Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. Lets pretend that Anet is NEVER going to split balance between Spvp, WvW and PvE. Which game mode would you pick to base balance on if you had to pick one and why?

I play all game modes and would pick Spvp. I think in the spirit of fair competition it makes the most sense. It would give every profession a fair shot at competitive play, and perhaps a place in the pro-league meta. That’s diversity and balance. WvW players would adapt pretty easily I think. I play WvW and wouldn’t mind. WvW, like spvp is about adapting on the fly most of the time anyway. The “mechanics” are never exactly the same.

PvE…..I guess I could accept if it had a negative impact. If it takes me 20 seconds longer to kill a mob then so be it. I don’t care much for fractals or raiding. My pve focus is mainly just open world stuff. Would it really matter if it took 5 minutes longer to clear a raid wing because some skills have been nerfed? Dungeons, fractals and raids get easier the more you do them. To the point that you are guaranteed success.This is reason enough not to balance based on pve. Playing pve is like dancing. If you know the steps and have a decent partner you will successfully perform the dance. I’m not trying to be insensitive, I would really like to know how people feel. I’m hoping people will look at the big picture of the game.

PvE should be the main focus for balance since that’s the main draw for people to play this game and where the vast majority of play time is spent.

I know they’d prefer PvP to be the big draw (what with all this focus on so called e-sports), but that ship sailed a long time ago. You aren’t going to have some PvP renaissance at this point in the game’s life cycle.

Balance around PVP. It matters much more there than in other places of the game. You can always adjust the enemies in PVE to deal with PVP changes, but you can’t adjust PVP to deal with PVE changes.

I was expecting this thread to actually discuss some balance issues, given the title.

I feel like a lot of balance issues have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. PvP is probably where imbalance becomes most apparent, because it’s the game mode where players are most likely to be taking each other on head-to-head, but it’s not like the other modes are just afterthoughts who react to PvP balance. If they were, I’m not sure Ice Bow would have gotten nerfed, unless it was way more popular in PvP than I would imagine.

Even if PvP gets most of the balance attention, I’m not sure it’s productive to argue for or against it being “the baseline.” There are too many exceptions and compromises to take a very narrow view of it.

mtpelion.4562:

PvE should be the main focus for balance since that’s the main draw for people to play this game and where the vast majority of play time is spent.

I know they’d prefer PvP to be the big draw (what with all this focus on so called e-sports), but that ship sailed a long time ago. You aren’t going to have some PvP renaissance at this point in the game’s life cycle.

I agree that the majority of players focus on pve. However, I also think the majority are also casual players who would never know the difference.

Redenaz.8631:

I was expecting this thread to actually discuss some balance issues, given the title.

I feel like a lot of balance issues have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. PvP is probably where imbalance becomes most apparent, because it’s the game mode where players are most likely to be taking each other on head-to-head, but it’s not like the other modes are just afterthoughts who react to PvP balance. If they were, I’m not sure Ice Bow would have gotten nerfed, unless it was way more popular in PvP than I would imagine.

Even if PvP gets most of the balance attention, I’m not sure it’s productive to argue for or against it being “the baseline.” There are too many exceptions and compromises to take a very narrow view of it.

Sorry to disappoint, there are already too many posts filled with peoples answers to the worlds problems on balancing our game. I must have read at least 500 times that balance issues won’t be fixed until there is a separation. I don’t think that will ever happen. I changed the topic to be more straight forward.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Balance around PVP. It matters much more there than in other places of the game. You can always adjust the enemies in PVE to deal with PVP changes, but you can’t adjust PVP to deal with PVE changes.

Agreed +1