Guild Wars 2

I spotted a peculiar feature in GW1 / GW2 relationship.
GW1 skills have a lot of resource costs
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Skill#note_1
Activation time, cooldown, energy cost,
Sacrifice, upkeep, overcast and adrenaline
They were pretty much shared between professions
( i mean that several profession combinations existed, that could have almost all of these resources in use )
And yet a.net struggled to keep all these skills balanced, despite they had so much tools(7 resources!) to balance them.

In GW2 skills have activation time, cooldown and at most 1 resource cost that cannot be shared between classes(initiative or adrenaline for example)
How do a.net developers hope to make skills interesting and balanced with 2-3 resources, if they could not(as they say) do that perfectly with 7 resources?

P.S. My suggestion is simple – make a full-featured resource from Gw2 energy.Just like energy was in GW1.This will greatly help both in skill balancing and keeping skills interesting.
Personally i do not see any drawbacks in this suggestions, only benefits.

They didn’t want to make resources in this game. They wanted to simultaneously streamline combat to make it “simpler” while also leaving in enough of a skill cap that revolves around balancing your conditions.

I’m not sure where you’re coming from, honestly, because this is much easier with fewer resources. Having a ton of random resources for skills makes it harder to balance, because you not only have to weigh the cost of the skill in terms of resource to determine its power, but you also have to compare that to other skills that use a different resource. So if one skill uses 50 mana and does X damage, but another skill uses 50 energy and does X damage, it’s may still not be balanced because perhaps energy is harder to restore than mana. In this way, they’ve made it easier to balance, and I think they’ve done a great job of it so far.

If you’re going to complain about balance, at least offer some examples of what you think is unbalanced, because there aren’t many skills that are completely unbalanced in all aspects.

Also, micromanaging resources is a bore to me as a player. It’s a silly inhibition mechanic that I hate. I’m so glad mana doesn’t exist.

In early beta, everyone used to have Energy. It looked really aggravating, and I remember energy in GW1 made the combat very slow paced, sometimes. Having only CD and activation times is perfect, imo. Makes the game even more fun.

@Temariah, you do not know what you are talking about. Balancing the game is not about making skills “equally powerful” ( which washes out everything interesting from the system), it is about giving players interesting and powerful skills and counter skills to defend yourself from these powerful skills. If the developers had the option to give skills resource cost, they would have had opportunity to support the balance.Now they do not have it.
Look at successfull game called dota2. Almost every hero has something overpowered built into him, but that is what makes dota2 fun and interesting to play/watch.
Micromanaging resources is not an “inhibition” mechanic, it is a tool to give players choice how to spend their resource/what skills to use.Without this “inhibition” there is nothing in the game but spamfest.

And btw, i named activation time as a resource only because wiki states it is. I personally do not consider activation time a resource. So GW2 has 1-1.5 resources(CD/initiative), GW1 has 6.

@Kaizz, does it make the game fun, because you do not have to think what skills to use and can just spam all of them whenever you want?

I agree, especially with how few skills there are. 5 weapon skills, 1 healing, 3 utility, 1 elite. While it does add up to more than GW1 had, (which is 8 I believe) these skills vary in use and purpose. With most all skills having some sort of cooldown, its basically the same as having some sort of energy cost. Instead of waiting for more energy, you wait a few seconds for the skill to be ready again.
Besides, the one class that has an “energy pool” plays differently. The thief can do as many skills as he/she needs as long as there is initiative. It adds a different strategy than just waiting for cooldowns. Spam your skills fast, then wait for initiative, or use them a bit more sparingly for longer fights. I use initiative fast when wielding duel daggers, but use it slow when using a shortbow.
And for the record, warriors adrenaline is not an energy pool. Adrenaline builds in combat and drains out of combat. Adrenaline allows for an extra skill based on how full it is. Calling adrenaline an energy pool is the same as calling a necro’s life force an energy pool.

Goorman.7916:

@Temariah, you do not know what you are talking about. Balancing the game is not about making skills “equally powerful” ( which washes out everything interesting from the system), it is about giving players interesting and powerful skills and counter skills to defend yourself from these powerful skills. If the developers had the option to give skills resource cost, they would have had opportunity to support the balance.Now they do not have it.
Look at successfull game called dota2. Almost every hero has something overpowered built into him, but that is what makes dota2 fun and interesting to play/watch.
Micromanaging resources is not an “inhibition” mechanic, it is a tool to give players choice how to spend their resource/what skills to use.Without this “inhibition” there is nothing in the game but spamfest.

And btw, i named activation time as a resource only because wiki states it is. I personally do not consider activation time a resource. So GW2 has 1-1.5 resources(CD/initiative), GW1 has 6.

@Kaizz, does it make the game fun, because you do not have to think what skills to use and can just spam all of them whenever you want?

To address your points, in order of absurdity.

Dota 2 is balanced relatively well, yes. But no heroes are absurdly OP. Watch a few pro games and you will see that every single thing you may think is OP in a pub match is incredibly easily countered by skill. Let’s take Ursa for a moment. He owns in pubs because no one tries to counter him via things like Shadow Demon’s Demonic Purge or Gyrocopter’s Call Down or Razor’s Static Link, all of which go through magic immunity and severely nerf Ursa. Pros know these simple little tricks and will use them if you ever actually see Ursa in a pro game. Also, Dota 2 is such a different game because of the way the heroes are created. Each hero is relatively niche, which means that it is easy to counter, but also easy to be victim to its powers if you don’t counter it or balance it some way. GW2 intentionally defies this type of niche role, even going as far as making it so that every player can do everything moderately well (yes some classes are better at some things). Please don’t try to use references that you yourself are not in touch with. It makes you seem a little uneducated.

Anyone in GW2 who just spams skills without thinking is probably a pretty low tier player. The idea that you can just spam skills is true, yes, but the effectiveness of it is enough to teach most players to find smart skill rotations. For example, as a Mesmer, I can use my Sword #3 to cripple/immobilize, then use Sword #2 to do some moderate damage, at the cost of rooting myself. This is a very simple example, but you can see how it’s much more effective to immobilize before using your strike that roots you. Without using proper skill rotation, my opponents can very easily just walk out of my sword strikes. The game is built this way intentionally. Very few attacks just do damage, so just spamming random stuff whenever really doesn’t help. Even a lot of the weapon skills offer some great utility, and not taking advantage of that really weakens your character.

In response to your comment about how the design is to not make everything equally powerful, you are correct on a small scale level. Each individual skill should not be equal to every other skill in the game, but it is important to keep a balance on a class basis. Each class should be roughly as good as another, though different. This balance has not quite been reached, though, since some classes are stronger at sPvP, or 1v1s, or dungeon speed runs. But that isn’t due to the fact that there is no resource. It’s much more due to the inherent challenge of balancing.

I think the issue we’re having is that you think the unbalance is caused (for some reason) by a lack of resource management. To me, I see that this is probably not true, and my personal opinion is that managing resources is annoying and just about as silly as rested HP bonuses in Tera.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Initiative