Guild Wars 2

I’d assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession. Everyone would get a shot at filling in this position, but there would be a catch, you’d have to pass an extensive knowledge test, dealing with the games mechanics, the classes profession and also show your skill level is beyond the average players.

This wouldn’t be everything pertaining to my list of to do things but its a good start IMO.

I’d set up a twitch tv account for each of these player testers on said class and encourage the community watch them in live action and provide feedback.

Each team lead for X class would have to spend countless hours testing all trait abilities finding out just exactly how they work inside and out and then find a solution so that all traits would become valuable.

Each team lead for X class would have to spend countless hours 1v1ing their own class and all other classes. I’d also strongly encourage the community to be apart of these 1v1 tests.

Each team lead for X class would have to spend countless hours trying to solo in WvW with multiple builds in mind, eventually creating several builds that provide great returns. Several builds must be created which cater to casual players and hardcore players.

Note class balance would not be based upon making X class stronger, but would rather focus on creating a multitude of great options. (Traits, Weapons, Abilities)

All team leads for X class would work on forming their own havoc groups (With multiple class combinations in mind) and determine how to make OTHER classes (Which seemed to be lacking) just as appealing for team play as their class. (Based upon a great amount of experience). The end goal would be to find several builds for each class which would provide a unique role for the team play scene.

The ultimate goal is to create multiple viable builds, meaning all traits, skills and abilities are now viable. A playstyle on each class ranging from casual to pro-player difficulty would be just as important.

Perhaps you should be a presidential candidate. :P

It’s easy to say something, but often hard to do it.

LastDay.3524:

Perhaps you should be a presidential candidate. :P

It’s easy to say something, but often hard to do it.

If I was given the power to make it happen I’d spend all of my free time making it happen. You don’t even want to know how obsessed I am with this games class balance.

Turning a game into a job is about the quickest way possible to make you detest it. Real test is could you be just as passionate about it when you hate the subject mater.

Kadin.2356:

Turning a game into a job is about the quickest way possible to make you detest it.

And yet I somehow find a way to enjoy the tedious task of messing around and testing my Elementalist’s class mechanics. I guess I’m an oddball. I’ll sit in the mists for hours just playing around with traits and stats and hitting test dummies, lol. I also sometimes find my self spending an eternity playing “paper guild wars 2” :p

Grimreaper.5370:

I’d assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession. Everyone would get a shot at filling in this position, but there would be a catch, you’d have to pass an extensive knowledge test, dealing with the games mechanics, the classes profession and also show your skill level is beyond the average players. Eventually a vote would be casted amongst the community for the winner of the job position.

Yeah good luck with that.

I see two problems:

• The players who you’re thinking of would end up filling the positions are both rare, and you wouldn’t actually get them. Instead…
• The players who would end up in the position are a mix of fan-favourite sPvP players – who are highly biased by default – and internet celebrity players who have to preserve their fan attention for their income.

Worst about the idea is that you’d have 0 chance to have someone be impartial. Everyone would want their own class to be as perfect as possible, want everything everyone else has, and protect everything they have but others don’t.

Usually you want the exact opposite.
You want developers who have as little personal interest in the classes as possible (so they don’t have favourites), who ideally never work on a dedicated class but instead have to share all class-balance, so they cannot focus on one. One good way to do this is to have less balance devs than classes. That way they have to share the work.

Grimreaper.5370:

You don’t even want to know how obsessed I am with this games class balance.

Which is precisely why you’d be unsuited for the job.
Class balance needs to be in the hand of people who don’t care. Personally, that is. They need to care because it’s their job. Together with accountant it’s one of the few cases where any personal motivation is a detriment to the overall quality of the job you’re doing.

It would be nice to see what kind of metrics they have to work with as far as balance goes. I’m sure they have LOADS of information we don’t have access to. Such as average/outlier damage by x ability in WvW by level 80’s and so on.

Kadin.2356:

It would be nice to see what kind of metrics they have to work with as far as balance goes. I’m sure they have LOADS of information we don’t have access to. Such as average/outlier damage by x ability in WvW by level 80’s and so on.

Yeah. I mean if the engine’s tools are even somewhat useful they’ll have a lot of statistical data they can pull, average damage done by ability X in mode Y, average lifetime of a player of class A in mode Y, and so on.

That being said, they’ll probably be struggling with the same issue Blizzard had in Starcraft II, that if players win 50% and lose 50% they don’t perceive it as winning half the time (red traffic light syndrome). It needs to be ~70% wins so a player feels he’s winning and losing equally.

Really weird how our brains work in that regard. :P

Carighan.6758:

Grimreaper.5370:

I’d assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession. Everyone would get a shot at filling in this position, but there would be a catch, you’d have to pass an extensive knowledge test, dealing with the games mechanics, the classes profession and also show your skill level is beyond the average players. Eventually a vote would be casted amongst the community for the winner of the job position.

Yeah good luck with that.

I see two problems:

• The players who you’re thinking of would end up filling the positions are both rare, and you wouldn’t actually get them. Instead…
• The players who would end up in the position are a mix of fan-favourite sPvP players – who are highly biased by default – and internet celebrity players who have to preserve their fan attention for their income.

Worst about the idea is that you’d have 0 chance to have someone be impartial. Everyone would want their own class to be as perfect as possible, want everything everyone else has, and protect everything they have but others don’t.

Usually you want the exact opposite.
You want developers who have as little personal interest in the classes as possible (so they don’t have favourites), who ideally never work on a dedicated class but instead have to share all class-balance, so they cannot focus on one. One good way to do this is to have less balance devs than classes. That way they have to share the work.

Grimreaper.5370:

You don’t even want to know how obsessed I am with this games class balance.

Which is precisely why you’d be unsuited for the job.
Class balance needs to be in the hand of people who don’t care. Personally, that is. They need to care because it’s their job. Together with accountant it’s one of the few cases where any personal motivation is a detriment to the overall quality of the job you’re doing.

Ok, but then how are we supposed to achieve perfect balance when many of the devs are much better at their specific job opposed understanding a specific class itself? It is true that some testers would probably favor their class over all the others and want it to be stronger than the rest, but I believe that is where the community comes into play to balance things out with their feedback as well. Sure we will get ignorant feedback and remarks from some, and so we must sift through all the feedback and find what is most reasonable. I do not want to make one class better than the rest, I want solid competitive play.

I played a game by the name of Dark Age of Camelot for many years. There was a leader for each class whom would submit feedback for their class and also take the communities feedback into consideration. The game had 40+ classes. I believe the class leaders for each class were the soul reason for that game achieving a much healthier balance, mind you that game is also a decade old :p

A quick short story about asking recognized players about balance.

NAMCO once decided to ask World best players to give advice on balancing of a sequel of a famous fighting game.

It resulted in being the most unbalanced of the serie, with favourite character of said players being totally OP.(actually thegame was a match of OP characters with the lowest skill level ever).

The solution is small twekas in FREQUENT Patches.
They should work on a system to manage at least number changes with the minimum effort so they can be tweaked biweekly and see how they works….

Also considering Emergency balancing like it happen for bugfixes.

It would also means a more dynamic meta and more longevity since the gameplay changes often.

LordByron.8369:

A quick short story about asking recognized players about balance.

NAMCO once decided to ask World best players to give advice on balancing of a sequel of a famous fighting game.

It resulted in being the most unbalanced of the serie, with favourite character of said players being totally OP.(actually thegame was a match of OP characters with the lowest skill level ever).

The solution is small twekas in FREQUENT Patches.
They should work on a system to manage at least number changes with the minimum effort so they can be tweaked biweekly and see how they works….

Also considering Emergency balancing like it happen for bugfixes.

It would also means a more dynamic meta and more longevity since the gameplay changes often.

Which game are you referring to, Soul Calibur or Tekken? I agree that it should not be up to one person alone. The community should also be taken seriously as well. I don’t think it hurts to have one very experienced player focusing on gathering feedback and calling most of the shots though as long as they are the right type of candidate for class balance. We need selfless passionate people working on each class who want to see the game flourish as a whole, and who will also take community feedback very seriously. This is at least my opinion on how class balance should be approached.

Grimreaper.5370:

Ok, but then how are we supposed to achieve perfect balance when many of the devs are much better at their specific job opposed understanding a specific class itself? It is true that some testers would probably favor their class over all the others and want it to be stronger than the rest, but I believe that is where the community comes into play to balance things out with their feedback as well. Sure we will get ignorant feedback and remarks from some, and so we must sift through all the feedback and find what is most reasonable.

True, we could have a community-filtered feedback system ala TLs, but see further down where you mention those. We already have that, only they’re actually getting paid for the job.

Now if you want the community itself to filter that feedback… uh, no.

See, the forum-community is heavily biased. Happy players don’t want to interact with the developers, they want to play the game. But they will not be happy if the game changes, because they’re happy with the current state (There’s actual evidence for this, see every time WoW changes some of it’s mechanics and millions of players you haven’t ever heard of in the past 2 years come crawling out of the woodwork to complain).

Grimreaper.5370:

I do not want to make one class better than the rest, I want solid competitive play.

See, that’s where the trouble starts. You’re biased, you want solid competitive play. There’s probably over a million players out there who don’t want that. Who either don’t care at all, or who genuinely don’t want it because they want the game to make them feel overpowered and strong (whether they actually are is a different thing, and balance is as much about smoke&mirrors than it is about actual number tweaking).

You seem to have a very PvP-centric perspective, which is a Bad Thing™ in this regard. Balance is much greater than just PvP (or PvE, or even the combination).
Balance is first and foremost about player perception and the “idea” that the game is balanced. Independent of what is actually happening.

Grimreaper.5370:

I played a game by the name of Dark Age of Camelot for many years. There was a leader for each class whom would submit feedback for their class and also take the communities feedback into consideration.

Hey, I played DAoC from launch to late-ToA, too! Morgan Le Fay, I was one of the 6 only active MM Mentalists in the game, and for a while our TL was Tess, who was also one. \o/

Anyhow, the TLs were not at all like what you mention here. TLs did without pay what ANet paid people are now doing as their job: Read the forums, compile information, send them to the devs. At times get answers, post those.

Mind you, I dunno about your class but for both of mine (Mentalist and Bard) the feedback was “Yeah, we disagree.” (without further explanation, ever) 9 out of 10 times.

Anyhow the point is, TLs had nothing to do with class balance or development, they were community managers who did the job without compensation.

Carighan.6758:

Grimreaper.5370:

Ok, but then how are we supposed to achieve perfect balance when many of the devs are much better at their specific job opposed understanding a specific class itself? It is true that some testers would probably favor their class over all the others and want it to be stronger than the rest, but I believe that is where the community comes into play to balance things out with their feedback as well. Sure we will get ignorant feedback and remarks from some, and so we must sift through all the feedback and find what is most reasonable.

True, we could have a community-filtered feedback system ala TLs, but see further down where you mention those. We already have that, only they’re actually getting paid for the job.

Now if you want the community itself to filter that feedback… uh, no.

See, the forum-community is heavily biased. Happy players don’t want to interact with the developers, they want to play the game. But they will not be happy if the game changes, because they’re happy with the current state (There’s actual evidence for this, see every time WoW changes some of it’s mechanics and millions of players you haven’t ever heard of in the past 2 years come crawling out of the woodwork to complain).

Grimreaper.5370:

I do not want to make one class better than the rest, I want solid competitive play.

See, that’s where the trouble starts. You’re biased, you want solid competitive play. There’s probably over a million players out there who don’t want that. Who either don’t care at all, or who genuinely don’t want it because they want the game to make them feel overpowered and strong (whether they actually are is a different thing, and balance is as much about smoke&mirrors than it is about actual number tweaking).

You seem to have a very PvP-centric perspective, which is a Bad Thing™ in this regard. Balance is much greater than just PvP (or PvE, or even the combination).
Balance is first and foremost about player perception and the “idea” that the game is balanced. Independent of what is actually happening.

Grimreaper.5370:

I played a game by the name of Dark Age of Camelot for many years. There was a leader for each class whom would submit feedback for their class and also take the communities feedback into consideration.

Hey, I played DAoC from launch to late-ToA, too! Morgan Le Fay, I was one of the 6 only active MM Mentalists in the game, and for a while our TL was Tess, who was also one. \o/

Anyhow, the TLs were not at all like what you mention here. TLs did without pay what ANet paid people are now doing as their job: Read the forums, compile information, send them to the devs. At times get answers, post those.

Mind you, I dunno about your class but for both of mine (Mentalist and Bard) the feedback was “Yeah, we disagree.” (without further explanation, ever) 9 out of 10 times.

Anyhow the point is, TLs had nothing to do with class balance or development, they were community managers who did the job without compensation.

? But they had everything to do with class balance, that was the whole purpose of a team lead. Sure class balance wasn’t totally up to them, but they made a difference.

Are there really people currently being payed at Anet to focus on one specific class and balance it? I had no idea, it would be nice if these “team leads” focusing on one class in particular made themselves more well known amongst the community.

I do recall a good majority of people disagreeing with every said potential change in mind, since it seemed the daoc forums were unfortunately full of negative nancies, but there were also the reasonable people giving constructive criticism or positive feedback.

Yes I am very PvP/WvW driven, I guess making each class have a fair shot can be considered bias if you also look at the part of the community that just enjoys being OP, never really thought about it like that. IMO, that “OP-feeling” should come from skill though, not an OP ez-mode class mechanic. In the long run I feel a class that you can develop skill with will feel more rewarding than a class that is just OP due to broken ez-mode gameplay. This game is the closest thing to a MMORPG moving into pro-scene gameplay imo, I desperately want to see extreme competitive play.

LordByron.8369:

A quick short story about asking recognized players about balance.

NAMCO once decided to ask World best players to give advice on balancing of a sequel of a famous fighting game.

It resulted in being the most unbalanced of the serie, with favourite character of said players being totally OP.(actually thegame was a match of OP characters with the lowest skill level ever).

The solution is small twekas in FREQUENT Patches.
They should work on a system to manage at least number changes with the minimum effort so they can be tweaked biweekly and see how they works….

Also considering Emergency balancing like it happen for bugfixes.

It would also means a more dynamic meta and more longevity since the gameplay changes often.

I’m interested to know this story also my guess is Soul Calibur, Tekken is my favorite fighting series but I don’t recall any tekken being wildly unbalanced. Soul Calibur I never was a fan of but I think I remember some rumblings about one of the games not being very balanced. I want to say the issue was Nightmare?

Grimreaper.5370:

Which game are you referring to, Soul Calibur or Tekken? I agree that it should not be up to one person alone. The community should also be taken seriously as well. I don’t think it hurts to have one very experienced player focusing on gathering feedback and calling most of the shots though as long as they are the right type of candidate for class balance. We need selfless passionate people working on each class who want to see the game flourish as a whole, and who will also take community feedback very seriously. This is at least my opinion on how class balance should be approached.

SCV ….
They were:
professional players (or semipro…the rewards in money of the tournament won were significant).
They were extremely dedicated to the point of keeping alive a game considered dead from Namco itself and convincing namco to release a sequel….

I can just say that i saw better balancing from developers not playing the game….
Balancing on paper and then testing a little is often better…..expecially if you have guidelines (like risk/reward) and you don t try to avoid those rules with the profession identity excuse.

P.S. nightmare winning LOT of major tournaments with only LOW KICKS pokes….due to the superior range paired with damage AND OP backstep.

The Whole game just forgot the balancing guidelines of risk/reward of the prequel where range+tracking+damage+reactability etc were considered for each move……

Exactly what we see in GW2 with moves that have just everything….
Other almost identical but totally UP.
The “profession identity” is the same excuse….

Grimreaper.5370:

I’d assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession. [snip] Eventually a vote would be casted amongst the community for the winner of the job position.

[snip]
Each team lead for X class would have to spend countless hours 1v1ing their own class and all other classes. I’d also strongly encourage the community to be apart of these 1v1 tests.

Each team lead for X class would have to spend countless hours trying to solo in WvW with multiple builds in mind, eventually creating several builds that provide great returns.

All team leads for X class would work on forming their own havoc groups
[snip]
The ultimate goal of this would be to find a balance that allowed all classes as much of an even playing field in 1v1, 1vX, and team play scenarios as possible.

All traits on all classes would become extremely vital, making it hard to choose which one you really wanted.

1- assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession
Taking moslty the opinion of “skilled” individual is letting out casuals. I didn’t play manu MMOs myself, but often read on these forums that balancing and/or builds proposed by higher tier players are often totally inaccessible to lower-skills individuals…

2- vote would be casted amongst the community
Which would turn into a popularity contest, most likely

3- 1v1, 1vX, and team play balancing
Ranger can be good in 1v1, 1vX and havoc groups… but useless in zergs and big events, would it be WvW or PvE…
Balance is done around group play, at the moment, but balance in a format is not synonym of balance in all game formats…

4- All traits on all classes would become extremely vital
This is pretty much the only part of your proposal that I agree with.
Choice shouldn’t be to take the “less bad” option, but about taking “the best” for the situation… and very few classes are at the point of having to choose “the best”; most take the “less bad”…

For me, balance should be a constant flow of tweaks with feedback monitoring.
too many changes right now feel “bad” because they are too big/too spaced…

Gonna give 3 examples
- Dhuumfire
The community said it was a bad introduction. Necro has been nerfed since it’s introduction, with no compensation to builds that didn’t even use it
- War HS
Eventually goinng to be nerfed… How much QQ would have been saved if the announced change was already implemented?
- Ranger CDI
Announced Anet change : pet responsiveness is gonna be better with the next patch… Wouldn’t the CDI have been better and more constructive if that change was already in the game?

Right now, they are also reducing endurance regen for “all” profession… but they are doing it at a rate of 1-2 proffessions per patch… thus it is not fair for “already nerfed” professions, compared with “to be nerfed” professions…

The balancing work in this game is not, in itself, as kittenome make it out to be… but the time between two balance patch makes it all horrible, because we are stuck for a long time with OP professions, and Down the barrel ones….

More frequent quick fixes, with maybe some greater changes once in a while would go a long way in the balancing of the game…

Carighan.6758:

Grimreaper.5370:

I’d assign one dedicated, knowledgeable, gifted, and skilled individual to each profession. Everyone would get a shot at filling in this position, but there would be a catch, you’d have to pass an extensive knowledge test, dealing with the games mechanics, the classes profession and also show your skill level is beyond the average players. Eventually a vote would be casted amongst the community for the winner of the job position.

Yeah good luck with that.

I see two problems:

• The players who you’re thinking of would end up filling the positions are both rare, and you wouldn’t actually get them. Instead…
• The players who would end up in the position are a mix of fan-favourite sPvP players – who are highly biased by default – and internet celebrity players who have to preserve their fan attention for their income.

Worst about the idea is that you’d have 0 chance to have someone be impartial. Everyone would want their own class to be as perfect as possible, want everything everyone else has, and protect everything they have but others don’t.

Usually you want the exact opposite.
You want developers who have as little personal interest in the classes as possible (so they don’t have favourites), who ideally never work on a dedicated class but instead have to share all class-balance, so they cannot focus on one. One good way to do this is to have less balance devs than classes. That way they have to share the work.

Grimreaper.5370:

You don’t even want to know how obsessed I am with this games class balance.

Which is precisely why you’d be unsuited for the job.
Class balance needs to be in the hand of people who don’t care. Personally, that is. They need to care because it’s their job. Together with accountant it’s one of the few cases where any personal motivation is a detriment to the overall quality of the job you’re doing.

I am impartial and rational, I do not dwell on appearance and kitten all 360 °, unfortunately not chew English and I have little time.

LordByron.8369:

Grimreaper.5370:

Which game are you referring to, Soul Calibur or Tekken? I agree that it should not be up to one person alone. The community should also be taken seriously as well. I don’t think it hurts to have one very experienced player focusing on gathering feedback and calling most of the shots though as long as they are the right type of candidate for class balance. We need selfless passionate people working on each class who want to see the game flourish as a whole, and who will also take community feedback very seriously. This is at least my opinion on how class balance should be approached.

SCV ….
They were:
professional players (or semipro…the rewards in money of the tournament won were significant).
They were extremely dedicated to the point of keeping alive a game considered dead from Namco itself and convincing namco to release a sequel….

I can just say that i saw better balancing from developers not playing the game….
Balancing on paper and then testing a little is often better…..expecially if you have guidelines (like risk/reward) and you don t try to avoid those rules with the profession identity excuse.

P.S. nightmare winning LOT of major tournaments with only LOW KICKS pokes….due to the superior range paired with damage AND OP backstep.

The Whole game just forgot the balancing guidelines of risk/reward of the prequel where range+tracking+damage+reactability etc were considered for each move……

Exactly what we see in GW2 with moves that have just everything….
Other almost identical but totally UP.
The “profession identity” is the same excuse….

Interesting read, I thought Nightmare was OP the very first time I ever VSed him. I thought maybe I was just too-noob at that game though and didn’t understand how to counter him.

Forgive me if I came off sort of ambiguous with my initial statement, but it was never my plan to take away the power of class balance from the devs, I just thought it would be nice if they had very experienced players at their side, giving them some advice. I don’t believe the choice should ever be up to one person alone due to potential propaganda.

Well for fightning games balance is debatable only when you are experienced enough to know perfectly all the frame data, all moves and how they works….

Infact what it had broken was a basic move like backstep and the fast poke low kick.
(to make a comparison, think of playing only with autoattack and evasion and winning a tournaments…..).

What made the prequel more balanced was a simple fact:

Each move from autoattack to specials were balanced following the same guidelines.
(example, each fast low kick was 13-14 frames, tracked slightly left and straight, had the same frames on block and on hit etc…)

Then some moves were made intentionally SLIGHTLY stronger (and different) in order to give character identity.
But each move still had a downside…

If you look at how moves are balanced in this game is a total mess…..
Lightning flash VS blink VS shadow evade (<=== this utility imho is an insult to balance…).

Everything instead is balanced (quite randomly basing on feelings rather than on raw data in my humble opinion) for PvP capture points…. ._.

Do I need to be r21+ to give you my vote?

Someone genuinely dedicated to balance would never win a mob rule vote.

I think the biggest mistake (from a balance and gameplay standpoint) that GW2 made when releasing this game was catering to casuals.

Many fans of GW1 were looking for that element of "hardcore" and "cutthroat" but GW2 is far from that.

Instead we have a game that tries to be competitive but in the end is filled with plenty of imbalances that prevents it from being that, too much catering for casuals to the point this game becomes almost ezmode, being Guild Wars 2 without any so called "Guild Wars", etc. It seems like the devs like to focus on PvE content 80% of the time and the PvE content isn’t even challenging, engaging or force you to think deeply about what build you should bring.

I say down with the casuals! If they can’t handle the difficulty a game presents and the skill level it requires then screw them!

Everyone can say that they would be great at doing class balance and they would do this and they would do that. At the end of the day it all comes down to money and how much ANet is willing to put into balancing the game. Because obviously constant on the fly balances > 3-4 month big patches.

This game will never be balance why? Because what I see is X player got killed by Y player then X player will go to the forum and l2p, qq ask for nerf equal no balance.

jayson.6512:

This game will never be balance why? Because what I see is X player got killed by Y player then X player will go to the forum and l2p, qq ask for nerf equal no balance.

Gee. I can’t imagine why Developers regularly ignore such complaints…

I’m not even really concerned about x class lined up vs y class (Although I am slightly concerned its not my biggest issue with this game), I’d just like to see some build options that cater more towards hardcore play style.

I’d personally like to see more skills like for example, Burning speed, which have no arrow telegraph indicator to tell you which direction you will go, you rather have to rely on knowing how to position your character before using the ability, and how far the range on the skill will take you. (if you’re trying to use the skill to dmg someone atleast)

Another example of abilities that take more skill and less point and click could be Comet, from focus weapon on Ele. It takes a while to land, so its harder to execute correctly, but if done right and it lands you can get a real sense of satisfaction out of something like that. (Skills like this shouldn’t have a telegraph letting you know where this skill will land due to the delay after the skill is casted, but there should be a nice indication of when its casted by some sort of casting animation from the player)

I know some of you are not fond of MOBAs so mind you this is just an example… I think Anet should look into the hero Invoker from DOTA, who has to use a combination of orbs to summon different skills before executing them. Invokers a really good example of a “class” that would take more skill and less mindless button mashing.

My idea of class balance is a little different than make X class beat the crap out of Y class, I’m much more concerned about adding a more skillful play into the mix. And I don’t mind if there are ez mode options for the casual players, give them that handicap if they need it. Infact I think there should be that handicap for casuals (Like warrior), so more hardcore players like myself have more of a challenge.

Having players serve as class advocates has been successful in several games.
The issue is that as a class advocate, you still don’t know the business, design, hardware or coding side of the game.
Too often you get “in school” computer jockeys going beyond just being the “voice of the elementalist” etc. or not realizing the scope of their role.

A lot of that is maturity. The best advocates tend to be employed for 10+ years, in consumer facing industries, play the game casually and have just enough technical skill to understand the issues without so much as to think their job is to solve them.

In short, advocates tend to relate to the customer but not be the core customer. Core customers in gaming tend not to work well (or in fairness know how to work well) with professional developers.

This lesson was painfully learned by the Fortune 500 years ago tied to strategic and technology transformations. Great advocates tend not to be directly the folks who are impacted.

Grimreaper.5370:

My idea of class balance is a little different than make X class beat the crap out of Y class, I’m much more concerned about adding a more skillful play into the mix. And I don’t mind if there are ez mode options for the casual players, give them that handicap if they need it. Infact I think there should be that handicap for casuals (Like warrior), so more hardcore players like myself have more of a challenge.

The bold line is spewed out in post after post, by posters who have no idea what they even mean by it. If you are going to claim “they are doing it wrong” and that it should be based on “skilled play” as you call it.

What makes a skill being used “skilled play”????

Whose skill of play do we balance off of ????

Are your idea or suggestions invalid if my suggestions disagree with yours, and I repeatedly kick your tail in game? Thus my skill trumps yours.

Do you have a sigle fact, much less a list of them, that define what skilled play is????

Who defines what skilled play actually is????

The “skilled play” idea is illogical, and I have yet to see anyone define it. It is a prime example of how posters love to complain and offer fake ideas with cliche’s. simply to justify there unhelpful post of complaints.

Oh yeah, that’s a good one, actually.
Someone define “balance based on a skillful play please”. I think that might actually be how many balancing acts and up as bad as they are, that the devs originally decide “Yeah we’re going to make it based on player skill”, and ofc then later on they have to accept the reality that it’s impossible.

I don’t think it would be impossible to find people who speak for an individual class during balance round-tables to provide insight on how someone else’s ideas could impact their situation. Not only would finding those people be difficult, but those people would be very far from fan favorites in the community, most likely. They are the ones challenging people’s ideas, naysaying, playing devil’s advocate. They are the ones saying “Well that sounds like it could be OP”, or “That’s a bad idea because of XYZ”, and not many people these days seem to be able to take someone else telling them their idea isn’t the best in the world.

That aside, Carighan makes a bunch of really good points. It actually reminds me of a PvP balance article I read from some Age of Conan developers a long while back, and how true balance puts you at a 50% win rate, no one who wins 50% of their games will feel like the game is balanced. People more often than not think they should win more often than not, meaning that to be happy, everyone needs a 66% win rate (or something like that, forget the fine details). So how do you balance a game?

It’s definitely all about perception. As much as I often sit back and think about whether something I’d like to see would be overpowered for my class of choice, I’m not sure I’d be a good candidate because I can’t make a valid argument for people who want to feel overpowered. If the stakeholders want the game to flourish financially, and part of that is making a class or build that is easy to play and very strong to attract a larger audience, I’m not the person for the job. I think those people are intensely unhealthy for a game, and I’d rather see them not play in a balanced world than accommodate them in an imbalanced world.

And even then, I often feel like my Power Necro is imbalanced in certain situations. I’ll sit back and think “Ok, so that person couldn’t really do anything. That’s a bit of a bummer”.

Anyway, I’m digressing. At the end of the day, the OP is very pie in the sky. All classes balanced for 1v1, 1vX, and XvX, and having all traits “vital”. Odds are, if you have traits that work for a particular build, other traits aren’t going to matter for it with different styles of play. And if they DO matter, then maybe you’ll have no traits that matter for another build, and someone will complain that you only made traits good for one build and not others.

It’s a razor’s edge, and I honestly think people should often spend less time worrying so much about it and more time focusing on enjoying the game. More often than not, people who complain about balance do so before they step back and analyze their own ability.

EDIT – And about the community watching Twitch streams of players, I watched a Longbow/Greatsword (I think) Warrior up against a M+Sh/GS Warrior in WvW on a stream. They both had Healing Signet, and the fight was basically never-ending. What did people in chat say? “Lol @ healing signet”, “hs is clearly imba”, etc. None of them actually realized that these two Warriors were designed to either burst down squishies or apply consistent pressure in a sustained fight with a sustain heal. They had ample disengage, so when one would get low, they’d just bust out of the fight and use their sustain to their advantage.

Community feedback often seems to just piggyback on complaints someone else has that enables a person to blame a game mechanic instead of themselves.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t think it would be impossible to find people who speak for an individual class during balance round-tables to provide insight on how someone else’s ideas could impact their situation. Not only would finding those people be difficult, but those people would be very far from fan favorites in the community, most likely. They are the ones challenging people’s ideas, naysaying, playing devil’s advocate. They are the ones saying “Well that sounds like it could be OP”, or “That’s a bad idea because of XYZ”, and not many people these days seem to be able to take someone else telling them their idea isn’t the best in the world.

That aside, Carighan makes a bunch of really good points. It actually reminds me of a PvP balance article I read from some Age of Conan developers a long while back, and how true balance puts you at a 50% win rate, no one who wins 50% of their games will feel like the game is balanced. People more often than not think they should win more often than not, meaning that to be happy, everyone needs a 66% win rate (or something like that, forget the fine details). So how do you balance a game?

It’s definitely all about perception. As much as I often sit back and think about whether something I’d like to see would be overpowered for my class of choice, I’m not sure I’d be a good candidate because I can’t make a valid argument for people who want to feel overpowered. If the stakeholders want the game to flourish financially, and part of that is making a class or build that is easy to play and very strong to attract a larger audience, I’m not the person for the job. I think those people are intensely unhealthy for a game, and I’d rather see them not play in a balanced world than accommodate them in an imbalanced world.

And even then, I often feel like my Power Necro is imbalanced in certain situations. I’ll sit back and think “Ok, so that person couldn’t really do anything. That’s a bit of a bummer”.

Anyway, I’m digressing. At the end of the day, the OP is very pie in the sky. All classes balanced for 1v1, 1vX, and XvX, and having all traits “vital”. Odds are, if you have traits that work for a particular build, other traits aren’t going to matter for it with different styles of play. And if they DO matter, then maybe you’ll have no traits that matter for another build, and someone will complain that you only made traits good for one build and not others.

It’s a razor’s edge, and I honestly think people should often spend less time worrying so much about it and more time focusing on enjoying the game. More often than not, people who complain about balance do so before they step back and analyze their own ability.

EDIT – And about the community watching Twitch streams of players, I watched a Longbow/Greatsword (I think) Warrior up against a M+Sh/GS Warrior in WvW on a stream. They both had Healing Signet, and the fight was basically never-ending. What did people in chat say? “Lol @ healing signet”, “hs is clearly imba”, etc. None of them actually realized that these two Warriors were designed to either burst down squishies or apply consistent pressure in a sustained fight with a sustain heal. They had ample disengage, so when one would get low, they’d just bust out of the fight and use their sustain to their advantage.

Community feedback often seems to just piggyback on complaints someone else has that enables a person to blame a game mechanic instead of themselves.

Good read. good stuff to think about, like I said beforehand if the Devs would take community suggestion into consideration we would most definitely have to sift through a huge void in order to find the good suggestions. That being said I suppose its true that having a community vote for putting people into power for class balance, isn’t the best idea.

I’ve said this already as well but I don’t feel like I can emphasize enough, so bare with me while I reiterate.. My idea of class balance is less about making one class more op and more about giving each class more options, options that rank from lower skill level difficulty to higher skill level, so that the game can meet a wide range of player expectations.

I still think the best balancing expecially for a game where each class should be able to cover any role, should be common guidelines for skills:

Example. (maybe dividing weaponset in macrogrous like ranged-midrange-melee)

Every autoattack should deal X
Every teleport should not have (or should have) breakstun.
every heal should have the same numbers

From there you simply add few characteristic to give every skill its own style.

That worked for many games.

See what they did last patch with some traits?

Well same can be done for most skills/traits….unfortunately they seems to approach the issue in a total random way..

Buff random stuff and nerf random stuff and see how meta changes….repeat after 6 months.

Grimreaper.5370:

My idea of class balance is less about making one class more op and more about giving each class more options, options that rank from lower skill level difficulty to higher skill level, so that the game can meet a wide range of player expectations.

This “Must have ALL the abilities” was what made GW1 so washed out and boring in class design after a few updates.

I’m not sure ANet wants to repeat it. Especially in light of most MMO-makers actively working to reduce their ability-overload so as to allows the relatively diverse MMO-market (this is anything but a “hardcore”-genre, after all) to access your game.

Ofc, you could have difficult to use abilities which are clearly stronger, sure. High-requirements, high-rewards.

But then you make PvP inaccessible for newcomers, because existent players can and will destroy them on two levels. Not only are they better in general, their very individual skills are better, too. Far from good game design, too.

I’m sorry to say this, but the idea of “Just balance it for skillful play” is stupid. It’s not how you balance a MMORPG. It’s a social game, it needs to primarily be balanced around that idea. You can even make an argument that combat should be “boring” and should be based on AA-ing to a significant degree so as to allow chatting during combat.

And if you look at GW2, you could really make the argument that there needs to be more reasons to communicate, not less.

Hence:

• Slower combat.
• Slower deaths/kills in general.
• More powerful combo mechanics. But make fields/finishers slightly more rare. Fields should last longer.
• More combo mechanics in general, not only fields/finishers. Also abilities which “consume” a type of debuff for some effect, and ofc your class can barely apply this. For example a Guardian can apply burning, what if a Mesmer could consume this to turn it into a purple fire which over 0,5s burns off the damage + drains endurance? Ofc needs a popup and mention in the tooltip.

In other words, communication during combat becomes important and you get time to do it.

And yes, many would hate this. And no, this isn’t a “do this”-post. I’m stating this as an example of what game design fits a social game. The idea of “skillful play” nearly always equates to sPvP-centric twitch gaming design, but I don’t see where you picked the right genre to apply it to. This isn’t a fighting game we’re talking about.

And many of the designs of GW1 were what drove people away from it. Sure it retained a small yet very loyal fan following, but from a dev perspective loyalty can only buy you food to a certain degree, and not with modern art/sound/engine fidelity development costs.
At some point you need to make sure the existent MMO gamerbase can approach your game. And WoW more or less defined them, and they’re to a large part couples, family and circles of friends. These people want to play together, yet they are spread over very different levels of player skill. Hence, you need to make sure player skill is a noticeable yet relatively muted element in your design.

Carighan.6758:

You can even make an argument that combat should be “boring” and should be based on AA-ing to a significant degree so as to allow chatting during combat.

And if you look at GW2, you could really make the argument that there needs to be more reasons to community, not less.

Hence:

• Slower combat.
• Slower deaths/kills in general.
• More powerful combo mechanics. But make fields/finishers slightly more rare. Fields should last longer.
• More combo mechanics in general, not only fields/finishers. Also abilities which “consume” a type of debuff for some effect, and ofc your class can barely apply this. For example a Guardian can apply burning, what if a Mesmer could consume this to turn it into a purple fire which over 0,5s burns off the damage + drains endurance? Ofc needs a popup and mention in the tooltip.

In other words, communication during combat becomes important and you get time to do it.

I’ve never seen “boring” combat in an MMO justified so appropriately and succinctly. I love more action-based combat in an MMO, as I like the idea of having a custom character with a slew of abilities that few other games provide from that perspective. However, I like action games that make me focus up and push my ability to react and adapt to the limit.

Not that I’ve ever wanted to quash all “boring” play in all MMOs to make everything cater to my preferred style, but I have a newfound respect for less action-oriented play. If only Bloodline Champions was still a game, or if only another game tried to replicate that style, I wouldn’t have to wish so hard that MMOs would shoehorn action-based play into their combat.