extremely competitive game with a very fine-tuned balance, a lower skilled player can and will frequently beat opponents he should not be able to beat. He’ll just on average lose slightly more (say, 6 out of 10) until he approaches his final scoring destination, where assuming the system settles he’ll play an equal mix of 3/10, 4/10, 5/10, 6/10 and 7/10 games so that on average he’s winning half the matches while not feeling like the games are coin-toss-balanced.

Curiously enough, existent race imbalances has ~no effect on this in SC2. Win-percentages budges by 1%-2% maybe. Which is a big issue, but not for any individual player, it’s virtually imperceptible there. Yet players complain about it a lot and sound as if they’re losing every round to completely unfair tactics.

What I’m trying to say is: “Balanced”, as in, the numerical concept, is sadly incompatible with “Balanced”, what players would understand it means.
Deciding for either is tricky. The former is easy to achieve, can partially be done with a matchmaker, and allows for more freeform class design. The issue is that players accept it in some genres (MOBAs, Fighting Games, TBS), but not in others (MMOs, RTS).

People train, learn and adapt to become better, that is where they can beat opponent that once they could not.

Good points and discussion everyone LordByron, Carighan, Nike and anybody else I haven’t mentioned. Looks like Arenanet noticed this forum with this Red Post. Please direct all the feedback on the metagame there thanks.