Guild Wars 2

This caught my attention somehow.

Long story short, I was blinded late 2014 and still play GW2. Due to extreme visual limitations there is no way I’ll ever be able to see text.

I utilize two screen readers (JAWS, NVDA) which can read text out loud for me, but they’re still very finnicky. They work best with plain text only, unformatted strings. They can also read labels for objects (thank you programmers that actually label objects and not leave them as “button 83.”

Skimming this thread, will there actually be a way to output in=game chat as text for my screen readers? Screen readers are absolutely incapable of reading things in a visual environment such as video games.

If this is true I cannot emphasize how happy I would be to finally be able to “read” what’s going on in game as well as what people are saying.

Weapon swap cooldown is there to bring an opportunity cost to your decision making in combat. Decision making in combat is another level of skill due to these opportunity costs. Why does anything have a cooldown or some sort of cost? for this reason.

Having a cooldown for swapping out 5 skills is grounded in the same reasoning why any skill will have some sort of cost (be it cooldowns, mana/resource cost, etc.) You have to decide which set of skills is most important for the next 9 seconds, balancing strengths/weaknesses and opportunities/threats.

The alternative is consequence free decision making in combat.

So buying gems gives you a seat on the Board? What is this? I wish it were so easy to become a board member for many companies simply by buying their products…

Crinn.7864:

I’m pretty sure the MM works by arranging players into 5 man teams and then finding another arranged team for them to fight.

I doubt the matchmaker finds ten players and then arranges the ten into teams.

This is true. Recall on release how the old queue system worked. You’d know your five random teammates before being placed in a match.

Give me a few more months. I’m currently starting up my own 3d print company. I’ll be using resin not gypsum powder. With the print bed I’ll be able to make 11" figures. Not just of game characters (licenses must be negotiated), but I’ll be able to take a series of photographs of people and customize them however they want. School took up my entire time these past few months so I’m delayed, but I was still able to present my business plan to some investors. I’ll be launching a kickstarter soon after the holidays.

Interesting that this topic came up now since I’m pretty much done with my entire college education and am prepping to delve into the business full-time.

Last quick thing, I’m able to do all of this blind using Maya Productions.

As a blind player, I get this. However, I understand that developers can’t maike drastic changes to the game so that any blind person can pick it up ang go with it. I adapt my playstyle to my blidness (I played the game for 2-3 years before losing my vision).

As for new contect, I don’t really play it on my own. It seems like there a many people willing to help you and that’s what’s great about this community. Ask around for help and someone will.

And in case anyone is wondering, I play by sound mostly. There are audio cues for almost everything in the game.

Why do you guys keep asking for capes?? Don’t you remember Thunderhead?

TL;DR words and stuff

I don’tt think it’s such a good idea to go out of the way to preach such a story. Wouldn’t it be better to have such things be just normal in the setting? No one in Tyria makes any sout of deal with it because it’s about as big a news as someone getting a haircut. There is no intolerance. At least that’s what I get from the setting.

So, again, there is no need to put someone front and center to preach about the social struggles of someone who would only face such struggles on Earth, and not on Tyria. Well… maybe the Sons of Svanir and Flame Legion would create such a struggle for someone. I hear they’re pretty intolerant. Just another reason to hack them to bits right? Yes there’s an irony in here about intolerantly hacking away the intolerant for the sake of maintaining tolerance.

And this is coming from someone who does ahve “struggles” as you would see it Penguin. I’m blind, but its whatevs because everyone has some sort of struggle. Anyways, you don’t see me begging everyone to feature a blind character whose story revolves around how hard it is to get through life blind. I definitely wouldn’t want that because seriously, who cares. I don’t.

The only reason I openly advertise that I’m blind because I want people to understand that I have severe visual impairments taht might explain why I do some idiotic things in game :p. Also, just to show that it’s possible to play games bli

Dave.6819:

Cyhann.2609:

Heh, I like your aproach to the topic, nice thinking there op, I hope one or another player actually read it and improve themselves by doing it.

Rogue.8235:

I don’t play the game, I play the players.

Wow that’s a gread quoute right there!

i improved myself very easily. ‘’why be a soldier when you can be a tank’‘. re-rolled scrapper in other words. tho it’s sad to see thief in this state. once it goes back to more of a dueling class im sure i’ll roll it again. just cause im an addict. tho i cannot play a class that isnt rly capable of 1v1. just cause i love roaming in wvw. and 1v1 is very important there. pvp yea.. pvp role is fine. +1 and decap always works. but not being able to 1v1 or giving so much effort to be able to 1v1 is just not okey. cuz from my perspective and my older mmorpgs every class has to be able to 1v1 if it’s controlled by a skilled player. and before HoT and june patches it was the case. but when it became a game of class > skill that’s when i just said ‘’nope. not anymore. this is just wrong’’

I’m able to 1 v 1 very effectively. However, I don’t do WvW so there are different circumstances in that arena. I’m not able to comment on that theater of war.

As a blind player I’m better in 1 v 1’s than team fights. Too much motion and light in teamfights to know what is going on. However, 1 v 1 I can easily get in the head of my opponent. I treat 1v1’s like fighting games such as Tekken and Soul Calibur (which I still play as well, beware my Seigfried and Miguel)

Edit: New strategy to this conversation. Thieve3s are in a really crappy state so please buff. >_>

bearshaman.3421:

Zero Day.2594:

Rogue.8235:

…
I don’t play the game, I play the players.

But the players you play are in the game, so to play them you need to play the game.

Unless, you mean, playing someone that’s playing on your account that’s playing players under your name – Then you’re play players, dawg.

You need to know how the game works, yes. But he’s talking about getting inside the player’s heads, so they start playing the game in the way you want them to.

By that I meant more of something I picked up from chess. You don’t play the board so much as the player. Deception, feints, and counters are based on who you play. I’ve set up aboard once and used my king as a frontliner because the player was so obsessed with trying to get it. This is what I mean.

Edit: He was so frusterated and confused by this tactic. He never quite learned.

Replying because I have read the Art of War inside and out countless times.

Thieves do fulfill a lot of the intelligence warfare that Sun Tzu emphasized. As a Thief, my goal in PvP matches is to pull the enemies wherever my team needs them to be pulled. Attack where they are not. Attack where they are exposed (waiting in the wings and then bursting someone in the middle of a team fight). Attack the maral of the enemy (major harass between points, so by the time they get to a fight on point they have blown cooldowns and/or not at full health).

This is how I normally play thief and it works well. I don’t play the game, I play the players.

From a blind player’s perspective.

The PvP community is awesome. Any PuG I’m with works with my blindness. They don’t use chat to communicate with me but call targets for me and jump near me to get my attention if needed. They communicate through their character movements. It also helps that I already know what to do and make good decisions in match.

The PvE community is pretty toxic. I did tournies and finally got the courage to do dungeons with a PuG. I get harrassed and they get pretty mad at me for not always knowing what to do. I’ve shared screen with my brother to know what they say and yeah it’s pretty bad.

to the PvE community, I’m sorry that I don’t have much of any vision. This is really surprising that the PvP community is more accommadating. I am good in fights but when you do things like run through mobs you have to have a little patience with me.

/end rant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

Please read and understand the most basic of probability distributions to understand why there are outliers. There is nothing special about being part of the bunch that’s two or three standard deviations away from the mean.

However, give it time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem
If you feel you are ridiculously unlucky read and understand the central limit theorem.

Basically, just understand basic statistics…….

Donari.5237 is correct and I’m surprised someone remembers what I say/post

So while my little corner of peripheral is extremely damaged and the field of vision is tiny, it is still very sensitive to motion as is all peripheral vision.

Lots of practice is required to play other players blind. With the release of HoT I had to step away from pvp until I can learn all the new specializations and skills so I can fight them effectively. As for NPC’s, the patterns of attacks are the same across the board for each species. Yes they do have audio cues (talking mainly aboput open world).

I don’t really do dungeons or fractals, though I have a group of friends who are helping me with fractals now. We voice chat and they jump up and down in front of me so I can easily follow them.

Want to know more just message me. Add me in game to if you want to see how I play :p

To bring this back to topic!
Audio cues are always a good thing. It allows you to focus on whatever you want to focus on and receive information without having to really divert attention. We’re at an age where people are used to receiving… being bombarded with really… information constantly. Settings to allow this and sensoryinput that takes advantage of our skills with information reception would be nice.

Sorry if my post sounds too fragmented.

TL;DR words and stuff

I’d play as carefully as I do on EVE Online. There would be so much more forethought and planning in everything I do.

Scalyon.7028:

Rogue.8235:

As a blind player I love audio cues. Hearing one to let me know I can read….oh wait….

While you are trying to be funny (poorly, I might add) the OP is not blind but has bad vision. I personally suffer from this (glaucoma) and having a little bell ding whenever a human player types a message in chat would be an easy thing to add.

However, I can see the need to make it configurable (both sound and frequency-wise) since some map/guild chats can get rather spammy.

I am blind. I can joke about it because I’m not bothered by my visual impairment…

I lost my vision in November 2014 and GW2 is one of the very very few games I can still play, mainly because of memorization and the sheer amount of audio cues they already have in game.

I don’t know any other blind player in GW2 but someone I did play with once told me they have a blind friend that plays WoW. If there is a blind community here I wouldn’t mind starting a guild for us.

I would love an audio cue to let me know a new message is in chat. Would be ni9ce to set the audio cues to each tab and you can set the dings based on the chats you have selectyed in said tab.

As a blind player I love audio cues. Hearing one to let me know I can read….oh wait….

As a thief main I’m happy with where thief is.

I’m blind and can hold my own very well in any pvp match. I hate hotjoin and avoid it like the plague.

If I can play thief pretty well and contribute to my team I know you guys can. I’m also pretty sure my build is crap, but I never played meta builds anyways.

Want to thank the community for being more than awesome!

I left PvP for a while at HoT launch because There was too much new information for a blind player to handle. I’d be a huge detriment to any team until I can familiarize myself with all the new elite sepcs and skills.

Came back and again I was expecting people to give up or think I’m trolling when I tell my team I’m blind. I say so at the beginning of the match because it’s my team’s right to know they have a handicap.

Well nothing of the sort happened. Everyone has always been really helpful and again you guys use in game movements and jumping to relay messages to me. I had screen shared one time via skype with a friend so she rcan read chat to me. Just curious. Everyone was supportive in chat and I was surprised to know that no one talked trash about me knowing I couldn’t read chat. I’m cynical, yes.

Anyways, I’m doing well again now that I’m familiar with the new elites and the meta. I lvoe metas now because players are so predictable. I struggle against off the wall builds.

Thanks again for being a wonderful community! You guys are awesome.

I so want this. I’d be able to finally read chat. I’d be able to copy chat and paste it in notepad for my screen reader to read to me. I can do this on EVE Online which makes communicating so much easier.

But there aren’t very many blind gamers out there so this is an extremely niche reason

Ithilwen.1529:

In The Army, I learned

Couldn’t get past that part. It’s impossible to learn anything in the army.

- Marine

Firms establish a unifying mission statement that provides the foundation of their core competency with their business model. There comes a time when internal forces of a firm brings it to a crossroads of divergent missions and competencies. Many firms go under in their attempts to stretch their limited resources to tackle these widely separated goal posts. At the very least they struggle to stay afloat.

Firms are wildly successful when they focus their resources, time, and energy in the full devotion to their core competency. Those who succeed in traveling both paths of a crossroad simultaneously conjure creative solutions to apply this focus and dedication to both paths.

I see (haha “see”) many players here bringing up critical points about the state of competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2. All I would like to point out is that eSports games are pretty much an entirely separate genre within the industry. I am not attributing the word eSports to anyone’s points who did not explicitly use the term. However, many are bringing up problems that are solved by the characteristics of games whose developers are solely dedicated to this particular core competency.

If Arenanet is intent on creating an environment similar to the games that are often compared by the player base in these forums, the players have to understand that Arenanet is tackling the age old problem of divergent paths in a firm. This takes time to successfully master as all points of the business must maintain a synchronized equilibrium. They must also develop the resources to fully dedicate to these divergent competencies.

Guild Wars 2 is not a purely competitive game bred for the eSports scene. To gain the competitive advantage in this arena they must develop a creatively unique solution. This takes experimentation and time. I do not presume to know or understand the strategies that Arenanet executes, but the player community must be patient and provide useful, constructive feedback to lay the groundwork for the market research needed to accomplish such a goal.

Guild Wars 2 is not at the brink of disaster or total failure. Being a doomsayer on the forums doesn’t help anyone, not even the doomsayers themselves. Saying “this sucks” or “WTF” without much qualitative information for people to act on also isn’t helping.

Arenanet isn’t a giant corporation with an army of people to throw at every little problem liek the kitten copier isn’t working again. If you want this endeavour to succeed then be the expert to dedicate to the competitive path on the crossroad. Look at things objectively and with the bigger picture in mind.

No one knows anything better than the boots on the ground. You, the players, are the boots on the ground. Set aside the frustration and become the expert that provides the reliable, actionable information. Or continue making hilariously funny troll posts, everyone needs a good laugh.

TL;DR – You can read all of this. I use a screen reader and you read faster than I can listen to these forum posts.

/2 copper

thank you so much, that’s exactly what I was looking for. (hahaha get it looking for umm ok maybe not so funny :p)

I’ll be committing this to memory and Dragon Ball won’t be nearly as frusterating. Thanik you so so so much for taking the time to explain all of it!!!!!

Saw Emergency Rations a long long while back.

I logged 3k hours before losing my vision so I know the UI and Central Tyria extremely well, as well as the old WvW and sPvP.

I have enough vision to recognize general maps if I magnify the crap out of them and study them for an embarassingly long time.

What I need help with is Dragon Ball. I understand that there are upgrades and stuff and the blue lights are health. What I need help with is what the heck are the upgrades and where they are and stuff. I pick up the big glowing orange ball but I have no idea what I picked up nor how to use it. The game mode is too fast and I don’t know what skill is unlcoked, much less what key to press. I can’t stand and figure it out so what I need to know is what upgrades are where so that when I pick them up I know right away what key to press.

Is there any maps with the locations somewhere that I can study? It’s frusterating because I know I picked something useful up but I mash keys and die before I even get to use it.

The wiki is completely unhelpful regarding a tutorial for Dragon Ball. Which sucks because I learn so much from it and it’s extremely useful to me because I can screen read everything before going in game and doing it.

I apologize for the lengthy message. Sorry, no TL;DR.

Not a fan of global world chat. Don’t think it has a place in this game.

However, as a blind player I fully support all notions of in-game voice chat. I also play EVE Online as I’m familiar with the UI on that game as well (also easier for my screen reader) and the in-game voice is well structured and absolutely amazing for me.

Still though, I fully understand the hesitation and counterpoints to in-game voice. I only want it for purely selfish reasons.

MyPuppy.8970:

Congratulations! Inspiring and motivating! Just to ask, have you ever tried sweet fx and the like to enhance colors/contrasts/brightness/etc to your needs? Merry christmas, and I wish you a lot of future successes!

I’m interested in finding out more about this. I hadn’t made any adjustments. is Sweet Effects a program to help with that?

I remember a time when Bull’s Rush GS Wars were considered op

Thank you! You’ll be surprised how much you can still do without vision. I was recently told about an artist (mainly painting) who is completely blind.

newbihack.7180:

What is in the bag?

Your choice of one of the original wintersday toy minis (charr soldier, princess doll, plush griffin, toy golem, wooden ventari) or 100 presents.

I’m the blind player. I just wanted to thank Anet and the extremely helpful player community for aiding me in playing this game.

Some feedback on the wintersday stuff. This is coming from the perspective of someone with only one eye, and even then I only have the lower left corner of my peripheral vision in that eye that’s badly damaged (the rest of the eye is blind).

Toypocalypse was crazy fun and ridiculously accessible. I just ran around with a rifle, shot toys and smashed buildings for stuff to set near the dolyaks. The pacing of toypocalypse combined with your ability to set up turrets makes this the most accessible component of Wintersday.

The Snowball Mayhem thingy was pretty easy to work with. I just announced to my team that I’m blind and they really helped with the target calling and combat support. As for the skills, I just chose randomly until I settled with option number two as it was the easiest to learn without vision.

The bell choir was surprisingly doable. With my particular brand of vision impairment, I maintain light sensitivity and peripheral vision is adapted to pick up mtion. While my field of vision is very limited (I can’t see all 8 notes simultaneously) I just focused on the left 4 notes occasionally seeing notes 5 and 6. The brightness of motion of the notes is actually very accessible. After LOTS of trial and error I finally got the timing down. While this took me forever to do, I finally got the achievements. So yes, blind players can get the bell choir done.

The jumping puzzle is impossible. One suggestion is to add bright visual cues to the platforms as visually impaired players are still light sensitive. The only way you lack light sensitivity is if you are totally blind and have completely non-funcition eyes, optic nerves, and/or ocular lobes. Even then, the timing of the jump puzzle makes it next to impossible. I can do jumping puzzles still in Tyria (well a good number of them not all), as long as I have the time to kitten the next jump.

Overall, I’m not sure if this was intentional but the visual contrasting of most content in this game makes it surprisingly seeable (not really but I at least stand a chance). The biggest thing is the array of audio cues. Its this characteristic that allows me to continue playing GW2 (I have been playing for 2.5 years before I lost my vision so the other half is memory).

Not sure why I’m posting this, just excited that I can still do new content still in this game without having to sit back knowing everyone else is having all the fun.

TL;DR:
Random stuff about playing this game blind and thanking anet for making it accessible and thanking the community for helping along the way.

Thank you all for the support! I plan on continuing to play and improve my gameplay despite my condition. The prognosis and recovery is coming along well, and there’s ton of research on getting people their sight back, so maybe one day!

abc.5790:

It’s so awesome to hear about the humanitarian side of the pvp community. Anyhow, if I remember correctly, I think you have owned my scrub thief in a recent match! Way to go. Hope you continue playing

I do have my moments when I can really focus and play well. My characters that I normally play with are a thief (Corosuvult Saterin), warrior (Sinestra Jhessia), and occasionally a necro (Khaervun Resz) and a ranger (Aesa Mielikki).

Hope to see ya’ll in game for some great matches.

I’m legally blind and lost my vision on November of last year. It wasn’t a gradual thing, and was a sudden BAM I went from 20/10 vision to nothing.

I’m thanking the PvP Community because you guys are awesomem and so supportive. Any team I told that I was blind before the match began has gone out of their way to work with me. Besides calling targets so I can tab target easier, they do lots of little things like character movements and skill usage to help with my decision making (I’m operating on limited information considering my vision loss).

In order to “read” chat I have to set up a lot of accesibility software, which means I can’t read chat at all while actively playing. However, reviewing chat after matches reveals all the supportive comments from my fellow players.

Pre-emptive ansewring. My vision is limited to part of the lower left peripheral of my left eye. It’s severely damaged, but somewhat usable. Namely, I can deduce the abstract shapes I see and things get easier when objects are in motion. I play the game mostly through sound. Anet did such a great job varying the sounds of the skills and implementing so many auditory cues such as the shouts with boons and conditions as well as the announcer letting me know what’s going on with the map (even though these cues don’t always trigger which complicates things sometimes). Also, I’ve logged a crap ton of hours on all professions so I can play from memorization as well (especially since most players have skill rotations and rarely deviate from them allowing me to counter while blind).

Again, thanks so much to the community for being awesomely supportive. I apologize ahead of time for courtyard and stronghold, those maps came in after I lost my vision so ’m not familiar at all with them and that causes problems.

See you in game and good luck out there, unless you’re fighting me then I hope your keyboard disconnects >_>.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Yes, team fights matter. But if your home point defender can’t handle a 1v1, then your team is forced to do a rotation. In otherwords, his 1v1 capability did matter.
Decap engi is a good example about how 1v1 balance is important in this game. A decap engi wins most of the node fights and so he almost always forces 2 players from the opposing team to defend their home. This wins 3v4 in the rest of the map for the engineer’s team.

The bolded/underlined part is the kind of balance I was talking about. It isn’t necessarily 1v1 balance you’re looking for, it’s a build with too few weaknesses and too many strengths. I addressed this in the following post:

Rogue.8235:

With this view, you have builds that have strengths and weaknesses, which entails that the individual players have battles they should seek out or avoid to take advantage of their strengths and exploit others’ weaknesses. 1v1 balance would not allow for such tactical positioning and exploitation to exist, as every single person would be evenly matched by every other person all the time, regardless of any environmental or circumstantial factors.

Team balancing over 1v1 balancing would entail that, yes, every build has their counters, but no build would outshine any other so much so as to be the epitome of all combat styles in a single instance. That is to say, no one class is so overpowered that it is a must have for every circumstance, every map, and every team composition without regard.

Everyone is bringing up good points, especially about reducing the severity of counters (which is the kind of balance I’m trying to emphasize).

the sober ninja.6539:

This isn’t a team game. Combo fields and finishers don’t support the party. Lets not balance for that.

There isn’t even a 1v1 specific aspect to the game. In fact you want to AVOID 1v1s in spvp to stack the odds in your favour, so why balance around it? That’s dumb.

This, however… So it’s not a team game and it’s not a dueling game. What game are you playing?

manveruppd.7601:

Dee Jay.2460:

But the thing is the “we balance around team dynamics” approach NEVER works.

This gives me an excuse to once again bring up my favourite moment in Guild Wars 1: watching LUM vs WM game 2 on observer mode during the first tournament!

- snipped due to message length -

So yes, balancing around team fights rather than 1v1 can work. GW1 is proof of that. If that match was a simple team deathmatch with no secondary objectives, LUM would have won by having hte better 8v8 build. But because the secondary objectives gave WM more tactical options, they were able to turn things around.

The main point of this is that GW2 shouldn’t be balanced either for 1v1 or around 5v5 or 20v20 or any other number: it should give the players the flexibility to come up with the builds they want. Currently, team support builds are very underplayed – practically non-existent in tpvp. Even guardian bunkers tend to be selfish bunkers (they provide some team support but they’re mainly there for their own personal survivability and their ability to stay alive and contesting a point). The game’s mechanics allow for team support builds (although they are arguably underpowered), but the conquest game mode makes them impractical, and rewards selfish gameplay. If we ever actually get TDM, we’ll probably see support builds flourish more.

Reading the description, that’s an excellent display of a team build adapting to both the terrain and their opponents’ weaknesses. While I see your point, that balance shouldn’t focus on specific # vs specific #, there does need to be an overall balance between team strategies/synergies. At no point within that game was there a balanced 1v1 fight. This can be seen by target selection whenever one player tried to quickly take down another single player (usually monk). Also, the game was won due to adaptability and superior positioning, matching their strengths to the opposition’s weaknesses (to which I’m inferring that there is no true 1v1 balance in most combinations of matchups in that game). This kind of balance should be the focus, the bird’s eye view of team strategy.

With this view, you have builds that have strengths and weaknesses, which entails that the individual players have battles they should seek out or avoid to take advantage of their strengths and exploit others’ weaknesses. 1v1 balance would not allow for such tactical positioning and exploitation to exist, as every single person would be evenly matched by every other person all the time, regardless of any environmental or circumstantial factors.

Team balancing over 1v1 balancing would entail that, yes, every build has their counters, but no build would outshine any other so much so as to be the epitome of all combat styles in a single instance. That is to say, no one class is so overpowered that it is a must have for every circumstance, every map, and every team composition without regard. What we want is a variety of adaptable strategies, playing to the strengths of our own fairly unique playstyles, that take advantage of our combined strengths. We need the strategic and tactical play that is exploiting the other team’s weaknesses. We need the ability to knowledgeably apply our team’s strengths where they need to be applied.

This is how GW2 should be balanced.

Sizer.5632:

In spvp it seems obvious that it should be, since the only game type is conquest and 1v1’s will have to happen between people roaming around the side points. So if one class is so much better at roaming that people never run anything else for it then the game will end up with no diversity at all.

Which is probably why it takes so long to balance. Wvw this kind of thing doesnt matter at all, and pve players are entirely different too. Seems like it would be easier if there was an even bigger difference between pvp and pve/wvw abilities like there already is on some abilities.

So you want everyone to be great roaming duelists who can defend a point equally well and perform equally in all scenarios all the time? Not trying to be offensive but this is what you’re implying.

ronpierce.2760:

That’s not true. You can have diversity. Play Bloodline champions. That game is amazingly balanced for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 AND 10v10. (Granted the game was never very big because it was an indy game and didn’t get much promotion which breaks my heart). You CAN have diversity. What you can’t have or, to be precise, you need far LESS of is “customization” of each character/role. For instance, you can’t get to chose what abilities and how to specialize them because maximizing your abilities in the first place is what causes imbalances. Too much player control to think out builds will cause imbalances. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have different characters and still find ways to make the game interesting and deep. Its just not an easy thing to do.

What you’re suggesting isn’t really diversity. What you want (or seem to want based on your wording) is one way to build up each role. In which case, we should only have 3 classes. The defensive guy, the damage guy, and some sort of offensive/defensive support guy. Yes, again it’s reductio ad absurdum, but that was what your argumentation truly is leading to. Would that be a game everyone is willing to play?

ronpierce.2760:

Nope. You can have a “core”, how all classes play out without their “support” being taken into consideration, purely 1v1. Then; factor IN support, each class has to be able to support EQUALLY in a fashion that doesn’t break that balance (this comes with testing, trial and error and careful planning). And you have to make sure each class doesn’t exceed too much in a group setting.

1 and 2 should check out just fine. 3, you can have diversity, BUILD diversity, not really. I already said that. Allowing players to maximize and chose too much will always cause imbalance because SOMETHING will always be the superior option. I said in order to increase balance there has to be fewer choices to make on a given “character”, and less hidden benefits going on. That’s true, you can’t customize a character much when you want good balance, or to be fair is very HARD to do that realistically. I already said that though. I was discussing balance not customization diversity…

Again, you acknowledge that we would have to strip down all classes, traits, and skills to the essentials and limit diversity. Also, balance and diversity go hand in hand so both must be taken into account and discussed. Think bigger picture, what is the ultimate point of an MMO*RPG*?

Erebos.6741:

Some nice points from Rogue.

To clarify: does that mean you think balanced 1v1 IS good game design? — However unrealistic/achievable or close there to, and therefore perhaps not a smart goal?

Balanced 1v1 that leads to aggregate team balance can only be good design if there is almost no variation between players, i.e. in today’s market it is not a good design (even sports don’t have players that can “1v1” any other player, they have specialists fulfilling a role on a TEAM).

Master of Timespace.2548:

This is a necessity in a game where 1v1s are both common and important part of the game. Gw2 is such a game due to the silly conquest mode. 1v1 balance was not important at all in gw1.

1v1 isn’t always a necessity in the way you may think it is. I’ve been in many situations where I, or someone on my team, could not handle a 1v1 fight they needed to simply because they were either being outplayed or countered via build. This is where teams come in: we switched/rotated positioning so someone else better suited for the fight can take over. That are we adjusted our overall strategy to accommodate that particular weakness.

GW2 still comes down to team play. Yes, individual strengths and skill are necessary, but it is still a team game, NOT a collection of 5 1v1 matchups on a single map.

ronpierce.2760:

To answer your question, as I did the poll, yep. I totally feel like GW2 SHOULD have been balanced for 1v1. Balancing for 1v1 makes it easier to balance things like 2v2 and so forth because after you balance 1v1 you only have to gauge a few things:
- how much do classes support one another. This needs to balance out.
- how much a class can deal splash damage. If damage is balanced 1v1 one class can’t do the same damage AoE and the other only single targeted.
- how well each class can survive in a cluster.

I don’t mean to make it sound so easy, but it’s easier than trying to just balance a cluster of diversity that isn’t balanced at its core. Plus 1v1 skirmishes are often the most fun in a game, for me, because they have a true sense of skill involved to win. But when 1v1 isn’t balanced and one build totally wrecks another that sense of battle enjoyment diminishes for both players. Of course this is all my opinion.

I bolded the contradictory statements. In the first you acknowledge that classes support each other. That very statement shows that considerations OTHER than 1v1 need to be taken into account. This flies in the face that 1v1 balance is paramount and also serves as another example of why the aggregate of 1v1 balance will not be equal to 5v5 team balance (which is what proponents are claiming).

Second statement: This is contradictory because the for 1v1 balance the aoe user will need to be able to deal the same amount of single target damage as their opponent (non-aoe). However, in a team fight, the aoe user will now deal significantly more damage to each target in their aoe’s, as much as a single target damager would need to deal to the same number of targets SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Likewise, if the aoe user needs to scale down to accommodate for multi-target engagement, the single target user will be at a distinct advantage in 1v1 combat. This would unbalance these two classes on a 1v1 scale.

Point: You cannot have absolute 1v1 balance and absolute team balance in a game with diversity. These two examples should further solidify my case. To put it another way, there are 3 factors being discussed:

1) 1v1 balance
2) Team balance
3) Class/build diversity

Essentially, you must pick two as having all 3 is absolutely unfeasible.

EDIT: fixed bolding

ronpierce.2760:

With enough pre-planning, thought and research you can balance all things 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 and large scale at once.

However what you can’t have are so many hidden variables, and often less “choice” involved in building a character. Sometimes true balance is worth that to players, other times it isn’t. It really depends on what the audience wants the most…

The bolded part plays into my point. I’m arguing that this is an unrealistic proposition. Even then, it is not necessarily the case that the aggregate of the constituents will yield a like result when viewed as a whole.

Unless your second part comes into play. In which case, you can toss out almost all diversity among builds to achieve this sort of balance. At that point, why have 8 different classes? Why have 5 trait lines within each class? Why the diversity in weapons? Yes, I’m engaging in reductio ad absurdum but you should see my point now.

Realistically, I don’t see how true 1v1 balance is achievable. To what extent will the game be considered fully balanced on a 1v1 scale? Will every combination of traits/skills/weapons be able to fight fairly against every combination? If not, at what point will the balance be “good enough” on a 1v1 scale?

Also, while your argument of the aggregate of the whole (i.e. if each individual instance is balanced then the whole must be balanced) seems logically sound, there are conditions in which this can be proven to be false. Others in this thread of pointed this out with various examples.

Finally, I believe that balancing beyond 1v1 duels is a necessity. In order to allow for diversity in playstyles, certain tactics will inherently be stronger or weaker than others (tactics being a combination of a build and its usage). People seem to laud league of legends a lot, so I’ll use them as an example. Is every single character capable of fighting on equal ground with every other character? And is every combination of character and items capable of fighting with any other combination of character and items (purely in a 1v1 context)? What makes any sort of team play balanced is the balance of the teams themselves.

Another question on 1v1 balance. In what capacity are all 1v1’s deemed balanced? Even in the single game mode of GW2 tPvP, there are multiple ways to fight and gain points. With 1v1 balance, will this mean that every combination of profession/traits/skills/weapons be able to fairly fight any other combination in any tactical capacity/situation? If this is what you mean, how will we even begin to approach this balance while also maintaining a diverse combination of builds for every profession?

tPvP makes you a much better player. I’d argue that being well versed in all 3 PvX’s makes you a great player.

Pocket Ninja from fark.com. No one on these forums can even approach the masterpiece that is Pocket Ninja.

ronpierce.2760:

Personally, I dislike Tank, Healer, Dps trinities! Tanks are only useful in pve leaving pvp with a dual-type system which isn’t very exciting. Additionally, tanking never made sense. Its full of “taunts” and weird mechanics forcing brainless AI to attack the toughest dude in a crowd of people. Very lame, if you ask me. And healing is boring, nothing short of playing the UI.

Mostly a lurker, rarely post. Wanted to point out “tanking” works in pvp without any “taunting”. A tanks role in player-vs-player in any game is about charging into the other team and wreaking havoc (via various cc, nullifying certain strategies/mechanics [e.g. mass poison if the team relies on healing or something], or doing just enough damage to seem like a threat). Tanks in these competitive setting are about getting in the other teams face and making as much noise as possible. Obviously, experienced teams wouldn’t fall for this so easily or can adapt on the fly (and thus experienced tanks have to adapt to their adaptations), but you get the point.

Anyways, the point of this is that I love utilizing defensive tactics as a source for counter-offense (e.g. giving ground to reposition for a renewed advance in ancient battles), and is something that isn’t quite there in this game. CC builds are mainly damage dealers, and if it wasn’t for the capture point mechanics, bunker builds aren’t a threat and can be ignored with little consequence. The strategic play around defense-to-offense doesn’t exist (besides the feint to capture a point and flanking to capture a different point, but that’s another discussion).

Ok, sorry for the threadjack.

/tangent

Open on Sorrow’s Furnace

Just wanted to throw in that the only Abyss I’ve ever gotten was during BWE3.

I’m still not sure if that was lucky or unlucky.

Came here to say this. Looks like it’s being covered.