Guild Wars 2

Plug: if you like this suggestion, check out my other one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Root-Problem-or-How-to-Balance-PvP/first#post3633033

P.S: this is likely will be my last suggestion for gw2. I hope it get some response from the dev. Frankly, they did a good job with this game, especially the server side programmers. The combat is one of the best for MMO. The PvE side has excellent dynamic story. I love this game; but the balancing issues is draining my patience (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). ANet needs a fundamental overhaul on how it does balancing. It’s a sad fact that although you may do a lot of things right, customers will leave just because of a bad issue (in their eyes). It’s like you have a great restaurant with world class cuisines, but you serve the customers with broken chairs everyday. Some will learn to sit on the table and enjoy the food; some will lose patience and leave.

Maybe try something new, instead of following the old process that has been proven doesn’t work?
http://blog.codinghorror.com/complaint-driven-development/

Obvious easy fixes for this game:

• A ready button. Game doesn’t start until everyone press Ready. Returns people to the lobby if fewer than 10 people press ready in 30 seconds.
• Play a sound when the dialog pops up.

Medium term fixes:

• A report button that works. Each 7 reports from the same match count as a dishonor.
• Grey out the HP bar portion to display how much future condition damage will take.
• A test realm

Changes that can get more revenues for ANet:

• A gem store item that makes all the enemy displayed as Human on your screen.
• An announcer soundpack
• A new tab that people can save their build and allows to switch builds when out of combat.

Sunshine.5014:

Obvious easy fixes for this game:
- A ready button. Game doesn’t start until everyone press Ready. Returns people to the lobby if fewer than 10 people press ready in 30 seconds.
- Play a sound when the dialog pops up.

Medium term fixes:
- A test realm
- A report button that works. Each 5 reports count as a dishonor.

Changes that can get more revenues for ANet:
- A gem store item that makes all the enemy displayed as Human on your screen.
- An announcer soundpack
- A new tab that people can save their build and allows to switch builds when out of combat.

yes, no, yes. the report button would be problematic because if all 5 of your team members report a single person on the other team you essentially break the team. Please for the love of god take asura out of spvp. not being able to see a small animation breaks the game. VERY UNBALANCED.

WarriorKcLocal.6728:

Sunshine.5014:

Obvious easy fixes for this game:
- A ready button. Game doesn’t start until everyone press Ready. Returns people to the lobby if fewer than 10 people press ready in 30 seconds.
- Play a sound when the dialog pops up.

Medium term fixes:
- A test realm
- A report button that works. Each 5 reports count as a dishonor.

Changes that can get more revenues for ANet:
- A gem store item that makes all the enemy displayed as Human on your screen.
- An announcer soundpack
- A new tab that people can save their build and allows to switch builds when out of combat.

yes, no, yes. the report button would be problematic because if all 5 of your team members report a single person on the other team you essentially break the team. Please for the love of god take asura out of spvp. not being able to see a small animation breaks the game. VERY UNBALANCED.

I see that you agree with the principle, and disagree with the number. It’s an easy fix then, just make it 7 reports from the same match counts as a dishonor. Does it change your vote from a no to a yes?

Huh. This is a great post and I agree with it. It’s something I’ve always thought about and this has helped me expand my thought on it.

Originally I just thought “Hey remove most of the customization cause it’s making balance way to hard, take the direction WoW did!”. Thing is people love tons of customization. I even think it’s fun it just has bad consequences.

Now my thoughts are “Put a ton of customization in but make the customization not affect the game very much.” It’s almost like you are fooling the playerbase into customizing their character but really it’s not a lot.

I think ArenaNet really did want to allow every class to be able to do almost everything with very small amounts of things you can’t do. Maybe they didn’t think about how hard this would actually be to balance things.

So lets say 100% would be a class being able to do everything there is in a game and 0% is a class being able to do nothing in the game.

As it is every class is probably able to do 80%(ballpark) of everything in the game(how well they do it is another subject). This makes it INSANELY hard to balance.

The lower the % gets below 80% the easier it is. We can’t deny that 0 customization would be super easy to balance, but something like 25% or below in customization would be easy enough to balance and still allow players to do the customization that we like.

After that is achieved create the illusion that there is tons of customization(but in reality you are only editing 25% of your class) by spreading it across many things, gw2 has already done this. Runes/trinkets/sigils/traits. It’s just that the customization at this point is too high of a %.

Let’s be real though. ArenaNet realizes they can’t make every single build viable across all classes. The thing most of us are frustrated about is that they have made the un-fun builds(the ones that basically ignore everything this games combat system is about) some of the best ones and left the most fun builds that play perfectly into the games combat system (elementalist, shatter mesmer, etc) alone to die to these atrocious builds that make the game a bore.

Balance is really nice, but having a fun game is 10x better.

Anyways, great post, +1d.

This game is quite well balanced compared to other mediocre low pop mmos. The core isssue in balance comes from the fact that there are no public test realms so players that come up with the “op” builds can do so and these will last a year+ before the next balance patch. The less frequently you update your game the more you should test those additions however ArenaNet seem to have opted for the least frequent, least tested patches achievable, which is interesting considering many people would volunteer or would have volunteered to test patches before they go live.

Sunshine.5014:

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard.

GW1 allowed you to choose 2 classes, put your attribute points anywhere you liked and then allowed you to pick 8 of any of the skills that those 2 classes have…

and that game was fairly balanced, probably the most balanced pvp i’ve played.
(and i’ve played pretty much every MMO released in the past 10 years)
if there was a build you considered OP then you could make a build that counters it.
everything had a counter.

its such a huge contrast in balance between GW1 and 2’s balance,
obviously the brains behind the GW1 balance must have moved to other projects.
because the current balance guys obviously don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

Low customization would make the game boring. There are reasons why I find games like League of Legends completly terrible.

Malediktus.9250:

Low customization would make the game boring. There are reasons why I find games like League of Legends completly terrible.

It’s a fallacy to think that customization equals choices.
League of Legends has a smaller range of customization; however, the users are given a tons of choices on which hero they can play, which items order they will buy, which traits/talents they pick.

GW2 has a much wider range of customizations; however, people are forced to use an extreme build for each class. A thief is forced to play zerker to be effective. An ele is forced to either go extreme glassy, or extreme bunker. A ranger is forced to play spirits if he or she wants to play in high end tournaments.

It’s false choices GW2 is offering its players. More customization doesn’t mean more choices. It’s much better to have a smaller range of customizable stats, and allow the games to be better balanced. In addition, as I’ve mentioned, smaller stats difference also means that the player can make a choice to play the way he or she likes, sacrificing a little bit of power (like 10%—and still can be effective).

Liewec.2896:

Sunshine.5014:

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard.

GW1 allowed you to choose 2 classes, put your attribute points anywhere you liked and then allowed you to pick 8 of any of the skills that those 2 classes have…

and that game was fairly balanced, probably the most balanced pvp i’ve played.
(and i’ve played pretty much every MMO released in the past 10 years)
if there was a build you considered OP then you could make a build that counters it.
everything had a counter.

its such a huge contrast in balance between GW1 and 2’s balance,
obviously the brains behind the GW1 balance must have moved to other projects.
because the current balance guys obviously don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

Agreed. They tried to make the steep learning curve of GW1’s skill system more accessible to the BOOM HEADSHOT crowd and ended up just creating a bunch of kittenty gimmicks and wombo combos that are near impossible to balance. Hell just by removing energy they basically doomed the balance and design from the start.

Keep in mind, if this game was like League, you’d have the different professions, but they’d all be using the same trait trees.

Totally agreed with OP. Very well said. Customization is nice and something I LOVE about this game, however it does indeed make it extremely difficult to balance properly.

The combat in gw1 just had a lot more depth than here.
It was more balanced not only because of the trinity but because there was more skills to chose from and the dual class system. The combat here pretty much boils down to good dps and bad dps. a bunker in pvp survive as long as a player with kevlar in a fps.
It toke 7 years to develop this. Its easier to learn the game now for sure.
But why? gvg in gw1 had potential to become a esport what anet is striving for here.
If you did release an expansion in gw1 i would buy it and enjoy it and pretty much ignore gw2 until i was bored of it.

Good post, I think it’s worth to look into this. Thanks also to Allie for identifying this and passing it along.

tom.7468:

The combat in gw1 just had a lot more depth than here.
It was more balanced not only because of the trinity but because there was more skills to chose from and the dual class system. The combat here pretty much boils down to good dps and bad dps. a bunker in pvp survive as long as a player with kevlar in a fps.
It toke 7 years to develop this. Its easier to learn the game now for sure.
But why? gvg in gw1 had potential to become a esport what anet is striving for here.
If you did release an expansion in gw1 i would buy it and enjoy it and pretty much ignore gw2 until i was bored of it.

I do remember anet commenting though that balancing in gw1 was extremely difficult due to the very wide range(wider than gw2’s) possibilities for builds. I do and don’t agree with the OP. I think reducing the trait points would make things very stale in gw2, but easier to balance. A small range makes everyone feel as if thye are playing very similar classes. A wide range makes people feel more unique in their diversity, however ends up being exponentially more difficult to balance as the size expands.

I have to agree that the stat bonus from trait lines is bigger than it needs to be. Wee get 1400 stat points from traits. While knocking that all the way down to 140 might be excessive, I could see lowering at much as to 280 (2 points per stat, 2 stats in each line). Even just halving the current bonuses could pull the ends of the spectrum closer together.

To sum up the OP.

“overhaul the game by equalizing everything”

am i getting it right?

As for league of legend comparison… Majority of the customization is gear based (item shop). GW2 PvP is basically LoL on end game stage. The difference between tank and carry are probably way beyond 300% difference (gw2 isn’t nearly as extreme… i think). Their light can wear heavy armor etc.

Liewec.2896:

Sunshine.5014:

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard.

GW1 allowed you to choose 2 classes, put your attribute points anywhere you liked and then allowed you to pick 8 of any of the skills that those 2 classes have…

You’ve missed what the OP meant by “customisation”. Yes, you’re right, GW1 had a vastly larger variety of viable builds (and an exponentially larger number of possible builds), but EVERY lvl 20 character of EVERY class had 480HP! Yeah, you had bonuses (and minuses) from gear, but even the most extreme health differentials you would get in any kind of pvp would range from kitten -550 – which is a less than 25% differential! Even later, when Vitae runes and Survivor gear were introduced, the theoretical maximum you could get was 670 (which no-one went for anyway), so only +50% differential from the minimum!

Compare that to GW2, where the health differential between, say, a thief and a necromancer is A STAGGERING 80% even without any gear whatsoever! (base health at lvl 80 10.8k vs 18.3k) And that difference becomes even more extreme once you start adding gear into the question – if I play my ele and my necro in spvp I’ll be going from 12k to 22k HP from one match to the next, and the tankiest builds can have even more health, leading to an absurdly large range!

And that’s just health – if you look at the kind of range you can get from damage you’ll find the range to be even greater, with a crit from a full glass cannon zerker scoring up to 10x as much damage as the same skill from someone in tanky gear – that’s a 1000% differential and that’s comparing the same exact skill from two characters in the same profession in different kinds of gear, let alone once you start comparing different professions!

I fully agree with the OP that attribute extremes must be toned down for the game to be more easily balanced. Reducing the base health differentials would only be a start though. Damage numbers must similarly be adjusted, obviously, but, most importantly, a system of diminishing returns has to be instituted to discourage people from going all-out in a single direction, like they had in GW1: while most GW1 skills had linear scaling with their attribute, each rank in an attribute cost more points than the last, so if you wanted a flexible, balanced build you couldn’t go all-out in just 2 attributes. In GW2, ANet kept the linear scaling in everything (which is good for the theorycrafter in a sense, as it makes it easier for you to tell how tweaking your attributes will affect the effectiveness of each skill), but made every attribute point effectively cost the same, with the one exception of Celestial gear, which gives you more attribute points than any other combination, but spreads them across so many attribute lines that it’s only used in niche builds.

Rather than go out and redesign every single skill in the game to give its scaling diminishing returns though, a lot can be accomplished by simply changing the types of gear available in pvp to adhere to 2 simple rules:
1. All gear must include at least 1 offensive and 1 defensive attribute, and
2. All gear must include at least 1 primary and 1 secondary attitude.
Under this system, something like Berserker (Power, Precision, CritDmg) would be out: it includes 2 primary and 1 secondary attribute, but all 3 are offensive attributes. OTOH, Valkyrie would be ok: it has 2 primary and 1 secondary attributes, and 2 offensive and 1 defensive attributes. This would rule out the most extreme builds – tone down the burstiest damage and soften the toughest bunkers, and thereby hopefully increase the skill required in the game and the number of viable builds.

ahuba.6430:

lol it’s only hard to balance because they don’t do any balance at all. its been like 6 months since last balance patch

I think they realized the best patch they can make for PvP is none at all.

I disagree about there being so much customization. I believe it’s fine.

The problem is it’s in the wrong system. It works for a single player RPG, not an MMO

Traits’ problem is they simply affect to much, making them hard to balance. If you want to balance traits, you need more wiggle room.

The current trait system has to go.

For an MMO, there are limitless possibilities that traits can affect skills. You can have a trait system for every skill.

For example, say you can only pick 1 or 2 traits per skill:
Whirlwind Attack: Whirl in a target’s direction, slashing foes along your path.

• Increase range by 100
• Reduce range to 0, no longer evades, cripple foes on hit.
• Gain Might for every foe you hit (max 5 stacks, lasts 5 seconds)
• Reduce recharge by 2 seconds
• Increase the damage by 10%
• Gain Vigor if you successfully evaded, (5 seconds)

Look at all that WIGGLE room. Look at how much is available to balance!

• Increase range by 100<- too strong? Reduce range increase to 80
• Gain Vigor if you successfully evaded, (5 seconds)<- too good? Changed to: gain 20 endurance if you successfully evaded.
• Reduce recharge by 2 seconds<- not useful? Increased to 3 seconds.
  .

Now lets look at the current trait system!

• Diamond Skin: Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold.
  Balance that. Go ahead, don’t make it to strong that it counters to well and don’t make it too weak so it’s not useless.

Yes, you’re right, GW1 had a vastly larger variety of viable builds (and an exponentially larger number of possible builds), but EVERY lvl 20 character of EVERY class had 480HP!

Nope. Dervishes had 505 HP. Yes, it was on an armor but it was NOT an armor bonus.
A lot of builds and a lot of useless skills. Mending wishes to remind you.
Oh, don’t get me started on skills specifically designed for farming. I’m looking at you Shadow Form.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Nope. Dervishes had 505 HP. Yes, it was on an armor but it was NOT an armor bonus.

Yeah, fair enough – they still had 480 naked though! :p

@Nova Stiker

The game is just messy.
Customization… the traits setup, it is workable, skill trees tied to attributes, random pick and choose traits that could affect anything.. that’s fine, just VERY sloppy.
(sloppy customization makes balancing much more tedious)

Ideally traits would have been far more streamlined, tier one would have a certain kind of trait (like they all are condi defense), tier two a different sort, exc. exc.
When things are exceedingly similar, balance is much easier.

You know… I once compared pure soldiers vs. pure berserkers gear for an otherwise identical setup for a Guardian, and then ran some calculations for their effective effective power and effective health. It was at the beginning of this post, but to take out the contest and just post the results:

Effective Power from stats:

DPS build: 4376
Same build w/ Soldiers: 2871

Effective HP (assuming base 1836 armor)

DPS: 12,871 HP
Soldiers: 29,152 HP

The berserker build only hits about 52.4% higher than a soldier’s build. If I were to make a similar cleric build…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNAR8dlsApUo9CxOI8DNhkzQkQQbGA0BVpIeuHA-zwBB4hERzkfQUBDZOJtIasFXFRjVNjIqWnEjUARMMC-e

Effective Power:
2397

Effective HP
17255

Which makes zerker do about 82.6% more damage than clerics. This is with identical builds, where the modifiers cancel each other out. With additional modifiers on different builds, I’m certain that things can go higher, but to say they do 500% damage is an exaggeration.

I wouldn’t put the damage differences higher than 150%, or 2.5 times more. Whether this is too much, you can debate. But I figured I’d lay some math down on the actual scales of things here.

garethh.3518:

@Nova Stiker

The game is just messy.
Customization… the traits setup, it is workable, skill trees tied to attributes, random pick and choose traits that could affect anything.. that’s fine, just VERY sloppy.
(sloppy customization makes balancing much more tedious)

Ideally traits would have been far more streamlined, tier one would have a certain kind of trait (like they all are condi defense), tier two a different sort, exc. exc.
When things are exceedingly similar, balance is much easier.

True. But I personally wouldn’t worry about sloppy customization for traits. Can’t be any harder to understand than crafting in Guild Wars 2.

Don’t lie, when you first crafted you made like 10 insignias and wondering if you were suppose to apply them to armor like an upgrade… Or eat them.

i’d rather gw2 not go down lol path. imo lol dilutes players participation with heavy pve presence. remove all minions and turrets and my expectation is lol’s pvp balance will be a complete disaster. even with little customization that it allows. also, there is a trade off here. either you remove customization and achieve balance at a cost of boring same vs same combat, or you allow customization and balance will be disrupted in many ways (duel vs team, rock paper scissor, burst vs sustain, bunker vs damage, etc…). with diverse game you have to start thinking in terms of balance given modes, balance given meta, but there is still a concept of balance, a more complex one.

if you like ILLUSION of balance at a cost of 1 hour tag of war, your efforts being drawn in the sea of pve (which is an exact copy [hence balance] on both sides) – lol is your game. but for dynamic, fluid, player skill driven combat, like the one gw2 aspires for – this is a wrong direction. id push gw2 down to the path it has chosen and one players love it for. dont give up game’s identity to make a poor clone of someone else’s.

Nova Stiker.8396:

garethh.3518:

@Nova Stiker

The game is just messy.
Customization… the traits setup, it is workable, skill trees tied to attributes, random pick and choose traits that could affect anything.. that’s fine, just VERY sloppy.
(sloppy customization makes balancing much more tedious)

Ideally traits would have been far more streamlined, tier one would have a certain kind of trait (like they all are condi defense), tier two a different sort, exc. exc.
When things are exceedingly similar, balance is much easier.

True. But I personally wouldn’t worry about sloppy customization for traits. Can’t be any harder to understand than crafting in Guild Wars 2.

Don’t lie, when you first crafted you made like 10 insignias and wondering if you were suppose to apply them to armor like an upgrade… Or eat them.

I ate mine – although messy they were delicious.

Then I got indigestion….

they are not even capable of implementing ready button… you actually expect some balance in something complex like mmorpg? nice joke

After reading the OP I agree 100% agree. And I’m actually confused as to why this wasn’t done in the first place.

+1

I don’t believe that numbers alone is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity behind skills is what makes this game unbalanced.

Changing numbers will not change Automated Response, changing numbers will not change Dhuumfire, changing numbers will not change the thief’s ability to keep spamming the same button because he knows that he can’t be touched, changing numbers would not fix everything that is wrong with this game.

In fact I don’t believe the numbers are that inflated. At most it’s a bit of a hinderance but the main factor is in the way things function or are executed. For instance, if the thief worked on a combo system, we wouldn’t have 2 spams or 3 spams, we’d have combo spams that can be seen and countered. If the Warrior Beserker stance, blocked only a few conditions it would be a skill that could seen and countered. If Automated response did something totally different, that would be a lot more skillful than what we have now.

Anyway I hope that Anet bring the rain, else this town will become a desert.

Mostly I agree

LoE does not compute

Different game here.

Well written and I agree with a lot of it, but I don’t think you’re honest with your pro/con lists. Your last pro is very subjective and contrasts with the worst con that you didn’t list; lack of customization. In a game where horizontal progression, cosmetics, and customization are the only rewards in the game, severely limiting the ability for a player to customize their characters is a huge problem. The wide range of customization is not just a balance decision, it’s a core philosophy of the game overall.

Again, it’s a well written post but I feel your lack of objectivity in certain points sort of takes away from your overall message.

@gesho.9468

?
???
I’d recommended you just don’t talk about LoL without actually playing it…

So…
There IS a mode in LoL that’s all PvP, it was added 3? years ago.
And, compared to GW2…
LoL lacks player participation?
LoL lacks customization??
LoL is the one diluted by AI controlled mobs????

Holy kitten.
Seems at least one person still has googly eyes for Anet.

This is something I can support.

A while ago, we had a similar discussion about how the health difference between ele (light armor, 10k hp) and warrior (heavy armor, 20k hp) was so large that it made dungeons hard to balance. If you make a boss do 7.5k damage with an attack, it’ll be a near instant kill for the ele while the warrior doesn’t even lose half their health bar. The result is that for warriors, the boss is too easy and for eles it’s extremely hard.

This post is an extension of that concept. It’s well written and certainly something worth looking at by the devs. They’ll probably know this, and maybe they chose to make the roles extreme on purpose. However, it does make things more complex for the reasons stated in the original post.

@OP: Nice post. For what it’s worth, you have my vote.

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

This sounds really good, +1 – hopefully they make something out of it.

Personally I’d say remove customization from PvP altogether. You queue with a class, when you enter the match, you pick a preset build for that class (With everything from Traits/Runes/Sigils/Weapons/Skills all preset and picked for you,) and roll with it.

Devs can then just balance these presets and it would be much easier to do.

ThiBash.5634:

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

Take my post in its full context. Numbers alone will not fix this game. Take your example, change the way the burst or the way invulnerability skills function and you could have a more cerebral game.

Reikou.7068:

Personally I’d say remove customization from PvP altogether. You queue with a class, when you enter the match, you pick a preset build for that class (With everything from Traits/Runes/Sigils/Weapons/Skills all preset and picked for you,) and roll with it.

Devs can then just balance these presets and it would be much easier to do.

Yay for build diversity!!!!!

Dirame.8521:

Reikou.7068:

Personally I’d say remove customization from PvP altogether. You queue with a class, when you enter the match, you pick a preset build for that class (With everything from Traits/Runes/Sigils/Weapons/Skills all preset and picked for you,) and roll with it.

Devs can then just balance these presets and it would be much easier to do.

Yay for build diversity!!!!!

“Build diversity” should never take precedence over balance in a competitive game.

@Sunshine:
You have to keep in mind that LoL is totally a different game, it’s made to be much easier and faster to understand and get the reins of, that’s totally different from the actual target of an MMORPG.
The traditional Mmorpg is developed to allow more deep customization on the characters.
Here you have to tweak classes through gear and traits to get different build working, different concepts going, on LoL you have different characters with just one personal mechanic (one concept), the stats scaling and the gear does the rest of the work.

It’s totally false that the customization on LoL is so much expanded and also it suffers heavy balancing problems, leading to the current meta (abuse of the strongest items, abuse of the strongest characters).
The runes and the masteries give a little extra just for the early game, and it’s rare when you can build a competitive character in non traditional way and make it work (whatever your experience and skill is, your success will always depend on the experience and errors of your opponent -don’t make citations about AlphaNerds like SivHD or other “LoL Professionists”-), usually it all depends on the balance of the character and the skillset. Usually only offtanks, AD bruisers or characters with high base damage can decide if to go tanky or full assassin. This argument is too vast atm to be described in all its details, it would be another problem to talk of, I won’t do it here.

It’s false choices GW2 is offering its players. More customization doesn’t mean more choices. It’s much better to have a smaller range of customizable stats, and allow the games to be better balanced. In addition, as I’ve mentioned, smaller stats difference also means that the player can make a choice to play the way he or she likes, sacrificing a little bit of power (like 10%—and still can be effective).

It’s false, it’s simply the opposite.
More customization would mean more choices.
The fact that for you it’s much better like that means it’s a preference of yours, it’s not universal good, it doesn’t mean it’s good for Guild Wars2.
Smaller Stats difference depends on the scaling percentages (damage dealt, damage inflicted, resistances) it doesn’t allow a player to play the way it likes: if the character is made to deal heavy damages, it will always -if given the chance to deal heavy damages- deal heavy damages whatever the gear and the build would be; otherwise you can consider tanks with low damage, even if builded full damage, they won’t never do damage as a character made to be a damage dealer. That’s a simply design limitation, a character is made to follow a role (with many exceptions), if you build badly your character you will have harder times.

TL;DR:
League of Legends has balance problems too. What you say about the idea of the customizable zone isn’t wrong, it can be a nice point to think about, but it’s out of its context. You can’t balance an MMORPG -with PVE, PVP and large scale PVP (zergs)- following the model of a MOBA.

ANET be careful on what you can take for good to balance this messy game!

manveruppd.7601:

rule out the most extreme builds – tone down the burstiest damage and soften the toughest bunkers, and thereby hopefully increase the skill required in the game and the number of viable builds.

Reikou.7068:

Dirame.8521:

Reikou.7068:

Personally I’d say remove customization from PvP altogether. You queue with a class, when you enter the match, you pick a preset build for that class (With everything from Traits/Runes/Sigils/Weapons/Skills all preset and picked for you,) and roll with it.

Devs can then just balance these presets and it would be much easier to do.

Yay for build diversity!!!!!

“Build diversity” should never take precedence over balance in a competitive game.

The most important factor for the game is to be fun. Balance and diversity are two of those factors. If you don’t have balance, then things become stale really quickly while everyone plays the OP class/build. If you don’t have diversity… things also get stale really quickly.

No one wants to compete in a game that isn’t fun to play. You can’t just oust one for the other.

I have actually been thinking about this type of thing a lot. I’ll throw a more lengthy post in here after work today but while I feel that I must agree that there is a great desperate in the numbers we have to look at the game mechanics as well.

Gw2 carries boons and conditions and non condition controls and direct damage and direct healing. Currently some of these scale much better than others and there is a massive difference between classes as to what you can have access to at a given time. Trait trees are also a variable mess.

While I agree balance should not be sacrificed for customization there must be a way to add variety while maintaining stability. I’ve posted about this before but a modification to the class system seems fitting.

Something along the lines of a sub class system. A net creates 3 for example, sub tiers inside of your class. Each one specializes at a few thing while sacrificing in others. Traits and inherent Stat bonuses can focus down to keep some type of build diversity inside of what is effectively a smaller box than the current. And if you have a few smaller boxes you can have a wider variety of choices that can be more easily managed in theory.

Just a quick example for those that may not understand. Warriors could have a berserker, a bunker, or a cc support choice for sub their. Berserker would gain damage and maybe increased Speed but lose healing and toughness. These losses would be inherited by going this path which could be recouped by armor but this would come at the price that they would lose potential maxing. Trait lines would then refocus and further making up these losses difficult, providing few to none in traits to provide extra healing or toughness. The end result is a player making a conscious choice to select a path that fits their focus and wants rather than a player attempting to force their wants out of a mix and match Lego box filled with broken or useless or “OP” parts.
This setup should allow a net to look at the game and note that this particular build on this particular sub tier of this particular class needs a tweak up or down. Meaning a net can apply a change without damaging every other build option that class maintains. Provided a focus can be pulled to traits over basic skills.. More later tho.

Tldr
Agree limit disparity
Disagree that diversity must vanish to allow balance, instead bring focus via sub tiers to classes there gently forcing players into more easily balanced groups.

Sunshine.5014:

What GW2 really need is an overhaul, closing the gap between bunker and zerker. Make the trait point give 1 stat points instead of 10 stats point, and bring both the base stats dramatically up, and the top stats down. Add more base stats, and make gears give less stats too..

It’s an interesting idea… And one that really doesn’t require much work on their part.

Just divide the stat contribution by 10 (i.e. what was 10 power is now effectively 1).

Numbers don’t have to change, which makes it so that they don’t have to go through every item.

However, that would only further make gear levels obsolete. I mean, the difference between Exotic and Ascended would become negligible.

Yes, it’d still be 5% more, but that’s 1.05 compared to 10.5. (Especially considering if you don’t reduce base stats.)

That would, effectively, destroy one of the biggest material sinks in the game.

It will have to happen. Stat inflation is the very reason for the extreme builds.

Take condition weapons, for example. Most skills outside burning do miserable damage without stacking condition damage. The same goes for power based skills.

The huge impact of stats on weaponskill viability just restricts build variety to an incredible degree.

Sunshine.5014:

What GW2 really need is an overhaul, closing the gap between bunker and zerker. Make the trait point give 1 stat points instead of 10 stats point, and bring both the base stats dramatically up, and the top stats down. Add more base stats, and make gears give less stats too.

I think it’s certainly an interesting concept to bring the range of variability closer together. That being said, stats from Traits have never been the overwhelming problem for buildcrafting – rather, I would posit that the Gearing is. For example, let’s look at the PVP Soldier’s Amulet and Jewel stats provided:
Amulet:

• +798 Power
• +569 Toughness
• +569 Vitality
  • Total stats: 1936

Jewel:

• +125 Power
• +75 Toughness
• +75 Vitality
  • Total stats: 275
    Grand total stats: 2211

• In the case of Critical Damage, Amulets are budgeted at 19 stat points per 1% of Critical Damage on Amulets, and 6 stat points per 1% of Critical Damage on Jewels.
• For PVE and WVW, budgeting is wildly different, but suffice it to say that in general, Armour’s budget ranges from 12-16 per 1%, Traits are 10 per 1%, with the most efficient being Beryl or Ruby Orbs, or Divinity Runes

Compare this with stats gainable from 70 points of Traits (Assuming 1% Critical damage = 10 stat points).

• Each Trait point is 10 Primary stats (Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality, Critical Damage) and
• 10 Secondary Stats (Condition Duration, Condition damage, Healing Power, Boon Duration, Class Mechanic)
• 70×10×2=1400 stats. (And this is including secondary stats that do not directly contribute to DPS/survivability such as Class mechanic or Boon Duration)

I’m not going to go into PVE/WVW gear budgeting because this is the PVP forum.

Even on a mathematical basis it is clear which source of stats has the greater impact on character customisation – not Traits, but _gear. This is the reason why builds are possible in PVE and WVW that would be unworkable in PVP, or at the very least, significantly diminished in survivability or damage output. Gear, not traits, is overbudgeted.

Dividing stats given by Traits by 10 will not grant significant differences between DPS and Bunker because that’s not where the majority of the disparity lies. In fact, reducing the impact of Traits can only increase the significance of gearing.

What needs to change instead is the fact that damage scales multiplicatively rather than linearly in GW2 as opposed to GW1.

Nice post OP. However, this is GW2, where it takes 5+ months to change the coefficient of a single healing signet.

The kind of changes you are discussing are not possible with the teams and processes in place.

While I respect the OP’s perspective of why gw2 is hard to balance, I’m in total disagreement with his/her observations.

The original gw had more build customization than gw2 could ever have, yet it was much more balanced than gw2. Why? It comes down to the simple concept of reward vs punishment.

Punishment can come in a few different forms. One is being punished when you fail to connect with a skill, another is a were a skill itself has a form of punishment attached to it as a requirement, which offsets how powerful this skill is.

For example, lets look at gw1’s healing signet:

Healing Signet: You gain 82…154…172 Health. You have -40 armor while using this skill. Cooldown 2 seconds.

Healing signet heals for a lot of hp with a short cooldown, it also has other benefits like not using energy. In bold is the negative effect that offsets all of the positives that healing signet might have. In practical terms, what this negative effect/punishment does is cause the player to make conscious choices instead of spamming the skill. Why?

Because if they use the skill when they are being attacked then would take more damage than they are being healed for. So its necessary to set yourself up to not take damage when you use it. This could be done by using a knockdown then healing signet or a blind then using healing signet. But blind and knockdown can’t be spammed either, so the player only had small windows of opportunity to use them to setup a way to bypass the negative effects of healing signet.

Gw2 is opposite of the original gw in this respect. For most abilities there is no form of punishment associated with it: There is no punishment for failing many attacks nor is there any punishment that is associated to most skills. What this creates is the gameplay of spam until you hit something, use the skill each time its up regardless of the circumstance.

The best skills in gw2 revolve around not being penalized, the worst skills in the game have penalties associated with it. Which gives the illusion that they are bad skills.

Lets look at healing signet in gw2:

Healing Signet: Passive: Grants regeneration.
Active: Heal yourself.

Healing: 3,275 (0.5)?
Healing Signet: 392 Heal

There is no negative penalty to it. The player just equips it and thats it. The healing is done for them, no need for maintenance, no negative penalty for it being a strong heal over time that isn’t bound to cooldowns or cast times. The result? Is that mostly every warrior takes this for their heal. Why wouldn’t they? The other heals have some form of requirements associated with them. Healing signet doesn’t, so it minimizes the weakness that player may have with their build.

To sum things up for people who do not want to read:

• Gw2 imbalance comes from the lack of punishment associated with most abilities

• With no punishing elements present the result is spam and mindless playing

• Abilities that have some form of punishment associated with them are perceived as weak.

• Many combat mechanics in game have no polar opposite to counter them i.e evade, stealth. Which leaves these mechanics to go unchecked.

• Building upon how the negative element (punishment) is missing in game. One can see this pattern with little things like skills with instant to short animations but are very powerful with relatively short cds.

• Abilities with long cooldowns and casting times often are less powerful than abilities that are instant with short cooldowns. (Staff ele comes to mind)

• In order to remedy the imbalance problems gw2 has, Anet must give many abilities hard counters or negative effects to offset their strengths. For example gw2 healing signet could be: Active: Heals yourself for 3,200, Passive: Heals for 392 per second but as long as the passive is active you deal less damage.

I agree with the premise that guild wars 2 balance is terrible, but the solution you offer will not work in a MMORPG.

I think the best possible thing for Anet to do with respect to balance is to completely divorce the trait system from stats. Originally, when the trait system was introduced it was based on the premise that the traits could change the way skills behaved, except that that is rarely true of most classes.

I think anet will be best serve to borrow the trait system from Blade and Soul (that is the only MMORPG that I have played that uses such a system). Here is the skill simulator for the game [url] http://bns.duowan.com/zt/jnjd/index.html [url] basically you get skill points and every major skill can be changed to give it a new effect, whether increase damage, cripple, turn something into an AOE etc. So in guild wars 2, it could be done based on weapon and or ultility skill type or even the current trait system, but without the stat increase.

Effectively, stats only will come equipment which will minimize a lot the difference between bunker and damage. Ofc, certain classes will have to be adjusted to take into account the lack of extra hp fro

Aza.2105:

To sum things up for people who do not want to read:

• Gw2 imbalance comes from the lack of punishment associated with most abilities

• With no punishing elements present the result is spam and mindless playing

• Abilities that have some form of punishment associated with them are perceived as weak.

• Many combat mechanics in game have no polar opposite to counter them i.e evade, stealth. Which leaves these mechanics to go unchecked.

• Building upon how the negative element (punishment) is missing in game. One can see this pattern with little things like skills with instant to short animations but are very powerful with relatively short cds.

• Abilities with long cooldowns and casting times often are less powerful than abilities that are instant with short cooldowns. (Staff ele comes to mind)

• In order to remedy the imbalance problems gw2 has, Anet must give many abilities hard counters or negative effects to offset their strengths. For example gw2 healing signet could be: Active: Heals yourself for 3,200, Passive: Heals for 392 per second but as long as the passive is active you deal less damage.

This guy this guy has the right idea. Hey Anet take this guy idea, it will help punish a lot of the cheap specs.

They should bring back the punishment for using certain strong abilities. I remember for meteor for the elementalist came with nice big back of exhaustion which reduced your hp. In this game you can take all the most powerful skills and have no worries or issues.

I mean for something like berserker stance, it could be like during its effect you take more damage from non condition attacks.

I think the point is that Anet has to make players consider the implications of using certain skills at certain moments, right now there is very little reason to except CD which is not a big deterrent.

But the trait system should still be divorce from stat increase and make equipment the source of your stats.