Guild Wars 2

It’s good that skills are being split this way. Would you prefer if PvP balancing started to influence your PvE gameplay?

The problem with a game that has pvp and pve is that the combat and opponents are too different.

Take an enemy player. Has perhaps 20-25k health. This is about as bad as it gets in pvp. In WvW you have some npc’s but the zerg element takes care of that easily.

In PvE mobs can have a lot more health, especially bosses but already veteran mobs have a lot more health.

This creates an entirely different mechanic. Some skills will then either be too powerful for pvp or underpowered for pve. It’s inevitable. PvP balance is not the same as pve balance.

With that the trait system is also a factor. Because you cannot change it at will like your skills, you can’t just switch from a build to another.

Then I also disagree that the GW2 system has a lot of depth. It has some depth for sure but a lot of limitations and therefore is fairly rigid in build creation, although dynamic in use. This could’ve helped in the overall balance but it doesn’t take away the fact that killing a mob is an entirely different thing from killing another player.

Splitting skills between pvp and pve effects makes it so that skill balancing doesn’t negatively affect the other game type. So a pvp balancing doesn’t affect pve and vice versa. We’ve seen that complaint many times.

All in all I think it’s unrealistic to think pvp and pve can use the exact same skill sets effectively. This can only be possible when fighting pve mobs is much closer to fighting other players in pvp. As this is not the case. Splitting skills or bringing out pvp or pve only skills are the only realistic options.

That’s my view.

Yay, I am so happy for this.
It was really irritating that my PvE skills were continually readjusted just because people don’t like Mesmers in PvP.
Keeping the skills separate can only be good for all the professions.
Good Job Arena Net and Thank you.

I’m glad they split it. They needed to have had the split across the board right from the start. But, better late than never.

Keep the splits coming. PVE does not need to be as balanced as PVP. Monsters dont get mad and stop buying gem store products and expansions, thats why.

they should just split ALL skills

having the same set of skills meant to play the same when beating on 1zillion hp mobs and 15k HP players is absolutly kitten
this system has failed in dozens of MMOs before, no wonder its failing here too

Yes, thank you for beginning the pvp/pve split. Now the competitive PVP players can have each other’s classes nerfed to the ground and not hurt the rest of us.

bojangles.6912:

Not sure why that would be split when this is a pvp based game. Their pve is basically just leveling and a couple of dungeons. Until they add actual raids, not sure why they would do that.

Yes, that’s all there is…just a couple dungeons and an eeensy-teensy tiny little PvE map that took no thought in development at all.

Ordin.9047:

Keep the splits coming. PVE does not need to be as balanced as PVP. Monsters dont get mad and stop buying gem store products and expansions, thats why.

This.

Mobs are there to be beaten. I don’t play PvE for challenge. I play PvE to be guaranteed to win the events. In PvE, I’m the hero. Heroes win. A mob’s entire purpose, it’s entire reason for existing, is to die to the heroes. That’s it’s job.

bojangles.6912:

Not sure why that would be split when this is a pvp based game. Their pve is basically just leveling and a couple of dungeons. Until they add actual raids, not sure why they would do that.

It would be split for the same reason why Anet spent most of their time and resources on leveling and pve in general.

Say what you will about pvp but the pve content is just so much larger that it makes no sense to call this a pvp based game. I certainly agree pvp is important in GW2 as it was in GW1 but content and resource wise, you cannot tell me that this game is mostly a pvp game. That would be bull.

The game simply has pve and pvp. Both are important and Anet happens to care more about pvp balance than other games. But pve is a huge part of the game and it’s just a pipe dream to think you can balance both at the same time.

You say that pve is just leveling and a couple of dungeons. That by itself is already wrong.

So what is pvp then? Oh yeh, leveling your pvp rank and a couple of siege maps.

Anet luckily realised quick enough that skill splits are needed since pvp and pve are entirely different.

PvE and PvP simply are not the same. So to think that the skills can be is just wishful thinking. I am just glad they came to this a lot sooner than in GW1.

Truth is that skills at some point will be either too powerful for pvp and/or too weak for pve or the other way around.

Also with the added rigidity in the skill bar in GW2 where you are not as free to choose your skills as it was in GW1, you run into this issue more simply because people can’t just swap a skill when a skill is messed up for either pvp or pve. You would need to use different weapons with entirely different skill sets. Which you may not like.

Whatever Anet thought they could do to balance the game for both pvp and pve was really just wishful thinking from my point of view. I am glad they are taking action sooner rather than later.

raphaeldisanto.5478:

Mobs are there to be beaten. I don’t play PvE for challenge. I play PvE to be guaranteed to win the events. In PvE, I’m the hero. Heroes win. A mob’s entire purpose, it’s entire reason for existing, is to die to the heroes. That’s it’s job.

So what’s wrong with tuning the events instead?

Couldn’t have come too soon.

My guardian has already suffered multiple nerfs to PvE prowess to balance sPvP (yet still a bunker-build is on every competitive team).

The mesmer remains the strongest 1v1 AND by far the most useful utility (for Kylo if nothin else), despite having its already weak pve-solo capacity diminished.

Skilled pvp is a completely different game. It’s absurd to think you can balance for it and not disbalance pve/wvw.

PvE is non existant in this game anyway.

You cant even farm in this game because of DR.

Wheres the PvE at? leveling to 80 through hearts and some dungeons no one does?

People play this game for the WvW not the pve, they will never beat wow’s pve, ever.

Dware.4259:

PvE is non existant in this game anyway.

You cant even farm in this game because of DR.

Wheres the PvE at? leveling to 80 through hearts and some dungeons no one does?

People play this game for the WvW not the pve, they will never beat wow’s pve, ever.

So because you can’t farm and you can’t figure out what to do with yourself at level 80 PVE is non existent? Give me a break.

PVE is just PVP vs bots….Thats all, nothing more. IF the classes/traits/skills are balanced around PVP then they are inhearently balanced for PVE.

Its this “One build to rule them all” mentality that causes the divide.

Dware.4259:

People play this game for the WvW not the pve, they will never beat wow’s pve, ever.

I don’t I have never even been in WvW don’t care for it. I have done real PvP though you know the structured one in the mists that actually requires skill.

People like you make me laugh your either trolling or ignorant. PvE is the driving force behind almost all MMOs I remember seeing this exact comment in GW1 and look at that game now its still alive solely off PvE

If you read around, all other MMO forums have people praising the way Anet splits PVE/PVP skills.
Because those games are stuck with PvP nerfs that ruin PvE and PvE buffs that ruin PvP.
Pretty sure I don’t need to name you what’s the game that had this gigantic issue to the most ridiculous level for almost a decade now.

Violently disagree with the OP. Splits are absolutely necessary and I hope we see more. I was extremely disappointed when Anet announced that there were no splits before launch. And I knew that choice would come back to bite them. Balance in any game is practically impossible. However, you can try to strive to be as balanced as you can and the first step toward that is splitting pve and pvp.

Mammoth.1975:

Sorry Darmikau, which of those points were you disagreeing with?

BTW, to paraphrase, you’re on drugs if you think paragons would have been in a good state if they were split before nerfed. GW1 PvE was always all about abusing broken synergies, and paragons had a nice one with SY. So that was what they did.

There’s no such thing as a good state in GW1 pve. You abuse broken stuff or you play casually.

I’m disagreeing with all your points because you’re wrong.

Again you’re complaining about PvE skills specifically and not about the actual PvE/PvP split. There are many examples of PvE skills and professions that are still today unused or used only in niche cases because they were obliterated by PvP nerfs. I’ve given examples. The only case you’ve made against the split is that you think it makes PvE easy, and you haven’t substantiated that with any evidence.

A PvE/PvP split does not make PvE an unchanging vacuum. Skills are still adjusted for PvE – and even with the split many skills are still adjusted for both PvE and PvP at the time. The primary purpose of the split is to prevent extremely impactful changes from negatively influencing PvE. Saying that PvE skills should be burdened by PvP changes is assuming that skills in PvE are inherently strong just because they were too strong in PvP – which is entirely not that case and, in many cases, the opposite. Water magic in Guild Wars 1 was staple to GvG and some HA builds but considered largely useless in PvE – yet somehow nerfing both PvE and PvP water magic at the same time makes PvE more diverse and challenging?

The abuse cases of overpowered skills is a naturally occurring phenomenon in any game, and will exist regardless of a split – everything is either divided into a casual or abuse case, (The M16 in Call of Duty 4, Shockwave in GW1 after the Ele rework, nearly every abusable champion pick in League of Legends tournaments, etc) and it’s impossible to reconcile between casual and abuse play, they just don’t mesh. A PvE/PvP split will not make Anet turn a blind eye towards PvE balance, and in fact the lack of a split leads to less diversification when it inadvertently hits skills that are not abusable in PvE. Perhaps if Paragons weren’t destroyed by PvP-centered nerfs they’d have more builds than one abuse case that uses an egregious PvE skill. When skills that are balanced for PvE get hit by PvP nerfs while abuse case skills remain untouched, the incentive to diversify is lowered even further. In such cases, even when abuse case skills ARE hit, the alternatives are left as non-viable and they don’t make PvE “harder,” they needlessly complicate strategy and cause eventual rebalances in either A: PvE content difficulty or B: PvE skill numbers which adversely affects PvP because there’s no split.

There is no question that splits are bad and that they will lead to poor mechanics. So many people here go out of their way to differentiate PvP from PvE (and vice versa), leaving devs to either ignore it completely (that’s how GW2 started) or drive a wedge between the two. With each split, you’re going to see an increase in 1) game imbalance and 2) stupid mechanics. I only need cite World of Warcraft. I’m sorry, but the imbalance in that game is absurd and has never even been remotely addressed and the mechanics (I mean really, the cata boss fights? seriously?) are dumb. If you’re gonna split, create two different games. Otherwise, keep it one and let skill be the primary differentiator (is that a word?).

jgowans.3156:

There is no question TO ME that splits are bad and that they will lead to poor mechanics. So many people here go out of their way to differentiate PvP from PvE (and vice versa), leaving devs to either ignore it completely (that’s how GW2 started) or drive a wedge between the two. With each split, you’re going to see an increase in 1) game imbalance and 2) stupid mechanics. I only need cite World of Warcraft. I’m sorry, but the imbalance in that game is absurd and has never even been remotely addressed and the mechanics (I mean really, the cata boss fights? seriously?) are dumb. If you’re gonna split, create two different games. Otherwise, keep it one and let skill be the primary differentiator (is that a word?).

There I fixed that for you,

Splitting skills is not a bad thing, it does not creat game imbalance, in fact it makes both playstyles easier to balance because PVE & PVP are already two different games. Arena Net Split skills in GW and they still update and change both PVE & PVP skills as needed even as recent as September

Maybe you didn’t play Guild Wars, but PVP was it’s own game, and PVE was it’s own and that’s just as it should be, because mobs never react the same way a human player does. Already classes have suffered in PVE in GW2 because of nerfs that were made which were aimed at PVP play. Right now they say Mesmers are Over powered in PVP well I can tell you that simply isn’t the case in PVE. Solo Leveling a mesmer is difficult and frustrating. Splitting the skills and adjusting them for the type of game play they are aimed at would GREATLY help in the mesmer situation.

WOW probably could have saved itself a lot of headache had they adopted arena’s net’s skill split long ago, imho.

Darmikau.9413:

I’m disagreeing with all your points because you’re wrong.

So you think guild wars pve was balanced, guild wars pvp was unbalanced, more people played pvp than pve, and guild wars didn’t have split skills?

I see.

Mammoth.1975:

Darmikau.9413:

I’m disagreeing with all your points because you’re wrong.

So you think guild wars pve was balanced, guild wars pvp was unbalanced, more people played pvp than pve, and guild wars didn’t have split skills?

I see.

Where did I say any of that? This isn’t a presidential debate – you can’t make up bullkitten when my post is right there for everyone to see.

You’re really not making a good case for yourself here. You could at least try and demonstrate you know what you’re talking about instead of making yourself look like an idiot by attempting to extrapolate my posts and failing to give any contextual examples that a PvE/PvP split was bad for Guild Wars 1.

Mammoth.1975:

1. GW1 had split skills.
2. GW1 PvP was pretty well balanced.
3. GW1 PvE was horribly unbalanced.
4. More people played PvE than PvP in GW1.

Conclusions:

1. Splitting doesn’t help with balancing both sides, it just means more work trying to balance the extra skill versions.
2. People will PvE no matter what.
3. More skill versions means more complexity means greater barriers to PvP means less PvPers means less PvP.

You said you disagreed with all of them.

You said you disagreed with all of them.

I disagreed with all the points in your original post. I haven’t addressed any of your other posts in this thread. Backtracking and trying to say I explicitly disagreed with a set of points that you think would suit your argument still isn’t producing any form of evidence that a PvE/PvP split was bad for GW1.

If your goal is somehow to lower the barrier of entry into PvP then you should take a real lesson from Guild Wars 1 – that berating PvE players attempting to PvP creates an elitist community that eventually dies off, just like what happened to HA – and apply that instead of trying to come up with a convoluted strawman argument that a PvE/PvP split somehow makes it harder to PvP. The barriers to entry in PvP are already there – it’s a completely different mindset and game type. The marginal cost of skill differentiation is completely negligible. If you’re upset that a change in skill numbers or functions could somehow prevent a PvEer from accessing PvP, you should also be upset that Anet isn’t rigidly enforcing that all PvPers funnel into bottlenecks, aggro to non-essential targets, and refuse to kite or roll.

Darmikau.9413:

You said you disagreed with all of them.

I disagreed with all the points in your original post. I haven’t addressed any of your other posts in this thread. Backtracking and trying to say I explicitly disagreed with a set of points that you think would suit your argument still isn’t producing any form of evidence that a PvE/PvP split was bad for GW1.

If your goal is somehow to lower the barrier of entry into PvP then you should take a real lesson from Guild Wars 1 – that berating PvE players attempting to PvP creates an elitist community that eventually dies off, just like what happened to HA – and apply that instead of trying to come up with a convoluted strawman argument that a PvE/PvP split somehow makes it harder to PvP. The barriers to entry in PvP are already there – it’s a completely different mindset and game type. The marginal cost of skill differentiation is completely negligible.

It doesn’t help, it only hurts, why do it. That’s the general point. Your opinion is that it has a negligible effect, fine, I don’t share it, so back it up.

Mammoth.1975:

It doesn’t help, it only hurts, why do it. That’s the general point. Your opinion is that it has a negligible effect, fine, I don’t share it, so back it up.

But it does help – it preserves PvE gameplay by preventing highly impactful PvP-oriented changes from fundamentally altering how PvE plays. There’s these things called marginal benefits and marginal costs. Even if “burden of skill knowledge when entering PvP” was a substantial cost, which it’s not, the marginal benefit received from splitting PvP and PvE is many times greater.

I’ve already back my points up in two separate posts and yet you still haven’t produced even a single example of remotely applicable evidence that a PvE/PvP split is bad. Please quit wasting my time.

Darmikau.9413:

Mammoth.1975:

It doesn’t help, it only hurts, why do it. That’s the general point. Your opinion is that it has a negligible effect, fine, I don’t share it, so back it up.

But it does help – it preserves PvE gameplay by preventing highly impactful PvP-oriented changes from fundamentally altering how PvE plays. There’s these things called marginal benefits and marginal costs. Even if “burden of skill knowledge when entering PvP” was a substantial cost, which it’s not, the marginal benefit received from splitting PvP and PvE is many times greater.

I’ve already back my points up in two separate posts and yet you still haven’t produced even a single example of remotely applicable evidence that a PvE/PvP split is bad. Please quit wasting my time.

You haven’t backed that up at all. You just keep repeating it. On the other hand I’ve provided links to builds, completion times etc showing that despite the split, GW1 PvE was incredibly unbalanced. You won’t tackle any of those points though, you just keep spamming ‘it doesn’t hurt pvp, it helps pve’, despite being shown that at least one of those statements is flat out wrong.

And you’re talking about wasting peoples time? Smells like troll.

Mammoth.1975:

You haven’t backed that up at all. You just keep repeating it. On the other hand I’ve provided links to builds, completion times etc showing that despite the split, GW1 PvE was incredibly unbalanced. You won’t tackle any of those points though, you just keep spamming ‘it doesn’t hurt pvp, it helps pve’, despite being shown that at least one of those statements is flat out wrong.

And you’re talking about wasting peoples time? Smells like troll.

I keep repeating it because you’re not getting it. Paragons are still useless except when they abuse PvE only skills, because they were hammered by PvP centered nerfs. Mesmers were never able to be buffed until the PvE/PvP split because, even though they were awful in PvE, they saw good use in PvP. Multiple skill lines such as water magic were considered PvP staples and yet saw no use in PvE – because they were balanced around PvP and became unviable in PvE – when nobody uses something, there’s less diversity.

I never in a single one of my posts claimed PvE was balanced. Please stop using this red herring to try and draw away from the actual issue – whether or not PvE was balanced has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of a PvE/PvP split. You of all people should understand that without balancing the two sides of the game in a vacuum, PvE will ALWAYS be inherently unbalanced because the natural tendency for a game is to balance for PvP.

And you STILL have no evidence that any PvE balance issues were a result of the PvE/PvP split. The only link you’ve provided is to the meta speed clear builds which, in fact, support my assumption that you’re falsely attributing the PvE imbalance to the skill split instead of PvE only skills. EVERY SC team build in the link you listed abuses PvE only skills, which are NOT the result of a PvE/PvP skill split – they’re a completely different mechanic.

Not to mention if you’re going to argue that PvE was imbalanced you still haven’t defined what balanced PvE is. Balanced PvP is simple – in a two team game each team has a 50% chance at victory assuming they employ efficient strategies. How do you quantify PvE balance? Based on the time it takes to clear an elite area? The ability for players to fail a run? How often players fail a run? If you’re going to argue that PvE is imbalanced you need to first argue for what you think balanced PvE means – which you also haven’t done.

So you have three tasks you’ve made for yourself:

1: You need to define what you think balanced PvE is and get others to agree to that.
2: You need to clearly demonstrate that that PvE was inherently imbalanced based on (1).
3: Given (1) and (2) you need to conclusively prove that the specific cause of any PvE imbalance, if it exists, is the PvE/PvP split.

I just did half the work for you. If you still can’t produce a coherent argument, this thread is dead and I’m done responding.

You’re not responding anyway. I’ve outlined my key points three times, you haven’t disagreed with any of them. Well, you said you did, but then you changed your mind or something.

Nor have you even tried to argue with any of those points. Only MrsAngelD did. Your posts don’t seem to be contributing very much in fact.

@ op, you have to understand: there is a huge divide between casual pve — playing while sipping tea/texting — and pvping with a team that “can’t afford” a whipe.

I agree, l’d rather pve be as challenging/engaging as pvp, but that seems very unlikely as it does affect ArenaNet’s bottom line. Were the AI turned up several degrees, and reaction time sped up by two, most pvers wouldn’t make it past the starter area before rage-quitting. Rage-quitting was the scourge of grouping in GW1, seems to have returned for gw2; pvers do not want a challenge, as a whole, they desire the path of least resistance.

Wolfend.5287:

@ op, you have to understand: there is a huge divide between casual pve — playing while sipping tea/texting — and pvping with a team that “can’t afford” a whipe.

I agree, l’d rather pve be as challenging/engaging as pvp, but that seems very unlikely as it does affect ArenaNet’s bottom line. Were the AI turned up several degrees, and reaction time sped up by two, most pvers wouldn’t make it past the starter area before rage-quitting. Rage-quitting was the scourge of grouping in GW1, seems to have returned for gw2; pvers do not want a challenge, as a whole, they desire the path of least resistance.

Again, you can tune content for characters, rather than characters for content.

Skill Splits + Fractured Environments (PvP/PvE) = World of Warcraft

Let’s learn from failures, people.

So the OP proposes that skills are only balance for PvP and somehow, magically, they will also be balanced for PvE content where the AI is extremely different than real players.

OP is a troll. He doesn’t provide any convincing arguments and resorts to just misinterpret what other people say and cries his own tune over and over. What a tool.

Darmikau was pretty convincing and rational. Unfortunately common sense doesn’t cut it for trolls.

Mammoth.1975:

Wolfend.5287:

@ op, you have to understand: there is a huge divide between casual pve — playing while sipping tea/texting — and pvping with a team that “can’t afford” a whipe.

I agree, l’d rather pve be as challenging/engaging as pvp, but that seems very unlikely as it does affect ArenaNet’s bottom line. Were the AI turned up several degrees, and reaction time sped up by two, most pvers wouldn’t make it past the starter area before rage-quitting. Rage-quitting was the scourge of grouping in GW1, seems to have returned for gw2; pvers do not want a challenge, as a whole, they desire the path of least resistance.

Again, you can tune content for characters, rather than characters for content.

… only if the ‘character’ is up for the challenge, as I imply above: many casual pvers are not up to the challenge of content ‘tuned’ to higher difficulty.

Or, are you suggesting that pve AI difficulty be turned down for mesmers and other nerf-batted professions? Though I agree, I personally do not like the convolution borne of splitting skills between pve and pvp, particularly in the function and description.

ArenaNet needs to add coefficient variable to boon/condition/damage skills that proc on percentage variance depending on venue; leaving skill mechanic and description unchanged as a whole.

A stability boon would have a chance to proc more when being used in pve, as an example. Or swiftness could have similar variance chance as: instead of a solid 4 secs, have a variance chance of 2 – 6 secs, where in pvp 6 secs being less likely to occur. Damage coefficient also adjustable for pvp versus pve.

Nothing should be set in stone in skill descriptions; ArenaNet did a good job ‘removing numbers’ from skill info. By adding random variance, skills could be modified continuously with a lot less client-side whine.

Mammoth.1975:

Nor have you even tried to argue with any of those points. Only MrsAngelD did. Your posts don’t seem to be contributing very much in fact.

Darmikau has argued your original post, and has made a pretty compelling argument. I for one can’t see where you have made a compelling argument to convince me that Splitting skills for PVP/PVE was the cause of your perceived PVE unbalance.

Just because a few people can Speed clear certain area’s does not mean that the game play is unbalanced. Some people can win a chess match in very little time, but we didn’t call that unbalanced and re-make chess boards.

In a game where you are fighting AI the human will always have the upper-hand and can always outsmart the AI else there is no point to playing the game. I mean why play if you can never win. But for some people their enjoyment comes from even further outsmarting the AI and they will attempt to do it even better and faster than it is normally done. There is nothing wrong with that, and where Arena Net found it to be unbalanced in PVE they sought to fix it, such as removing Ursan and changing Perma Sin.

You really need to prove how Skill splits were the cause of your perceived unbalance Because after all that is what you are saying. So far all you have done is stated that you think it was, but you have not proven it. Because honestly in GW the PVE was horrible for some classes before they split the skills and improved greatly after they split them, because they no longer had the concern of overpowering a class in PVP because they needed a change in PVE.

I understand you’re afraid of unbalance but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree in trying to blame any perceived GW unbalance on the splitting the skills for PVP/PVE.

PvP/PvE splits are a good thing if not overused as a shortcut for balancing. I think it is important to recognize that certain mechanics are much more effective in PvP while others are more effective in PvE. They are very different styles of gameplay and need to be treated as such.

Looking at GW1, how mesmers were a top-tier class in PvP but suffered as a PvE class.

Monsters are brute force with more hitpoints/toughness and hard-hitting attacks. They don’t kite, don’t use movement the same way as humans, and aren’t as adaptable. They also don’t use teamwork to synergize.