Guild Wars 2

I’ll give my opinions further down this post, but I want to lay out at the top what the intention of this thread is.

We’ve seen a great deal of discussion lately about balance in WvW, some complaining that there’s less and less of it, others saying it’s fine, and others saying it’s not meant to be balanced anyway. From server matchups, to GvG, to nightcapping, to ascended gear, to bloodlust and server leagues, to condition/CC meta, to wxp-masteries, balance is always the talking point.

So, lets cut the details out and get right to the heart of the matter:

• Should WvW be, or try to be, balanced and fair?
• Should it try to be balanced in all aspects, or only in some and not others?
• Is balance even possible?
• What should WvW be balanced around? PPT? Seige/Keeps (not the same as PPT)? Zergs? Roaming? Medium-size/Guild open-field? Rewards/Gear?

Until recently I assumed the answers to these questions were pretty obvious, but reading the discussions lately I’m wondering if infact there isn’t as much consensus as I’d assumed.

In particular I’d like clarification about this post by our Overlord:

DevonCarver.5370:

Walabone.6713:

I hope you take into consideration adding achievements that encourage zergs to disperse. Lets not have another WvExp situation.

Although, all in all, I’m not enthusiastic about this new system. I fail to understand the concept of “competition” that you hope to instill, when the playing field is inherently unbalanced. Numbers win everything. How is that a fair competition?

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

Now he doesn’t out-right say that balance isn’t a goal for WvW, but it’s very much implied that it isn’t a priority.

I had always assumed that the most basic principle behind any game, from cards and dice to multi-million-dollar MMOs, was fair competition and balance; that it’s no fun if one side has a minimal to non-existant chance of winning. And I had always assumed that everyone agreed with this. But I see alot of people, including our lead developer, saying that WvW isn’t intended to be balanced. Which just leaves me completely confused.

So what’s your opinion on balance in WvW?

Reserved (Editing)

Now for my personal view, which is that of bleepin course wvw should be balanced!

First, let me say that I understand why balance, particularly in WvW, is hard to achieve. Impossible, even, to 100% achieve, when the matches are based on server populations that wildly vary hour to hour. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim for 95% balance. Just because it isn’t possible to do something 100% perfectly, is not an excuse to throw all effort out the window.

It is no fun for anyone involved for one side to be steam-rolling the other. It isn’t fun for those doing the steam-rolling, and it isn’t fun for those being rolled. Especially not if the reason for the one-sidedness isn’t that the winning side is more skillfull and better organised, but simply that they have more people or access to better gear/buffs that the other side don’t have.

No-one wants to see a light-weight against a heavy-weight. No-one wants to see a chess grandmaster play a toddler. No-one wants to see Real Madrid play against a disabled school team. It’s just tedious. Whether it’s sport or computer games, fun and interest are created by a sense of “This could go either way! I wonder who’ll pull something interesting or spectacular out of the bag and snatch the win?”

Why do we have matchups based on server rating if balanced play is not desirable?

Why do lower levelled players get up-scaled if balanced play is not desirable?

Why do we have an out-manned buff if balanced play is not desirable?

Why do we have three-way matches if balanced play is not desirable?

Why do we have equal population limits for each server per map if balanced play is not desirable?

Clearly, balance is a requirement. I can’t begin to understand how anyone would argue otherwise. Which is why it worries me when I see posts like the one above from Devon. It also makes alot of sense when you consider past changes.

“Buff ACs into absurdity? Doesn’t matter, WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced”
“Allow veteran players to have +250 vitality and +100 power? Doesn’t matter, WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced”
“Match up T1 servers with T5 servers? Doesn’t matter WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced”
“Give the winning server +150 to all stats? Doesn’t matter, WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced”
“Rewards for the highest population server? Doesn’t matter, WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced”

IMO this is right at the heart of the discontent on these forums. Players want balanced, fair competition, and the developers just aren’t interested in providing it.

Right now, WvW is like a chess-board where one side starts with 8 pawns and 7 bishops, and the other side starts with 2 pawns and 2 knights. The knights can dance around for a while, maybe even take a couple of pieces. The 2 pawns can defend their king for a turn or two. But the outcome is inevitable, and the game is short. The only vaguely interesting part is how much trolling the knights can do before the game is over. And rather than changing the pieces to make it more interesting, ANet are giving the board a paint job.

I don’t want this thread to turn into another GvG hate-fest, but it’s worth noting that the GvG scene emerged and is so popular precisely because dedicated players got fed up with the imbalance in WvW and the numbers-over-skill meta, and even more fed up with the complete unwillingness of the devs to address it. GvG is born simply of the desire to cut out the imbalance from WvW. Right now it’s just a circle-pit deathmatch, but that’s not because that’s all GvGers want. We have to do it that way, because that’s all we can do. I’m sure alot of WvW guilds would love to be able to GvG in more interesting terrain, have to use more situational awareness, even use seige. In short, they want WvW but with the imbalance cut out.

For what I’d call balance, I expect the best gear to be fairly easy to access so that you can get into the game fast instead of playing gear progression. And match making to be such that there’s variety in who you fight but with only a minimal chance of having a match where one side completely dominates (basically everyone should end up with at least 100k points in an ideal situation).

WvW is four big maps with hundreds of people. Sometimes 5 people find 1 roamer and just destroy that person. Sometimes 50 roll over 10. It should even out though in a fair match up. Sometimes they have 50 and you have 10 and vice versa. Or your 50 are elsewhere taking somethin else. Basically I expect things to balance out long term in a match, I don’t worry about any one fight. There shouldn’t be classes that are just awful at like most things (like perhaps rangers are right now.. they have a really hard time surviving things).

strategy and skill balancing doesn’t mix together in an unpolished battleground, does it? imbalance dictates when it becomes a disadvantage. you may be able to spot balance issues when both sides of the party have the same armor/skills/level/and other part of the equation in a separate pvp map like HOTM.

I don’t like “too much” balance. What is too much is debatable, but being unbalanced through certain builds is what makes games like these fun to me.

I like to try and work my builds to be “OP” and rarely look at other people’s (sometimes I do for a baseline-idea) because that to me is the easy way, when I fight a player I want them to party me and say “dude wtf are you running?”.

If everything was too balanced, then fights would nearly be pre-determined, too much Rock/paper/scissors. That is why I love WvW and hate sPVP, because you never know what to expect with the combinations we have access to. Which is also what makes it difficult to balance, but again makes it fun.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I don’t like “too much” balance. What is too much is debatable, but being unbalanced through certain builds is what makes games like these fun to me.

I like to try and work my builds to be “OP” and rarely look at other people’s (sometimes I do for a baseline-idea) because that to me is the easy way, when I fight a player I want them to party me and say “dude wtf are you running?”.

If everything was too balanced, then fights would nearly be pre-determined, too much Rock/paper/scissors. That is why I love WvW and hate sPVP, because you never know what to expect with the combinations we have access to. Which is also what makes it difficult to balance, but again makes it fun.

.
You are looking at balance differently. Good PvP games are built on balance the game type above it however doesn’t necessarily have to be balanced. Balance means every class has access to the tools necessary to compete at even levels. This just simply isn’t true. In the current meta certain classes are just not feasible in wvw and are delegated to only certain builds. The base balance is required for any competition to be fun. If you want to maintain population in a PvP game balance has to be present. Skill has to be measured between individuals.

Sadly every game since UO has failed this most basic premise. The most simplistic of games lasted years off one core accident from the developers. The PvP was balanced. And very good. This doesn’t and shouldn’t diminish builds the “OP” feeling you apparently like is still there. Even in a balanced PvP game gimmick builds can and will exist. The core problem is of there is no general consensus to combat them.

Wvw is quickly becoming a place to login skirmish for thirty minutes and just quit. I don’t find any fun in a gametype when I know all further additions to it will only reward unskilled play

Malachi.1836:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I don’t like “too much” balance. What is too much is debatable, but being unbalanced through certain builds is what makes games like these fun to me.

I like to try and work my builds to be “OP” and rarely look at other people’s (sometimes I do for a baseline-idea) because that to me is the easy way, when I fight a player I want them to party me and say “dude wtf are you running?”.

If everything was too balanced, then fights would nearly be pre-determined, too much Rock/paper/scissors. That is why I love WvW and hate sPVP, because you never know what to expect with the combinations we have access to. Which is also what makes it difficult to balance, but again makes it fun.

.
You are looking at balance differently. Good PvP games are built on balance the game type above it however doesn’t necessarily have to be balanced. Balance means every class has access to the tools necessary to compete at even levels. This just simply isn’t true. In the current meta certain classes are just not feasible in wvw and are delegated to only certain builds. The base balance is required for any competition to be fun. If you want to maintain population in a PvP game balance has to be present. Skill has to be measured between individuals.

Sadly every game since UO has failed this most basic premise. The most simplistic of games lasted years off one core accident from the developers. The PvP was balanced. And very good. This doesn’t and shouldn’t diminish builds the “OP” feeling you apparently like is still there. Even in a balanced PvP game gimmick builds can and will exist. The core problem is of there is no general consensus to combat them.

Wvw is quickly becoming a place to login skirmish for thirty minutes and just quit. I don’t find any fun in a gametype when I know all further additions to it will only reward unskilled play

I have found each class to be more than feasible in WvW, sure each has their strengths and weaknesses (which I think you are also alluding to), but that is what I was saying….I want certain classes to excel at certain things.

In terms of individual players. Balance should mean that a skilled new player can beat a veteran player who is less skilled. This used to be the case, but with all the vertical progression that has been added to this game in the past few months, it is no longer.

WvWvW will never be balanced, ever(I’d like it to, but the premise of it makes balance impossible). It’s 24/7 open world pvp/seige mode with a scoreboard slapped on it. I enjoy both good open field fights and high pressure sieges but strolling around the maps lately its been:

nothing
nothing
ZERG
nothing
nothing
“where did they go? this map is empt…oh snap!”
ZERG
nothing
nothing
nothing
“oh look there’s a group of them”
-they run into a tower-
“let’s try to take this tower, maybe they’ll come out.”
-AC starts firing-
“Oh kitten! RUN!”
ZERG
nothing
nothing

It’s tiresome to say the least. Very few wipe or win fights that were actually fun.

I’m going to be that kittenhead who says it(if someone else hadn’t already).

They had a good thing going in GW1, a set group of people per team were dumped on an instanced map and one team emerged the victor because they outplayed the other(s). There is no reason why they couldn’t have done that here, give the players options for 10v10/25v25 or 50v50 if they wanted to tout “epic” battles and whatnot, there could have been optional siege modes.

I agree with the OP 100%.

Arenanet solved the “gear disparity” issue in WoW by making lvl 80 gear easily obtainable.

However, by (1) making the matches server based instead of based on race or realm and by (2) not including a cap on numbers, they guaranteed an unbalanced matchup.

There is no perfect solution. WoW had queues and then instituted cross-server queues to avoid the problem.

I am not sure what they can do to resolve the imbalanced problem unless they combine servers which would weaken an already weak community.

Future WvW games will likely have queues, smaller numbers or cross-server fights.

Great words by the OP, but unfortunately Arenanet will not listen to any words of wisdom. History has already proven thakitten

seems the entire WvWvW design team, at least those who are making gameplay balance related decisions, isn’t experienced in game design. I don’t know how many people are in the entire team, but it seems the lead designer has 4 years of experience in game industry and working on QA counts as a game design experience:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devon_Carver
Now compare this with Mike Brien, whose track record is indeed really impressive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_O%27Brien_

Game design is very difficult. I began myself making my own board games when I was around 10 years of age. At the age of 15 I started to design my own pen & paper role-playing games. I made 4 role-playing game rule systems, which was a massive task. Some of my ideas 1st sounded great until I tested them. Oh boy, I made a lot of mistakes, creating for example overly complex and realistic fighting simulation (calculation the blood / bleeding by 1 milliliter, of course all the lead to horribly slow combat simulation), but I learned from those mistakes. I don’t even want to embarrass people how many bad games I programmed in my youth (most were bad clones of existing games). But that was when I was under 20. Now I am over 40 and hopefully much wiser.

Now we are talking about a triple A MMORPG, which has a development budget of tens of millions or more. In such case, it doesn’t make sense to give important roles, to people with little experience. Your earn your wings doing something smaller first.

About balance still:
Imagine a FPS game, which has 5 different weapons: pistol, rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher and crowbar. Let’s say pistol shoots further than any of the other weapons, fires faster, has cheapest ammo and does more damage than the others. Why would anybody use the other weapons (except if they wouldn’t know better) if the pistol would always be the best choice. This just underlines that there needs to be balance.

I logged in especially for this so feel speshul.

You see Devon is the mouthpiece for a development team that believes that you can design a competitive game mode while also having it imbalanced. Now the delusion of AAA rated games developers thinking they have competitive esports gameplay is pretty common these days, but including logical facilities in media is something new I’ve only really seen from ANet.

So now that’s out of the way, WvW is getting worse from a balance perspective. Bigger servers have bigger advantages, whether it’s coverage, easier access to large farming blobs for +1 tier gear, more gold/badges for siege, more map dominance meaning better access to the orb buffs and of course much quicker wxp farming.

So basically transfer to a t1 server now while you have the chance because everything else will be hell.

Honestly I love WvW, but this is the only pvp game I have ever played that intentionally unbalanced.

I know its not fair to cap servers and there’s no easy way to autobalance, but its just unfair right now the way it is.

I know this isn’t sPVP, but they do feature it as a large portion of their game…and right now it is sort of a mess to be honest. I mean there is a cap, but its high and only three servers can cap out all BL’s on any given night

You have three or four servers that play for ppt, and the rest just can’t and play for the kills (and there’s nothing wrong with that!!). But the game is designed around PPT and the way its setup right now, it honestly shouldn’t be.

Right now it sounds like this upcoming patch will make outmanned servers a detriment to PPT. I’ll hold judgement until I experience it against a larger server, but in theory its sort of broken.

Samis.1750:

I agree with the OP 100%.

Arenanet solved the “gear disparity” issue in WoW by making lvl 80 gear easily obtainable.

Which they have now gone back on.

The only balance that concerns me is population. The points at the end of the week is determined by how many people can be put on the field in the most time zones. If there is no one to defend, opposing servers can come in and rack up some points.

The only suggestion that I can see solving this is factions and have those factions draw from the various servers. I think this would also benefit GvG. If before a season we had to choose the team we played for, we could arrange varous GvG against people that we were teamed with in the previous season. Right now, we have to transfer to compete against those that are on our servers.

Ragnar.4257:

Reserved (Editing)

Now for my personal view, which is that of bleepin course wvw should be balanced!

IMO this is right at the heart of the discontent on these forums. Players want balanced, fair competition, and the developers just aren’t interested in providing it.

Your post is a alot of common sense issues that some people have with the game but you don’t offer any feedback or suggestions. You could name this thread “Things I don’t like about WvW” and it would be the same exact thing.

You say you feel it should be balanced you list basically issues that people have with the game but don’t offer anything as an idea. I could list stuff I want too and not offer any suggestions thats easy.

Devon never said the game was “Imbalanced” the forums as a whole can’t decide on what is balanced or whakittenshould be balanced around people just say X is OP or Y is broken.

In your list you bring up small man teams and roaming also larger groups, and also mention sieging etc. If you balance for small teams and roaming then unintended consequence will occur where something that is balanced around 5 people becomes extremely powerful when that number becomes 30 people.

I don’t think the devs are saying that WvW is suppose to be “broken” and that they don’t think about balance at all when it comes to WvW. What they have is a set of boundaries of what is “Acceptable” if they feel that something is outside of what is acceptable then they deal with it.

You mention T1 servers vs T5 servers but people said they where getting tired of stale matchups. So who is right and who is wrong?

TL&DR

There is no consensus on pretty much anything on these forums. If people like changes they usually won’t post to say thanks anet(though it happens sometimes) if they don’t like something then they post. The forums can’t be used as the only feedback for “balance”.

I’m glad I took the time to make this thread.

Should’ve named it “OMGWTF Theives”.

I think you’re putting way to much analysis into a typical offhand response/excuse from a dev.

Regarding class balance, there’s 2 contexts, 1v1/small group and zerg/large scale and since both are part of the same game mode, it can be impossible to balance every aspect of each across every single class while still keeping a variety of weapon sets and skills viable in each context. This is one of the better points with GW2 (following from GW1) where other games commonly fall on their face.

The real issue is with WvW and population/combat balance in particular. They do try to balance some population issues by adding things like outmanned buff (as meaningless as it is), and breakout which can be significant. While removing things like orb buffs that actively work against balance. The problem is devs are kind of clueless about a lot of things that a veteran WvW player would notice every day.

For example when they were hinting at ‘big’ changes that would help smaller defending teams and balance out coverage differneces, these changes actually turned out to be a massive AC buff. Just about every WvW player knew immediately from day 1 that this was way overbuffed. In this case, clear consensus from the players was spot on, and ACs were nerfed again some weeks later.

It seems like a similar case against these new stat buffs of dev’s vision vs player’s experience. I guess we’ll see how it will actually play out.

But the long and short of it is, competitive balance is an essential pillar for any PvP game or mode. In WvW it’s not the only consideration (there’s levels, gear, character/wxp progression, population difference, etc…) but no matter what developers say, they always have to work within the context of balanced combat because that’s what makes PvP.

Balanced match-ups are a lot of fun. Unbalanced match-ups aren’t.
This is even more pronounced in WvW where match-ups last for days or weeks.

There are several reasons why balance is poor in WvW and why it is getting worse not better:

1. There are too few WvW servers and too great a variation between servers to make most WvW match-ups balanced.
   Compare this with PvP where a) there are far more participants, b) a huge amount of effort goes into ensuring balance for everything except personal skill, and c) matches are so short that unbalanced match-ups have very limited effect (yet even in PvP this is one of the biggest complaints).
2. WvW assumes a level of organisation that is rare in a casual gaming environment.
   The level of organisation required to participate competitively in WvW is far beyond what most casual communities of this size can achieve, let alone sustain. – My hat goes off to the three or four WvW servers that have achieved that (even if it has been at the cost of depleting the number of WvW players on other servers.)
3. The idea that people will rally the PvE community on their sever to join the WvW fight simply hasn’t worked.
   As with 2 above, the GW2 community simply isn’t that well integrated.
4. WvW lacks mechanisms that support less organised servers allying against stronger foes.
   The three way WvW competition is supposed to allow that, but the tags of players from both opposing servers look the same so they all get treated as enemies.
5. Anet are focussing incentives on winning servers at a time when losing servers are struggling to get WvW participation.
6. The WXP system rewards depth of individual participation in WvW at a time when servers are struggling to increase the overall number of people participating in WvW.
   As a result it is becoming harder for casual players to join WvW and experience the early success necessary to capture their interest.

The idea that WvW can be about skill overcoming greater numbers (and coverage) has failed to manifest in reality. Yes, the organised WvW servers can and do show how WvW can be done. Yes, an organised guild group can wipe a larger zerg, or have a disproportionate effect on a WvW map. But these are the exceptions. Most of the time WvW is determined by whichever server has the most people in WvW.

However, improving balance is the way to break us out of this. Better balance means better more interesting fights, as well as more loot bags (because the leaders will have more enemies for fight). Better balance makes matches more exciting which attracts more attention. Better balance means that more of the people who participate in WvW will feel they are being (or could be) successful and so will be inclined to stay longer and to recommend the experience to others.

TLDR: Server balance matters most in WvW and right now it’s getting worse not better. This needs to be turned around if we want more people playing WvW.

Ragnar.4257:

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”.

I had always assumed that the most basic principle behind any game, from cards and dice to multi-million-dollar MMOs, was fair competition and balance; that it’s no fun if one side has a minimal to non-existant chance of winning. And I had always assumed that everyone agreed with this. But I see alot of people, including our lead developer, saying that WvW isn’t intended to be balanced. Which just leaves me completely confused.

So what’s your opinion on balance in WvW?

I think Devon misspoke a bit on this. WvW is fair which to me means equal access to skills, gear, buffs, etc. It is not meant to be balanced (and really cannot be) but the game should always strive to be fair to all players/classes.

IMO the failure here isn’t fairness or balance… it is in the fun department. We players like a challenge but the game should be fun even when losing. Currently getting steam rolled in points AND battles is just not fun. Even the duration sucks as players often check out for an entire week when an overly difficult matchup is rolled.