Guild Wars 2

I’d like to see builds be balanced around matchups, each build having an equal amount of matchup advantages and matchup disadvantages.

Kinda like fighting games.

And when I say matchup advantage/disadvantage, something like a 6/4 advantage, or a 4/6 disadvantage. Nothing ridiculous like 8/2 or 1/9 like we have now.

Reikou.7068:

I’d like to see builds be balanced around matchups, each build having an equal amount of matchup advantages and matchup disadvantages.

Kinda like fighting games.

And when I say matchup advantage/disadvantage, something like a 6/4 advantage, or a 4/6 disadvantage. Nothing ridiculous like 8/2 or 1/9 like we have now.

Agreed, even if it’s not perfectly balanced, skill should be the overall determining factor without needing to vastly outskill your opponent like it is now with many matchups.

bhagwad.4281:

Yes. Because losing the match is very often less important than losing a 1v1. In a team, you’re never sure of how much you contributed. In a 1v1, it’s all you baby. Forget team balance. It should_only_ focus on 1v1s because it’s far more satisfying.

Sarcasm detected. :P

Curiously, what component/s of 1v1 balance imply 5v5 imbalance? — for example.

First I don’t believe a game like this or similar can be balanced. It is just impossible. There are just too many possibilities, combination and permutation that the developer cannot see or foresee for that matter.

Just like rock paper scissors, this cannot be balanced. If as a rock and come across scissors, in hind side, rock should win. But there are occasion when it doesn’t.

Does that mean rock is balanced against scissors, NO.

And say you now balance scissors against rock to have a fighting chance by harden it up, what happens to paper vs scissors, no contest anymore. And say you beef up paper again scissors, guess what happened next. Paper will outclass rock. And this goes round and round.

This is what Rogue is trying to explain. It is just impossible to balance 1v1 unless you want no diversity which will make the game really boring.

But if you get a team game of 2v2 up to whatever number vs the same, you get more of a tactical game and more fun. Balancing is less an issue although it is still a minor problem.

Using

• P= paper
• R=rock
• S=scissor

Against

• P>R
• R>S
• S>P

P R S
P PP PR PS
R RR RS
S SS

Using the chart, one cannot say which the best combination is because there is a counter to them.
Now look at the comb when in 2v2. Forgetting the idea of player skills, this is just on build alone, you could start to see where team work really plays it part.

PP PR PS RR RS SS
PP PP/PP PP/PR PP/PS PP/RR PP/RS PP/SS
PR PR/PR PR/PS PR/RR PR/RS PR/SS
PS PS/PS PS/RR PS/RS PS/SS
RR RR/RR RR/RS RR/SS
RS RS/RS RS/SS
SS SS/SS

Let use PPvRS, we already know that P>R, S>P,
group 1 has 2P against 1S. If the 2P should attack R at once, R goes down fast leaving just S, leaving 2v1. Therefore PPvRS, PP wins.

Now if we try PSvRS. Now we have a more complex scenario.

• Group 1 P > group 1 R,
• Group 1 S = group 2 S,
• Group 2 R > group 1 S,

How do you think this will turn out? This is impossible to determine because of just the small factors here.

Now think of it in a 5v5, 8v8, 10v10 the possibilities becomes endless. Then you now have to take skills build and other stuff into consideration. This is why team composition is very important, and this is what development team work with.

So back to is it question of 1v1 unless playing same class same build and same skill player.

As for me the main problem is a single build that is above all other. Call it super r, goes against P wins, goes against S wins, goes against SS, PP, SP and wins, that is when there that build needs looking into. Going as far as a three combo, then that build is truly over powered.

Now let look at some of the build in the game that are so called OVER POWERED to me.

• Necro M/M,
• Ranger SP

In a 1v1, it is almost impossible to win against them. 2v1 or 3v1 is still sometimes impossible, but this depends on the other player skill that joins the fight, their build and other factors.

You all remember Guardian and their spirit weapon build, which got toned down, now you hardly see anyone play that build. They should do the same to those two build, tone it down but not enough to render it useless like the guardian spirit build.

This isn’t a team game. Combo fields and finishers don’t support the party. Lets not balance for that.

There isn’t even a 1v1 specific aspect to the game. In fact you want to AVOID 1v1s in spvp to stack the odds in your favour, so why balance around it? That’s dumb.

Everyone is bringing up good points, especially about reducing the severity of counters (which is the kind of balance I’m trying to emphasize).

the sober ninja.6539:

This isn’t a team game. Combo fields and finishers don’t support the party. Lets not balance for that.

There isn’t even a 1v1 specific aspect to the game. In fact you want to AVOID 1v1s in spvp to stack the odds in your favour, so why balance around it? That’s dumb.

This, however… So it’s not a team game and it’s not a dueling game. What game are you playing?

Rogue.8235:

Master of Timespace.2548:

This is a necessity in a game where 1v1s are both common and important part of the game. Gw2 is such a game due to the silly conquest mode. 1v1 balance was not important at all in gw1.

1v1 isn’t always a necessity in the way you may think it is. I’ve been in many situations where I, or someone on my team, could not handle a 1v1 fight they needed to simply because they were either being outplayed or countered via build. This is where teams come in: we switched/rotated positioning so someone else better suited for the fight can take over. That are we adjusted our overall strategy to accommodate that particular weakness.

GW2 still comes down to team play. Yes, individual strengths and skill are necessary, but it is still a team game, NOT a collection of 5 1v1 matchups on a single map.

Yes, team fights matter. But if your home point defender can’t handle a 1v1, then your team is forced to do a rotation. In otherwords, his 1v1 capability did matter.
Decap engi is a good example about how 1v1 balance is important in this game. A decap engi wins most of the node fights and so he almost always forces 2 players from the opposing team to defend their home. This wins 3v4 in the rest of the map for the engineer’s team.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Yes, team fights matter. But if your home point defender can’t handle a 1v1, then your team is forced to do a rotation. In otherwords, his 1v1 capability did matter.
Decap engi is a good example about how 1v1 balance is important in this game. A decap engi wins most of the node fights and so he almost always forces 2 players from the opposing team to defend their home. This wins 3v4 in the rest of the map for the engineer’s team.

The bolded/underlined part is the kind of balance I was talking about. It isn’t necessarily 1v1 balance you’re looking for, it’s a build with too few weaknesses and too many strengths. I addressed this in the following post:

Rogue.8235:

With this view, you have builds that have strengths and weaknesses, which entails that the individual players have battles they should seek out or avoid to take advantage of their strengths and exploit others’ weaknesses. 1v1 balance would not allow for such tactical positioning and exploitation to exist, as every single person would be evenly matched by every other person all the time, regardless of any environmental or circumstantial factors.

Team balancing over 1v1 balancing would entail that, yes, every build has their counters, but no build would outshine any other so much so as to be the epitome of all combat styles in a single instance. That is to say, no one class is so overpowered that it is a must have for every circumstance, every map, and every team composition without regard.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

Just like rock paper scissors, this cannot be balanced. If as a rock and come across scissors, in hind side, rock should win. But there are occasion when it doesn’t.

Does that mean rock is balanced against scissors, NO.

I was confused at first because I thought you were only talking about the actual game: Rock, Paper, Scissors. :P

If you interpret Rock and Scissors to represent professions (or builds if you prefer), than that’s not a fair comparison, because GW2 builds don’t HARD counter one another in the literal sense like Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

And say you now balance scissors against rock to have a fighting chance by harden it up, what happens to paper vs scissors, no contest anymore. And say you beef up paper again scissors, guess what happened next. Paper will outclass rock. And this goes round and round.

This is what Rogue is trying to explain. It is just impossible to balance 1v1 unless you want no diversity which will make the game really boring.

I understand what you mean; the direct relationship between Rock, Paper, Scissor balance means that buffing any one skill will upset the balance; making that skill overpowered.
- This is not what 1v1 balance implies, in fact it asks for the opposite; equal capability.

Blades of Sabatine.5639:

Snip

I don’t think you’ve quite grasped what 1v1 balance implies.

Look to the following examples to see the differences.

GROUP BALANCE

Builds: a > b > c > a

Team1:
a + b + c

Team2:
a + c + c
__

1v1 BALANCE:

Abilities: a > b > c > a

Player1:
a + b + c

Player2:
a + c + c

Both examples are balanced, but the difference is group balance relies on allies to provide counters, while 1v1 balance relies on the individual to choose the correct abilities.

In other words, group balance promotes skill through smart teamplay, while 1v1 balance encourages individual skill through smart ability use.

Something to note however is that groups can easily become imbalanced depending on the matchup.

E.g:
Team1:
a + a + b

Team2:
b + b + b

This could be controlled if teams weren’t random, such as a system that balances groups by assigning roles. If you’re familiar with World of Warcraft, it could act like their dungeon finder, but for PvP.

The same could be said for 1v1 balance (like what Ronpierce was getting at), because traits/talent trees, utility bar slots, etc, enables players to customize their characters, however a carefully crafted system could allow the illusion of customization but really account for all the possible choices.

p.s. And no that’s not a typo; a + b + c – a + c + c = 0. Think about it.

I like to draw a parallel to racing games when discussing PVP balancing.

Assuming both cars are built the same, only the best driver wins.
Assuming both cars are different, only the best car wins.

PVP is based on a set of rules. If there were no rules, there would be no competition.

The problem with GW2 is that the rules keep changing after every balancing patch. The “cars” have their own unique features and are always being modified. You can’t balance this no matter how hard you try. Blizzard understood this a long time ago. They, like Arenanet will keep plugging holes only to create new ones.

It’s a never ending cycle.

Rogue.8235:

Everyone is bringing up good points, especially about reducing the severity of counters (which is the kind of balance I’m trying to emphasize).

the sober ninja.6539:

This isn’t a team game. Combo fields and finishers don’t support the party. Lets not balance for that.

There isn’t even a 1v1 specific aspect to the game. In fact you want to AVOID 1v1s in spvp to stack the odds in your favour, so why balance around it? That’s dumb.

This, however… So it’s not a team game and it’s not a dueling game. What game are you playing?

That first bit was supposed to be sarcasm (ie. it IS a team game).

Need to do something about the condi meta before they address class imbalance. As it stands spam heal and condis and win.

I think it should start with 1v1 balance because there are too many factors in team fights to make balancing an accurate effort.

Actually if it is not balanced 1v1, then it is especially not balanced 5v5. So this cliché that game is balanced around 5v5 is nothing more than excuse which is harder to see. In 1v1 its much easier to see who has an advantage, but in 5v5, not so easy.

That is clever disguise of Anet.

Dee Jay.2460:

silvermember.8941:

We can all agree in an ideal world every game would be balance with 1v1, but I think that is beyond the abilities of this game.

The way they designed certain mechanics makes it nearly impossible to do a 1v1 balance. They will have to gut out the game and completely redesign certain aspects like conditions damage, traits and certains skills and I don’t see Anet dedicating the resource to fix that. Maybe in guilds wars 3 aka Tyria they will finally realize that conditions should not be a main source of damage.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yes, there are things like AoE that need to be taken in to account.

But the thing is the “we balance around team dynamics” approach NEVER works.

On the other hand I’ve played plenty of games where 1v1 balance is taken into account and that ended up with reasonable team balance as well.

The whole sentiment of “balance” is based on 1v1. The entire lens of how we perceive that is balanced and what is OP is based around duel situations. That’s just it. You can talk about balancing around teams all you like but at the end of the day it’s how well you fare in a duel that really dictates how you perceive balance.

I would love an example of an MMORPG that had good 1v1 balance because most MMORPG have always been designed with the premise of rock paper scissor.

Name one game where you have a hard-counter triage where you have practically no chance in winning if your class comes up against your counter-class?

Because I can name numerous ones that have reasonably balanced 1v1s.

• World of Warcraft
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Warhammer Online (exception: Bright-Wizards)
• Guild Wars 2 (despite a terrible meta most classes have a reasonable shot at killing any other class).
• pretty much all FPS games.
• even TF2, despite its different classes, doesn’t have a true hard-counter dynamic.

RTS games are the only games I can think of that still hold on to a rock-paper-scissor concept. Aka. Colossi counter Zerglings, Zerglings counter Siege Tanks, Siege Tanks counter Colossi etc.

My Shadow Warrior was pretty much a Hard Counter to Choppa’s 1v1 in WAR..

While a DoK could easily destroy my Shadow Warrior with not much i could do

Black Orc at the start of the game was pretty much unkillable 1v1 except for a Swordmaster.

Like a Black Orc at the start of the game was so unkillable that I’d have groups of Order with multiple BW’s mind you, completely ignored me (because there is no way for me to kill a Order toon with Heals as a BO at the start, without heals..I could kill them all day, 1 healer and it was impossible) because I could sit there and basically never die.

Hello and thanks for your feedback Tatsuo!

Tatsuo.1478:

Actually if it is not balanced 1v1, then it is especially not balanced 5v5. So this cliché that game is balanced around 5v5 is nothing more than excuse which is harder to see.

Sorry; I don’t understand why you think 5v5 balance requires 1v1 balance to be made possible. Could you please explain?

Tatsuo.1478:

That is clever disguise of Anet.

I know Word of Warcraft development stated they’re aiming for 3v3 balance (although that could have changed by now), but I don’t know of Guild Wars 2’s philosophy.

Did I miss something?

Impossible, because individual min maxing is not the same as team min maxing. In team games people OFTEN build there characters to be specialists at doing a particular thing, and would lose to a more generally speced player in 1on1.

1on1 balance exists is NO pvp game with skill tree variety. It exists in games where people are clones of each other, like call of duty. But is league of legends, the most popular pvp game on the planet 1on1 balanced? NO.
Is world of warcraft 1on1 balanced? NO.

And even if all classes COULD be balanced 1on1, you would still have people specializing to do things in a team environment that would lead to more group power, but less individual power.