Guild Wars 2

In Ultra Street Fighter IV you have 44 characters yet despite this huge number of match ups they remain mostly unique (Even Ken and Ryu have distinct feels to them despite very similar move sets) and balanced.

For match ups we have to use this formula and plug in 44 for x as that’s the number of characters:

y(x) =x(x+1)/2

44(45)/2=990 match ups!

In Guild Wars 2 however it’s more complicated with teams of 5 so we’ll need a different formula to accommodate it:

(9 nCr 5)² / 2 + (9 nCr 5) / 2 = The need to determine (9C5) first:

9C5=9!/(5!*(9-5)!)
362,880/(120*(9-5)!)
362,880/(120*4!)
362,880/120*24
362,880/2,880
=126

Now that we have solved the combination:

126²/2 + (126)/2= 8,001 potential match ups in Guild Wars 2.

What about Street Fighter? This brings me to the second part of my tl;dr book: it is a game with simple mechanics, but from those simple mechanics comes deep tactical, strategic, and psychological play. You have multi hit combos where due to their complexity you risk getting frame trapped and countered if your precision isn’t just so, like missing a cancel or a link, and in chess you also have simple mechanics where genuine complexity and deep strategic play branch out of.

What makes RPG’s potentially great is the more complex base mechanics means potentially richer and deeper gameplay where even supercomputers can’t solve (if chess can’t even be solved and that’s a static turn based game within an absolute and established system then…) but usually degenerate (PvE wise and single player wise) into stacking damage and speed (in turn based games where it determines your turn) and hitting things really hard while saving MP and limit breaks for bosses. What this leads to is an unsatisfying experience in the long run going, “That’s it?” disappointed that the systems weren’t utilized to their full potential.

In this game there’s five man content that people solo successfully even without exploits. Now why? Why can’t they be scaled high enough where even a random Abjured/Astral member can’t solo, since five man content shouldn’t be solvable by just one person even the exceptionally skilled?

The solution I fear, while temporary, is a going back to basics. The base specs were mostly formed before elite specs entered the game and a simpler game is easier to balance. Get rid of most of the passive procs, cut down the number of utilities, and up the cooldown on powerful AoE’s like Mesmer wells (why isn’t well of action or recall meta?) or Tempest overloads. This would mean smart use of skills get rewarded while inefficient use of such skills get punished. Chess and Street Fighter have simple base mechanics and are very well balanced, and are designed in a way where skill plays a big impact. Skill is timing and tactical decision making.

Here’s a checklist of ways of potentially simplifying the game:

• Replace stealth with a reverse taunt that doesn’t allow the player to be targeted while still having the same effects in PvE. Stealth denies information to the opposing team, but that creates so many balancing issues. Without stealth classes can be rebalanced properly and makes the game closer to a complete information game.

• Cut down AoE’s, boons, and conditions.

• Get rid of most runes and eventually replace them with active proc runes.

• Many animations last slightly longer especially heals. This will increase scope for counterplay while still requiring skill to interrupt said abilities (slightly means slightly).

• Interrupt skills like distracting daggers have faster precasts.

• Nerf overall burst damage and healing. This gives people a chance you bursted down a chance to fight back. Even with best play they’d still lose but the onus would be on the attacker to skillfully finish the job and if he screws up his opponent can reset to equality but never to a big advantage like scrapper pre-patch unless the attacker screws up enough.

• Remove in combat speed and rebalance ability speeds and ranges accordingly.

• On Daredevil you can chain staff 1’s first two autoattacks and staff 2 successfully in a seamless transition while others are clunkier (You can’t dodge cancel out of staff 5 and the third autoattack, which we’ll call staff 1c.) You can also chain staff 1a, b, and fist flurry since staff 1c has an aftercast delay and the fact you can’t dodge out of staff 1 c means you’re vulnerable for that window with the exception of projectile attacks. This I feel is good game design and promotes skillful ability usage and completing an autoattack chain isn’t always best. All classes should have such seamless combos and clunky attempts that leave gaps in their play. This makes mechanical precision more important and accepting temporary vulnerability as a calculated risk.

• Ask ourselves, “What feels tacked on or forced?” And remove superfluous elements.

• Understand that much of Guild Wars 2’s mechanics stem from old turn based tabletop games and RPG’s that are turn based. Mechanics originally intended for turn based battles don’t always translate well to an action game where movement and positioning is key. There’s no evasion stat so Guild Wars 2 already took a step in the correct direction on this front.

• No hard counters, but soft counters. This ensures that while a match up may favor one class there’s still a decent chance for the countered class to win if he’s more skilled mechanically while equally skilled players means the soft counter will win most of the time.

I agree on almost everything except removing stealth. That, to me, is good for the game and is what thieves are mainly built around.

What I think needs to be addressed is the duration of stealth you can achieve.

Cut down boons would damage guardian even further class rellies to much on them, and sacrifices to much one thing for another already

Some of the boons or condis should be specific class only.

What you are saying is not balancing the game but " re-creating" the entire concept. It would not be Gw2, but a different game with different mechanics. Most of the professions would be dead and gone, and it would be a pvp game only.

But some things should be changed as you said. And really some boons and abilities should be professions-unique.

what the hell is all this.
all you need to know is, haduoken.

Aeolus.3615:

Cut down boons would damage guardian even further class rellies to much on them, and sacrifices to much one thing for another already

Some of the boons or condis should be specific class only.

You’re forgetting that other things would be brought up or simply substituted to avoid a nerf. Guardian is underpowered so they need an overwhelmingly net buff.

I agree on almost everything except removing stealth. That, to me, is good for the game and is what thieves are mainly built around.
What I think needs to be addressed is the duration of stealth you can achieve.

Maybe replacing it is too extreme. I figured since stealth is balanced around it would mean more staying power in fight to compensate while still being weaker the bigger the fight (2v2’s alright and 1v1’s strong, but weak in 3v3’s and above to maintain its thematic playstyle and role) while still keeping disengage.

Adjusting stealth duration but more 1v1 sustain could work so nerf stealth but give something else to avoid a net nerf.

With an overall simplification the game becomes approachable for new players while increasing the depth and tight windows for more skilled players. I was point blank shotted twice today out of…lightning whip, a “1” ability with no cooldown, which gave me information that going for an overload was safe.

Maybe a potential method of balancing could be running some sort of adaptive AI programs. They can have entire games sped up by 1,000’s of times to get a lot of data in a relatively short period of time and if certain traits and abilities stand out in certain situations they’d be marked with red indicating it needs nerfing or green indicating a buff. People being less than perfect aren’t as home in systems as an AI would be. With adaptive AI they can easily solve optimal skill and map rotations while still only having access to information a player would on the map (so no knowing where enemies are on the map unless they’re in combat) and even be allowed to form their own comps after playing a certain number of matches (since they’d need statistical data in their decision making process).

The adaptive AI would be stronger than any pro and a weaker version of it could even be used for future PvE content as an externality. This translates into tons of high level matches where skill gaps are taken out of the equation so purely class and build strength can be looked at. Who knows, maybe we’ll discover that daredevil is the most overpowered class if coordinated with the exactly perfect comp or Chrono not being nearly as good as its reputation? So much information could be retrieved with such research. Maybe balance is much better than we think but there’s not a sufficient amount of high level practice to confirm it? I personally believe generally accepted tier lists are accurate with Tempest in S-tier instead of A due to its very strong support and sheer interrupting, zoning and disengaging options. Revenant may be S-tier, and it is undeniably strong, and can block, interrupt, gap close, and burst quite effectively and passively gives boons at the expense of energy regen, but due to Ventari being unwieldy and poor self heals I’d place it under A.

Such “perfect play” metrics especially past their 10,000 games and at least two would be biased towards support initially. One for each group and that sounds like a lot of games but keep in mind a chess engine can calculate millions of moves per second and a chess game typically lasts 40 or 50 moves, which can be many hours between top players so those 10,000 matches might be a couple of days or so of sped up simulation. Given that there are 8,0001 potential matchups however maybe the number of matches needs to be vastly bigger to account for different builds and those repeated to weed out flukes?

This means balance, since if a totally objective AI never picks warrior or any base class for example that should be data worth investigating. After a balance patch with the given information simulations could be run again to see what can further be tweaked. It isn’t realistic for humans alone to balance 8,001 matchups especially where each class has a plethora of rune, weapon, sigil, and traitline combinations.

I forgot above however:

• Make having more than one class suboptimal. So two of a class should never be better than only having one, but that would be quite a challenge itself. I don’t mean a forced algorithm making the stacked classes weaker in some way (that would be artificial balancing) but make it so two of the same class can’t sync well.

Semantics… Anet can’t learn anything from streetfighter anymore than they could from Pokémon or Need For Speed. It’s easy to talk about simplifying a game or buffing X class…

I completely disagree with removing more in-game content like Runes, Amulets, Sigs, etc. Everything can be balanced if tried… removing items is a laziman’s work.

Im sorry but i have to disagree, this game is unbalance for 2 reasons in PvP

1-HOT
2- Lack of actual rating system.

Lets start with 2 first. Anet for what ever reason anet doesnt want to share MMR, create a leaderboard, and doesnt want a solo que. There is also a serious issue of rewards for PvP. Unique titles and such. For instance i was in a random party of newer players and one said that he was almsot level 80 and would probably quit playing PvP since hes maxed level.

Yet i feel crazy since i was gifted a level 80 from my level 55 character way back when patch. Anet made this game for the casual yet PvP players do not want it to be. So you have a community who wants serious rewards, leader boards, rankings etc etc etc. A real clear line of skilled players vs the good/average/bad and anet wants everyone to have some cake.

Now back to the first part HOT, Anet knows what they are doing. Its easy to balance classes when you know the problems. Guess what we know the problems. Anet wants certain builds to be effective for play style and they also want certain HOT spec to be good for people to buy HOT.

The warrior change for instance. The gun flame build wasnt very good but they knew it had issues in WvW so they killed it for PvP. People ask for seperate builds in the different zones. Anet refuses so instead of meeting in the middle, they kill it.

For warrior they made 2 trait lines a must, beserker and defense. They could buff core specs but they wont. They could buff weapons such as Axe/ warhorn/ hammer but they wont.

Its not even big things either, chaith made a thread and to me most of it works. Everyone has said things on each forum. Legit actual posts on builds/cd on weapons and skills/ and spec changes.

Many people have posted the give and take and role definition. For instance guardian was the best bunker class but lacked mobility. Want more mobility you would have to take dps weapons and then you lacked condi clear. Want condi clear but still want to do damage you went burn guardian which was a 1 condi damage.

Everything about the class was near perfect. Yes there were moments of burn damage being too high and the amount of burns they were able to apply might needed some looked at. But these are easy fixes just like HOT.

They know whats wrong, everyone needs to quit acting like Anet wants this game to be balanced and made for Esports.

Agemnon.4608:

Maybe a potential method of balancing could be running some sort of adaptive AI programs.

I laughed.

I disagree with much. Cuting down diversity is a no go for me. Agree with kdaddy that Hot caused a lot of inbalance. Role definitions and build diversity is key for most players. This might be diffrent for high tier play where people want to match pure skill but this are mostly players that got a tunnel vision. Diffrent damage types, counter builds, … feeling their character is unique, … This makes a good game. esports focus that brings down diversity (like simplify for only power damage matters and one build per class), is a shure way to ruin a game and leave it with a small number of addicted pro gamers. You can do this if you want to end the lifecycle and prepare the next generation …

Why does it bug the op so much that ppl can solo content? What’s it to him…

Pakkazull.6894:

Agemnon.4608:

Maybe a potential method of balancing could be running some sort of adaptive AI programs.

I laughed.

I don’t mean players botting, I mean devs making bots that outclass even Abjured/Astral competing against and learning from each other for data gathering purposes. Metabattle builds are typically made and discovered by pro players, people who are already very skilled to begin with, so the simulations eliminating skill gaps between teams could isolate why certain builds and classes outclass others by eliminating differences in skill. Data will track:

1.Duels.
2.Abilities used in all scenarios.
3.Strat success.
4.When they go for objectives. This could be tough to program to avoid blindly zerging, maybe add some sort of class to location priority ratio or calculate distance and objective HP for daredevil or druid steals?
5.Interrupt/interrupted ratios for each class and build.
6.When they rotated and where.

Slight delays need to be added however to account for the human need to press a button to activate a skill whereas an AI wouldn’t share that handicap.

Why does it bug the op so much that ppl can solo content? What’s it to him…

Because it means the content is too easy. While there should be varying degrees of challenge for different groups ranging from solo to zergs and from easy to hard someone solo’ing 5 man content in a game with level scaling suggests the content is way undertuned. Keep it easy, but still hard enough for only three players at least. One guy doing the job of two is impressive, one guy doing the job of five is just plain silly.

I know full well what you meant, that’s why I laughed. Do you honestly think ArenaNet has the skills, time and resources to make AI good enough to outclass the best human players? No. I mean, sure, we can make AI that can beat human players in chess and Go, but those are 1v1 games that, while complex, have relatively simple rules.

The easiest route to balancing this game or at least providing the “illusion” that it is balanced, is by bringing back a stronger sense of class role and purpose. The only issue with this idea is that GW2 doesn’t provide enough types of different play dynamic to fill every class with something unique.

Though if they could, this would mean that no matter if “a thief was under powered or not” he would be the only class in the game that was capable of stealthing and moving across a map undetected. Thus, no matter how underpowered he is, he will always have a role to fill that other classes cannot fill. If every class was like this, it would mean that they all had an ace in the hole that made them important.

However, we have a game where every class can do everything. This just leads to a vicious never ending cycle of buffs & nerfs to twink things to a player base’s preferences in hopes of every class being the same but somehow being different at the same time!
This is a hopeless pursuit and the idea of “every class doing everything” was not so good of an idea after all.

The true answer to fixing this game, lies far far more core to the engine than simply balancing what we have now. We need more dynamic in the game so that each class can lean on being dominant in one category. This would provide a much easier system to form balance around.

Right now we have only:

• Healing/Cleansing
• Boon sharing
• DPS Physical
• DPS Condition
• Crowd Control
• Stealthing/Mobility
• AI Minion Fodder
  ~ This is a small list of dynamic compared to other games of it’s genre.
  ~ Let’s take a look at GW2’s predecessor GW1.

GW1 dynamics:

• Healing – through various different subcategory dynamic methods
• Cleansing – through various different subcategory dynamic methods. Different cleanses for very specific different things. A condi cleanse did not simple remove 1 condi.
• Raw DPS separated in to Physical, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Dark, Light, Unmitigatable such as signet of spite or Grenth’s Balance. This of course comes with different forms of toughness to mitigate this damage.
• Condi DPS separated in to many many different subcategories that were not so easily cleansed from one universal system of “condi cleansing”. You’re talking the difference between bleed from a sword, burn from a spell, degeneration effects from a hex or small life steals coming from an AoE source. Different classes could or could not deal with certain things.
• Enchantments
• Weapon Enchantments “completely separate from normal enchantments”
• Shouts “completely separate type of boons from normal enchantments”
• Stances “completely separate type of boons granted which required stance removal skills to kill the boons”.
• Various in depth forms of CCs. Not so easy to use a universal stability vs. all here.
• Various in depth forms of AIs and actual purposes for them.
  ~ ect.. ect.. this really is just the tip of the iceberg on this one.

You see with the above listed dynamics, there is more to work with in terms of granting let’s say a currently under powered class, more in certain areas to work with so that it is important. Right now in GW2, with the small list of dynamic, it is inevitable that 3-4 builds will become dominant in meta simply because that is exactly what is going to happen when every class is working with a small list of dynamic. A small handful of builds will be identified that just do everything better than the other classes that are also supposed to be able to do everything.

~ Next expansion needs to be a serious implementation of added game dynamics and not ones that are granted to every class but dynamics that are specific and special to individual classes. Things that only a certain class can do or deal with. It needs to happen. Bring back class role.