Guild Wars 2

I wanted to have a discussion with the rest of the community and devs as to the idea of having balance be separate for PvP PvE and WvW. I know this is an idea that gets thrown around a lot and I am definitely in support of separate balance. I am not sure as to why the game was not balanced this way to begin with and why it has not changed since. From my point of view, I think the game would greatly benefit from separate balance. If a team is looking to balance content in PvE they would not have to worry at all about the impact such a change would have on another game mode and balance could be quicker and more content focused. I know that having three different balance teams may be harder than it sounds, but with the recent addition of a team entirely dedicated to Guild halls, I am not sure why three different balance teams are out of the question. I would imagine that because these teams are only working on one aspect of the game they could be significantly smaller than the current team as the scope of content they need to worry about is 1/3 of what it is now. I have heard some say such a split would be negative to new players or those who play multiple game modes as they may need different armor for each game mode; however, I don’t think that it’s an issue. As of now I am always changing my armor based on what game mode I’m playing so there would really be no difference. I also think that with a major WvW update on the horizon this would be a great time to separate the balance and really make some major changes to how WvW is played. So are there any other negatives and positives to having separate balance? I would love to hear others opinions and views about balance separation. I would also appreciate a response from a dev on this, are there things some of us may not be thinking about or things that really make separate balance nonrealistic for GW2? So feel free to throw around ideas and concepts, but please remember if you do comment that others will not always view thing the way you do so try to open minded when discussing.
(On a side note I believe PvP has its own balance so really it would be separation of WvW and PvE, but I could be wrong I’m not much of a PvP player).

I’m all for separating all modes of play and balancing around them. However that is way more time and resources than Anet current cares to allocate. Which is a shame as it would go a long way in increasing the overall health and stability of all game modes.

You really find PVE so difficult that you think it needs different balance?

Are you soloing raids? As a 4000+ hour player with 15k chievo points i can’t fathom what could possibly be causing anyone so much trouble they would need the game balanced for PVE.

What encounter in PVE is giving you this much trouble that the devs should re-balance 100’s of different skills?

They should duplicate Skills, Copy all the skills we have in the game and make separate sets.

Like if you enter PvE you get all the same skills as before but these will only effect PvE, If you move to PvP you are not allowed to use PvE Skills and you get automatically switched to the PvP Variant.

Like for example a Elite Skill “Chilled to the bone!” It will say in description that this Elite Skill Version is PvP Only. So upon leaving the PvP Lobby your Chilled to the bone Elite Skill get’s swapped out to the PvE Version.

Having everyone use the same Skills across all modes it causes a tug-of-war effect.

As I always like to ask in these threads, please provide an example of a balance change made for PvP reasons that had unacceptable consequences for PvE, or a balance change for PvE that had unacceptable consequences for PvP.

There are times and places for splitting skill functionality between different game modes, but I can’t think of any balance changes from the past year or so that would demand it.

Godmoney.2048:

You really find PVE so difficult that you think it needs different balance?

Are you soloing raids? As a 4000+ hour player with 15k chievo points i can’t fathom what could possibly be causing anyone so much trouble they would need the game balanced for PVE.

What encounter in PVE is giving you this much trouble that the devs should re-balance 100’s of different skills?

As to why they should do this, they had been doing it previously and there are still some skills not entirely unsplit from PvP/PvE balance. One could legitimately argue that the overall state of combat was healthier due to this.

Ensign.2189:

As I always like to ask in these threads, please provide an example of a balance change made for PvP reasons that had unacceptable consequences for PvE, or a balance change for PvE that had unacceptable consequences for PvP.

There are times and places for splitting skill functionality between different game modes, but I can’t think of any balance changes from the past year or so that would demand it.

The recent changes to both CoR and Scorched Earth come to mind as changed made for either mode that are in direct opposition of another gameplay mode. Additionally, most of the mesmer nerfs have had sweeping rippling effects through PvE, even though the majority of it (sans Pre-cog) were aimed at PvP.

The change to necro in general this patch scream PvP balance changes, that have little to no impact on their PvE viability.

This is why both balance needs to be done on a per mode basis, because last i check i don’t play conquest in PvE, and you don’t kill bosses with 22million HP in PvP.

TexZero.7910:

Godmoney.2048:

You really find PVE so difficult that you think it needs different balance?

Are you soloing raids? As a 4000+ hour player with 15k chievo points i can’t fathom what could possibly be causing anyone so much trouble they would need the game balanced for PVE.

What encounter in PVE is giving you this much trouble that the devs should re-balance 100’s of different skills?

As to why they should do this, they had been doing it previously and there are still some skills not entirely unsplit from PvP/PvE balance. One could legitimately argue that the overall state of combat was healthier due to this.

Ensign.2189:

As I always like to ask in these threads, please provide an example of a balance change made for PvP reasons that had unacceptable consequences for PvE, or a balance change for PvE that had unacceptable consequences for PvP.

There are times and places for splitting skill functionality between different game modes, but I can’t think of any balance changes from the past year or so that would demand it.

The recent changes to both CoR and Scorched Earth come to mind as changed made for either mode that are in direct opposition of another gameplay mode. Additionally, most of the mesmer nerfs have had sweeping rippling effects through PvE, even though the majority of it (sans Pre-cog) were aimed at PvP.

The change to necro in general this patch scream PvP balance changes, that have little to no impact on their PvE viability.

This is why both balance needs to be done on a per mode basis, because last i check i don’t play conquest in PvE, and you don’t kill bosses with 22million HP in PvP.

That doesnt answer the question in the slightest. Give me a example of this mindbendingly difficult content in Gw2 that needs sweeping PVE buffs to accomplish.

Serious, what content in Gw2 needs rebalancing so much that you can’t just knock off some hitpoints.

Let’s see changing hitpoints on a single mob > Rebalancing 100’s of interconnecting skills for no other reason than a few players have trouble in pve

Again, what mob in gw2 is giving you this much trouble?

Every piece you separate is one more thing a person has to first relearn before they can play at full effectiveness in the other mode, then remember when they swap back and forth between aspects of the game. Reading patch notes you can see in general they’re trying to minimize the splits that are already in the game, not create more.

You get 100 times more player understanding and acceptance by making your PvE monsters act more like players (action tempo, range of skills, defensive behavior, movement) than you do from splitting skills by game mode. Even if players freak out a little that some mobs actually fight back .

I don’t like PvE skills getting nerfed because they are a problem in PvP or some prof that’s already OP’d in PvE getting another buff because it’s too weak in PvP. However, before asking to change the status quo, it’s a good idea to try to understand why it exists, in particular why ANet chose to use the same skills for 3 distinct game modes, with 3 distinct sets of strategies & tactics.

First, balancing is really difficult. If it were easy to do, there would never be many substantive complaints about it, in this game or in any other MMO out there. Players want each profession to have more than a few fun & powerful options, which means skills & traits can’t be interchangeable and need to have interesting & useful synergies. That flexibility makes it exponentially more difficult to balance, since each change has to be considered in its relationship to every other possible use.

Second, it’s impossible for a dev team of any size to predict all the different ways a million players will figure out to combine mechanics, within and across profs. Across the entire community, with little risk, people can try out all sorts of stuff. Within the ‘lab’, there’s only a limited amount of time to predict (and test) the unexpected.

Third (and related to above), no matter how good a job they do, players are always going to evolve (overall, if not individually) far faster than ANet is going to be able to evolve the game. That’s why a lot of the same people who had trouble with dungeons in 2012 were roflstomping 80% of the paths in 2013 or 2014. That’s why FE used to be a difficult fight and now it’s a joke.

Given the above, ANet’s first principle is to reduce the complexity as much as possible. For that reason, they imposed the following rules, that otherwise seem arbitrary:

• Primary weapon set determines the first five skills and one (and only one) utility must be a ‘healing’ skill.
• Traits are limited to a handful and are only usable by one profession.
• PvE, PvP, and WvW will use identically named skills|traits with identical functionality.

Each of these limitations represents a compromise between the most fun for the players and a “reasonable” amount of complexity for the dev team.

I’d be very surprised if the devs themselves failed to realize that they have created some new issues, in attempting to avoid others. I’m 99% sure that they know that confusion (balanced around enemy’s speed of attack) is going to underpowered in PvE and overpowered in PvP and so on.

The question is: if ANet does decide to split skills substantially, what else can they do to make it feasible to balance & rebalance fast enough to accommodate the community?

Godmoney.2048:

That doesnt answer the question in the slightest. Give me a example of this mindbendingly difficult content in Gw2 that needs sweeping PVE buffs to accomplish.

Serious, what content in Gw2 needs rebalancing so much that you can’t just knock off some hitpoints.

Let’s see changing hitpoints on a single mob > Rebalancing 100’s of interconnecting skills for no other reason than a few players have trouble in pve

Again, what mob in gw2 is giving you this much trouble?

Right by this logic lets re-introduce all the tank amulets to PvP. Remind me about that removing hitpoints argument again when your conquest mode is bunker city.

Changing hitpoints in PvE is a bandaid fix that often times trivializes what the encounters were designed to do. It does the exact opposite of what you want balance to do which is have meaningful inputs and choice.

Ensign.2189:

As I always like to ask in these threads, please provide an example of a balance change made for PvP reasons that had unacceptable consequences for PvE, or a balance change for PvE that had unacceptable consequences for PvP.

Stability “rework”. Clear now?

It requires more work to keep and maintain three different versions of skills. That’s also not taking into account the complexity of GW2 compared to GW1.

Having game developers think of a PvE battle limited by what the boss can do in order to match the player’s skills is detrimental to the game. The PvE designers would have much more freedom to create battles if they were also free to balance player skills. I understand you don’t see any battle NOW, live in the game, that would require buffing players skills. But we are not talking about what is in the game now, but what could be if the PvE skills had their own niche application.

PvP and PvE modes are different anyway. Gear is different, map objectives are different, heck even traits are different. There is no problem having players “learn” PvE and PvP again. If anything, that makes the game richer, with more gameplay possibilities.

Godmoney.2048:

You really find PVE so difficult that you think it needs different balance?

Are you soloing raids? As a 4000+ hour player with 15k chievo points i can’t fathom what could possibly be causing anyone so much trouble they would need the game balanced for PVE.

What encounter in PVE is giving you this much trouble that the devs should re-balance 100’s of different skills?

It’s not that there is any PvE content that is too difficult. The idea I had in mind was if a certain skill needed to be changed in either PvE or WvW due to some sort of imbalance in one of the modes. If this skill is performing as expected in one game mode but not the other then the devs are stuck on how to change said skill. If they change the skill in one mode it may have a negative impact on the other. I’m not sure if I worded that quite the way I had in mind, but I think the idea is still there

TexZero.7910:

The recent changes to both CoR and Scorched Earth come to mind as changed made for either mode that are in direct opposition of another gameplay mode.

The Scorched Earth change was made for PvE (specifically raids) and is inconsequential (if anything an improvement) in PvP. What’s the need for a split?

The CoR change was made for WvW with additional benefits for sPvP (where it wasn’t a problem only because it’s harder to maintain range and the weapon was much less viable as a result). Does a higher cooldown on CoR cause any problems in PvE? I guess it makes it a bit harder to tag mobs when zerging open world events.

TexZero.7910:

Additionally, most of the mesmer nerfs have had sweeping rippling effects through PvE, even though the majority of it (sans Pre-cog) were aimed at PvP.

Are you talking about the alacrity changes? Those were not aimed specifically at sPvP, but were made as a wide net to a mechanic that was broken in every game mode. Alacrity was more oppressive in sPvP than in raids, but it needed to be nerfed hard in raids just as much as it needed to be hit elsewhere.

Manu.6078:

Stability “rework”. Clear now?

Not really. I presume you are an advocate for the old ‘GvG melee train with as much stability as possible so as to be unstoppable’ meta? I’m not going to sit here and defend how things are now (WvW balance has been long neglected) but I suspect you’d have a hard time convincing me (or the devs) that stability, particularly high uptime, AoE stability, wasn’t format defining and game breaking in WvW.

Ensign.2189:

Manu.6078:

Stability “rework”. Clear now?

Not really. I presume you are an advocate for the old ‘GvG melee train with as much stability as possible so as to be unstoppable’ meta? I’m not going to sit here and defend how things are now (WvW balance has been long neglected) but I suspect you’d have a hard time convincing me (or the devs) that stability, particularly high uptime, AoE stability, wasn’t format defining and game breaking in WvW.

Hint: teragriffs and co., all those creatures who eat all your stability stacks in a second. Pesky spammers.

Ensign.2189:

TexZero.7910:

The recent changes to both CoR and Scorched Earth come to mind as changed made for either mode that are in direct opposition of another gameplay mode.

The Scorched Earth change was made for PvE (specifically raids) and is inconsequential (if anything an improvement) in PvP. What’s the need for a split?

The CoR change was made for WvW with additional benefits for sPvP (where it wasn’t a problem only because it’s harder to maintain range and the weapon was much less viable as a result). Does a higher cooldown on CoR cause any problems in PvE? I guess it makes it a bit harder to tag mobs when zerging open world events.

TexZero.7910:

Additionally, most of the mesmer nerfs have had sweeping rippling effects through PvE, even though the majority of it (sans Pre-cog) were aimed at PvP.

Are you talking about the alacrity changes? Those were not aimed specifically at sPvP, but were made as a wide net to a mechanic that was broken in every game mode. Alacrity was more oppressive in sPvP than in raids, but it needed to be nerfed hard in raids just as much as it needed to be hit elsewhere.

Scorched Earth was nerfed for PvE, this is correct. However the Global ICD imposed on both it and CoR were lazy fixes that hinder gameplay across all game modes where there may be one or more players using the skills.

The mesmer nerfs go as far back as the original nerf to quickness, going from 100% down to 50. It was a changed aimed primarily at PvE but slowly pushed them out of being viable in PvP as well. Couple this with the now change to Alacrity which ultimately was fine in PvE, had to be changed in PvP because it allowed for high impact skills to be used too much in succession.

I mean i can keep going and bringing up nerfs to any mode that hindered others, if you would like….It’s nothing new with GW2.

Yeah, I agree with a few people here; we don’t need a whole team for PvE balancing, rofl…

Although I will miss my Warrior’s blood reckoning pre-nerf.

i dont understand why there needs to be a discussion, it seems obvious how beneficial it would be to have skills balanced separately for pvp and pve and i can only imagine the reasons anet dont do it are either because of lack of resources or because they are scared we are all stupid and will get confused if we have to remember two sets of skill information.

if its the last one all i can say to that is i dont think the group of people who spend equal amounts of time in all game types is going to be that big, most pick a favorite and then dabble in other types

Anet probably doesn’t want to have to deal with that on top of all the issues they currently have with the game, like bugs which they have had so many of since HoT released.

Plus pounding out new content as well to match competitors.

Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think Anet already has different teams working on different aspects of the game. Check WvW, for instance, it has its own dedicated team. Sure some resources are interchangeable, like designers, who can work anywhere. But maps and objective balancing is already separated into teams. It wouldn’t surprise me if the PvP teams would say “please nerf this” while the PvE team would say “no, please buff it instead” and the WvW would say “I don’t want any of it, can you please work on these other skills?”.