Guild Wars 2

Engaging PvP design is hard with asymmetrical games. Even in games that are nearly symmetrical like Chess and Go, it can be hard to predict the outcome of rule combinations.

It’s like cellular automata (e.g. The Game of Life). The only way to determine what pattern your rule set will create is to plug it in, press iterate, and observe it. Some rule combinations create stunning displays for a time, but end up entirely static, or as boring oscillators. You need real control over initial conditions and rules to discover complex patterns, and those discoveries are only made empirically.

ArenaNet entered into development with a willingness to allow for different gameplay in PvP and Pve. However, even with this leeway, they are still far more constrained than a games that are solely imagined as PvP games, like League of Legends for instance. Developers are more tethered to the original design choices than a MOBA, because those designs must also live on in PvE.

I personally think the skill design in GW2 is really beautiful; I loved the skill design in Heroes of Newerth, and GW2 shares a lot of the same cleverness. Nevertheless, you can get unlucky, even with a beautiful set of rules, and your game can devolve into tic-tac-toe.

Now, I’m not saying things have devolved into tic-tac-toe. Rather, when the pvp design team encounters problems, there will always be resistance to re-purposing. Tuning is sufficient for small class balance problems, but I’m guessing there’s a larger class of problems that will be much more expensive to address, because of the desire to keep fundamental mechanics the same in both realms.

A bit too abstract maybe. Mostly old hat. Hope it was a slightly enjoyable read.