Guild Wars 2

I know this wont be a popular suggestion. But atleast hear me out. I’ve pointed out in other threads about how this game suffers from an over saturation of options. Now you may say (well more options equals more strategy) i’m here to say thats not really the case. More options equals a more impossible task to balance a game. People wonder why balance changes come along so slowly…well aside from other reasons (everyone at arenanet is out drunk partying?..j/kj/k) try to consider this for a second.

This game has far too many variables.
We have.
8 professions.
Each with 20 utilitys that can be mixed and matched for a ton of combinations ontop of healing options and ultimates.
Multiple weapon options across each profession. (that can be mixed and matched in even more ways, ontop of multiple combinations of weapons to swap between)
37 sigil options
52 Rune options.
150 traits with 70 trait points per profession offering hundreds of different customizations.
aprox 60 major Traits (around 10-12 per trait line) to customize.

Now imagine trying to make every option equally viable for a second. You cant. It wont happen. The truth is, as the game grows and becomes more competitive, it will still come down to each profession having a max of 3-4 strict builds that will get the maximum effectiveness out of your profession in spvp. Leaving 100’s of less effective combinations for you to slap together for the ILLUSION of choice and options. Not to say someone wont come around and replace one of these combinations with a new strat that works better, the point is there will always be a few that anyone deems worthy to use…because it’ll be the best at whatever it is you want to be doing in spvp.

So heres a suggestion (i know it wont be popular but imagine this for a second)
Remove runes, remove sigils, remove amulets. (i know scary)

Now lets look at the traits. Shrink the traits down (which wouldnt be hard to do) to about 4 different trait lines. Each one represents a play style that would be popular and useful. To give an examp lets say one is tanky minion necro, one is conditionmancer, one is vampire assassin necro, one is supportymancer (shrug).

You pick ONE and your given a set amount of stats that the play style needs. Your customization is now left to 5 trait abilitys you can use to speacialize and enhance your particular play style.

Utilitys and weapons could be left open, but much like it is now, if you spec for minion master traits and dont use any minions…your kinda screwing yourself.

Right now you might be thinking, “WTH you ruined my game”. Truth is all this does is leave you with less ways to mess up. Infact, by doing this it actually give you MORE options, because the great thing about doing this is, it makes building up your character more straight forward and simple…its easier to predict what you will do, and thus a game developer can balance accordingly and thus open up more flexbility ensuring 4 options are always present and while min maxers will still have “what i think is the best 5 trait abilities per” they could be kept on a closer watch and made so if you didnt choose what the pros think is the best, your not at as much at a disadvantage as you would be NOW if you had no clue.

So in short, take away some of the needless pre-game customizations to stats/traits, and make it into something that is manageable. (after all what makes the game fun is the battles and tactics within the battle not number crunching before the match) And yes i’m well aware this is something at this point may never happen. But its what probably should happen if this game is ever to be close to being an E-sport. TF2 (not an e-sport last time i checked but close example) gets by just fine with its classes to choose from with minimul weapon customizations, as do several other successful games. As long as the gameplay is fun and rewarding (which gw2 pvp is!) you dont need bombarded with an over abundance of pre-game customizations that number in the hundreds.

Even with this it would STILL be difficult to balance. But 1000x more reasonable.

mbh.8301:

Suzu.4193:

Devs are too focused on balance.

The interesting thing is that GW1 gave a lot of leeway in terms of balance because it was self balancing to some degree.

Look at: http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2009/August/356/ (when you hover over the skills it shows how they are currently, so you need to look a bit lower on the page to see how they were pre-nerf)

That ranger bar was the silliest nonsense. Everyone was running it. It was stupid. It moved fast, it attacked fast, it died slow. But look at that necromancer bar and that mesmer bar; those guys has buttons which are good against that overpowered ranger bar. Both teams knew this, and whichever team was better prepared for the mirror match won. Yes, this was a meta which was HEAVILY impacted by the presence of a grossly overpowered build.

In gw2, builds are made by the devs. Players have very little to do as far as being creative goes. Players have the task of figuring out how each weapon loadout is meant to be played and what gear / utility / traits maximizes that role (which normally comes down to maximizing damage in some way or another).

By giving the players few options, the burden of balance falls to the devs. Ironic, in a way.

Removing item customization will do nothing to improve balance, it will just make it easier to figure out what the optimum configuration is for a given character.

No thank you. Sounds Marxists.
Let’s keep what we’ve got and make it better.

I don’t think balance is as bad as some people think it is.

So, what you’re saying is let’s dumb the game down to the point you don’t need to think about your build, just take what you’re given.

No, thx.

i somewhat agree. traits are too numerous and the large majority of them will not ever be as useful as some few good ones. I’m not so sure about removing the runes and sigils etc.

my related complaint regarding the general system, is that it’s more complicated that GW1’s build set up… and 90% of it is HIDDEN! I don’t like all of these 20% chance to proc some condition on critical hits and stuff like that. not only are they boring traits, but they feel random and out of your control. enemies can’t know hardly anything about traits you’ve selected. idk, was just a random rant about traits. :|

I tried to keep an open-mind but that “simply” doesn’t make it more balanced.

milo.6942:

enemies can’t know hardly anything about traits you’ve selected. idk, was just a random rant about traits. :|

Actually that’s not true. If you play the class, you can often notice some details that would give away the traits enemy used.

Harrier.9380:

So, what you’re saying is let’s dumb the game down to the point you don’t need to think about your build, just take what you’re given.

No, thx.

As a warrior, how many viable options do you currently have?

Think about that for a second, then read your post. Then look at every other class, and read your post again.

Standardizing profession builds would go a long ways to balancing profession performance and increase the variability of team comps. I didn’t really read your entire post, but I’m assuming that’s your idea.

Lets use the example of a warrior and a thief. Comparatively, a thief is much more desirable. Thieves are more mobile, have more damage, have greater defensive capability than a warrior, and are less reliant on team support. So why would you ever bring a warrior over a thief?

That’s the current meta of 100B warriors and backstab thieves. With how the game is built currently, with the amount of options available, some builds will simply be flat out better than other builds at the same task. Bunker warrior versus bunker guardian, or direct damage ranger versus direct damage thief. There are 4 options and 2 obvious choices. The other 2 choices aren’t real choices in the first place. All the current system does is promote the false illusion of diversity and options, while at the same time creating a much larger barrier to entry for new players and simplifying the meta game. Since one build is flat out better than all others, you bring that build. Since some entire niches aren’t required, builds in that niche aren’t used. Since some professions simply do not specialize in the right niche or have an optimal build relative to others, they are simply not used either.

In other words, standardizing profession builds would increase the diversity of profession representation. This is because each profession can be solely balanced exclusively around one build, and each profession can occupy a unique niche that is neither better nor worse than others, and each niche can be equally desirable. The only variable is in how the team wants to play.

Larynx.2453:

Standardizing profession builds would go a long ways to balancing profession performance and increase the variability of team comps. I didn’t really read your entire post, but I’m assuming that’s your idea.

Lets use the example of a warrior and a thief. Comparatively, a thief is much more desirable. Thieves are more mobile, have more damage, have greater defensive capability than a warrior, and are less reliant on team support. So why would you ever bring a warrior over a thief?

That’s the current meta of 100B warriors and backstab thieves. With how the game is built currently, with the amount of options available, some builds will simply be flat out better than other builds at the same task. Bunker warrior versus bunker guardian, or direct damage ranger versus direct damage thief. There are 4 options and 2 obvious choices. The other 2 choices aren’t real choices in the first place. All the current system does is promote the false illusion of diversity and options, while at the same time creating a much larger barrier to entry for new players and simplifying the meta game. Since one build is flat out better than all others, you bring that build. Since some entire niches aren’t required, builds in that niche aren’t used. Since some professions simply do not specialize in the right niche or have an optimal build relative to others, they are simply not used either.

In other words, standardizing profession builds would increase the diversity of profession representation. This is because each profession can be solely balanced exclusively around one build, and each profession can occupy a unique niche that is neither better nor worse than others, and each niche can be equally desirable. The only variable is in how the team wants to play.

I think you hit the nail on the head of what i was saying. The game throws new players to the wolfs with the developers well knowing that majority of options to change your champion are less effective (in some cases terribly less effective) than others. This doesnt have to entirely change it just needs toned down. Right now most professions only have 1-3 viable builds that work or are desired or wanted anyway, and maybe 2 play styles that are even working at all (some only 1). Focusing the professions into a few play styles that are in a more controlled manner allow for easier balancing and dont really hurt the player.

You’ll have people like some have mentioned in this thread and claim this “dumbs the game down”, but does it really? Majority of players are just gonna look up on a forum or watch whatever the pros are doing in a stream and copy/paste it. All the work was done for them. It is no different if a few pros min/maxed till they came across the best possible build vs a developer creating the best possible build and saying “this is what you play, so you can be effective”. Its a hard one to swallow for a lot of people and i understand that. But the gameplay once your in the game doesnt change, you still gotta use your abilities more effenciently, aim your aoe’s, counter the enemys tactics, shift your players to the correct areas, dodge enemy attacks etc. The game has PLENTY of difficulty that is built into the actual gameplay. Its a battleground where in most games, you pick an archtype and go in and have fun….not forced to research what works and go through all this min/maxing getting the right possible combination of 100s of variables just so you can play the game. This is a hump that new players have to overcome and is not inviting….it actually just adds a level of frusteration to people who just wanna play the game.

By saying "when you play your profession click from one of these 3-4 tabs of play styles this Profession can fullfill, now choose 5 from 15 enhancements for that playstyle (tools that might be more useful from map to map, thus allowing a quick fix to make each play style viable in each map through this method) Gives the player choices to make without months of colaberative effort to find this build that works. (or like i said, most people will just go on youtube or to a forum and copy/paste working build from pro) anyone who isnt as hardcore about the game as it stands….is just a fish in a tank full of sharks in a game that already rewards skill through knowing how to best use abilities, counter abilties, dodge correctly etc.

This way it also means a developer has more ease at balancing his game, because he has more control over what you can do. If i had a game that had 4 classes with no options…its VERY easy to identify when one is stronger or weaker and set it in line with the others. But when i throw each of them 100’s upon 100’s of variables and customizations suddenly it isnt so clear. You simply cant keep track of that much data.

A more compact responce incase you didnt wanna read my wall of txt.

Simply put, doing this would still leave you with the same viable options that will exist if its left the way it is. It only means new players will be able to skip an unnecessary hump to playing and enjoying the game. And that it will be easier to balance.

first you need to fire the guys working at Anet and replace them with ppl who actually have a clue about e-sports and pvp

Sanis.1096:

first you need to fire the guys working at Anet and replace them with ppl who actually have a clue about e-sports and pvp

Well if they were entirely focused on E-sports you probably wouldnt have multiple races in spvp and everyone would be Human when they enter with a character or create a character for spvp to ensure no one has a visual advantage (Norn fighting asura for examp). and other changes that might not seem popular from a role playing side of things, but incredibly healthy to a fair competitive environment.

But i wouldnt attack the devs too much , while the famous early interview where John said RNG was actually good for E-sports was scary and made many lose trust in the future of competition for Guild wars 2.
(i’ve written and read several manifesto’s even from more senior and respected game developers that explain why RNG is NOT healthy for a competitive game, infact is a good way to make a game family friendly and less competitive like candy land “rng” vs Chess “no rng”. Smash brothers devs put in RNG prat falls to their WII game with the reason “we never intended for this game to be competitive”)

i think a lot of decent decisions were made however.
One was how they do damage. Direct damage, damage over time ETC, instead of several resistances you have one that covers all direct damage “toughness”. Unlike other games that flood it with fire, ice, etc resistances that just make things more complicated to balance and control.

Now you could argue “they dumbed down the game by not adding 20 different damage types and resistances” and once again you would be caught in the illusion that a game NEEDS such things to be fun and competitive. Which brings me back to what i’m writing about.

The game mechanics are awesome. They are what drew people to this game and made people fall in love with the pvp before the game even came out.

Great graphics that visually make you feel like your doing what your ability says.
Twitch style game play with dodge mechanics and stun breakers and aimed abilitys
Lack of a gear treadmill to the pvp side of the game leaving a fair playing field.

i know i’m rambling now, but compare this game to other mmos pvp.
Usually the player has a WALL of icons across their screen showing 30+ abilitys at any one time they can click during combat. Is guild wars 2 pvp LESS competitive because you only have 10 (to 14) abilitys on your screen? No, the game doesnt need it, theres enough going on.

So while i acknowledge there were a lot of mistakes in the design of the spvp that make you think (they wanted this to be an E-sport??). I think its understandable that the people working on this game are also sharing the game mechanics with a much larger team dedicated to making these classes fun in a role playing environment in the PVE side of the game. And i’m sure thats why a lot of these flaws exist and why changes that should have been made long ago, never came to fruition.

great post Zinwrath

Larynx.2453:

As a warrior, how many viable options do you currently have?

Think about that for a second, then read your post. Then look at every other class, and read your post again.

I can have at least 15 variations of 100b build, each of them can be viable, it depends only on playstyle. In fact, I’m constantly iterating on my current build, and probably it’ll take some more time to find ‘perfect’ GS build.

Actually there’s more build diversity among GS warriors than most other classes in game. Look at shatter Mesmers or backstab Thieves. Most of them run the same, optimal build since like 4+ months.

I can troll around with Rifle or Longbow, which (and that’s quite funny) actually work pretty decent on a new map.

I can run without GS at all, and still make it work.

Options are there. You might not see them, but that doesn’t mean others are the same.

Zinwrath.2049:

developer creating the best possible build and saying “this is what you play, so you can be effective”.

I’ve heard of some builds made by developers. They’re nowhere near ‘being effective’.

Actually I think ANet should take a different approach:

1) Focus/readjust class design philosophy. ANet has already made a post on this, but I mean get really specific on this and assign roles to classes, such guardians, eles, engis are the possible bunker classes, warriors and thieves are the burst DPS classes, necro and warriors and the “carry” classes, ele and thieves are the roamers, etc. Each class will have multiple roles they can fill, but not ALL of them. This makes it so you don’t have to balance every class to be able to fill every role and makes it easier to balance and gives the playerbase a clear picture of what each class does/excels at. They could then even list out what spec they are during the warm-up time before the tourney match, so PUGs can adjust their roles to match their team.

2) Balance/fix bugs WITHIN a class, rather than across classes. I think this is the #1 issue why sPvP has gone stale. Most people stick to 1, maybe 2 classes that they play regularly. When each of those classes only have 1 viable build in sPvP it gets very old very fast.

3) And of course they need to add the PvP systems around it like a true ladder/leaderboard, custom servers, etc.

Skyro.3108:

Actually I think ANet should take a different approach:

1) Focus/readjust class design philosophy. ANet has already made a post on this, but I mean get really specific on this and assign roles to classes, such guardians, eles, engis are the possible bunker classes, warriors and thieves are the burst DPS classes, necro and warriors and the “carry” classes, ele and thieves are the roamers, etc. Each class will have multiple roles they can fill, but not ALL of them. This makes it so you don’t have to balance every class to be able to fill every role and makes it easier to balance and gives the playerbase a clear picture of what each class does/excels at. They could then even list out what spec they are during the warm-up time before the tourney match, so PUGs can adjust their roles to match their team.

2) Balance/fix bugs WITHIN a class, rather than across classes. I think this is the #1 issue why sPvP has gone stale. Most people stick to 1, maybe 2 classes that they play regularly. When each of those classes only have 1 viable build in sPvP it gets very old very fast.

3) And of course they need to add the PvP systems around it like a true ladder/leaderboard, custom servers, etc.

I’m half on board with what you said. I dont think theres any thing wrong with each class having obvious character traits that make them really good at some things instead of others. I like to use TF2 because its a popular game and most people have played it as an example. The engineer is good at bunkering and stopping scouts, spys/demomen are good at taking out engineer turrets, heavys are good at defending and breaking through enemy lines when used with a medic, etc etc.

Clear defined strengths of each class. So i agree each profession probably shouldnt have been designed to do everything, but as i’ve said in the past..they wanted each profession to be able to sorta do everything, because of the PVE dungeon crawl side of the game where they didnt want you to feel like you NEEDED any one profession.
(which ties into my issue with the PVE side of the games influence on spvp)

And balance inside a class is good (when it has a defined role). When it doesnt its very complicated because anything you change is stepping on another class trying to do the same things toes.

So i dont really disagree with what your saying, i just think if they did what i suggested…doing what you want done would have been 1000x easier. But true, what your suggesting is probably a more realistic approach at this point in the game, mine would require a large amount of time and money and would be more suited for an expantion. However, doing what i suggested would save them a LOT of future problems.

Zinwrath.2049:

i know i’m rambling now, but compare this game to other mmos pvp.
Usually the player has a WALL of icons across their screen showing 30+ abilitys at any one time they can click during combat. Is guild wars 2 pvp LESS competitive because you only have 10 (to 14) abilitys on your screen? No, the game doesnt need it, theres enough going on.

The number of abilities doesn’t directly correlate with being competitive, but the players don’t get to choose any of them. You decide which weapons you want to use, whether or not another weapon does that better, and then build your traits and runes around a skill set that someone else designed. This balance decision makes GW2 pvp less competitive, since the creative option is yanked away from the player so that they don’t use skills in an unanticipated way.

This is a (shaky) analogy, for those of you who still think I’m full of it:

Imagine if blizzard released sc2, but you could only choose between one of three builds. You could cheese, do a timing, or macro. That’s it. The players have no input in balance because the meta is dictated by blizzard and a counter meta isn’t given the opportunity to evolve. What do the players do now? They can’t make new and exciting builds because blizzard has given them 3 to choose from. The only task that remains is to find out which of the 3 builds is strongest for your race.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but I already referenced gw1 above and nobody seemed to care.

We’re already on the verge of stagnation just through the leveling experience (that is, once you reach lvl 40, there isn’t much left that your character will be acquiring to change up his game.
I’m a big fan of this, personally, because it gives me time to become fluid with my preferred weapons as well as experiment with all sorts of wonky builds / stat set ups while I’m levelling (for me, this makes it feel less grindy, which is something I value).

Also

I’m never 100% sure, but i’m going to take a shot in the dark and say that this belief of superior balancing through less knobs to turn stems from the World of Warcraft talent collapse that happened after WotLK.
Throughout the course of that following expansion, the game lost around 4 million subscribers.
That is over 30% of the playerbase.
PvP was still just as imbalanced as it had ever been (and still is, tbh)
And perhaps it wasn’t just the talent changes that caused such a mass amount of people to move away from the game, but it clearly didn’t help.

pigeon-holing players into a small set of options that a greater power deems ‘best’ is not my interpretation of an upgrade.
I love being able to spec however i want.
Who cares if theres only a select few specs that perform optimally under designated circumstance?
I prefer to be more reactive to the chaos of a battlefield, than the numeric counter-weight of ‘output’.

Or are you worried that you’re being beaten by players with similar set-ups to you, but with minute differences that give them the advantage?

mbh.8301:

Zinwrath.2049:

i know i’m rambling now, but compare this game to other mmos pvp.
Usually the player has a WALL of icons across their screen showing 30+ abilitys at any one time they can click during combat. Is guild wars 2 pvp LESS competitive because you only have 10 (to 14) abilitys on your screen? No, the game doesnt need it, theres enough going on.

The number of abilities doesn’t directly correlate with being competitive, but the players don’t get to choose any of them. You decide which weapons you want to use, whether or not another weapon does that better, and then build your traits and runes around a skill set that someone else designed. This balance decision makes GW2 pvp less competitive, since the creative option is yanked away from the player so that they don’t use skills in an unanticipated way.

This is a (shaky) analogy, for those of you who still think I’m full of it:

Imagine if blizzard released sc2, but you could only choose between one of three builds. You could cheese, do a timing, or macro. That’s it. The players have no input in balance because the meta is dictated by blizzard and a counter meta isn’t given the opportunity to evolve. What do the players do now? They can’t make new and exciting builds because blizzard has given them 3 to choose from. The only task that remains is to find out which of the 3 builds is strongest for your race.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but I already referenced gw1 above and nobody seemed to care.

Yeah I’m with you here. Restricting options isn’t a good thing. Options are just that, options. You can maintain balance since you can only equip 3 utilites + 1 elite and equip 2 weapon sets. LoL/DotA have a ton of heroes/options, but that hasn’t stopped their success. What LoL/DotA does have however is clearly defined roles of each hero.

@Verisuvalise I think I’m in love with you.

Skyro.3108:

Yeah I’m with you here. Restricting options isn’t a good thing. Options are just that, options.

Can you expand on this? What is this meant to convey?

Skyro.3108:

You can maintain balance since you can only equip 3 utilites + 1 elite and equip 2 weapon sets.

Who is “you” ? Is it the devs/balance team? Did you intend for it to refer to the player? My first quote in this thread shows that the burden of balance falls entirely on the dev/balance team.

Skyro.3108:

LoL/DotA have a ton of heroes/options, but that hasn’t stopped their success. What LoL/DotA does have however is clearly defined roles of each hero.

There’s a fair number of heroes who can play any position. They can play support roles, they can be in push teams, they can babysit, they can initiate and sometimes even carry. The only things that define your role in a moba is how much gold you have and how your team wants to use your buttons.

Also; can you expand on this? Are you saying that classes in GW2 need to be more defined? How would you try to do that? By no longer having the holy trinity be consolidated into each class? Is there another way to do it?

It’s not supposed to be balanced.

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

Yeah I’m with you here. Restricting options isn’t a good thing. Options are just that, options.

Can you expand on this? What is this meant to convey?

Skyro.3108:

You can maintain balance since you can only equip 3 utilites + 1 elite and equip 2 weapon sets.

Who is “you” ? Is it the devs/balance team? Did you intend for it to refer to the player? My first quote in this thread shows that the burden of balance falls entirely on the dev/balance team.

Skyro.3108:

LoL/DotA have a ton of heroes/options, but that hasn’t stopped their success. What LoL/DotA does have however is clearly defined roles of each hero.

There’s a fair number of heroes who can play any position. They can play support roles, they can be in push teams, they can babysit, they can initiate and sometimes even carry. The only things that define your role in a moba is how much gold you have and how your team wants to use your buttons.

Also; can you expand on this? Are you saying that classes in GW2 need to be more defined? How would you try to do that? By no longer having the holy trinity be consolidated into each class? Is there another way to do it?

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

Skyro.3108:

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

I hope we all agree that OP’s idea is the opposite of true. It is untruthy or, as some would say, false.

As far as the possible roles that any gw2 class can play; what roles do we even have? There’s bunker and damage. On top of that, every class can play both of these roles. The player-imposed convention is that guardians are bunkers, but some players don’t care about that opinion and play sword/torch + scepter/focus (I think) and do fat damage.

To a large degree roles in mobas are also player-imposed. They see a top team, who has crafted a strategy based on some idea / their own playstyle, and shove it down the throat of every public they get in a game with – complete with loud hissyfits and capslock.

Example which exemplifies the nonsense of player-imposed roles:
There’s a player in HoN, Emperor. His favorite hero was considered to be only good for tanking. One day he decided to unleash a carry build on that hero so fierce that it was nerfed shortly thereafter.

When all classes have access to the same palette of abilities (healing, damage, damage mitigation) then the only roles you have will be decided by players.

Skyro.3108:

There’s a fair number of heroes who can play any position. They can play support roles, they can be in push teams, they can babysit, they can initiate and sometimes even carry. The only things that define your role in a moba is how much gold you have and how your team wants to use your buttons.

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

Maybe i can clear up some of this.
first some talk about dota
For starters Dota/LoL are poor examples as its an entirely different formula. Things between heros is kept simple with only 4 abilities to balance around. Often times “atleast in LoL case” a hero is designed to serve 1-3 roles at best (they will often announce what they expect you to do with that hero anymore) Balance is then done through itemization which is where real balance happens, as the games strategy is half built on Gold farming and how to best spend that gold at each moment in the game. “should i buy this cheap item, to help me for the next 5 minutes, should i save up and buy this item to become a god in 30 min” are all parts of the strategy of the game So balancing between champions is easy (thus they can have over 100 of them) because it follows a different formula and has fewer options for the individual champion, issues arise when we see how well these champions can use an item over another or can aquire money (through pushing another player out of lane, last hitting with more ease, ganking with more ease, etc etc) than the next champion. If you removed items and gold from these games….they would be ridiculously easy to balance, but thats a core part of the game play…the whole game play is built around buying things…thats what you do from start to finish. The game is just as much a race to get more gold than the enemy than it is to blow up the enemies nexus…big tree..whatever.

The gameplay of guild wars 2 is honestly closer to ANOTHER game that has cap the point objectives with classes like TF2 or battlefield 3. But because battlefield is more strictly a shooter, i choose to use TF2. Far from perfect but closer in the sense. theres a clear goal (kill others control points).

What each profession can do must fall in line with a role in acheiving this. Whether its bunkering on a point, taking a point, or acheiving whatever the 3rd role of the map is..etc.

Also, NEEDLESS weaker options are NOT necessary. Some people have fun tinkering with builds, but if you shrunk that they would tinker with 5 traits and different utility/weaopon combos like i’m suggesting….OR they would just tinker with more than 1 profession cause they’d have more time to spread their focus and become more versed. this idea still acheives each profession as really being 4 different classes in an archtype for a total of 32 possible classes. (because a condition spreading necro will play a LOT different than a minion master focused more on disruption and helping his pets kill things vs disabilitating and plagueing his foe to death)

Extra options are simply what i call “nub traps” they are things you put in a game that are weak poor choices. They are simply there to confuse noobs who dont go online and look up where they should be putting their points what runes to buy etc to acheive victory in spvp. IF you take away the over saturated pre-game strategy, you leave more room and time to focus on gameplay tactics and perfecting how you counter each of the 32 classes you will face in spvp using different combinational strategys.

Its one of those things if they never put it in…you would never miss it or beg for it. Since all it does is appease people who wanna sit around tinkering with numbers (which is NOT the larger population, most people are impatient and just wanna turn on a game and play it) Truth is i fall into the catagory of people who DO like to do this and theorycraft all day, but i dont let that blind me to understanding that this isnt healthiest for the game nor is it what the game is about NOR does it help the game grow or appeal to a larger audience.

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

I hope we all agree that OP’s idea is the opposite of true. It is untruthy or, as some would say, false.

As far as the possible roles that any gw2 class can play; what roles do we even have? There’s bunker and damage. On top of that, every class can play both of these roles. The player-imposed convention is that guardians are bunkers, but some players don’t care about that opinion and play sword/torch + scepter/focus (I think) and do fat damage.

To a large degree roles in mobas are also player-imposed. They see a top team, who has crafted a strategy based on some idea / their own playstyle, and shove it down the throat of every public they get in a game with – complete with loud hissyfits and capslock.

Example which exemplifies the nonsense of player-imposed roles:
There’s a player in HoN, Emperor. His favorite hero was considered to be only good for tanking. One day he decided to unleash a carry build on that hero so fierce that it was nerfed shortly thereafter.

When all classes have access to the same palette of abilities (healing, damage, damage mitigation) then the only roles you have will be decided by players.

I can assure you there are more roles than simply bunker and DPS. Roamers (Ele/Thief) is a very clearly defined role. A “carry” role (condi necro, 100b war) is also pretty clearly defined, where the chance of winning the team fight highly correlated with that team’s ability to protect their carry.

Then you can get even more specific such as point assault, treb assault, flag carrier, node defense (backpoint), etc. that is map specific.

My point is, a lot of the optimal classes/builds for each role have been figured out already, and that’s good and can be used as a starting point. So if they have a stated class design philosophy of which classes can serve which roles (each class must be able to serve mulitple roles since there’s only 8 classes), then focus balancing around buffing up the underpowered abilities to help serve those defined roles.

The reason I think this is a good idea is because is gets straight to the reason why I believe people get bored and leave the game (outside of the lack of PvP systems that ANet already stated are coming), because most only play one or two classes and get bored when there isn’t much variety with that class.

Skyro.3108:

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

I hope we all agree that OP’s idea is the opposite of true. It is untruthy or, as some would say, false.

As far as the possible roles that any gw2 class can play; what roles do we even have? There’s bunker and damage. On top of that, every class can play both of these roles. The player-imposed convention is that guardians are bunkers, but some players don’t care about that opinion and play sword/torch + scepter/focus (I think) and do fat damage.

To a large degree roles in mobas are also player-imposed. They see a top team, who has crafted a strategy based on some idea / their own playstyle, and shove it down the throat of every public they get in a game with – complete with loud hissyfits and capslock.

Example which exemplifies the nonsense of player-imposed roles:
There’s a player in HoN, Emperor. His favorite hero was considered to be only good for tanking. One day he decided to unleash a carry build on that hero so fierce that it was nerfed shortly thereafter.

When all classes have access to the same palette of abilities (healing, damage, damage mitigation) then the only roles you have will be decided by players.

I can assure you there are more roles than simply bunker and DPS. Roamers (Ele/Thief) is a very clearly defined role. A “carry” role (condi necro, 100b war) is also pretty clearly defined, where the chance of winning the team fight highly correlated with that team’s ability to protect their carry.

Then you can get even more specific such as point assault, treb assault, flag carrier, node defense (backpoint), etc. that is map specific.

My point is, a lot of the optimal classes/builds for each role have been figured out already, and that’s good and can be used as a starting point. So if they have a stated class design philosophy of which classes can serve which roles (each class must be able to serve mulitple roles since there’s only 8 classes), then focus balancing around buffing up the underpowered abilities to help serve those defined roles.

The reason I think this is a good idea is because is gets straight to the reason why I believe people get bored and leave the game (outside of the lack of PvP systems that ANet already stated are coming), because most only play one or two classes and get bored when there isn’t much variety with that class.

I leave my suggestion fairly open to several paths to take with it.

You could say each of the 4 trait lines is for a different role (bunker, roamer, assassin, support) or whatever, or you could have 4 different ways of being a bunker. Its not really as big of a concern. In TF2 a HW guy can be a devencive turret or played offencively like a battering ram, same the demo man can lay mines to defend or use his gun to shoot around corners to take out enemy defences.

I think proessions can have some flexibility here. The only point i am setting out to make, is it would be far easier to balance the game (still offering far more strategic choices for customizing than most if not ALL competitive E sport games that are current) but slimming the number down heavily. its literally 100’s of variables that dont need to be there, there will always be a few that are viable and many that are weak. The GAMEPLAY itself is fun. Look at counter strike one of the longest lasting E-sport games to date. No pregame options, your only choices are weapons to buy yet no one gets bored, hell most people play the same 3 maps over and over for the past 10 years. Look at starcraft, no pregame. You pick 1 of 3 races and play. What you do with it from there on out IN the game is what makes it fun and strategic.

Guild wars 2 gameplay offers enough strategy once you get into the game as well as options to simply perform better than the next guy, that you dont need to clutter it with 100+ customizations before you even join a match.

NOOOO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Exactly how Star Wars Galaxies DIED! Don’t dumb down the game because its too much for you to handle.

MarcusGood.5270:

NOOOO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Exactly how Star Wars Galaxies DIED! Don’t dumb down the game because its too much for you to handle.

As it is now, I wouldn’t say that the game is ‘smart’ so much as it is convoluted.

When you made your build, what did you do?
What considerations did you take into account?
Did you pick all the skills you wanted to use?
Did you pick a couple, and then get stuck with 4 more by necessity?
Were you unable to choose the weapons that you wanted because of a single undesirable skill?
Did you make your decision based on which weapon sets offer the best performance?
Did you spend the rest of the time doing math and trying to figure out what gear made the biggest numbers? Did you sacrifice big numbers for the neato effects of some rune?
Did you even have to think about which attribute lines to invest in, or was it dictated to you by the weapons that you chose?

I also wouldnt compare the death of other mmo’s and blame it on efforts they may have took to make things more controlled for them. The fact they take this route only means that they felt they had to. Also if you want to know why star wars galaxies died, you can read SOE’s president’s words….he pretty much spells it out really clearly…INFACT arenanet might wanna read it, as hes making some new MMO’s and i have a feeling he wont make the same mistake twice.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12/21/soes-john-smedley-expresses-regrets-over-swg-mishaps/

to quote what i want you to read from the above is that Smedly (SOE head) states:

(His first regret is launching the game before the space combat system was done, and his second is that SOE didn’t talk and listen to its players more. “We would have encouraged more in-depth discussion with the community surrounding the idea of any game modifications,” he said.)

And their future title Everquest (Next) will be free to play with no purchase necessary meaning…everyone can download and play. And if you look at what everquest 2 has been trying to do, they release videos of the heads of development all sitting in a room and talking about the direction of their game and reading what players have said on the forums and discussing it while streaming it for players to watch.

I’m not saying go play everquest next, my point is big competition has already learned that ignoring the ideas and thoughts of your community will result in the death of your game, and when other companys set the bar a little higher….games that dont hold the same level of quality and community participation will be left in the dust.

But, yea MBH pointed out some good points, as well as a few other people i talked to recently.

Its not really just a problem of too many abilities, most of those abilities you would never use anyway…or maybe you dont even WANT to use some but they are things you feel you NEED to perform well.

A lot of peoples anger right out of beta was engineers arent focused more around building up powerful turrets and having longer range weaponry while being more of a steampunk gizmo user instead of a potion-holic. (term coined for future use) They wanna run around melting people with a flame thrower.

Necros wanted to mass minion armys and be good at doing it, and have powerful life steals.

Elementalists wanted to be high damage nukers (not tanks). etc etc.

And when people played the game and ATTEMPTED to spec to these popular play styles, turns out they’re not good, its better to do things like Spam 3 wells that do ae damage while laying circles on the ground as a necro, or chug pots and hurl grenades, etc.

My friend wants to use long bow ranger, but short bow is better.
(or so he tells me)

If this game had listened to its community (or let people beta it way in advance). The things people want would be delivered on…and you wouldnt have what you have now…and hopefully in the future it is what people wanted on day 1.

But if you were on the engineer forum for the first month (or even recently really) you would have saw 1000 angry posts about why we dont have a sniper rifle kit(weapon) why does the flame thrower not do massive damage, and to this day 100 different ways to make turrets better or remake the profession to be more centered around building turrets and mechs.

if i was a designer i would have identified that as a fun and expected feature that the community will definitly want (especially since early video introducing the engineer on their site showed him setting mines and using turrets). But arenanet decided they would do….well i think Sony head John Smedly said it best.

“[The mistake was] to not just think we know the right direction without bringing the fans into the mix,” he explained. “We made the cardinal sin of not listening, but assuming and we were wrong.”

Zinwrath.2049:

I know this wont be a popular suggestion. But atleast hear me out. I’ve pointed out in other threads about how this game suffers from an over saturation of options. Now you may say (well more options equals more strategy) i’m here to say thats not really the case. More options equals a more impossible task to balance a game. People wonder why balance changes come along so slowly…well aside from other reasons (everyone at arenanet is out drunk partying?..j/kj/k) try to consider this for a second.

This game has far too many variables.
We have.
8 professions.
Each with 20 utilitys that can be mixed and matched for a ton of combinations ontop of healing options and ultimates.
Multiple weapon options across each profession. (that can be mixed and matched in even more ways, ontop of multiple combinations of weapons to swap between)
37 sigil options
52 Rune options.
150 traits with 70 trait points per profession offering hundreds of different customizations.
aprox 60 major Traits (around 10-12 per trait line) to customize.

Now imagine trying to make every option equally viable for a second. You cant. It wont happen. The truth is, as the game grows and becomes more competitive, it will still come down to each profession having a max of 3-4 strict builds that will get the maximum effectiveness out of your profession in spvp. Leaving 100’s of less effective combinations for you to slap together for the ILLUSION of choice and options. Not to say someone wont come around and replace one of these combinations with a new strat that works better, the point is there will always be a few that anyone deems worthy to use…because it’ll be the best at whatever it is you want to be doing in spvp.

So heres a suggestion (i know it wont be popular but imagine this for a second)
Remove runes, remove sigils, remove amulets. (i know scary)

Now lets look at the traits. Shrink the traits down (which wouldnt be hard to do) to about 4 different trait lines. Each one represents a play style that would be popular and useful. To give an examp lets say one is tanky minion necro, one is conditionmancer, one is vampire assassin necro, one is supportymancer (shrug).

You pick ONE and your given a set amount of stats that the play style needs. Your customization is now left to 5 trait abilitys you can use to speacialize and enhance your particular play style.

Utilitys and weapons could be left open, but much like it is now, if you spec for minion master traits and dont use any minions…your kinda screwing yourself.

Right now you might be thinking, “WTH you ruined my game”. Truth is all this does is leave you with less ways to mess up. Infact, by doing this it actually give you MORE options, because the great thing about doing this is, it makes building up your character more straight forward and simple…its easier to predict what you will do, and thus a game developer can balance accordingly and thus open up more flexbility ensuring 4 options are always present and while min maxers will still have “what i think is the best 5 trait abilities per” they could be kept on a closer watch and made so if you didnt choose what the pros think is the best, your not at as much at a disadvantage as you would be NOW if you had no clue.

So in short, take away some of the needless pre-game customizations to stats/traits, and make it into something that is manageable. (after all what makes the game fun is the battles and tactics within the battle not number crunching before the match) And yes i’m well aware this is something at this point may never happen. But its what probably should happen if this game is ever to be close to being an E-sport. TF2 (not an e-sport last time i checked but close example) gets by just fine with its classes to choose from with minimul weapon customizations, as do several other successful games. As long as the gameplay is fun and rewarding (which gw2 pvp is!) you dont need bombarded with an over abundance of pre-game customizations that number in the hundreds.

Even with this it would STILL be difficult to balance. But 1000x more reasonable.

No.

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