Guild Wars 2

When it comes to game design, there is an overwhelming importance for solid foundations, and sound positions. Sadly, very few people in the gaming industry have these. In many cases like guild wars, it’s more or less coders doing design aspects; the simple truth is your not a good designer just because you can code.

The concept of “every spec is good” is a dream, one that has not been realized yet, and which will likely never happen. I am of the opinion that we are no where near close enough to the ability to do this, especially with the current mindset our industry has of “copy paste” concepts from other games.

This means, that Guild Wars 2, In my opinion will never get the concept of “all specs are good” Right. Why Do you ask? I’ll explain.

Complexity Vs Depth

It’s a bit tricky to explain the difference of complexity and depth, so i wont go to much into it but the simple way i put of defining the two is as follows

- Complexity is an option, that will benefit another through investigation of the situation, and what benefits might arise from finding out how to exploit that situation.

- Depth is an option, which is clear at first glance (the first time you read it) and requires little or no further thought or investigation.

Now that we have fined these lets look at why the game will never be balanced

Describing the situation of the game in a metaphorical way

“the balance cycle of gw2 is equal to a doctor giving pain killers to kill the pain, only to ignore what is causing it. If you want to stop the pain, you cure the problem, not conceal it”

understanding the metaphor

Basically in a short, the current development process is something to the effect of, nerf buff nerf buff nerf buff. It’s an endless cycle, and it will never end if you continue to repeat it in this manner.

Why?

The reason for this is because there is a lot of shifting parts. Lets say we have a list, something like

1 Power
2 Condition
3 Precision

From this list, we have this situation that the meta in general favors option 1 ) power.
After a nerf, condition comes up, and then it gets nerfed to give way to precision. This cycle will repeat over and over. Expecting a different result will only designate you as an insane person.

This is important to understand because this is the exact situation that is taking place. however, the game does not need to be like this. hence we come to the metaphor.

So What Gives? What is the cure for the disease?

This question brings us to a very important discussion and before i give an answer to this i want to point out some very important points.

First we have to meet some conclusions

- The majority of players do not have the desire, or the time to invest in finding broken builds.
- Complexity offers no benefit that depth does not, and brings with it major problems, including game decline and potential population limits, and major instabilities in balance.

The disease

In truth, the major problem to game balance is the developers way they go about doing their development process. What i mean by this is that they are not well founded in their foundation concepts for the games balance.

For Example lets look at blizzard

- blizzard understands how to use metrics, where many others do not. this is probably due to the people in charge of values like this being more founded in math then most coders are. in short, their specialists are good.

- part of the reason blizzard is so good at what they do is because they are very well founded in base concepts, think of them as the gaming worlds version of isaac newtons laws of physics ,only for gaming. these concepts include things like (but not limited to)

- sticking to their concepts with an iron fist (your laws are only good if you stick to them)

- Keeping livability rates in target time frames.
for example, 20-30 seconds is the sweet spot for fast game pvp (Which is where gw2 should be imo)

- adjusting anything that does not offer competitive play, or is overly competitive

- Keeping an important rule in mind “game development is not just coding, its also psychology”

- Paying attention to play trending and demands, so you keep everything “balanced”.

- putting classes into key aspects of game play

- Last and most importantly, they recognize that there is a breaking point. It took me a few years of game balance work to even become conscious of this, but in short there is a “golden ratio” to game balance across all genre, that is a max variance of 13%. It seems that when classes differ from other classes by an amount greater than this they become broken. This is a general application there is a few situations where it can be exceeded slightly, but the true target “gold zone” is about 8.5%.

- Understanding how to make both aspects of the player base happy (Hardcore/softcore).

Recently blizzard made a bold move to define the value of “skill” a previously very subjective and highly debated concept. They did this by defining it as “ability to micromanage”. In Warlords of draenor this ended up meaning “tracking /proc/buff management” This is highly important, because it gave hardcore players the ability to exceed the casual players due to their skill, but retained the principle of the “golden ratio”. As a result they came out with a system that was balance no matter if your casual or hardcore, but rewarded you marginally for being good, and skilled.

Gw2 and how it fits in

We look at guild wars 2 we seem to come into issues when it comes to such principles, for example

- there is a massive variance in damage rates of each class, but those classes retain superior survivabiltiy rates. A great example of this is the necro’s reaper shroud.

- In many cases a class invalidates itself, again point in case is shroud, and repear shroud.

- in many cases, some classes are near unkillable because of having massive amounts of stability issues when it comes to addressing survivability rates. Examples are Guardian, and elementalists perma 33% Protection builds.

- in some cases classes depend on a very specific build, or would other wise be highly ineffective in pvp. A great example is elementalist. Auramancer is probably the only really competitive build of the class. Other specs just dont compete with it.

- In many cases skills are very unpractical, which violates the concept of makings things feel psychologically feel “good”. For example elementalists dagger abilities for lighing basic attack is highly unpractical for a some what squishy class.

- In some cases, their is classes that offer so much damage, they instantly kill someone. Examples of this are thief, and dragon hunter.

So to sum all of this up, this game will never be balanced until major issues are addressed, these issues have nothing to do with what to change as much as they do to guide the developers in the direction of how to implement changes.

For this reason the game is destined to repeat this cycle of massive instabilities.

I call on the development team to engage me in some form or way to discuss these things. My teamspeak is open to anyone who is wanting to have conversations about them (as well as the devs) contact me via pm to obtain the info (additionally if your a clan that needs a voice chat we can set up you with a place on our ts, we have a 500 slot server).

Thanks for the read.

Anari.2137:

When it comes to game design, there is an overwhelming importance for solid foundations, and sound positions. Sadly, very few people in the gaming industry have these. In many cases like guild wars, it’s more or less coders doing design aspects; the simple truth is your not a good designer just because you can code.

The concept of “every spec is good” is a dream, one that has not been realized yet, and which will likely never happen. I am of the opinion that we are no where near close enough to the ability to do this, especially with the current mindset our industry has of “copy paste” concepts from other games.

This means, that Guild Wars 2, In my opinion will never get the concept of “all specs are good” Right. Why Do you ask? I’ll explain.

Complexity Vs Depth

It’s a bit tricky to explain the difference of complexity and depth, so i wont go to much into it but the simple way i put of defining the two is as follows

- Complexity is an option, that will benefit another through investigation of the situation, and what benefits might arise from finding out how to exploit that situation.

- Depth is an option, which is clear at first glance (the first time you read it) and requires little or no further thought or investigation.

Now that we have fined these lets look at why the game will never be balanced

Describing the situation of the game in a metaphorical way

“the balance cycle of gw2 is equal to a doctor giving pain killers to kill the pain, only to ignore what is causing it. If you want to stop the pain, you cure the problem, not conceal it”

understanding the metaphor

Basically in a short, the current development process is something to the effect of, nerf buff nerf buff nerf buff. It’s an endless cycle, and it will never end if you continue to repeat it in this manner.

Why?

The reason for this is because there is a lot of shifting parts. Lets say we have a list, something like

1 Power
2 Condition
3 Precision

From this list, we have this situation that the meta in general favors option 1 ) power.
After a nerf, condition comes up, and then it gets nerfed to give way to precision. This cycle will repeat over and over. Expecting a different result will only designate you as an insane person.

This is important to understand because this is the exact situation that is taking place. however, the game does not need to be like this. hence we come to the metaphor.

So What Gives? What is the cure for the disease?

This question brings us to a very important discussion and before i give an answer to this i want to point out some very important points.

First we have to meet some conclusions

- The majority of players do not have the desire, or the time to invest in finding broken builds.
- Complexity offers no benefit that depth does not, and brings with it major problems, including game decline and potential population limits, and major instabilities in balance.

The disease

In truth, the major problem to game balance is the developers way they go about doing their development process. What i mean by this is that they are not well founded in their foundation concepts for the games balance.

For Example lets look at blizzard

- blizzard understands how to use metrics, where many others do not. this is probably due to the people in charge of values like this being more founded in math then most coders are. in short, their specialists are good.

- part of the reason blizzard is so good at what they do is because they are very well founded in base concepts, think of them as the gaming worlds version of isaac newtons laws of physics ,only for gaming. these concepts include things like (but not limited to)

- sticking to their concepts with an iron fist (your laws are only good if you stick to them)

- Keeping livability rates in target time frames.
for example, 20-30 seconds is the sweet spot for fast game pvp (Which is where gw2 should be imo)

- adjusting anything that does not offer competitive play, or is overly competitive

- Keeping an important rule in mind “game development is not just coding, its also psychology”

- Paying attention to play trending and demands, so you keep everything “balanced”.

- putting classes into key aspects of game play

- Last and most importantly, they recognize that there is a breaking point. It took me a few years of game balance work to even become conscious of this, but in short there is a “golden ratio” to game balance across all genre, that is a max variance of 13%. It seems that when classes differ from other classes by an amount greater than this they become broken. This is a general application there is a few situations where it can be exceeded slightly, but the true target “gold zone” is about 8.5%.

- Understanding how to make both aspects of the player base happy (Hardcore/softcore).

Recently blizzard made a bold move to define the value of “skill” a previously very subjective and highly debated concept. They did this by defining it as “ability to micromanage”. In Warlords of draenor this ended up meaning “tracking /proc/buff management” This is highly important, because it gave hardcore players the ability to exceed the casual players due to their skill, but retained the principle of the “golden ratio”. As a result they came out with a system that was balance no matter if your casual or hardcore, but rewarded you marginally for being good, and skilled.

Gw2 and how it fits in

We look at guild wars 2 we seem to come into issues when it comes to such principles, for example

- there is a massive variance in damage rates of each class, but those classes retain superior survivabiltiy rates. A great example of this is the necro’s reaper shroud.

- In many cases a class invalidates itself, again point in case is shroud, and repear shroud.

- in many cases, some classes are near unkillable because of having massive amounts of stability issues when it comes to addressing survivability rates. Examples are Guardian, and elementalists perma 33% Protection builds.

- in some cases classes depend on a very specific build, or would other wise be highly ineffective in pvp. A great example is elementalist. Auramancer is probably the only really competitive build of the class. Other specs just dont compete with it.

- In many cases skills are very unpractical, which violates the concept of makings things feel psychologically feel “good”. For example elementalists dagger abilities for lighing basic attack is highly unpractical for a some what squishy class.

- In some cases, their is classes that offer so much damage, they instantly kill someone. Examples of this are thief, and dragon hunter.

So to sum all of this up, this game will never be balanced until major issues are addressed, these issues have nothing to do with what to change as much as they do to guide the developers in the direction of how to implement changes.

For this reason the game is destined to repeat this cycle of massive instabilities.

I call on the development team to engage me in some form or way to discuss these things. My teamspeak is open to anyone who is wanting to have conversations about them (as well as the devs) contact me via pm to obtain the info (additionally if your a clan that needs a voice chat we can set up you with a place on our ts, we have a 500 slot server).

Thanks for the read.

there is a simple reason, they dont want to split skills into pve/pvp and the inclusion of high end content(raid) makes nerfs a dramatic situation that can make inviable the raid

No one is advocating for that.

Yo, huge post here, lets see if ppl/devs come and say smth about it ^^

I like the idea of balance, especially in the form of “active vs passive.”

As a Thief player, I do hope there’s more balance in that regard. Especially by giving the Thief more active defenses (outside of Daredevil) in the way that others have been given passive defenses. Also the ability to negate certain passives such as Mirror of Anguish.

But I cannot really agree with the Thief being used as an example of an “instant killer.” I’ve been playing as a Berserker Thief recently. Even if caught completely by surprise, no Thief has been able to down me within a few seconds if their initial burst. I’m always able to extend the fight. Nor have I been able to instantly down anyone without using a one-trick signet/trapper build… and that only works with complete surprise against a squishy target.

Just saying that the Thief isn’t what it used to be, sadly. I still don’t understand why a “glass cannon’s” power isn’t as great as its vulnerability.

Great post and interesting read! It confirms what I thought not long after HoT release, Anet should sell to Blizzard.

Kageseigi.2150:

I like the idea of balance, especially in the form of “active vs passive.”

As a Thief player, I do hope there’s more balance in that regard. Especially by giving the Thief more active defenses (outside of Daredevil) in the way that others have been given passive defenses. Also the ability to negate certain passives such as Mirror of Anguish.

But I cannot really agree with the Thief being used as an example of an “instant killer.” I’ve been playing as a Berserker Thief recently. Even if caught completely by surprise, no Thief has been able to down me within a few seconds if their initial burst. I’m always able to extend the fight. Nor have I been able to instantly down anyone without using a one-trick signet/trapper build… and that only works with complete surprise against a squishy target.

Just saying that the Thief isn’t what it used to be, sadly. I still don’t understand why a “glass cannon’s” power isn’t as great as its vulnerability.

If you played world of warcraft, you will be able to measure this idea of power vs weakness to get the effect of the glass cannon vs that which is currently in wow, where mages are more “rounded” but less “glass cannon” than they use to be.

While we expect that instant kill power from a glass cannon, in actuality the fore way of balance was really negative for that class. this is a bit of a tricky situation which is game breaking, either if you do, or do not do it.

my personal position is that is to take the rounded position, but give the class some special benefit that allows the class to be extremely effective at killing targets below specific health rates. For example, Executions in wow will fill this purpose.

So to recap, i believe the thief should be more rounded, but should get something like this (execution concept), as well as a few other classes or specs (just depending) such as warrior.

I am not a fan of the instant death concept. It is against the concept concept of play and counter play, which i think its very important for the suspense and over all balance and health of the game.

drcraig.9403:

Great post and interesting read! It confirms what I thought not long after HoT release, Anet should sell to Blizzard.

The only thing I agree with this post is this…

…in many cases, some classes are near unkillable because of having massive amounts of stability issues when it comes to addressing survivability rates. Examples are Guardian, and elementalists perma 33% Protection builds Stability traits
…in some cases classes depend on a very specific build, or would other wise be highly ineffective in pvp.

The rest of the post is opinionated, semantic propaganda.

Oh and as for Blizzard… they killed WoW a long time ago, during/after WotLK. They completely removed build diversity and completely simplified the game so any 3yo with a brain could play it… that’s not the kind of game balance GW2 needs. Definitely don’t want any Blizzard PvP Director for GW2… I would quit in a heartbeat.

Anari.2137:

I am not a fan of the instant death concept. It is against the concept concept of play and counter play, which i think its very important for the suspense and over all balance and health of the game.

Yes, I think that’s what I don’t understand. The Thief is easily a victim of insta-death (or even near-insta-death with Marauder), but does not have the ability to deal insta-death (save for the instances I mentioned above).

I’m running full Berserker, Deadly Arts/Critical Strikes/Trickery, Fire/Air sigils, and Assassin’s Signet, and I still cannot punch through defenses quickly enough. I am running Pack runes instead of Scholar runes for more sustained damage.

What I find really odd is that other professions get my kind of damage (or more) along with defenses. In my opinion, too many passive defenses at that. And even Daredevil’s sustain is locked behind HoT. So it seems that a glass cannon Thief is really only truly effective against another glass cannon. Having never played WoW, I fear I cannot compare the two games.

Kageseigi.2150:

Anari.2137:

I am not a fan of the instant death concept. It is against the concept concept of play and counter play, which i think its very important for the suspense and over all balance and health of the game.

Yes, I think that’s what I don’t understand. The Thief is easily a victim of insta-death (or even near-insta-death with Marauder), but does not have the ability to deal insta-death (save for the instances I mentioned above).

I’m running full Berserker, Deadly Arts/Critical Strikes/Trickery, Fire/Air sigils, and Assassin’s Signet, and I still cannot punch through defenses quickly enough. I am running Pack runes instead of Scholar runes for more sustained damage.

What I find really odd is that other professions get my kind of damage (or more) along with defenses. In my opinion, too many passive defenses at that. And even Daredevil’s sustain is locked behind HoT. So it seems that a glass cannon Thief is really only truly effective against another glass cannon. Having never played WoW, I fear I cannot compare the two games.

The thing is, Thief is more OP with any other burst+cc class. Thief is very subpar by himself, unlike the prepatch version of Thief and unlike most self-supporting or self-sustaining classes we have currently.

That’s why Thief is so hard to balance and make right. On one hand you want Thief players to be self reliant. On the other, Thieves could be OP if they’re self-reliant AND over-the-top when ran with a Guard/Mesmer/Rev comp. That partly has to do with their incredibly mobility arch-type of a class so… them insta-dying when making a false move is kind of well within reason…. in theory.

I found this game to be balanced around premade teams only. Playing solo queue it is and will be a lottery forever due to how classes work and counter each other. Split team over 3 points without prior coordination will be random and the results are decided mostly about what class attacks and what class defends, considering similar mechanic skills. A game mode to encourage 5vs5 fights would be better for random solo players, and easier to balance team composition by the developer at game start.
Edit: I speak as a normal player that just wants to have some fun, not as a pro.

The game is intentionally imbalanced, its not news to say that. Its like this in most MMO’s simply because it keeps the game interesting. There is a very good reason why Thieves and Warriors are at the bottom end of the pvp line up, and it’s not ignorance on behalf of the developers, infact its totally obvious this is intentional.

Just imagine if elite specs were just as balanced as the other traitlines, or if revenants did as much damage as a mesmer. You would have wasted a whole year of development and the company would need to start firing the staff and stopping content creation to keep the game profitable enough to justify the expense. What do you think is better?

we all know the reason why.
cuz were all game designers who know everything about everything and anyone who thinks differently is wrong and should be discriminated against.
but thanks anyway.

Long post and a lot of good stuff. In the end you need a dedicated person that is good in building such systems. Its a fulltime job including forum reading, network thinking, psychology and math (for me its statistics and must not be exact because i build self regulating systems). And this guy could get demands from marketing like elite has to be needed for selling, but never should someone intervene and change or override his decisions/work because its a complex system (unless he obvious is not capable at which point someone else must take over). I did it and overiding a singe point in a system i built can topple alot … And then the dev is blamed because his system does not work as intended. Here too many cooks ruin the meal.

Zlater.6789:

The game is intentionally imbalanced, its not news to say that. Its like this in most MMO’s simply because it keeps the game interesting. There is a very good reason why Thieves and Warriors are at the bottom end of the pvp line up, and it’s not ignorance on behalf of the developers, infact its totally obvious this is intentional.

Just imagine if elite specs were just as balanced as the other traitlines, or if revenants did as much damage as a mesmer. You would have wasted a whole year of development and the company would need to start firing the staff and stopping content creation to keep the game profitable enough to justify the expense. What do you think is better?

I would like to know where people like you get such insane positions.

Is that kind of like hardcore means elite, and not someone who plays a lot?
Is it kind of like ’fun" is pvp and not pve?

Your position is purely speculation. Speculation that is not founded on anything other then your opinion, which gaming seems to have a lot of.

The game is only “interesting” a long as the player wants to play it. when you can provide metric data on how success this is by some sort of empirical evidence let us know, other wise please keep your conjecture to yourself.

Jack Daniels.5270:

I found this game to be balanced around premade teams only. Playing solo queue it is and will be a lottery forever due to how classes work and counter each other. Split team over 3 points without prior coordination will be random and the results are decided mostly about what class attacks and what class defends, considering similar mechanic skills. A game mode to encourage 5vs5 fights would be better for random solo players, and easier to balance team composition by the developer at game start.
Edit: I speak as a normal player that just wants to have some fun, not as a pro.

This is part of the point i raise with hardcore and casual players. It works like the following conditions

- If game is catering to intentionally designed *complex nature, you limit the max population as players who want to be competitive cannot, or lack the desire to investigate to do so.

- Catering to complex systems provides massive amounts of instability, largely (if not fully) due to the power creep involved in complex systems.

- The misconception that a game cannot have choices if its not complex is totally inaccurate.

[*]An example of complex games and how they have effects on population can be seem with games like Eve online.

when it comes to casual players

If a game caters to hardcore player base with concepts like complexity, the majority of the casual population leaves. If you cater to casual population, some of the hardcore population leaves, but the majority stay complaining. This is simple to understand if you understand that a portion of the hardcore players are psychologically classified as the “steamroller” type of personality, where they use power to exert the position upon others.

As such, complex systems are used by such to fill this emotional need to dominate. This is why you generally do not see casual player base advocating for such systems, as they generally are of other personality types.

The “steamroller” personality is driven, and its that type of drive that gets them to push to be the best in a game, which is why they are isolated primarily in the more active, hardcore group.

Anari: I expect your explanation of complex is hard to understand for most.
Your last post is something every game designer should have burned into his head. Its on of the core psycologies affecting population. But you can make complexity easy to use by casual players. But overstressing complexity always results in a small fan population left.

I followed it until you used WoW as an example of good PvP balance. At worst, their balance is as bad as GW2 is now. When GW2 was better balanced, it was far better than WoW because the gameplay is more engaging (WoW relies on beating on someone until they’re out of cooldowns with a bit of RNG).

WoW is so good that they can manage to drop 7million players in like 3 years, yeah great example
also you cant compare them because wow has healers and tanks..pvp should be totally different

Sorry but I couldn’t go really further when you start to have WoW as an example. If you want to be exhaustive about it you should mention that
1/ balance is made around the highest stuff you can get during a season, but without this stuff you can largely sit on your golden rule.
2/There is a very weak building process in wow. The 34 different spec have a predefined skillset and gameplay. You choose some things on the side but not so much. You don’t have choice on your stuff bonus, there is no hybrid build possible.
3/Late in MoP, when I stopped, I also remember that PvP was like PvE, that is unbeatable without specific addons. The stupidest one for PvP ( Gladius) was one that was telling you that PlayerX was using a specific CC on you, even if you could not see that player (in your back for example). If you were warrior, you knew it was the moment to use your spell reflection.
4/Every season, there was a three-men team comp that was meta and had more chance to win… not every team was “balanced”

I am not an expert in balance, nor am I saying that Gw2 makes it perfectly but saying that WoW is much better balanced is not really true. That is maybe true in PvE where every dps class does the same dps within an error of 10 %, but the price for this is that every class have more or less the same abilities and the same rotation (one small CD, one or two proc, one filler and some big CDs).

Brockolosso.8316:

WoW is so good that they can manage to drop 7million players in like 3 years, yeah great example
also you cant compare them because wow has healers and tanks..pvp should be totally different

Unless you have some evidence proving that people left because of the games balance, you really have no water to hold.

I recognize that a lot of you think “watered down casual catering” is bad. I already addressed this point with the fact that this is a mentality, which is driven by the desire to 1 shot people and gloat over it.

Guild wars has reached at best 1/2 the peak population of wow, so if you want to play these number games you will easily get squashed with your own logic.

Additionally, Wow is still head of guild wars by years, billions in income, amount of expansions, and even has another 7 expansions planned. It is the most successful subscription based game today, and todate.

So Yea, Your arguments hold absolutely no water at all.

Lastly i want to say

Your position is expected, because its emotional. You think that just because someone makes mash potatoes, means that all mash potatoes are the same, and that is not true.

Take for example, Dota, Dota 2, Hon, And league of legends. Similar Yes, But not the same? why because the developers make minor changes to the way the math works, which changed the outcome.

Gw2 can be balanced on principles which blizzard (but is not subjected to only being blizzards view) uses, but it can modify it to keep the customization, and the speed that gw2, benefiting gw2 with a more stable rate of game play, validating all specs, but keeping its unique fast pace moba like combat.

Of course it will never be totally balanced. For one thing everyone has a different definition of what balanaced means. The pvp at A-net involved with balancing pvp probably have different definitions individually. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to reign in what’s op and bring classes as close together as possible. Some sort of consensus.

Ranael.6423:

Sorry but I couldn’t go really further when you start to have WoW as an example. If you want to be exhaustive about it you should mention that
1/ balance is made around the highest stuff you can get during a season, but without this stuff you can largely sit on your golden rule.
2/There is a very weak building process in wow. The 34 different spec have a predefined skillset and gameplay. You choose some things on the side but not so much. You don’t have choice on your stuff bonus, there is no hybrid build possible.
3/Late in MoP, when I stopped, I also remember that PvP was like PvE, that is unbeatable without specific addons. The stupidest one for PvP ( Gladius) was one that was telling you that PlayerX was using a specific CC on you, even if you could not see that player (in your back for example). If you were warrior, you knew it was the moment to use your spell reflection.
4/Every season, there was a three-men team comp that was meta and had more chance to win… not every team was “balanced”

I am not an expert in balance, nor am I saying that Gw2 makes it perfectly but saying that WoW is much better balanced is not really true. That is maybe true in PvE where every dps class does the same dps within an error of 10 %, but the price for this is that every class have more or less the same abilities and the same rotation (one small CD, one or two proc, one filler and some big CDs).

First, if your not going to read the entire topic, you may not want to reply. IT shows your emotional, and not addressing issues from an intellectual level. We dont nerf or change things as developers because we get emotional hate it, we change it because the metrics shows its not good.

1. No, Absolutely absolutely, absolutely not. Where in the world did you come up you balance a game around the 1%? I cannot even begin to fathom how you think that balances the game.

A game is balanced around the foundation, and the concepts applied. For example “target livability rates of 20-30 seconds”. Not around “what the top players think”.

2. i dont know what wow you played, but none of what you just said is true. This game has an almost identical balance system to wow. 3 Specs, Gear stats, and is set up naturally to hybrid. So where ever you came up with the concept that they are different is insanity. The only difference at the moment is the split the gear in gw2 into 2 items (amulet and runes) and make a more extreme power variation (which is the cause for the balance problems).

3. Yea Wow allowed for addons. Those addons actually make the game more balanced, because it allows the players who are less able to track multiple things react better more consistently and more quickly. So i cant really see the negative side of this point.

4. I am a Multi-Glad/Hwl. I lead a top pvp guild on Tich horde. That statement you just made in this point tells me you really were not competitive in pvp. God Comp is arguably the best comp because its well rounded and able to deal with so many situations, however it’s utterly bulled over by turbo cleave groups. So to put wow meta into perspective, its close to paper rock scissors with lots of paper groups. that is not the fault of developers, its just largely due to the classes players pick and them being so easy to get over the rest.

Additionally, dont even try to tell me this games meta at top end does not have cookei cutter builds, because there is more certainly a “top build” for this game, and unlike wow, its one specific build, built around perfect execution of boon/buff spam, and 1 shot killing.

gw2 is a joke for balance when it comes in comparison to wow. Sorry to break it to you, but blizzard is miles a head of any other game out there when it comes to this stuff, and if anyone was to come close to this kind of balance i’d bet that riot games could do it but i wouldn’t hold my breath after that point.

brannigan.9831:

Of course it will never be totally balanced. For one thing everyone has a different definition of what balanaced means. The pvp at A-net involved with balancing pvp probably have different definitions individually. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to reign in what’s op and bring classes as close together as possible. Some sort of consensus.

its not an objective of making it perfect, actually perfect balance is bad if we address it in the aspect of numbers. In truth, balance in a game is some where between numbers and psychology.

in my time iv seen situations where an ability is reporting from metrics to be very stable, but the player complain that it is not good. this is an example of how psychology is important to the design aspect.

i have also seen many more times, where a slow ability is so powerful that another class has no chance (or little) to fight it. Example Druids rooting spam in wow vs warrior.

Primarily there is three types of game balance, each with advantages and disadvantages, but the greatest balance comes from a mixture of all concepts.

When wow was originally released it used a PRS (paper, rock, Scissors) system.

After the release of BC, and through the time up until Cata it was largely more cyclical, which a type of PRS that allows you to swap the rock to kill the paper.

Then in the recent days, they started implementing over all normalization in the classes.

For example, a mage in vanilla wow had a damage factor of 10/10, but a surviability rate of only 2/10. In WoD that was changed to be something like 7/10 in damage, and 4/10 in survivability.

Additionally all other classes seemed to be very close to the middle range of 1/10 (around 5) instead of the extremely weak or strong area’s. This was good over all for the mage class (and others) in wow, but sadly it was the major change aspect in the game that made it feel “boring” because every other class was basically the game.

This brings us to an extremely extremely important point.

IF Gw2’s design concept is to be “everything is basically the same but does it in a different way” Then it will ultimately end up like WoW. The devs just haven’t gotten the balance aspect right.

They are sort of new to the concept of how to balance, like the devs at blizzard were during the time of vanilla wow and on.

*so in short, what i am attempting to do is “crash course” the devs on why wow is the way it is, wow gw2 is the way it is, so they can jump a head 10 years and find a balance system that does not lead to the end result of wow’s negative psychological aspects of design.

It has a much more simple reason why gw2 will never be balanced:
When are the classes balanced? When are the skills balanced?

If we really discuss the question, then we will have as many opinions as posts. Hence, what person 1 perceives as “balanced” is for person 2 “unbalanced”.

Currently, the perception of the imbalance is quiet high most likely due to the introduction of the elite specialisations and other new parts due to HoT (my opinion). The prior found balance has been disrupted and has to be found again.

Anari.2137:

First, if your not going to read the entire topic, you may not want to reply. IT shows your emotional, and not addressing issues from an intellectual level. We dont nerf or change things as developers because we get emotional hate it, we change it because the metrics shows its not good.

1. No, Absolutely absolutely, absolutely not. Where in the world did you come up you balance a game around the 1%? I cannot even begin to fathom how you think that balances the game.

A game is balanced around the foundation, and the concepts applied. For example “target livability rates of 20-30 seconds”. Not around “what the top players think”.

2. i dont know what wow you played, but none of what you just said is true. This game has an almost identical balance system to wow. 3 Specs, Gear stats, and is set up naturally to hybrid. So where ever you came up with the concept that they are different is insanity. The only difference at the moment is the split the gear in gw2 into 2 items (amulet and runes) and make a more extreme power variation (which is the cause for the balance problems).

3. Yea Wow allowed for addons. Those addons actually make the game more balanced, because it allows the players who are less able to track multiple things react better more consistently and more quickly. So i cant really see the negative side of this point.

4. I am a Multi-Glad/Hwl. I lead a top pvp guild on Tich horde. That statement you just made in this point tells me you really were not competitive in pvp. God Comp is arguably the best comp because its well rounded and able to deal with so many situations, however it’s utterly bulled over by turbo cleave groups. So to put wow meta into perspective, its close to paper rock scissors with lots of paper groups. that is not the fault of developers, its just largely due to the classes players pick and them being so easy to get over the rest.

Additionally, dont even try to tell me this games meta at top end does not have cookei cutter builds, because there is more certainly a “top build” for this game, and unlike wow, its one specific build, built around perfect execution of boon/buff spam, and 1 shot killing.

gw2 is a joke for balance when it comes in comparison to wow. Sorry to break it to you, but blizzard is miles a head of any other game out there when it comes to this stuff, and if anyone was to come close to this kind of balance i’d bet that riot games could do it but i wouldn’t hold my breath after that point.

1/ Apparently I’m not the only one to not read (so I will skip the part of not having intellect involved in the discussion and being just emotional) because where did I speak about 1% and top players thoughts? I said that during a season you grab better and better stuff (at least it was the case before) which increases you stats and hence your output damages in a non linear manner (haste or crit caps for example). So while you don’t have all stats your are not doing the best with your character. So it is obvious that balance has to be achieved based on maximal stats not on gearing phases.

2/You should invest more time in GW2 because you don’t really get the build process. Wow has 3 specs per class (4 for druid) and choosing one determines the skill you get to use, as well as passive bonus. And then you can choose 6 additional skills, for each you have a choice between three, all having a theme (CC, defense, dps..). In GW2 you choose 3 spec lines out of 6 with each having 3 passive bonus and 3 actively chosen one (each with a choice between 3). The very fact that one can mix those spec lines bring a broader variation on spec build for every class. On top of that skills are chosen by the player, not by the spec you choose. On top of that the bonus on gear is not fixed during the season and chosen by devs but by players… again the number of possibilities grows even more.

3/ Saying addons makes things more balanced is for me really weird to read. You write " it allows the players who are less able to track multiple things react better " … skill in GW2 is not to be able to write the best macro or have the best addons for interface but to be able to track multiple things! Huge philosophical difference ! Games are here really different .

4/Yes there is a meta in both games, or cookie cutter build. But this is exactly what people call unbalance. It is a simple reaction, but you come here to say you do better job on wow because everything is balanced, and then you say " yeah some builds are just better… but it is the same here !". So I don’t really see your point unless you want to tell that the choices are better done philosophically in wow…. but if in the end the results are the same, I do wonder if you are not a bit too much emotional….

And last but not least : a big difference is Wow PvP is an arena where the goal is to kill the other team. The goal in GW2 conquest is to hold points on three different spots. Sure reaper has huge damage and sustain (well he has a big CD of survival and after that he dies)…. but he is so slow that if you make him run between points you will have a big advantage. Else you isolate him and put him out of game for few seconds which will buy you another cap.

1. You mentioned balancing the game from the top, You dont build a house from the roof down. It’s a simple way to understand it. any developer that would try to do something like that i would point and laugh at, before telling him he should get a job at mc donalds or something (if he can handle that).

2. So Its the same? Do you get to choose the weapon skills" No. Your just provided with more options (which is part of the reason for balance problems). At the end of the day, you have a few tiers, with various options from. The system is the same, just amount of choices varies. In fact wow has a few more customization options then this game.

PvP is not balanced around a set stat rate (ie end stats) its balanced around concept rates. The better gear provides a temp amount of time that there is a alteration to the concept of livibility rates. In other words, Starter gear give you 30 seconds to live in combat, and fighting someone with the next tier gives you 25 seconds. The variation does not exceed 9% of the livability rates.

I happen to know this with certainty as one of the people that tracks wow’s metrics is a dev in our multi-gaming community.

3. Wow has addons, gw2 dont. who cares. Wow is still more balanced with out it.

4. There is metabuilds in games because players are efficient little super ants. they’d do anything to be efficient. Thats why such things exist. the only way to stop this is to give everyone the same spec/build (Like league, with out item options).

5. gw2 map design is horrid. Yea, you got some good concepts, but they are not practical, and are trash for most of the population. Why? because every noob out there that just wants to kill stuff does not have winning in mind, just killing. An intelligent designer would take this into consideration, and make killing the objective.

Mores like “kill the team captain” or “first one to 20 kills”. is what this game needs, not more objective oriented maps that people are just going to ignore.

Anari.2137:

Zlater.6789:

The game is intentionally imbalanced, its not news to say that. Its like this in most MMO’s simply because it keeps the game interesting. There is a very good reason why Thieves and Warriors are at the bottom end of the pvp line up, and it’s not ignorance on behalf of the developers, infact its totally obvious this is intentional.

Just imagine if elite specs were just as balanced as the other traitlines, or if revenants did as much damage as a mesmer. You would have wasted a whole year of development and the company would need to start firing the staff and stopping content creation to keep the game profitable enough to justify the expense. What do you think is better?

I would like to know where people like you get such insane positions.

Is that kind of like hardcore means elite, and not someone who plays a lot?
Is it kind of like ’fun" is pvp and not pve?

Your position is purely speculation. Speculation that is not founded on anything other then your opinion, which gaming seems to have a lot of.

The game is only “interesting” a long as the player wants to play it. when you can provide metric data on how success this is by some sort of empirical evidence let us know, other wise please keep your conjecture to yourself.

Ok I don’t care enough about you to do it for you, but I care enough about people who would read this. So here is a good place to start.

-Look at the most recent April fool’s day patch notes and see if you can find any notes that would indicate any hint of the developers understanding what the most recent player complaints are.
-Find out if they have a team dedicated to balance.
-Who were the 2 most dominate classes in Pvp pre-HoT?
-Watch the last few years of pro replays and see if you can notice any trend or rotation in the dominate class choices.
-Go here and listen to a nice-sounding-voice-guy explain it to you.
http://qqmore.net/video-guide-why-is-guild-wars-2-unbalanced/

You need to really consider if it would be a good thing if perfect balance was accomplished, if every skill/class was the same and if everybody won exactly half of their matches because their teammates skill was exactly what they were expecting, tell me would that be fun?
If you aren’t in full agreement with the last comment then you are not complaining about balance, you are just complaining because you are upset about not having fun… Because you aren’t winning more than 50% of your matches?

I have 95-96% Win game rate ratio when i play with others.

This person you linked is another player who thinks they understand more then us who have spent years in the industry balancing the game. I have better things to do then to listen to people who are theorizing nonsense.

He cannot even get basic understandings of what “cyclical balance” actually is, because is in unable to understand that power variance is not a dependency for cyclical balance.

Watching a video on EC (which btw, we have almost identical positions on 90% of topics) and citing it with a 1 minute explanation does not make you understand the complexities of balancing a game.

Additionally, I find it very intellectually dishonest that he cites this aspect of game developer, yet totally ignore other such videos on more important topics, like power creep which James explicitly says is not good for a game.

Lastly,

Blizzard implemented PRS When WoW first came out, then they went to PRS/Cyclical hybrid. Later in WoD, They implemented chaotic balance concepts, and now hold aspects of the major different types of game balance.

They do all of this, with only a variance of 8-9% of power. So the idea that you cannot have cyclical balance with small power variance is insanity.

@ Anari: Oh a shrink.
I didn’t read all of what you wrote nor do I intend to – but: This game is watered down because of “casuals” who complained about everything and also because of mismanagement.
A lof of the “hardcore” players have indeed left, mostly gvg guilds in wvw (yes, we’re dependend on pvp balance as well).
Also: Anet announced that they don’t really intend to do balance anymore (that they didn’t say literally) but want to “shake up the meta” every 4 months (this were their words). Google it – it was in some news around June last year, maybe a bit earlier.

Congrats OP you just listed 101 level concepts.
The reason GW2 balance will never be possible is because “balance” is a moving target that can never be caught.

Anytime you have multiple different ways to do something, one of those ways will be better than the others.

I don’t know how you guys can still talk about balance. Dindt you seen the ammount of passive kitten arenanet is adding at every balance patch? There are simply too many reaction for an One single simply action of the player. Even you if you dont touch nothing and sit afk, get struck and your pg will have a lot of reaction alone.
You can’t even get near at a fight that you get chilled stunned and damaged. Without even understand what beacause there are a thousend of easy access AoE.

The only way right by now to have a fun, fair and balanced gameplay is to buy a custom arena, invite 9 friends and play conquest 5v5 with 10 core warriors

Why Gw2 Will Never Be Balanced; because the entire balance is in PvE mode, so PvP and WvW will never be balanced, until they decide they separate them.

Wow’s pvp, arena, battleground updates, class balance, constant updates, communication, etc., is light years ahead of GW2..and this is coming from someone who has thousands of hours of experience in both games.

First rank 14 in Vanilla Wow, s1-4 Gladiator, thousands of hours of open world pvp experience vs. 4k+ hours on thief in GW2 (pvp and 1vX roaming on t1 on Blackgate).

In my opinion, (and this is solely my opinion), there is no comparison.

About that Dragonhunter part, DH’s damage is mostly depending on their opponent as the main source of “insta kill” are traps. If you counter all efforts of DH trying to lure you or force you into his traps, then it’s a downhill situation for you.

I play DH myself but I do not use traps and I find it pretty kitten enjoyable to kite around and burst down my DH brethren who can’t even pull me. Especially for that I pick stab shout or just use environment to break pulls from F1 and greatsword.

While thief also does not insta kill someone, all they have to do is to keep close to their target and control them which is no easy task as well.

Jana.6831:

@ Anari: Oh a shrink.
I didn’t read all of what you wrote nor do I intend to – but: This game is watered down because of “casuals” who complained about everything and also because of mismanagement.
A lof of the “hardcore” players have indeed left, mostly gvg guilds in wvw (yes, we’re dependend on pvp balance as well).
Also: Anet announced that they don’t really intend to do balance anymore (that they didn’t say literally) but want to “shake up the meta” every 4 months (this were their words). Google it – it was in some news around June last year, maybe a bit earlier.

You have to understand from our perspective as developers, we will always cater to those “casuals” over “hardcore players” because (we) hardcore players only make up at most 17-18% of a game. Additionally, if you cater to that 20% (To be generous) you alienate the other 80%. This is business suicide.

Blizzard is making headway to this designing systems that will allow them to cater to both, but even they strongly perfer the casual players (for business reasons).

So in short, get over it or create a solution to the problem (and believe me its only of the few big issues in the industry that is not easy to resolve).

Crinn.7864:

Congrats OP you just listed 101 level concepts.
The reason GW2 balance will never be possible is because “balance” is a moving target that can never be caught.

Anytime you have multiple different ways to do something, one of those ways will be better than the others.

That is not true. Balance can be caught, If you want to live with a static meta forever. A solution needs to be created like “move with the target”.

That being said, Yes i mentioned 101 concepts, but if you worked in it, or went to school for it you’d know the very first concept (or often joke) made by a professor is “KISS” Keep it simple stupid; Ironically how many people are advocating for complexity?

People ignore the 101 concepts, its like an engineer ignoring the basic concepts for building a bridge, it’s not going to go over well.

LordOtto.2650:

Why Gw2 Will Never Be Balanced; because the entire balance is in PvE mode, so PvP and WvW will never be balanced, until they decide they separate them.

Believe it or not, this actually causes more problems =/
I use to be a really big advocate for this solution, then i got some experience with it, and yet. I will say though there is a chance that it was just the way it was implemented.

Darkjin.7810:

Wow’s pvp, arena, battleground updates, class balance, constant updates, communication, etc., is light years ahead of GW2..and this is coming from someone who has thousands of hours of experience in both games.

First rank 14 in Vanilla Wow, s1-4 Gladiator, thousands of hours of open world pvp experience vs. 4k+ hours on thief in GW2 (pvp and 1vX roaming on t1 on Blackgate).

In my opinion, (and this is solely my opinion), there is no comparison.

While I agree fully with this, i will say though i enjoy Gw2 more, but i think its largely due to the faster game play and more moba like aspects.

GW2 will never be balanced because it was not made with balance in mind. GW2 is a pve game first, then a pvp game second. While GW1 is a pvp game first and a pve game second. The difference between the two in terms of balance is quite noticeable.

Anari.2137:

Darkjin.7810:

Wow’s pvp, arena, battleground updates, class balance, constant updates, communication, etc., is light years ahead of GW2..and this is coming from someone who has thousands of hours of experience in both games.

First rank 14 in Vanilla Wow, s1-4 Gladiator, thousands of hours of open world pvp experience vs. 4k+ hours on thief in GW2 (pvp and 1vX roaming on t1 on Blackgate).

In my opinion, (and this is solely my opinion), there is no comparison.

While I agree fully with this, i will say though i enjoy Gw2 more, but i think its largely due to the faster game play and more moba like aspects.

One of GW2’s core competencies is it’s action-oriented combat system which helped differentiate it with other games such as Wow.

Is one better than the other? No, it’s all personal preference. Both are very enjoyable in my opinion. Unfortunately for GW2, this core competency is constantly wasted because of incredibly poor balance decisions and updates which have driven competitive players away from the game, including myself. I won’t even bother getting into the details, because it’s just not worth the effort.

I log in very rarely, just to pop in and do some solo roaming, etc. It’s not what it used to be…and it is constantly getting worse and worse. My buddy/followers list used to be fairly lively…now it has maybe 1 or 2 people showing as online every time I log in….so, I’m assuming other players are feeling the same way. In fact, I know they are feeling similar, via the multiple conversations I’ve had regarding balance with other players in-game.

A well thought out post (with some gaps, IMO, but we’ll leave that for later).

Sadly, this isn’t the truth. The real problem with the balance in this game is akin to trying to shove a square in a circle slot or asking a fish to climb and then calling it stupid for not being able to do so.

What I mean is that, in general (or at least the last time I checked), the classes were balanced to fit their fantasy. They all had an “identity” or a “feel”. Warriors were powerful juggernauts that could really put on the pressure quickly, but had to work quickly before they tired out. Thieves were speedsters who could, with enough fine control, overcome almost every challenge.
None of these classes look outrageous. The real issue is when you look at the setting all of these classes are placed in.

You’ve placed them in conquest.

What does conquest promote? Rotations and point control. At every point of the meta, the classes that were at top did one or both verrrrry well. When a class, due to changes, cannot do that very well anymore….then they simply fall off.

Class balance (well, I haven’t played since about Jan, so I’m not too sure what the current landscape is looking like) is actually a lot better than most games. The issue is just this terrible game mode.

SlayerSixx.5763:

A well thought out post (with some gaps, IMO, but we’ll leave that for later).

Sadly, this isn’t the truth. The real problem with the balance in this game is akin to trying to shove a square in a circle slot or asking a fish to climb and then calling it stupid for not being able to do so.

What I mean is that, in general (or at least the last time I checked), the classes were balanced to fit their fantasy. They all had an “identity” or a “feel”. Warriors were powerful juggernauts that could really put on the pressure quickly, but had to work quickly before they tired out. Thieves were speedsters who could, with enough fine control, overcome almost every challenge.
None of these classes look outrageous. The real issue is when you look at the setting all of these classes are placed in.

You’ve placed them in conquest.

What does conquest promote? Rotations and point control. At every point of the meta, the classes that were at top did one or both verrrrry well. When a class, due to changes, cannot do that very well anymore….then they simply fall off.

Class balance (well, I haven’t played since about Jan, so I’m not too sure what the current landscape is looking like) is actually a lot better than most games. The issue is just this terrible game mode.

Game balance is divided into two major groups, Which are PRS (paper rock scissors) and Cyclical Balancing.

These have variances, but one of them is called chaotic balancing, it’s a type of variation of cyclical design concepts. This is what you are suggesting.

A system that is developed and designed fully around these concepts is not balanced at all, however if you add a enough to it it will stabilize to some degree.

Good studio’s like Riot Games, and Blizzard understand that you use a mixture of the systems to get good balance, and retain good interaction.

CD (Chaotic Design) helps give classes identity, but has serious instability issues because of the power variance.

Cyclical design is the most inconsistent type of balance, but this is good to a degree for removing stale game play, however it is also the hardest aspect to balance.

PRS is very predictable, and very consistent but it makes various combinations overly powerful (because they tend to fill in each others weaknesses, God Comp is a great example of this). However that being said, it also makes the game stale.

What you have to understand is each type of system has its advatages and disadvantages, but of these CD becomes massively more unstable with the more power that is added to it.

So while you sit and advocate for making thief 1 shot everything and zip around the map, consider exactly just how powerful that tool is in the meta, and how broke it would be if you found ways to exploit that. You absolutely will not get balance in these sorts of choices so that leaves us to a conclusion.

This conclusion is that CD is good for class identity, however not with paired with massive amounts of power. This is clear in games like league of legends, and World of warcraft where you see that a druid is unique because it can transform and do various tasks (its CD is Diversity as a class), where other classes excel at slow/snares (like mage), but do you see one of them doing so much in those fields that they are not competitive with another class? No you dont. A Druid can tank, but so can a warrior.

And so you have to understand that there is conditions that come out of this, Which is to keep the game competitive.

So if you are advocating we buff these classes (ie the cd aspects) of gw2, then your advocating we through out all forms of logic and reason; and with it will go all forms
of balance.

The real way to make the game balanced and dynamic is make all specs relative and equalized in terms of their competitive play. Then you will see things like God comp, jungle cleave and so forth come out, which will solve the problem of having dynamic game play.

OK, first things first. Stop mentioning riot. Riot has been absolutely nuts over champion “identity” since the latest season began. They’ve been so enthralled to the point where they’ve created some monstrosities T.T (man-with-shotgun-who-shall-not-be-named).

I’m not advocating for out-of-stealth 15k backstab insta-gibs or warriors being able to kill you in a single combo while being unable to be bursted. I’m saying that they have a fantasy or “niche” they MUST fill otherwise you may as well delete the class. If every class is overpowered, none are as long as everyone can compete.

The way I see it, we’re both on the same side but wanting to take drastically different approaches to the problem.

I think most players realize there will never be perfect balance.

The current problem with GW2 balance is that a handful of builds (all of them using HoT specs) are far stronger than everything else. It used to be that a good build which was played well could convincingly beat a stronger build which was played by a mediocre player. And there was variation in the top tier team comps as well without ESL having a “one of each prof” rule. We just want that back.

- there is a massive variance in damage rates of each class, but those classes retain superior survivabiltiy rates. A great example of this is the necro’s reaper shroud.

I can see you have put a lot of effort into this, but reading through it all it appears you have an odd perspective on it all.

There is a lot of factors you haven’t taken into consideration when making your conclusions.

Reaper shroud is not a class or profession. It is a mechanic of necromancers. You have particularly called out reaper shroud as a great example.

Reaper shroud as a mechanic has the biggest visual tell in game. Any player familiar with necromancer, or the concept of team spike damage find necromancer the easiest target to destroy. Reaper shroud can only be sustained for finite periods of time depending on how much life force the player has at their disposal.

When it is is exited there is a 10 second window that it can not be entered into again. Even then it can only be entered again if there is sufficient life force to do so.

In this 10 second window necromancers have no evade on use skills apart from dodge and how much vigor they have. They have no blocks. They do have a teleport that would have required previous placement and is dependent that the wurm has not already been destroyed.

In this moment necromancer damage rates, sustain and survive factor is compromised and their only active defense is positioning. This is the true profession were seeing here. The profession at its core with no additional mechanic it can make use of.

This is much the same as Warrior with no adrenaline, Thief with no initiative, Revenant with no energy, Druid with no astral force.

Basing conclusions regarding balance on profession mechanics, and not on the core profession is arguably a unwise decision to make because professions will always be in situations where their mechanic can be used, or it cannot.

This unto itself creates situations where every encounter will carry large instabilities. How each situation is addressed is solely based on what is happening in this moment, and not on how historically is the best way to address this situation or situations have been similar.

When stated out loud, is this not a desirable outcome? That each player approaching a situation will either excel or crumble depending on how wise of decisions they make with the information they can quickly gather.

In other words avoid the reaper shroud until you see the player has been forced out of it, or exited for some reason.

Target the druid when you can see their astral force is low…

Play defensively when you know the warrior has full adrenaline…

Nullify the ele within a 5 second window when they swap attunements to prevent over charges..

The big deciding factor is now when facing all four of the above, targeting the appropriate one quickly.

Game programmers do not do design at all. I assure you of this. Game designers and active game developers, however, must know some code in order to make simple scripts to interface with things like animations and frameworks designed by the programmers.

ANet uses metrics. Actually, I believe the lack of balance is because of overuse of analytical data, and too little mathematical application use for simulation for basis for development.

OP keeps referencing design which favors trinity-style play under the guise of concept-invalidation. Too much power creep and bad design ideology of letting the same builds get everything (tempest, rev, scrapper, condi reaper) through fixed-bonus effects and instead not modifiers to amplify builds creates these environments, not the capacity for each class to deviate.

The game isn’t balanced because of a multitude of reworks which holistically removed the skill ceiling from the game via passive effects, as well as disregard for stat integrity through sweeping changes made to stats and the math behind balance not being constantly verified with each adjustment.

Pvp is balanced well enough at high levels, people that think otherwise arent experienced enough to fully understand the game, as much as they think they’d like to, they dont. Honestly they should change back to the old leaderboard system and only allow the top 0.1% of players to post anything on the pvp forums, will help avoid worthless threads like this one.

I don´t think the balace is alctually extreamly bad. Its mostly diversity and power creep in elite which is more or less at the bottom. And warrior seems to have lost a useful spot …

i still think when it comes to PvP and WvW complexity should be top1 priority. that’s what makes PvPers thrive and motivates them to play. in other words – veteran population is more likely to stay for a long period of time. while casual and not really hardcore players are more open to leaving the game even if game is catering for them. besides even casual players might get some kind of drive to start exploring PvP when they would bump into complex systems. the depth of a game (or in this case depth of PvP system) is what keeps players logging in. thats why we got this situation now.. many vets and hardcore players are leaving. vets are the kind of players who are very patient BUT every1 has their breaking point. and i dunno but to me it seems that when you stop catering to competetive side of players population drops are very huge.

this might be a one-sided opinion tho.. as i am one of those hardcore/vet players. but i still think game has to evolve around active/complex and deep system. it just naturally builds up alot more interesting mechanics to learn/master and holds a person in game for longer.

PS. so please Anet start to promote active and not passive. start to promote the idea of complexity and reward. cuz u know.. many vets are on a breaking-point. you can really see that from your friend list too. or a guild. or anywhere really. that’s what happens when u promote passive over active.