Guild Wars 2

There are simply too many available skills and movements associated with an MMO like GW2 – jumping, too many skill slots, skill spamming, animations, etc. Any problems with these can lead to exploits, imbalance, and a the development of a heavy “meta.”

Companies with much deeper pockets (ie. Valve and Riot) have trouble balancing games like DotA2 and LoL, which only allow for 4 skills and basic 2D movement on a map. And despite their best efforts, there are still many balance issues and a “Meta” that arises for every patch.

I admire Anet’s original vision, but what they are aiming to achieve with PvP (esport) is clearly a near impossible task. They could triple their dev team/resources and still not even come close.

That is true, that “perfect balance” will never happen. But thats exactly why, ANet should be constantly tweaking/balancing the game, instead of large balance changes 2-3 times a year.

By consistently changing the game, the “meta” becomes a dynamic entity that is constantly changing. This is that “illusion of balance” that ANet had discussed so very long ago.

Good Tofu.9376:

There are simply too many available skills and movements associated with an MMO like GW2 – jumping, too many skill slots, skill spamming, animations, etc. Any problems with these can lead to exploits, imbalance, and a the development of a heavy “meta.”

Companies with much deeper pockets (ie. Valve and Riot) have trouble balancing games like DotA2 and LoL, which only allow for 4 skills and basic 2D movement on a map. And despite their best efforts, there are still many balance issues and a “Meta” that arises for every patch.

I admire Anet’s original vision, but what they are aiming to achieve with PvP (esport) is clearly a near impossible task. They could triple their dev team/resources and still not even come close.

I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.

Salamander.2504:

Good Tofu.9376:

There are simply too many available skills and movements associated with an MMO like GW2 – jumping, too many skill slots, skill spamming, animations, etc. Any problems with these can lead to exploits, imbalance, and a the development of a heavy “meta.”

Companies with much deeper pockets (ie. Valve and Riot) have trouble balancing games like DotA2 and LoL, which only allow for 4 skills and basic 2D movement on a map. And despite their best efforts, there are still many balance issues and a “Meta” that arises for every patch.

I admire Anet’s original vision, but what they are aiming to achieve with PvP (esport) is clearly a near impossible task. They could triple their dev team/resources and still not even come close.

I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.

Not sure, if I remember correctly I saw just as many moaning threads then as I do now.

Could balance happen in a reasonable time frame – absolutely!

Will it ever happen while they make very few changes and so rediculously infrequently – never. Games that are balanced will make changes as something becomes a problem, which allows them to shave things slowly before they get out of hand. GW2 isn’t actually trying to create balance anymore – they have even said as much. Their goal is just to have DIFFERENT sets of things be disgustingly OP every season.

Good Tofu.9376:

Salamander.2504:

I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.

Not sure, if I remember correctly I saw just as many moaning threads then as I do now.

At this time, all classes had a spot on the meta, some with even more than one build (burn guard or bunker guard), only ranger was a bit weak and D/D ele a bit strong. I haven’t played the game since the beginning, but for me this was a very fun meta.

Now, with elite specs, the balance is much worse, and also, the build diversity is awful. Before HoT, I could play non-meta builds without being a burden for my team. Now, the gap between non-meta and meta has strongly increased, in great part because of the elite spec power creep.

People will always complain, and to be fair, the pre-HoT meta was not perfect. You still could not really play damage elementalist or bunker mesmer (yet), but it was a vastly better one than now.

Silverkey.2078:

Good Tofu.9376:

Salamander.2504:

I disagree—we know they’ve already come so close in the past. Remember the post-june 23rd patch, post sept. 29 patch (d/d ele nerf), pre-hot balance? There was a solid ~1 month of fantastic balance.

Not sure, if I remember correctly I saw just as many moaning threads then as I do now.

At this time, all classes had a spot on the meta, some with even more than one build (burn guard or bunker guard), only ranger was a bit weak and D/D ele a bit strong. I haven’t played the game since the beginning, but for me this was a very fun meta.

Now, with elite specs, the balance is much worse, and also, the build diversity is awful. Before HoT, I could play non-meta builds without being a burden for my team. Now, the gap between non-meta and meta has strongly increased, in great part because of the elite spec power creep.

People will always complain, and to be fair, the pre-HoT meta was not perfect. You still could not really play damage elementalist or bunker mesmer (yet), but it was a vastly better one than now.

Look for BOLD.

In 2013, many top 100 players played their own build beating meta build all nights…

This was an ERA where skills was better than META.

Today… they can’t keep that anymore.

Why? Because we had a more balanced game at that time. You could tweak your attributes way more easily (6 rune pieces, jewels, attributes from traits line) and so, it was easier to have many (ten’s of) viable build for a class.

Then… depending on meta and comp, you could tweak a lot your build to make it better. (now you can tweak a bit, not a lot)

Perfect balanced not. But 2013 balanced (except the kitten like dhuumfire) was great because many players could play whatever and still beat meta build with good pilot.