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. I suggest we significantly reduce the stats point given by traits and gears, while significantly increase the base stats for each professions. The goal is to keep the customizable range small, and that comes with many benefits.
Let’s acknowledge it, ANet tried to balance the game. Whether they succeeded or failed, everyone has their opinion, although the consensus seems to be that they didn’t do a great job. Why? Lets take a look at other successful pvp games.
League of Legends allows a lot of customization. You have talent boards, you have gem slots. However, if you notice, they only allow the talent to change a tiny bit of the power, less than 1% of the power. In total, a full talent board traited for damage is max 10% stronger than a talent board traited for tanking, on the dps scale. That’s how they can achieve great balance, because the allowed customizable range is small, if an OP build exists, it can only be max 10% stronger than the normal build, which is still within acceptable range. It let them be able to fine tune the numbers, while still allow people to play with the traits they like.
Where did they learn it from? Hint: many of their employees are from the old Blizzard. It’s from the old Blizzard, who were so great at balancing, with great games like Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo (old), that they learned having smaller range of customization is the key to achieve balance. They follow the simple rule: if it’s customizable, don’t make the range too big, or else people will go to the extreme, and the balance will be broken. The current Blizzard failed at balancing because they let World of Warcraft grew too big, and their talent boards gives a much wider range of customizations (still not as broken as GW2).
GW2 now can’t really be balance because they let you swing too radically between bunker and zerker. An ele that go full glass can have 500% the damage of a bunker ele. With such a wide range of variable, any attempt to balance will fail:
- The damage for the bunker build is too low? Let’s buff the damage? Side effect: its zerker build can become really strong (example: scepter ele).
- The survivability for the zerker build is too low? Let’s buff the sustain? Side effect: the soldier build will become unkillable (example: warrior).
- A build is too weak in pve, even when they geared for full damage (Spirit Rangers)? Buff it, and it becomes too strong in pvp, when people play it with radically different gears.
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.
Pros:
- Much easier to balance, due to the significant smaller variable range.
- Reduce gears dependence. In spvp, it means player’s skill will have more impact than the choice of gears/sigils/runes/traits. In wvw, it means that an up level player can still fight with a fully geared ascended player, albeit the winning chance is low. In pve, we will see more people playing more diverse builds, instead of just go full berserker like right now. Sacrificing 10% of my damage to play the way I like? Count me in. Sacrificing 50% of my damage to play the way I like? well, my dungeons/tpvp buddies will kick me.
- The game designers can change the game more often, with less risk, since as long as they keep the customizable zone small, OP builds have much smaller impact.
- More happy players, more gems for ANet, better paycheck for the employees!
Cons:
- Requires a reorg
- It takes time to readjust all the numbers; however, if ANet has a testing realm, I’m sure this is not a problem since many people will volunteer to test it for ANet.
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. I suggest we significantly reduce the stats point given by traits and gears, while significantly increase the base stats for each professions. The goal is to keep the customizable range small, and that comes with many benefits.
