Guild Wars 2

Get comfy folks, this is gonna be a long one.

Every game development studio has it’s own philosophy when it comes to balance, in recent years PvP balance has generally been broken down to 3 pillars; skill floor, skill cap, and skill:reward (how effective you are able to be at skill floor vs skill cap). Some questions that I like to ask myself when considering these pillars are:

• Is what I’m doing harder than what my opponents doing?
• Is what I’m doing more effective than what my opponent is doing?
• How hard will it be for me to improve the effectiveness of what I’m doing to the point at which it’s effectiveness caps out?
• How does the level of maximum effectiveness divided by the level of difficulty to achieve this cap compare to that of my opponents? (does e1/d1 = e2/d2?)

In Guild Wars 2, the main problem I see with the philosophy behind ballance is that it caters to minimizing the gap between skill floor and skill cap (likely unintentional, but toxic to individual skill progression).
One of the best examples of this is the Engineer class, recently the 100 nades build was nerfed through the ground -and while I agree that the skill floor of the build was too low to match the reward that many players were getting from utilizing it (1 shotting ppl), nothing was even done to attempt to raise that skill floor, or to reduce the efficiency of it at lower skill levels (like reducing grenade barrage hitbox, or making it so that people had to face targets when using magnet or else it gets interupted like necro’s dagger 2), instead the entire trait that made this build possible (kit refinement) was redesigned. Meanwhile Thief d/d backstab build (25/30/0/0/15) is able to accomplish pretty much the same results at an even lower skill floor, but has a much lower skill cap (and likewise a mildly lower reward at this cap).

There was only 2 or 3 engineers that were using the 100 nades build effectively in competitive play on NA -and they were just BARELY able to make it work in their teams, but in casual play they were able to completely dominate (aoe globals). I actually did a survey on balance with almost every competitive NA player a few months back about balance (I was going to write an article, then folly said something that made me reconsider how I viewed balance & the state of balance in GW2) and the majority of them (like all but 3/>20) laughed at me when I asked them if this build should be nerfed.

This is the problem with the philosophy behind balance in this game -it limits skill cap:reward ratio so that the lower skilled players can have a shot against the skill capped players that have been playing 1000’s of games with the same build.
A game with a pvp focus on being competitive should not limit the correlation between skill progression and increasing reward -if anything they should promote it. Keeping cheese builds for new players to mess with is fine (bs thief i’m looking at you), but bring back builds like tact strike, lower the hitbox on it and increase the cast time -do whatever you have to do to challenge people, but make it possible to achieve those crazy rewarding results like super daze lock, even if it means they have to play it for 1000 games to become efficient.

This “class” skill floor-skill cap minimization is fine in MOBA games like LoL, because good players will get fed and just run around 1 shotting people anyways. But skill in a moba isn’t the same thing as skill in an mmorpg; in mobas you rely almost entirely on superior positioning and pve variants like last hitting more creeps than your opponent, or killing a boss to get a buff in order to win. In GW2 positioning holds much less importance – it is dynamic (changes based on what’s happening during the match), whereas in mobas it’s static (not changing), even in a global sense you have to be careful not to extend too far because you could get ganked or hit by a tower or by mobs (YOU’RE ALWAYS HAVING TO WATCH WHERE YOU STEP, so to say). The evolution of the single matches between these 2 genres are also polar opposites; where games in LoL progress at a linear rate (0-20 mins: early game where both teams just farm creeps, 20+ = mid game where buffs become contested and small skirmishes occur, then there’s a late game when everyone has their item builds completed and 5v5 team fights begin to take place), matches in GW2 move at a more dynamic rate (fights in varying numbers are always occurring at different points of interest, point distribution is changed based on outnumbering or outplaying).

Another way anet could increase skill cap is by removing the “iron curtain” (as I like to call it) between the player and internal cd’s/#‘s in pvp. Giving players the option to react to more information promotes a higher skill cap. It’s simple arithmetic; If I am to take into account 5 things (enemy boons/condis, own boons/condis, enemy hp bar, own hp bar, own endurance), and am able to process react to these 5 things in a smarter way than my opponent, who is reacting to only 2 things (own hp bar + enemy hp bar), that makes me the stronger player. Limiting the amount of information that is there to process just dumbs down the game as a whole and further limits the skill cap.

I want to end this thread on a lighter note and say that although individual skill cap may be low, the opportunities for team-based skill progression are much higher in this game than in most other games (even MOBAS), and the opportunities to explore and execute strategies built around unique comps is what has kept me excited about this game and how it will end up once more competitive teams begin to form and become more innovative. -I’m still waiting to see a team to try double shatter mesmer + supply crate engi AOE 1 shot comp ;p

TLDR: yeah it was long, I’m sorry I got carried away. It’s pretty much just a well written rant about balance, see 1st paragraph to get the jist of what I was trying to say. This is my opinion, and MY philosophical perception of balance and how it should work in player vs player game design.
-The peeps at Anet are a lot smarter than me, and probably have their reasons for their balance philosophy (like making pve more fun), this is merely the opinion I’ve spawned after watching and playing this game for the past 8 or 9 months (remember when kripparrian quit PvP because he saw that it would be almost impossible to 1v2 regardless of skill lvl back in like august?;) -I’ve probably logged more time watching sPvP streams than I have actually playing the game haha). K back to editing vids. :]

Just wanted to pop in and say that i completely agree.
The skill cap should be increased as some builds are simply too easy to play, therefore not really promoting skill because it does not take very long to master it.
An average D/D Ele vs a High skilled D/D ele would still be a long and exciting fight, because it is pretty easy to master if you have the correct build. When you have learned to hit the most of your skills, you’re pretty much good to go for 1v1 instances.

In the last SOTG the devs talked about things like “Interrupting Heals” should be more important, and therefore they didnt want to decrease an eles heal too much but rather give it a longer casting-time and more prominent animation.
I think this is a step in the right direction.

I understand how people feel this way. The emotional response is that if something is harder to do, it should have a greater reward, out of some moral principle. I argue that this is unhealthy for the interesting aspect of games.

A pushup contest is not interesting, one person will do more pushups in less time than another person. What makes a game interesting are the choices that thinking humans make while playing. This is why I think baseball is an awful sport. Everyone always knows the optimal play to make at all times while watching baseball, the only question is whether the players will be able to perform the optimal action, much like a pushup contest. Meanwhile, chess is fantastically interesting, because it’s very easy to move the pieces, so the only differentiating factor between players are the choices that they make.

I see desires to increase skill caps/floors as desires to add pushup contests to chess. The ability to succeed in twitch gameplay is largely inborn. You can improve a small amount, but there are genetic limits you can never overcome. This creates scenarios where one actor can know how to succeed, but is physically unable to do so, and so they lose to someone who made less optimal decisions.

In a game like gw2, it’s unavoidable that there will be at least a small physical barrier to entry to the game. But the more that barrier is minimized, the more the focus of the game can be on the actually interesting parts. One shotting anyone is never interesting, if you can do it, you always should. There’s no choice in the action, only the question of physical implementation, which is just a pushup contest. But the game needs to be balanced around choices, not actions.

All that said, there’s no real problem with having things in your game that are very hard to do, as long as their rewards are not greater than easier to perform actions. That keeps the game focused on choices that people make, and can still provide the exhilarating feeling of physical mastery for players that desire it.

I can see the OP’s point about floor/cap relationships. Currently, I choose to play a Venom Share thief. The amount of work I have to put in on an encounter with things such as well timed interrupts and evades is way more than that of a thief simply utilizing a burst rotation. Yet, my build’s performance capabilities does not exceed theirs.

However, in this team-oriented environment, I make my team-mates stronger and he does not. So my team’s power increases multiplicatively while his only increases additively.

By my conscious decisions to position myself while fighting in such a way as to provide venoms to as many allies as possible; I see higher performance results from my build, maybe not directly, but indirectly through the increased power of my allies.

Here is how to reward skill. Give standard 5 points for a kill on a 1v1, then minus 2 points for each additional player that has interfered in the last 10 seconds before the kill (so 4 v 1 gives 0 points unless anyone wants to go punishing people lol). This will stop the zerging and actually force people to play smart and with the objectives.

Just spam conditions, a.i., boons, and stealth and call yourself leet

My guess is, the leaderboards showed a bunch of mesmers, eles, and thieves on top

No sense in pouring that salt in the wound, huh?

Arkimedes.8730:

I understand how people feel this way. The emotional response is that if something is harder to do, it should have a greater reward, out of some moral principle. I argue that this is unhealthy for the interesting aspect of games.

A pushup contest is not interesting, one person will do more pushups in less time than another person. What makes a game interesting are the choices that thinking humans make while playing. This is why I think baseball is an awful sport. Everyone always knows the optimal play to make at all times while watching baseball, the only question is whether the players will be able to perform the optimal action, much like a pushup contest. Meanwhile, chess is fantastically interesting, because it’s very easy to move the pieces, so the only differentiating factor between players are the choices that they make.

I see desires to increase skill caps/floors as desires to add pushup contests to chess. The ability to succeed in twitch gameplay is largely inborn. You can improve a small amount, but there are genetic limits you can never overcome. This creates scenarios where one actor can know how to succeed, but is physically unable to do so, and so they lose to someone who made less optimal decisions.

In a game like gw2, it’s unavoidable that there will be at least a small physical barrier to entry to the game. But the more that barrier is minimized, the more the focus of the game can be on the actually interesting parts. One shotting anyone is never interesting, if you can do it, you always should. There’s no choice in the action, only the question of physical implementation, which is just a pushup contest. But the game needs to be balanced around choices, not actions.

All that said, there’s no real problem with having things in your game that are very hard to do, as long as their rewards are not greater than easier to perform actions. That keeps the game focused on choices that people make, and can still provide the exhilarating feeling of physical mastery for players that desire it.

I think you mistook my interpretation of skill for APM, like chess, GW2 has choices for players to react to in a pvp enviornment, but the options for higher level of processing/thinking on the players part is limited by the fact that “EZ MODE” builds achieve the same or greater results as ones that require more thinking.

I actually used to play chess, like ALOT (chesscube.com 8 hrs a day), and the gap between skill floor – skill cap in chess is extremely large, what you are able to achieve in chess is completely subjective to your skill level -yes there are still “cheese strats” like the gucci piano or napoleon opening, but a GM player will crush these strats with just 1 or 2 pawn moves. -And you’re not going to find a GM player that hasn’t spent at least 7 or 8 years studying and playing the crap out of chess to get to the skill level they have achieved.

Now, I’m not saying that the gap between floor-cap of chess is something to strive for in a real-time gaming (because then it just becomes a push-up contest like you described -whoever can execute faster, eg: Starcraft), but (for example) if I have the potential to be ~15-20% (I realize there’s no real numerical way to rank this, but i’m just gonna use it to give you an idea) more effective with d/p backstab than d/d backstab thief, even though it will take me 100+ games to reach that efficiency (learning to combo HS+black powder for stealth), that option should be there (and for more classes and more builds up and up and up to reaching ~35% more effectiveness than original d/d backstab build). This is kind of a bad example because it’s pretty much the same build with a different wep set, but just imagine if people kept getting better and better and trying kept harder and harder builds to achieve small but increasing results.

This whole thread spawned out of a post I made in another thread about how it was impossible to 1v2 in GW2 no matter how good you are with all but like 3 builds. Individual skill just isn’t rewarding in this game, and that’s a problem.

The only reason instagib build xyz isn’t considered OP in teamplay is Downed State and ever present team mates to ress.

Skill will matter once frontloading damage and spamming all your buttons becomes merely a beginner strat and once it’s possible to react to your opponent’s skills properly.

Individual skill is very rewarding for HgH engis. Sadly, I believe this build will be nerfed into the ground eventually.

Grenades are the hardest and most regularly used skill shot in the entire game. When they do get nerfed I’ll shed a tear for this games future. There aren’t very many skill shots and skill based features in this game outside of reactionary classes (condi engi, mesmer, bunker guardian are the ones that come to mind). Even then most of the skill involved in those revolve around knowing other classes. It’s an MMO, really that’s about as much as you can ask for.

Nice write-up, this is a very interesting issue. However, I don’t think the comparison between Moba games and GW2 is really helpful, because even a comparison with WoW pvp ignores the fact what GW2 spvp is all about: conquest.

If we’re talking about build variety and balance, I think it’s obvious the builds that will shine are the ones most capable of playing the conquest game type.
It’s why a lot of people have become jaded, because they want to play a certain build that is just weaker at node control and so they are forced into builds and even classes to compete.

The team dynamics in this game is very different from any other pvp system and to be honest, I don’t think even the top teams have reached anywhere near the skillcap when it comes to playing cohesively as a team. (This is hard to judge, because I do not play on that level and spectating is limited.)

If Anet wants to push the conquest game type as an e-sport, I think it’s fair they balance around it. Although, I don’t think they’ve been too successful in this area so far.

For example:

Currently, I choose to play a Venom Share thief. The amount of work I have to put in on an encounter with things such as well timed interrupts and evades is way more than that of a thief simply utilizing a burst rotation. Yet, my build’s performance capabilities does not exceed theirs.

However, in this team-oriented environment, I make my team-mates stronger and he does not. So my team’s power increases multiplicatively while his only increases additively.

I don’t know if I really agree Venomshare could match the added force a burst thief brings.
There are some game-breakingly good individual builds out there that hinder the progression towards reaching a skillcap as a team.

I think I see what you’re saying, Zodian. Sorry for any miscommunication. I think we agree that what the game really needs is expanding depth of choice and rewards. It’s very hard to achieve, but that’s kind of the entire job of a game designer, whether it’s hard or not.