Guild Wars 2

I quit the game forever ago, so I won’t discuss the current meta at all. However, I want to raise a ‘meta’ question of sorts (BEWARE: pun alert).

People are consistently clamoring for ‘Balance’. But what does balance actually mean to you?

Personally I find balance to refer to a subjective instance in time, a time when perhaps YOU find it balanced is a time when YOU find the game most fun. But more importantly, when does the aggregate community consider the current balance to be in a good place?

I want to draw up a dichotomy, it obviously does not represent the multitude of options but helps to start to answer the question of what would a game have to achieve to be perfectly balanced?

The far right: A game is balanced when everyone runs the exact same build. This means that the only thing that distinguishes a difference in skill is when I win. There is no opportunity for random chance to determine a victor or some luck guess to result in a decisive win.

The far left: A game is balanced when everything counters something and is counter-able by something. This instance comes down to foresight and the ability to figure out what your opponent is going to do before he does it and allows the maximum theory-craft to constantly beat whatever the current meta is and allows a dynamic shift in the meta.

The first is an example of an extremely high skill cap game where newcomers will never understand the subtle differences as to why team A beat team B and thus result in an impenetrable barrier to understanding the game. The other however becomes a stale game where skill doesn’t matter and it is literally nothing more than an elaborate rock-paper scissors game.

But here lies the problem I see when walking about these forums. I notice some people scream and yell for a balance similar to the far right without being able to devote themselves fully to it, and yet in the next post some one else is hinting at the balance to the far left. They both agree the current meta is bad, but neither is able to formulate what it is they want from a balanced game.

So my question to you all is.. What do you consider to be balanced?

Far right is ideal, but impossible in a game with multiple ways to win. Therefore the far left exists to shake things up and keep it interesting, but shouldn’t be the determining factor in most games.

I think Dota has a good mix because every game starts by drafting, so you can prevent getting dominated by the far left aka “build wars” like what happened in GW1. But the counterpicks still prevent you from running the same build/setup every game.

Perfect Imbalance.

I’ll give you the closest probable phrase: “Within reason”

This is a wrong view to take a look at an MMORPG. That’s how you look at FPS games. The far left and the far right are the perfect examples of that. For example, in FPS games, a sub-machine gunner has a higher chance of killing a Sniper if he gets close to him, and vice-versa. That’s how that system works.

In the current game, an MMORPG, balance is achieved through having unique set of tools that have been laid out through all different weapon sets, traits and skills that game has to offer. When people call imbalance, is usually when someone kills them in a very cheap fashion, for example current Spirit Rangers or early in GW2 Frenzy+HS spam.

No one should die in two seconds, and players usually do not achieve the fun factor when not being outplayed, but rather being decimated by the skillset of the other class.

Counters are perfectly acceptable in any game, and that’s how esports thrives, based on so-called “counters”. That’s why people yell at you in LoL when you pick Vladimir or Anivia against Fizz, or that’s why all units in Starcraft 2 are good against something and hence are picked based on other players’ unit composition. That’s what’s fun to watch, the thought-process and the reactions of the player in the game, mainly “the skill”.

Balance can be achieved, perfect balance does not exist, it never has and it never will. Currently, people are vocal about the current situation of the game, which is utmost horrible, and yell out imbalance. Because something is obviously too strong and too easy to pull off.

What you say with everyone running the same build and getting RNGed, that’s what GW2 wanted to eliminate and hence the dodge system. You no longer have Priests randomly parrying a Warrior’s attack, however, you do get “globalled” (excuse my WoW terms), and that’s what is currently imbalanced.

Balance is achieved with players being able to play their class and still be able to kill some other class, unless that class has the in-depth system (traits, skills, weaponsets) specifically designed to be able to defeat that class through their abilities while suffering in some other ways, whatever they may be, lower crowd control, lower burst, lower whatever. However, the golden rule of GW2 was “if he does a lot of damage, he takes a lot of damage”, and currently, everyone does a lot of damage and no one cares how much damage people take, when they all die from god knows what reasons.

Well the more recent QQ stems from a problem that’s even worse.

Right now there is a class with no discernible weakness (outside of cheap cop-outs) that totally dominates the meta AND requires almost no skill to play. Talkin about spirit rangers here yo.

This is a huge step back from where we were before where classes that were deemed “OP” (ele, for example) had at least a small skill floor and a relatively high skill-cap. Sure, they were broke, but skill was actually a factor.

As of right now we’ve seen the rise of multiple classes that require very little skill to get a HUGE reward. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Necros, stun-warriors, spirit rangers and, to a certain degree, s/d thieves have found their way into the meta and complete noobs have seen success to a degree unseen in GW2’s history.

This is my huge complaint right now about “balance”. The beauty of GW2 is that the better team wins in a very large number of cases of competitive play because of strategy and skill level. Less than 5% of all losses in the previous meta could be blamed on getting “out-comped” or “counter-comped” because skill and strategy played a much larger factor. As of right now I do not have faith that this is the case. If a team runs a standard comp in this meta versus a worse team with a similar comp then you’d see the worse team have more success than they ever would have had.

Balance in GW2 can ultimately be defined as such:

The viability of any reasonably made build on any class when juxtaposed to every other build of equal rationality is such that the weighted average advantage of all of the compositions over each other are equal to each other.

Was that so hard? Wait.. you want it simpler? Fine. Let me explain in more depth:

If I make a build that isn’t a joke build or stupidly made (haha power necro with shamen amulet lawlz), then this build would, on average, not be inferior to other builds on other classes. This does not mean that I can beat everything, or that I don’t have an advantage over everything else. No, there are going to be classes and builds who have a clear advantage over me. However, the number of classes and builds that do have an advantage over me should be equal to the classes and builds that I have an advantage over. Likewise, the “advantage” I have, from 60/40 odds to 80/20 odds, should be roughly equal to the odds against me from other builds, coming to a nice 50/50 on average.

It is actually really hard to do with a bunch of incomparables.

the three comments above me are gold, dev take notes.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Balance in GW2 can ultimately be defined as such:

The viability of any reasonably made build on any class when juxtaposed to every other build of equal rationality is such that the weighted average advantage of all of the compositions over each other are equal to each other.

Was that so hard? Wait.. you want it simpler? Fine. Let me explain in more depth:

If I make a build that isn’t a joke build or stupidly made (haha power necro with shamen amulet lawlz), then this build would, on average, not be inferior to other builds on other classes. This does not mean that I can beat everything, or that I don’t have an advantage over everything else. No, there are going to be classes and builds who have a clear advantage over me. However, the number of classes and builds that do have an advantage over me should be equal to the classes and builds that I have an advantage over. Likewise, the “advantage” I have, from 60/40 odds to 80/20 odds, should be roughly equal to the odds against me from other builds, coming to a nice 50/50 on average.

It is actually really hard to do with a bunch of incomparables.

I would also like to tack onto this and say that classes vs other classes that fill a particular role also reduce their viability as a whole.

Balance is iffy. Any particular buff to any particular class can have wide-range implications making other classes viable or unviable. This is particularly true when we see a class that fills a certain role overtaken by another that sees a buff or a class that is buffed and has a role that encounters another class’s role often. This happened when A-net buffed necros at the cost of cond-engis. IMO, condi engis are “better”, but necros do overwhelmingly well against condi engis because of their unrivaled amounts of condi control/clear.

I’m sure we all know what happened to mesmers. Poor guys went from necessary in a comp to unplayable in this meta.

Again, balance is touchy. IMO the best way to balance this game is to go down a class list and give each class at least two viable roles/specs in high level team comp. For example, guardians could be a bunker or far-node assaulting physical DPS, eles could be a bunker or an all-around physical DPS or a glass-cannon DPS, etc. This would reduce overlap of roles that play into balance and allow comps to have more depth to them.

The one thing I worry about though is that this game seems to be going down the slippery slope of counter-comping where one particular class is so overwhelmingly strong against another set of classes that there is little point in bringing those classes when you see them. Engis/mesmers V necros, engis V stun wars, for instance. This is bad for the game. Being forced to switch classes because your chances to win are severely diminished because you see another class is not good balance

For starters I want to mention that I agree my “analysis” was not correct. I believe I even stated that in there. It was an attempt to see what people thought. I would never advocate either of those two set of balances. (Refer to: “I want to draw up a dichotomy, it obviously does not represent the multitude of options but helps to start to answer the question of what would a game have to achieve to be perfectly balanced?”)

I want to point out a problem with the statement that every class should be good. Upon developing every class to be completely unique, you must give them a unique tool set. This tool set will either occupy the same space of another tool set or create something new so as not to take over the same space.

Now if it occupies the same space, then the question arises, which is better? In LoL this problem is somewhat handled by banning and the fact that certain champs counter other champs. If it occupies a new space, you must ask what sort of role does this position have and is it usable?

The point here, is that it is easy to wish that every class is powerful in their own right but in the end what that means is that you are looking for each class to be able to beat something while still being able to be beat. This is exactly the case of the extreme rock paper scissors. You can say that one class can beat 50% of classes and be beat by 50%, but that removes a factor of skill from the game and leaves it up to chance more than anything. Sure, you can always argue, “well a really well played X can beat that!” Even if in most cases the X gets countered by the subject, that is irrelevant because it is expected that a subject of exactly the same skill as X would always beat the X.

Anyways, here is my theory on when a game can call itself balanced

Let me tell you of a remarkable glimpse in time for a game created by the same developers. This was merely a sparkle in the entire life span of the game and it is sad that that is all it ever was. But back in the time of GW1 there was a period of what I would call perfect balance.

What did it look like? Well, at the time it was almost impossible to even be a top 1000 guild. If you watched the games, every team in the top 100 was playing almost the exact same build. It was an extremely high skill cap build, very hard to learn and pick up, however it could beat nearly everything. Around rank 600 started a whole other meta. It was a meta of constant flux. Where the fotm would be countered the next week by another build. All of these builds were beaten by the top build if the top build was ran nearly perfectly, however if not ran perfectly it was stomped by these easier to run builds.

So what you saw was this emergence of a rock-paper-scissors design in the lower ranks, however a single powerful but yet high skill cap build in the upper ranks.

Why is this perfect balance? Well because it meant that those who were at the top were there because they deserved to be there. They were truly the most skilled at the game, however the fotm builds helped new players to come into the game and learn how to play without playing a high skill cap build. A lot of these builds were things painfully simple like 5 ele spikers or necros or builds that required minimal understanding of the game or high end mechanics. As you developed yourself and became better as a team, you could start to think about swapping to the “balanced” build.

…. IMO

EDIT – ADDED: BTW, the balanced build wasn’t a strict build of every skill, it had room for individual play styles and it was also impossible to play perfectly. Two important characteristics which shouldn’t be overlooked.

Theres no need to be too black and white or mathematical about it. Perfect balance is a theoretical concept that people can’t even agree on, let alone design into a game.

Good practical balance is merely this:
- there exists a interesting variety of viable early choices to give matches a wide variety. (factions in rts, builds in rpgs, opening moves in chess, characters in fgs, etc)

- there are enough hills and troughs in the strength of different game elements (skills, weapons, cards, tactics, etc) such that discovering and knowing the relative power of each element is interesting.

- even weak game elements are useful in particular situations, or their weakness has minor impact compared to skillful play. (basically, as much of the options as possible is viable or usable)

- gameplay being fun is a separate issue: there are fun unbalanced games and unfun balanced games. But fun gameplay is nice to have too

That’s my opinion of what makes a game have interesting and good balance.

Diage.6451:

I quit the game forever ago, so I won’t discuss the current meta at all. However, I want to raise a ‘meta’ question of sorts (BEWARE: pun alert).

People are consistently clamoring for ‘Balance’. But what does balance actually mean to you?

Personally I find balance to refer to a subjective instance in time, a time when perhaps YOU find it balanced is a time when YOU find the game most fun. But more importantly, when does the aggregate community consider the current balance to be in a good place?

I want to draw up a dichotomy, it obviously does not represent the multitude of options but helps to start to answer the question of what would a game have to achieve to be perfectly balanced?

The far right: A game is balanced when everyone runs the exact same build. This means that the only thing that distinguishes a difference in skill is when I win. There is no opportunity for random chance to determine a victor or some luck guess to result in a decisive win.

The far left: A game is balanced when everything counters something and is counter-able by something. This instance comes down to foresight and the ability to figure out what your opponent is going to do before he does it and allows the maximum theory-craft to constantly beat whatever the current meta is and allows a dynamic shift in the meta.

The first is an example of an extremely high skill cap game where newcomers will never understand the subtle differences as to why team A beat team B and thus result in an impenetrable barrier to understanding the game. The other however becomes a stale game where skill doesn’t matter and it is literally nothing more than an elaborate rock-paper scissors game.

But here lies the problem I see when walking about these forums. I notice some people scream and yell for a balance similar to the far right without being able to devote themselves fully to it, and yet in the next post some one else is hinting at the balance to the far left. They both agree the current meta is bad, but neither is able to formulate what it is they want from a balanced game.

So my question to you all is.. What do you consider to be balanced?

not sure about meta of this game, but your vocabulary does cause me a pain. about drawing dichotomy of aggregate community in subjective instance of time.