Guild Wars 2

Awesome article you should read regarding “cheese”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sirlin.net%2Farticles%2Fplaying-to-win-part-1.html

Actually chapter 2 of the book, Playing to Win. It’s a very good book and I do recommend it to anyone looking at being competitive in games.

This is very good read and completely right as someone who will always love fighting games more then other games it is correct. It isn’t exclusive to fighting games and that can be applied to other genres like starcraft. I do believed this can also be applied to Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 PvP is infant it isn’t like any other games PvP. So the top players in Guild Wars 2 deserve to be there but they don’t have as much experience with this type of PvP as say someone who always played fighting games and picks up Marvel vs Capcom 3. Or starcraft and moved to starcraft 2.

If I played say SWTOR PvP for 10 years(just an example) very little of it I could apply to Guild Wars 2.

If I played all the streetfight 2 series for say 10 years I could probably figure out most a characters move set all on my own in Streetfighter 4. I could use tekken as that has always been my favorite fighting game. If you play Tekken 1 through 5 you can pick up Tekken 6 get the basics and advance much quicker then someone that picked up 5 and then moved on to Tekken 6. Since my learning of new mechanics is accelerated because of my previous experience I can get better faster and get deeper into the higher level play faster. Not always the case but usually holds true.

Daigo is considered the best streetfighter player in the world and he will always be one of the best streetfighter players as long as the series continues and he continues to play. Daigo wouldn’t automatically be one of the best Tekken players if he just decided to go play Tekken in the world tournament and would probably be out in the first round.

So the guild wars 2 players are top but the guild wars 2 pvp is infant. If a guild wars 3 came out and the top players now picked that up and the pvp is similar at the core those top players would be top there also. If you did Guild Wars 2 PvP as a top player and that was your only MMO ever then moved to Everquest next it probably doesn’t translate well there.

Anyway I got sidetracked I love fighting games and that was a great read and relevant.

I must admit that this chapter was a good read. But I wonder if this chapter is applicable to gw2 since this is a constantly changing game. The chapter described bugs (and the game in general) as something unchangeable and should just be integrated in your community.

If it does apply we should ask ourselves:
“How do we want to see the gameply of ‘the play to win’ gamers evolve?”,“How can we guide them to this goal?” and last but not least “How will this affect the scrubs?”
It sounds a bit academic but I think it is in the best interest that we answer these questions.

I think that fit very well with how alot of complaint threads look.

If build A beats build B then it is cheese and to good while Build C can have no problems at all with A but get’s rolled by B.

B complains about A and wants it nerfed and C complains about B and wants to nerf it.

B defends himself against C saying he is balanced and that we need to be looking at A, C disagree’s and finds A easy to beat and tells B to L2P. The cycle goes on forever.

Using streetfighter as reference say 5 characters in game have a dive kick. They are usually top tier in the early life of the game as players get better and the tech evolves 1 or 2 dive kick characters usually only stay top tier.

Ryu will always be a mid-top tier character in any streetfighter game because people are always familiar with him and can usually pick him up do well in any game he is in. At the end of that current games life Ryu might not be the top tier character and usually isn’t not to say he can’t win a tournament but he isn’t usually considered the S-tier character.

I feel this thread was needed, though will be sadly ignored/swallowed by all the kittened off players. Players who would rather visit the forums and vent instead of actually playing the game.

So how about whenever someone posts some ridiculous QQ topic we just link this article?

Alright, let’s all roll warriors, let’s play to win!
But seriously this is an MMO, not a fighting game. Unlike a fighting game an MMO is updated and should strive for balance. In an MMO you always compete against others whether you like it or not while in a fighting game you can play against the AI or play against friends instead.

And in regards to cheese builds, the article mentions this.

Depth in Games

I’ve talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of “honor” or “cheapness” and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, “game theory” emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between a game that lasts years (StarCraft, Street Fighter) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won’t name any names). The point is that if a game becomes “no fun” at high levels of play, then it’s the game’s fault, not the player’s. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it’s poorly designed and you just losing because you’re a scrub kind of look alike. You’ll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game’s fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren’t good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.

The problem with GW2 cheese builds are that they have too many effects that CANNOT be countered because they are passive. Passiveness is GW2’s cheese, we are not asking for every class to be as difficult as the ele, but the passives need to be toned down or replaced with something active.
Do fighting games have these powerful passive effects? No, they don’t and for a good reason.

That is not what the article is saying. It even states that every game has a best something.

Take an RTS like Starcraft 2 if you look at the tournament wins for Wings of Liberty it looks like Terran is the best race since it has the most wins and definitely dominated the early part of that game. That doesn’t mean all pro players used terran. At one point in time not much changed and Zerg was winning everything a strategy was found Max Roaches popularized by Stephano and it won over and over and over again. Players had to adapt find a strategy to beat it they did. Blizzard didn’t step in and nerf roaches because Max roach started beating everything.

Just because something is the best doesn’t mean you have to play it and doesn’t mean it can’t be countered.

Warrior isn’t the best profession in the game it might at the moment be the most used in more parts of the game and is never bad.

Playing to win in Guild Wars 2 isn’t making all Warrior teams because all warriors don’t = win it might just reduce you chances of failure but it doesn’t guarantee winning.

If 5 warrior comps was the = win then teams would run 5 warriors. They aren’t running 5 warrior comps because they are taking the moral high ground they aren’t running it because it doesn’t work. So warrior doesn’t = win.

MMO’s have passives in place I put on precision I get passive crits, put on power passively boosts my damage etc etc etc.

Fighting games do have passive effects and they do have patches just look up street fight IV revisions or Virtua Fighter 5 revisions A.B.C. and D.

Passive in fighting games is Blocking Highs for example they all have different power all have different effects but you press or hold block and block them all. A fire ball is a high just like a standing jab and does chip damage. Which means it does damage the only way to avoid it is to say jump.

Super meters Street Fighter 2 are passive or Rage meters in Tekken are passive both give you a damage increase the super meter gives you extra damage on a special attack or shadow moves that require say just pressing light punch and light kick together but using the same Dragon punch move. Rage meters give you extra damage at X% health.

Fighting games have passives more so now then they did before as companies started to throw a little bit of RPG element into their games to spice it up. It isn’t a large part of the game but if a fighting game ships without some kind of meter that does something it is now looked at strange.

If I played Super Street fighter 2 then moved to Super Street Fighter 2 turbo I build meter passively playing the exact same way I did before. Release date 1994 passive has been in fighting games a long time now.

My one problem with the article is that it seems like it’s saying that you should never try to fix imbalances in a game. This was written almost FOURTEEN years ago back where games where typically not patched and balancing didn’t really happen until the next game. Now, we have the ability to fix things that many people find to be broken.

I DO however agree with the mindset that if you think something is OP then you should try to find a way to counter it rather than just complaining about it. However, in the past we have seen some builds that are so good you would never run anything else. Games like MMOs are designed around variety, if there is none then the game could be seen as a failure. It would be like having a fighting game where you have dozens upon dozens of characters but only 5 or so are worth playing. Sure, you could P2W but I doubt anyone would want to play it competitively in the first place.

Now that everyone can patch their game you can go and fix those bugs or OP skills that you didn’t intend to exist. Having one or two things being slightly above par is fine because it can stir things up but only if there is a counter to be had. That’s why I’m fine with Hambow, Condi Necro, and pre-nerf Spirit Ranger because they all had counters. Sadly, outside of higher rank TPvP you hardly ever actually see them used.

I’m actually fairly pleased with the current meta, there’s enough “OP” builds around that I don’t see as many Warriors as I used to.

Also to add in fighting games now most characters have different health. Ryu’s jab doesn’t do the same damage as Bison’s jab though they are both jabs and they have different frame data.

Most people don’t know that characters in fighting games have different health and that isn’t always the case but usually in capcom games characters have different health.

Phoenix has low health in MvC 3 and if you kill her with 5 bars she turns into Dark Phoenix the best character in the game but also has the lowest health. There is no counter play to characters base health its there it’s passive and it’s in most fighting games today and has been for a while.

Try this link instead: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

And check out the “What should be banned?” article as it seems relevant to some of the discussion.

I def had to rethink alot of things reading this article. However, this is not the final conclusion for gamedesign nor has it great relevance for GW2.
Though it raises a good point, there are quite a few fishy comparisons in there (you can’t compare chess to streetfighter or single move spam to extended kite and zoning tactics).
However, biggest concern is that this article claims playing to win is a “higher level of play” where it is simply another type. Furthermore, playing your own “homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules” is a basic and very important concept of playing games for any human being. It is the very notion which defined the rules of the “actual game” in the first place and should not be deemed a lesser playstyle. That’s just hypocritical. Speaking of, the reasoning behind the “limit” of bug exploiting is inconsistent at the very least.

People in this thread have to remember that competetive is not the only or best way to play a game.
A MMORPG has more modes than just player versus player and there is little point in playing to win against an AI (PvE), which truely plays it’s own homemade version of the game, with extremely restricting additional rules. For example:
Stacking, los’ing and glitching dungeon monsters is not playing to win. It can’t be, because playing to win is a thing “99.9% of the world’s population is naive to” on the one hand, while GW2 apparently is crowded with casuals on the other hand and yet it happens all the time, probably even in a majority of dungeon parties.

Escadin.9482:

A MMORPG has more modes than just player versus player and there is little point in playing to win against an AI (PvE)

Things like LoS’ing IS a play to win strat in PvE – just like camping IS a play to win strat in FPS’es. In fact, since you get in-game gold, play to win strats might be even more prevalent in PvE. The problem with LoS’ing, and PvE in general, is that the game pretty much stops there. How is the AI going to counter that LoS’ing? By developing a better algorithm to deal with LoS’ing? Of course not. So the game doesn’t grow because of restrictive AI. It’s why I personally can’t stand PvE in MMO’s.

There are legit comparisons between chess and street fighter (and other competitive games) as well. Both types of games seek to try and predict what the other player is going to do and ether punish them for it, or reinforce themselves to prepare for it. You CAN compare single move spam to kite and zoning tactics. A ‘scrub’ would say “quit spamming that fireball, it’s cheap”, where a more experienced player would realize, “oh he’s trying to zone me, what can I do about this?”

The biggest thing to take away from this: Some people refuse to keep trying to learn and instead turn to the “that’s cheese” argument, whereas others will still try and learn and only recognize a certain move as a “tactic” and try and learn how to deal with it.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Escadin.9482:

A MMORPG has more modes than just player versus player and there is little point in playing to win against an AI (PvE)

Things like LoS’ing IS a play to win strat in PvE – just like camping IS a play to win strat in FPS’es. In fact, since you get in-game gold, play to win strats might be even more prevalent in PvE. The problem with LoS’ing, and PvE in general, is that the game pretty much stops there. How is the AI going to counter that LoS’ing? By developing a better algorithm to deal with LoS’ing? Of course not. So the game doesn’t grow because of restrictive AI. It’s why I personally can’t stand PvE in MMO’s.

There are legit comparisons between chess and street fighter (and other competitive games) as well. Both types of games seek to try and predict what the other player is going to do and ether punish them for it, or reinforce themselves to prepare for it. You CAN compare single move spam to kite and zoning tactics. A ‘scrub’ would say “quit spamming that fireball, it’s cheap”, where a more experienced player would realize, “oh he’s trying to zone me, what can I do about this?”

The biggest thing to take away from this: Some people refuse to keep trying to learn and instead turn to the “that’s cheese” argument, whereas others will still try and learn and only recognize a certain move as a “tactic” and try and learn how to deal with it.

This doesn’t explain why GW2- a game with distinct lack of hardcore PvE content- is apparently host to a majority of all dedicated players in the world.
I don’t want to offend these people but whenever I run a dungeon like this it is due to lazyness, timepressure or disinterest in repeating the same content for the 2457392th time, not because I want to best the AI or my last group.
On top of that, why would all these dedicated players choose to fight one of the worst AI there is? Is that a strategy for maximizing your chance to win as well? Fighting the weakest enemy you can find?
Not all genres are meant to be played competetively. That point still stands.

FPS, streetfighter, chess those are not all the same thing. Unlike fighting games, FPS require dedication in teamplay which is a whole other thing. Say what you will but there is a difference between your own private goals/mindset and group interaction.
Just as there is a difference between chess and streetfighter, because chess happens to have no “cheap moves”. It is perfectly balanced by design. Chess doesn’t have any bugs either. Don’t get me wrong, chess is a highly competetive game and playing it to win is definetly the way to go but is a very poor example for all this “scrubs call the winning move cheap” stuff (nice euphemism for noob btw…).

I will make myself clear again: The article doesn’t fit the context of MMORPGs. What you really should take away from this is that most people play another version of the game and they are perfectly right to do so. Unlike streetfighter, GW2 happens to be a massive multiplayer online game, so physically “scrubs” and dedicated player are playing the same game now. This is nothing but a commercial decision but it demands for a balanced middle ground, in order to work. It is this kind of balance that allows no cheap moves to exist unless it is a cheap move designed for scrubs (like a noobtube) in games with a high skill ceiling (which GW2 is not). Hence, crying for balanced classes and abilities is perfectly fine.

It does not apply very well to mmos where you have FOTM builds that change over time. The article is fairly old. The only mmorpg that was running back then and is still alive, is Runescape I believe.

See the following text from the end of the article.

In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves.

Well no. You definitely don’t improve if you run around as a hammer monkey or spirit ranger.
I did not improve as a thief player when I abused the hell out of culling.

Escadin.9482:

This doesn’t explain why GW2- a game with distinct lack of hardcore PvE content- is apparently host to a majority of all dedicated players in the world.

Just because there is a lack of “hardcore” content doesn’t mean people don’t play to win. Also just because people are oblivious to what they are doing, doesn’t mean they aren’t playing to win. It just means the game is shallow in this department. Heck, even you play to win because of:

Escadin.9482:

lazyness, timepressure or disinterest

It’s not about being able to execute super complicated maneuvers. If you can easily kill someone with a series of throws in super street fighter, then do it. It is about getting through obstacles in the most efficient way possible. Things like LoS’ing and arming yourself with all zerker gear are done for this very reason.

Escadin.9482:

On top of that, why would all these dedicated players choose to fight one of the worst AI there is? Is that a strategy for maximizing your chance to win as well? Fighting the weakest enemy you can find?

Well I’m not a PvE’er, but I would assume they do it for the gear (like working towards ascended gear) and in-game money. There is a strategy for maximizing your chance to win in places like fractals and people exploit those weaknesses in the AI, and the game in general. I highly doubt the game was intended to be played by stacking in one spot and dps’ing a boss down, but a vast majority of people still do it because of the very reasons why you PvE. Many people choose to do CoF for the very reason that it’s the easiest, most efficient, way to get money.

Escadin.9482:

Just as there is a difference between chess and streetfighter, because chess happens to have no “cheap moves”.

The moment you realize that there are virtually no “cheap moves”, there are only strategies, is the moment we can start talking.

Escadin.9482:

Chess doesn’t have any bugs either.

Again, bugs does not equal “cheap”.

Escadin.9482:

Most people play another version of the game and they are perfectly right to do so.

That is exactly right. It’s when people start to call other people cheesy, plz nerf bliz, when learning starts to break down.

WoW cured me of the “play to win” mentality in mmo’s. The whole level another character and grind gear every time another class takes the theoretical “top” spot in PvP/raids made me start looking at what is fun rather than the best.

GW2 Spvp isn’t so bad in this regard as it takes 5 min to make a class and play on it, so this can be applied a bit more to that specific game mode.

I still play what I enjoy as years of “playing to win” burned me out. The key is not calling people cheap or whatever because they are using a meta p2w build and accept that their enjoyment may come strictly from victories, rather than playing a class that they enjoy the feel of.

So you are totally conviced that a majority of the GW2 community happens to be that 0.1% of all humans on earth who are not naive to “play to win”? Pretty bold statement. My bet is either you are wrong or the article is fishy.

My point about chess was not that it has no “cheap moves”, but it has no moves anyone at any stage of scrubdom could seriously call cheap. That’s why it is a bad example and should not be compared to streetfighter.

“That is exactly right. It’s when people start to call other people cheesy, plz nerf bliz, when learning starts to break down.”
That middleground I mention is supposed to protect and restrict both sides. Crying for nerfs is just the equivilant of “l2p”. Nobody knows how the devs imagine that middleground’s balance to be, but I’d say the trend is to favour the greater side. In SC2 it’s the play to win people, in GW2 probably casuals (most likely scrubs). That’s why this article doesn’t apply to GW2.

Carpboy.7145:

So how about whenever someone posts some ridiculous QQ topic we just link this article?

Sounds pretty sensible, actually.

Ganathar.4956:

But seriously this is an MMO, not a fighting game. Unlike a fighting game an MMO is updated and should strive for balance. In an MMO you always compete against others whether you like it or not while in a fighting game you can play against the AI or play against friends instead.

The last part is pretty pointless. The whole idea of playing to win is that you play to win, against friends or not. And assuming so do your friends, you both play to win.

And other than that… what is so special about a MMO? Fighting games can be balance-patched, too. They rarely do because players accept and like the tiering of characters. They desire the imbalance to tier the characters and show off when they play a low-tier character. Devs desire them because it reduces the pool of truly to-be-balanced classes for tournament purposes to the S-tier ones.

And why should a MMO strive for balance in comparison? What does it have to gain what a fighting game would not?

It’s interesting to see how such a old article is still relevant today with modern MMOs like GW2. It’s not about the game, it’s about attitude and mindset. Some people will do anything to have an edge over their opponent, whether it be rolling FOTM builds, exploiting game and skill bugs, using OP foods and consumables and consider that part of playing the game because it is in the game and since it is available to everyone it is considered fair to them. Some of us have certain standards that we like to adhere to, for better or worse. It’s not really a win if it feels like we are cheating and if I am labeled a scrubbed for having some form of code then so be it.

I’d be a scrub. I like to win, I absolutely and without any doubt play to win BUT the victory MUST feel earned, in my opinion.

I need a proper challenge to feed my ego with.

I’ll counter your argument with a great little video about balancing for skill:

To paraphrase:

When a first-order optimal (foo) strategy is only 10% less powerful than the next superior strategy, but the next skill requires 3x the skill, then its not really better unless you have machine-like precision. As such, its not really better at all. Unfortunately, the FOO strategies in gw2 are like this, which is why people complain.

Sure you could argue to “just play the foo strategy” if you really want to win, but the problem with this game is that foo strategy is also just about the best. That isn’t fun, and the fun specs that should be more powerful are so marginally better for so much more work, that they are in-effect worse. That is why people complain, they want reward for the higher risk specs without needing 3x the execution.

Carpboy.7145:

So how about whenever someone posts some ridiculous QQ topic we just link this article?

I’ve linked Sirlin.net many times in the mesmer forum since launch. Playing to Win is a topic that’s applicable in every build and gameplay thread. It should permeate every serious players soul.