Guild Wars 2

Dawdler.8521:

Nyx.6532:

this can be situations like “mass stealth backstapping”

Well there would be no point in stealthing, you’re gonna hear those clicky shoes a mile away when the enemy zerg comes backstapping like fancy sirs in their tophats and tuxedos.

hehe yes and funny :P
my post was talking general example’s of the concept though ^^
if that was to be used in a specific game for it, it would require the movement in stealth to be silent in that game, at least on medium distance.

edit: and yes i actually didn’t know that you could hear people’s footsteps in the game, i rarely play without music in pvp so i haven’t notice it hehe.

Arricson Krei.9560:

I felt this was somewhat easy to read. Flows well and the summary in p3 basically says it all.

I think it’s a great idea and you explain well when you say why WvW is a numbers game. I think the diminishing returns on skills you mentioned in p3 #2 would be very hard to calculate and optimize, considering it would eliminate small scale groups who run multiple players of the same class. While it would promote having small scale comps that have a wide variety of classes (good thing), it may also discourage and punish players from playing what they want (bad thing). My tip to this suggestion would be to have it start diminishing after being affected by the same skill five times.

Having diminishing returns after 5x could mean that dps will be through the roof. 5 Necro well bombers would be kitten strong if 1 well can hit all targets in the area. Base health/armor of all players in WvW would probably have to increase to compensate for this proposed anti-zerg mechanic, but then this is have a massive impact on small scale.

Not sure how possible it would be to have player’s stats/skill change on the fly as they are joined by many players (zerg mechanics) and accompanied by less than 5 (small scale mechanics).

Probably one of the most outstanding problems of balancing WvW, there are too many players who value small scale and too many players that value large scale where it’s near impossible to balance for both parties to exist in the same instance. Think this is why people are calling for instanced 15v15 arenas, or open world toggle-able pvp, etc.

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Tyvm for the nice words and the very constructive reply, and you are right the diminishing return solution is a bit iffy, so needed some more thought in it (which took a little time to get to a good solution hehe).

I do agree the diminishing return would be hard, especially when we are talking multiple of same classes as you explained very well.
I am not sure the diminishing return would even be needed though. The issue I see coming with not having it is actually on the “defensive skills” (do keep in mind offensively we want big zerg’s to be destroyed if you run in a big bloob instead of properly splitting up and fighting on multiple fronts) as imagine guardians chaining AOE dmg-immunity skills and making everyone under it immune to damage Forever, or “return damage skills” and suddenly you do 1 AOE and you instantly explode from hitting 50 people who all reflect 200 dmg :P

So the trick is to find a way to prevent the Defensive skills from getting completely out of hand when stacking them in this manner. A good way of doing this could ofc. Be to change their effects slightly so they are not Vastly more powerful than the offensive counterpart skills.
Say a guardian shield would only mitigated an 80% of incoming damage instead of 100% (and only highest mitigation will be in effect, so no stacking of DR (damage reduction)).
same with “reflect damage” skills, making them reflect a max 50 % of the skills damage to a single person (so if each skill reflect 15% dmg, then if you hit aoe which does a max of 15k to each target you will take max 7,5k damage in reflection, if there was more than 4 people getting hit when they had reflect damage on. And no more than 7.5k could be returned from that 1 skill use).

Such changes would be Far preferred to other solutions. However, it would mean changing the mechanics slightly for these type of skills. But it shouldn’t require noteworthy extra computations (no noticeable decrease in performance. However the ability to hit more targets with AOE’s might decrease performance slightly, but I think the splitting up zergs more, would easily make up for that).
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Btw: when trying to find solutions etc. it is always important we remember “it needs to be as simple as possible and cannot introduce new issues needed to be fixed. if a solution can already exist by slightly changing something existing it is likely the best solution”.
we always have to be careful to not try and fix complex problem by adding more complexity to it, or creating new problems which then need solutions which then adds complexity.

i think some of the balance problems in GW2 comes from trying to fix a problem by adding a system to fix it, then finding a problem with that system and adding another system to fix that, so forth and so on (looking at just damage sources and mitigation sources as example:

just with dots and dmg mitigation alone; we got So many dmg dots types, and So many mitigation types for the different once that it is Very complex to even figure it out. Which raises the question of "couldn’t we have gotten the same gameplay effect/experience with only 1-2dot types and only 1-2 dmg mitigation type? what specific gameplay experience is it that the extra complexity adds and is it worth the negatives?
(i want to do a post about Complexity layers at some point as to explain how each complexity lvl in the combat system adds exponentially amount of information you need to balance out, compute and remember. but that is a Major post in itself. but very interesting subject i think.)

best regards
Me

Malerian.8435:

I tried to read all of this and just keep getting lost due to distractions(probably will not change anytime soon). Any chance you could just give the cliff notes? Or as Swagger asked condense it a bit?

Absolutely
The “water down version” here will only be stating cliff-note kind of thing with no deeper explanation of why or how it would change stuff (it’s in the text).

Colour code: can’t easily colour so Bold or italic instead
Overall idea, slightly more specifics. (italic only works for 1line at a time so, skip to bottom line after bold if more details isn’t needed/wanted).

Combat related mechanics in GW2 is made in a way that they are Rewarding zerg/bloob play so much that it is the only play that is reasonable to do (everything here is regarding to WvW pvp).
Personally I would like it to make anti-zerg mechanics more effective so to created more skirmish fighting, less clumping up, allow for effective comeback mechanics, and give more power to tactical/strategic/personal RL skill lvl.
Thoughts on whether or not you prefer Zerg-gameplay focus over the alternatives? Knowledge if Zerg-focus was truly the intend or an unforeseen by-product of the mechanics not being adjusted for WvW.

from here it is listing the mechanics which promotes the Zerg/Bloob focus currently and what I think would be a good way of fixing it:
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The mechanics which Rewards Zerg play right now:
1. Downing+resurrect systems. (biggest zerg never diminish player count, smallest lose players).
2. combo fields. (more players = more+logner lasting buffs+more engagements with buffs).
3. Maximum amount of Targets On Skills. (more players = more % of enemy zerg will be able to be hit)
4. SlowDown in combat mechanic (bigger vs small zerg = constantly players out-of-combat without penalty to run down).
5. Bruiser builds being extremely much stronger than other builds. (only 1 build type truly rules).
6. Commander/group setup. (preventing easy creation of multiple groups=multiple fighting of small group)
7. Auto-full healing out of combat. (bigger zerg = less need for healing skills to sustain the constant fighting)
8. too easy to escaped back to your Zerg’s protection (escaped/dmg mitigation vs CC/dmg mechanics).

Solutions:
1. Remove Downed mechanics and Ressurect without skill use from WvW.
2. Remove “Max targets” from all skills, and introduce a diminishing return effect to avoid 10 meteor 1hitting everything (diminish return might not be needed).
3. Lower the time which Slowdown last when no in/out dmg is done to 1sec before norm speed
4. Remove out of combat healing from WvW.
5. Lowering the effectiveness/powerspiking of combo fields.
6. Allowing everyone to Flag up as “raid parties”, just give them another colour icon. (also consider removing commander bonus or make them map wide=highest bonus apply)
7. Bruiser builds vs. everything else rebalancing according to TTK principle’s. (might want to read the TTK part of the p1, first post. I think every gamer should know TTK base concept/idea as it is good for our understanding of balance and design reasoning).
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Hope this made it a little less daunting to get through and that it gave a better overview of what I am trying to look at and here opinions on

Best regards from
Me
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Swagger.1459:

Thanks for putting in all the effort to type this out, but please try to condense this, and highlight important suggestions, so it’s easier to read.

Thank you for the constructive answer
will look it through a few more times and see if i can condense it in a way which still get the concept and massage but isn’t 4 pages of WoT

i find it hard to do because i don’t know how much i need to explain different concepts, reasoning etc. as the base knowledge for gamers differs so much when it comes to the mechanic and design part ^^

p3.

So to add a few suggestions to WvW pvp design change which would combat the heavy Pro-Zerg:
1. Remove Downed mechanics and Ressurect without skill use from WvW. If you die and no one around you invested a skillslot to ress skills, then you will need to ress at obelisk.
2. Remove “Max targets” from all skills, and introduce a diminishing return effect (meaning if you are hit by the same skill several times in a row the effect of it becomes less and less. So first skill 100%, second skill 75%, third 50%, etc. numbers there is obviously not balanced at all, but that would take the Database of skills and a genetic algorithm to find the optimal balance diminishing of the skills)
3. Lower Slowdown in combat to ONLY effect you while you are taking damage or using skills (just set it to 1second of not engaging in combat before it counts as out of combat.)
4. Remove out of combat healing from WvW (having sustain from healing is a BIG part of strategic and tactical play. It’s a resource which should hold great value, also between fights).
5. Lowering the effectiveness/powerspiking of combo fields (the bonusses they can give now is incredibly strong to the point of gamebreaking, and they promoted extreme clumping up which pushes zerg-play).
6. Allowing everyone to Flag up as “raid parties”, so anyone in WvW can lead at least 10-20 players easily with proper interface making it easy for Randoms to follow whats going on.
a. Having commander bonusses hit your entire faction (only highest bonus apply. If you want to keep these bonusses that is. A flat stats bonus just because person X is on is kind of a none-productive mechanic imho).
7. Bruiser builds vs. everything else rebalancing according to TTK principle’s.
8. I don’t believe it is needed to touch CC/Escaped mechanisms once the proper TTK balance have been corrected as with that it should all equal out in a fair and balanced manner and with the changing of the heavy Zerg-focus mechanics it should not be needed to do so. Imo.
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So if you made it this far you are a persistant one and I thank you for your time and ask you:
What do you think and how do you feel about a Pro-Zerg setup instead of the alternatives? And do you agree with my view of it being a pro-zerg setup if not, why not?

Best regards
me

P2.

What this means is that Numbers of the fight functions as an exponential increasing powerspike and becomes the most important in the game.
it eliminates the danger of Heavy aoe’s such as meteor, etc. as enemies will maximum get hit once by running through them (often not at all), and the aoe healing of combo fields negates it completely (as these does not suffer from the same handicaps as skills).
it allows the already outnumbered Ratio of players to continually grow to the already outnumbering sides advantage.
it removes the possibility of outsmarting and outplaying the opponent (as no matter how badly you outplay them their numbers never diminish as reviving/helping downed up continues forever).

so what it does is created a gameplay where the Biggest Zerg will have a Huge advantage from the start, and as the fight goes on the number advantage will increase exponentially.

As I started out saying I am not sure this is intended. but as the only “Anti-Zerg” mechanic currently is Siege/anti-Siege equipment and there have been made protective equipment which prevents their effect. There really isn’t any true comeback mechanic due to the lack of anti-zerg mechanic on top of all the pro-zerg mechanics.

To run through pro-zerg mechanics:
1. Downing systems -> heavily fevour zerg play.
2. combo fields -> heavily favour zerg play (as the more people you got that can do it the more bonusses you will have for every encounter and the more permanently you can keep the bonusses).
3. Maximum Targets On Skills -> meaning you NEED those extra people to be able to hit enough of the enemy zerg, hard enough, to be able to Zone/pressure zergs. The biggest zerg will both counter everything coming to them, and hit a Far larger % of the enemy zerg with their skills.
4. SlowDown in combat mechanic -> as the kiting party will be constantly slowed down while laying suppression CC+dps to prevent the enemy from simply easymode overrunning them. While the enemy will constantly have people not in combat getting high speedboost to outmanouver and continually catch the kiting part while never having any handicap by the slowdown (as it will never be to their disadvantage).
5. Bruiser builds being extremely much stronger than other builds -> bruiser builds is made specificly to constantly charge in and do heavy damage, they TRULY shine when they are running people down as they can survive most surpression fire, are generally heavily protected from CC and Burst danger and do heavy damage on fleeing and CC’ed enemies.
6. Commander/group setup -> only commanders seems to be able to have the interface setup for easily leading a larger group, due to the involved things of being a commander it creates the issue of VERY few commanders on a map at a time, it almost looks like your only supposed to have 1 commander at a time which pushes one place, instead of Many commanders where fights then will happen in a lot of places at a time (which would push strategic gameplay of managing player resources to how many you need where etc.)
7. Auto-full healing out of combat -> outnumbered advantage will constantly be able to take advantage of this while the kiting side will never be able to do so. Meaning sustain is far less important for the once with more numbers and they can focus their builds on gaining more push power.
8. Lastly “the ease of escaping CC/dmg” -> as it is now there is TONS of CC breaking, cleansing, immunities, etc. which works all on ALL CC types. On top of the CC’s having very low durations and being primarily single target (everything but slows/wall effects). This makes it incredibly hard to lock anyone or anything down to punish them for bad tactical/personal play. This is as such not too bad at it creates longer fights, but combined with the aboves it heavily strengthens the already powerful Zerg synergy.

These are the heavily pushers of the “Pro-Zerg/Bloob” playstyle and with all these in mind and how heavily it is pushed I cannot help but wondering if “Zerg Playstyle” was the intended target of the game? To eliminated tactical, strategic, and personal skilled playstyles to much heavier promoted the Zerg-playstyle.
I can imagine this is done to avoid having to balance to much as in a big zerg it is nearly impossible to figure out where the balance issues are as it is all just a big cluster f’d. however it doesn’t remove or fix the issue at all, it simply just makes it impossible to distinguish and thereby impossible to fix.

If you got no interest in a longer and more mechanical focused thread and discussion, then this is properly not the post for you ^^

limitation to characters this will be a 2-3parters:
p1.
WvW, anti-zerg and Downing mechanic etc.

So I want to note on some mechanics specificly talking about their effect in WvW. I am not sure if these effects was the intended once with the features introducing them but currently i will argue that a lot of mechanics are pushing specific Zerg gameplay over all others in WvW.

First the base concepts:
If you read the name and think “I know what it is, why it is and how it function just skip over the basic, it is for anyone who are in doubt of the meaning of the concepts”.
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TTK:
There is a simple balance formula which is known as TTK. It means time to kill, it is that the time it takes you to kill a person should equal the time it takes him to kill you given you both play optimally (In a balanced scenario TTK should be equal for all builds vs. all builds. If you do a Trinity scenario, the counter class will always have a high advantage and it goes cloth > heavy, heavy > medium, medium > Cloth, in which armour types beat which by default).
When you got a HUGE amount of skills it is generally done by giving different values of importance to each ability/skill that you give a class/character.
these abilities or attributes are normally set in 4 stages: movability (stealth, speed, soft CC), Dmg(DPS/BURST), Survivability (hard CC/Dmg mitigation). Which you set in each subject varies slightly (mostly on the CC part for where they should be depending on the use in the game).
with these you can insure on a per skill level how much power a single skill is allowed to add to the build (if 100dps is valued to the same as 15% speed increase/decrease, a skill would either do 100dps increase or 15% speed increase/decrease. These a random numbers, Just as an example of the usage, it is a spreadsheet balance setup which insures proper balance and easily auto balancing of Everything if one aspects turns out to have the wrong value for the power increase compared to the rest).

Anti-zerg mechanics:
is mechanics which punishes heavy zerging and forces groups to split up to survive easier. These are usually heavy AOE’s which means if you bunch up a lot everyone will die instead of a few, so you want to keep a reasonable amount of distance to each other to optimize survivability and keep numbers. It can also be heavy bonusses when outnumbered preventing you from wanting to engage much smaller groups (although this leads to a lot of other issues so it is a worse option and it never really prevent zerging due to lack of understanding or bonus amount).
Why is anti-zerg mechanic important? It lowers lag issues due to less people at the same spot. It rewards skillfull play on all area’s, strategic, tactical and personal skills, as it prevents numbers from being the main factor of a fight. It creates more clear overview of what is happening in a fight, by removing the heavy bloob clutter.
but most importantly it creates a Lot of good Comeback situations (so works as a comeback mechanic).

Comeback mechanics:
is a mechanic which allow a losing player to comeback into the game by outsmarting their opponent, not outplaying but outsmarting (using tactics and strategy to move the enemy into a position/situation where he can be heavily punished, which only happened because he didn’t/couldn’t forsee your “trick”).
this can be situations like “mass stealth backstapping”, manouvering enemies into chokes for heavy aoe, baiting them to clump up on a Tank for heavy CC+Dmg, etc.
it is situations which allows for the possibility of turning the fight around when it otherwise would have been impossible to do so.
Why are comeback mechanics important? Because without them it is a numbers game, biggest number wins and a machine will Always be better at number crunching, as well as it removing any suspense from the fighting since you can know who wins by the math from the start.

Basics done:

So to do a quick scenario as example of the discussion:
20 vs. 40.
the outnumbered is forced to kited back as in a straight up fight the limit of “maximum targets” of the skills means that you cannot rely on simply outplaying in a single encounter (as you will not have enough effective burst AOE as the limitation of target hits prevents this.)
as the smaller party kites back and both kill/lose people the pushing part will constantly be able to both finish downed people, revive dead once and almost instantly get up downed allies. This means as both sides “should” lose people, only the side with the least people actually does so (as everyone on the pushing side will be revived, helped up from downed state as their zerg pushes over, and everyone downed/killed from the kiting side will be finished/dead and can’t get revived by their allies, as the enemy zerg is running over them; even revive skills become useless because of this, and getting up from downed state give you roughly the same HP back as majority of revive skills will).

Ralkuth.1456:

Shaogin.2679:

Aza.2105:

The new dailies are way better if you are a pvper.

This is the key point here. The people complaining are PvE players that used the custom daily rooms. Usually my dailies are done in a single match, two if I lost the first. Love the change, should have been done forever ago.

Absolutely. What should have been done for players focused on PvE, is to adjust their dailies so they won’t consider it a necessity to use the PvP rooms just to save time.

I definitely know the feeling when you’re so busy some days even logging on to… log elder wood can be a strained venture.

Edit:

WvW is also a very convenient place to do your dailies, just go find some guards to kill and boom, daily done.

which is honestly why dailies are a bad idea in the first place. it makes it feel like a job. if you want a catch up mechanic with limited gain per day, at least make it x-weekly/monthlies instead, so people doesn’t have to feel they need to “log on to do their job”.
or better yet, make it a charge thing where you gain 1 charge for each day gone by, and that determines how many times you can complete the quest when you do it next time.

i just never liked dailies/weeklies in any game, it just feels too much like work and leaves a bad tasted

if one type of build is clearly preferred over the others, it is normally an indicator that it is too powerfull compared to the others ^^

personally i’ve never been fund of the “bruiser” builds which have always been the most powerfull in gw2, would like to see the TTK getting rebalanced so that DPS builds will kill Bruiser builds as fast as bruiser builds kill them (same with all other builds, meeting each other the kill time should be equal for both parties when optimally played.)

thanks you all
it’s nice with some good feedback, helps a lot when you are a bit frustrated and trying to find a good solution ^^

i REALLY want to use staff as long range, nuke/support/supression is where i normally truly shine and really enjoy myself.
i’ve found a few builds which works ok well in GvG type setups(as long as no super-meta-build looks in my direction), the issue i am running into is the Dmg output seems exceedingly weak even in full damage setup, changing a bit on the feats (to be able to use earth to remove crit hits) and using earth shield for invuln+block+movability, and invuln sylvari ult, gives a good amount of survive even when heavily focused (still getting instant kitten when i meet the “P2W” feel players hehe, i know it’s not p2w but it gives the idea of the feel i get when i meet them).
however doing so kitten my Dmg even more, to the point of being laughably weak vs. the super-meta-builds :/ (almost makes me wait for someone to start dancing in my meteor storm :P hehe

i do full damage rotations and i am consistantly rotating the entire skill spectra of the staff (to try and optimize support and dps).

is Staff ele very underpowered right now or is it just the Dmg build which currently suffers?
i really don’t want to go “tank” as the damage is already laughably low just having the minimum survive and removing the ability to lay down any suppression pressure seems like a huge wasted of the staff ^^
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as for ascended gear i had hoped to be able to get it through PvP, just slowly, but the reason mega nerf to that route seems like the devs Really want to punish pvp’ers for just wanting to PvP :/
so i guess pve is the only way. will look into the living story thing, i’ve done most of the new part but the Mastery grind to be able to do it is really pushing my patience so it is kind of hard to get around that :P

IndigoSundown.5419:

In addition to the obvious benefits of the Elite Specs introduced in Heart of Thorns, the XPac offered new stat combinations which are objectively more powerful. The combination of these stat combos, the benefits of the Elite Specs and the slight difference between Ascended and Exotic add up. Opportunity costs in these combinations are less than for core-only specs with core-only gear that is no longer BiS except for trinkets.

Meta play in both zerg, solo and small group combat involves beginning with as many offensive and defensive buffs as possible. Players also hit their invulnerability skills early (some professions have access to more than one). With protection/regen, multi-block or outright immunity to direct damage that lasts long enough for them to burst you down, anyone not also using these tactics are going to have experiences similar to yours.

So, yeah, it’s a combination of specs, gear and tactics.

yer it seemed like the new Specs is too powerful (wish that nerf bat or buff bat would come equalize that soon).
the amount of movability, defensive on top of crazy high medium/close range dps seems pretty overdone compared to the old setups.
but i just Really dislike using an elementalist for close range fighting. was also one of those that refused to use DD when that was in its prime. i just feel it is a “off” playstyle for an elementalist so it turns me off (Always seemed weird to me that close range outclassed long ranged so badly on an elementalist class :P think it is the lack of reliable cc+dmg and gab creators, as everything can be countered so easily by close range setups)

will try some different stuff and hopefully i can make dmg staff ele viable again in some way ^^

thank you all for the nice answers ^^

Paulytnz.7619:

I would suggest taking a closer look at the type of damage you are taking as there is a VERY good chance that it is conditions that is killing you. Which if that is the case your armour rating wont help you at all.

I’m not sure how long it has been since you have played but they have made conditions OP to the point if ridiculousness. It may be this that you are dealing with without even realizing it.

i got planty of condition removal so that isn’t the case, its direct power damage i am taking. also power build so not because they are just good at removing condition dmg ^^

it seems to be mostly necro’s, theifs(but thats to be expected), guardians, rangers which i’ve noticed just instant kitten me. properly others which i haven’t noticed. but these seems to be the once which i notice have insane survive and dmg ^^

but its properly a matter of “build meta’s, learn the classes etc. lack of knowledge things then” (and that i so badly want to play dmg staff ele, like long range nuking, just doesn’t work much when i am tickling people hehe :P ).

Ayrilana.1396:

Armor only adds 2%

thanks mate, it’s nice to know as i’ve assumed the balance of meta builds couldn’t be this “broken/extreme”.
2% seems acceptable as a difference from easy to get to hardest to get (which would be 4% diff if weapons give the same. still acceptable imho)^^

just wierd some people take no dmg and two shots me. many others seems to be reasonably balanced when fighting them…
it truly feels like a P2W game, where when i meet the “P2W’ers” i just explode while doing no dmg and having zero chance to do anything, then when i meet everything else its a fair fight ^^

balance of some meta builds seriously need the nerf bat so hard they bounch of the moon if this is almost purely a build issue ^^

EDIT:
i want to thank you mate for giving me info that i clearly needed which will help me deal with the frustration far better, as i know it is now a question of “play” vs. “needing to grind for 2.000hours to gear”, one is training the other is just sickly boring and “stupid” imho hehe ^^

though still think some balance is highly needed if the difference of builds does such an insane difference ^^
(assuming people are not doing “bad troll builds” ^^)

Ayrilana.1396:

Ascended armor doesn’t increase DPS all that much so I wouldn’t stress over it if you don’t have it.

so it’s not Def+Dmg from the armour+weap ascended? (anyone got actual % number of difference of full ascended vs. exotic? curious what we are talking about in numbers as it seems a lot to me, but might be low ratio etc. which i don’t know off) but simply builds that have become so extreme in difference?

hmm ok guess it is the “build bruiser, play mes/theif or gtfo” then :P
it is nice to know though, so i know where my focus should lay, just seems kind of insane when looking at dps vs. survive of what i am running into hehe ^^

infrequentia.3465:

you’re first talking about pvp and then about wvw

wich is the problem?

in pvp theres no stat difference it doesn’t use armor stats

in wvw. its a zerg fest

its called world versus world for a reason.
the stat difference is minimal

sry if it was unclear.
as SPvP is equalized stats i assumed it was clear this is WvW, also i thought i made it clear i dislike the SPvP due to the bruiser>>all build setup of the pvp
my apologies if the text was unclear on this for anyone

i do have full ascended accessories as i also wrote. but as i also wrote there is a Huge difference on Damage/Tankiness of full ascended vs. exoctic armour (at least it seems like it when as i stated i am now hitting as a wet noodle vs. getting literally 2 shotted). could be horrific balance changes since i played last time but i assumed it is a Stats difference (or hoped i guessed)
:)

hope that clears up the misunderstandings my text might have coursed ^^

BTW: i would love to hear the math for how to get the full ascended armour+weapon much faster, if there is a way to do that which doesn’t take months to do, please do tell as this should solve the main issue i am running my head into when returning ^^

i do have HoT as well ^^

edit: if there is a slight tasted of salt in this post i apologies. i tried to keep it nice and clean but it might shine through that i am frustrated by the situation.
i will be happy to take ideas to circumvent my issues if you got any.

if nothing else this can be taken as feedback after being back for a few weeks trying to get into the game again and my experience of doing so.
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so returning player after a loooong break.

what i’ve found is that Stats is now very prominent in PvP. there is a quite noticible difference from exoctic to ascenden geared (last i played was after the dayli ascended introduced and got full ascended accessories and exoctic gear besides that, which was max stats back then).

it seems like hitting someone max geared even in full berzerk is like hitting with a wet noodle, and getting hit by them is like trying to stop a truck using your head and a plastic bag, hyperboling obvs, but it feels Extremely unfair to see 1-2k hits with meteor etc. and then get hit for 4-6k*X instantly killed when touched (staff elementalist, yes i know we are supposed to be squicy, but that trade should come from heavy damage, which it actually used to and does when hitting people not overgeared in broken meta builds).

So i decided “ok i apparently suck, so i NEED to get full ascended then and check if there is a way to combat these new heavily dmg/tanky/mobile builds with Tons of gab closers” and here comes my issue.

the first thing was meta bruiser builds are still insanely strong, gotten Much stronger than before with the new class choices,which i honestly think are completely broken and OP compared to the old once. so i just have to accept that and deal with being UP since i do not play bruiser builds (its very boring for me).

then to the Gear which is the Real issue:
first i tried to see what it took to craft it “hmm dailies so minimum 1-2 months just waiting time and a very high amount of grind for the mats… i just want to WvW fairly so sigh no”.
then checking fractales (droprate seems unreasonable low, so 3-5 months to gear there… again i got Zero interest in these, imo, very boring and repetitive grind sessions so no).
then checking raids (ok need group to get carried, and it will still take at least 1-2 months with good drops).
then checking WvW/PvP reswards (which just turned out even worse, it would take Months of getting steamrolled by max geared players before i reach max stats, which obviously as a PvP’er isn’t fun and i might as well have stayed in BDO, or any other game which have the Stats >>> everything).

So i am kind of lost here. what i actually enjoyed about GW2 and why i returned was the “none forced Stats grind” that i could simply jump in and play and do the things i wanted without a dark shadow constantly “pushing my addiction” to try and make me play the game as if it was a job (do daylies stuff everyday to max out Stats to then be able to enjoy).

So here is a question: is there No way that i can actually enjoy WvW on equal ground without putting in Months of, imho, “boring and tidious” grind just to get it?
i know SPvP is an equalized stats setup (smartest thing GW2 ever did with pvp, besides the 3 front war which is always awesome). However my playstyle is anything But Bruiser builds and since the PvP in GW2 is heavily favoring Bruiser builds (due to downing system, survive/movability outscaling range/dps heavily) this is not fun for me at all.

so i assume the answer is:
“GW2 is a Stats grinder game on pair with the Worst/Best of them, so if you don’t like mindless stats grind for Months to be competitive then don’t bother”…
which i think is very sad as GW2 starting success came from the exact opposite setup and going to the “easy mode” version of “Time consumption” is pilling on the already large pile of mmorpg’s which does this and removing one of the very few which wasn’t just a mindless Stats grind :/

while i see your point that it is a way to have a “continues grind for x,y,z” while not being a “powercreeper”, the negative of the grind itself is the same as with any other “mindless forced grind”. as it makes you feel you “HAVE to grind” to be able to play and enjoy the game as you like.
the point of horizontal progression systems is to eliminated that negative feeling of “you have to grind for x hours or you are either handicapped stats wise or you cannot access feature y”.

GW2 was the only mmorpg on the market (reasonably popular one at least) which didn’t make you feel you “HAD” to do something after the first 1-2 weeks of playing. it was a really nice enjoyment to feel you could play as you wanted without the constant min/max monkey jumping your back.

while i think they improved the story elements a lot (and i am enjoying it after returning, especially the amount of voice acting), i do feel with the “stats increase of legendaries, and the ascended gear” there is a reasonable amount of “grind” already added.
adding even more by forcing you to grind a specific area to gain the “points” to be able to use “basic” movement in that area to explore with, is pushing it towards a wrong direction(although by baby steps, so no panic over it hehe
although as a returning player i find it a little bit discouraging to see how long i will need to “grind” before i can just relax and enjoy doing stuff i come across on the map ^^
(i will admit the amount of time i need to use seems minor, but coming from BDO i almost get a sick feeling when there is stuff i feel i “Need” to do to be able to fully enjoy hehe. but in reality i doubt it is that bad, think in 1 week or so i will have everything needed mastery wise by casual play)

when all that is said: NO ONE yet have found a really good way to do horizontal progression in mmo’s GW2 is the closest we have gotten to it.

(and personally bc of how well its done i would never have taken a long break from GW2 if it wasn’t for the extreme slowdown of movement in combat and the downing system. both systems something i despise and believe to force every build towards the same brawler setup while making combat feel less engaging.)

edit:
in the end it all comes down to how far they push it. if it is minor grind time it is all fine and just adds a little extra incentive to do some specific stuff for a hours over a week or so to get the needed stuff, like gaining skills early on, or maybe like getting your full gear before ascended gear now (no idea how long it takes to get now, but when it was introduced it actually took quite a lot of grind to get full ascended accessories; too much time for Stats imho.)

last bump i guess ^^

well once upon a time they where different, burning had much higher base damage, but didnt stack on dmg only on time it lasted.
and bleeding stacked dmg not time…

i dont understand why that ever got changed though ??

when interface/controls/cam become the issue, it’s design should be re-evaluated to se if there is a better way of doing it ^^

when that is said neither mesmer, nor thiefs are so weak that there should be added any extra hassel of targeting them or finding hte right target
such a thing is silly, because its only place should be if they where so weak that it was a needed mechanic for them to compete.

a good game designer should look at every design part and ask himself, “how do i make this a better, more fun and less frustrating gameplay experience for the players”.
instead of having the idea of “i like this concept and don’t care how the players overall experience is with it”

as a general rule, anything that disorientated a player is a bad idea. it is never fun to be disorientated.
so stuff like “blinding the player” (full screen colours etc), fighting stuff you cant see, rotating/shaking camera excessively, etc. stuff is something you should be very mindfull of when designing the system.
(which i don’t think we can say anet devs have been here. because fighting invis and clone heavy stuff is exceedingly annoying :P hehe)

i think it could be a good idea. i think it could be successfull.
i highly doubt it will ever happend.

the reason i think it could be a good idea and successfull is because if anet actually learned from gw2 and the mistakes in it and truly improved all the bad concept and features while adding new and good once, while keeping some of the awesome stuff that is here.
it could really be an awesome game.

however i doubt they would do this because as it is looking gw2 is not a big successfull and there are major issue’s with have gone ignored since release.
the devs have shown an extreme unwillingness to learn from their mistakes and better/change the features which is truly a problem of the game..
so i doubt they would do it…

but maybe once gw2 have completely outlived its existance they will try to, just to give it a shot, or maybe sell of the ip if they can ^^

WuGzaGenius.5684:

After the initial months of release, I have not stepped foot outside of heart of the mists.

I find this odd, but there is nothing for me to do outside of the Heart of the mists… Dungeons are boring repetitive and the bosses are braindead easy. lack of end game has made me neglect the lore because I don’t want to do dungeons or grind the mobs in the open world.

I feel like i should be able to queue for pvp outside of heart of the mists and not be zoned in there, there should be open world dueling on request of both parties, and I would like it if they had arenas much like WoW’s 2v2 / 3v3 arenas.

IDK how people play this game for so long without quitting( for those of you who play PVE) it blows my mind.

Explain to me please.

imagine if they introduced “flagging” in the open world. so you could flag yourself for pvp in all area’s and it would give you loot bonusses or something else when doing so

ofcouse with the horrific balance as it is now. that properly wouldn’t do too much, but well it could be cool if the balance was good, so if they ever fixed that hehe ^^

i do agree on the balance area and that it is driving the playerbase away ^^
(i know it is the reason i don’t play gw2 much, took a long break and will soonish fully stop playing it at all)

a suggestion for fixing this would be a TTK system.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PVP-basic-game-design-TTK-time-to-kill/page/2#post5486987

when that is said i think one of the major issue’s of gw2 in its core is also that they tried to arbitrarily amp up the difficulty with weapon switching, fields/finisher combo’s and downing system.
these are all adding things which could be added in a much better way without the “clutter” and the “false difficulty” of using/learning it.
they are there because they wanted it to be “hard to master” for their esport.
what they didnt understand is that arbitrary difficulty amping does the direct opposite to the esport scene, it drives it away…

it is like badly designed camera, interfaces or controls. these things should not be a difficulty challenge, and when they are they cheapens the experience.
equally the arbitrary amping of difficulty that gw2 have done with weapon switching, fields/finishers and downing system is only hurting the enjoyment of the gameplay and the feeling of being skillfull, rather than learning to deal with badly designed concepts…

cuge.5398:

Its surely something that would be needed in any /esport enviroment. Anet has been putting much effort to push GW2 in this esport scenario but they didnt focus on the right way to do that.

not to be mean, but isn’t the only thing they have been doing, when we are talking esport, proclaiming"this is an esport, awesome esport over here" and nothing else?

there is really not anything in the game which would make me think “esport”.
the basis features which are absolutely must have even before considering going out as an esport just doesn’t exist in the game :/

however you are right, the amount of screaming about gw2 being an esport in no way add up with what they are doing or have been doing…
gw2 could have been a great esport if they had focused on simple areas, and accepted the faults of others (most noticeble as a faulty feature for esport is the downing systems which seems like a very bad idea as esport material)

there is a clear need for a “match history” with details of everything for all involved parties.
(it could even be a log.txt just created in a folder for you to check out afterwards.
if it was a log.txt i garanteed you we would see websites with incredibly good statistical data which could help a lot for many things…)

apharma.3741:

@Eleandra

About your third point about the state of elementalist and burn damage. It is possible that it actually is balanced according to how they do balancing. They could have worked out all the possible counters and it actually being balanced. It however doesn’t mean that:

1) Players are using said counters. Example cele signet necro counters ele hard.
2) The patch is still figuratively new and people haven’t figured out exactly how viable the counters are.
3) The counters are easy to learn or figure out.

That’s just off the top of my head. In these cases it could in fact be balanced and it’s a player skill problem or even a player intolerance to adapt.

I personally and others also do not have any problem with burn, I know it, I know the attacks that apply it, I know how to avoid it and when to cleanse. It could be balanced but it also doesn’t mean everyone can or will see it the same.

I would say that without a red post detailing how the game is balanced this entire thread is completely pointless and is boiling down to ego stroking. For all we know it could be balanced on a more sophisticated or advanced form of TTK, it might not but GW2 is certainly a game trying to do things differently so it stands to reason it may be balanced differently.

Hi apharma
Ty for joining in ^^

It is definitely possible that this is the balance they are going for, and that they have the mind-set of “either you do this build or you lose”.
But if this is the case I am still very much against the way they do balance.

Most of the pvp is built over you not knowing which built the enemy team is using, or even who you are going to face.
It becomes more of a gamble then a skillfull decision at that point which I personally don’t find positive.
To add to that if you do hard a “A>B _ B>C _ C>A” (also known as rock/paper/scissor: hard meaning it is almost if not impossible to beat a rock as a scissor) balance on a 1v1 class/role individual level, you will find many situations where you just feel at an extremely unfair disadvantage, which is very rarely fun for anyone.

Now what I would like to see and the reason to use a TTK system is balanced and fair encounters. (weather it is GvG or 1v1)
Meaning no fight is predetermined (or close too) before it has started, and people feel like their loss was due to lack of skills much more then stuff they couldn’t control as the fight was going on (built, gear, etc.).

I also firmly believe that giving people the option of diversity, playing the playstyle they enjoy is exceedingly important to give people a fun and good gameplay experience, which I think is hard to do if you predetermined a few builds which are the only working pvp builds, and which all are +- the same role (for high lvl play).
Again something the TTK system can help solve, which you will have an exceedingly hard time doing with any other balance system I know of (granted there is guaranteed some I do not know).
—————————————

If we assume it was balanced in a better way. Wouldn’t it be quite weird for the devs not to enlighten anyone when their community explodes? Furthermore would they then make such huge blunder on the balance side that they need to do fixes in the manner that they do?
Not to mention that this would mean the vast majority of the pvp community would be clueless about pvp mechanics since they apparently don’t get the “magnificent and very well balanced pvp setup” so they can enlighten their community with the understanding of it?

In my experience a community is often much smarter than a few individuals behind the scenes.
If those few have found/made the “magic cube of insight” then the community would know of it too within very short time ^^

Which is one more reason I don’t believe the devs have a good system to balance the numbers from.
From what I can see, it seems like they are just “winging it”.
Meaning they are properly doing something like looking at individual skills and judging each skill individually for what it should/could do, and then apply it without consideration for the combination of all the other skills in the game or the stats of different builds. or they could just be looking at it thinking “this seems a bit weak/strong, lets try to just give it a little nerf/buff and see how that works out”

I hope that they at least have some spreadsheets somewhere which acts as their meters for balancing in some way, but again I am a bit doubtful considering the very large difference on the numbers that some setup puts out oppose to others hehe

Saiyan.1704:

A lot of TL;DR items here but from what i’ve read thus far, Nyx is getting his butt handed to him in this debate

Trying to politically correct some one in terms of “No, you don’t need a super computer, a lesser cpu will suffice”, is mute. That’s completely irrelevant to the point.

+

i am very interested in hearing how you deducted this?
i have answered all concerns, and i have disproofed any claims that it wouldn’t be possible to do due to processor power. which is what you are saying that i haven’t.

please do elaborate on this since i would be interested in hearing where you have found my statement to be wrong?
if you can’t find such a place i would ask you to keep your mouth closed because frankly i find it offensive that you attack me like this if you have absolutely no reason to do so, or if it is build on a lack of intellect, understanding or patience to read what have been said.

best regards.
nyx.

Saiyan.1704:

The reason GW2 has been the most balanced PvP MMO on market is because of its unique combat structure. The dodges, downed state, and everything in between, gave the game a more balanced window. It was, and still is, more forgiving in terms of game balances.

btw: gw2 is one of the worst balanced mmo’s on the market. despite its many good features, and despite the enormous amount of effort anet put into promoting it as a pvp game, esport, etc. it’s pvp scene is laughebly weak in comparison to almost every pvp focused mmo game on the market. (especially if you take developement pricetag into consideration)
on top of that the concensus from the vast majority of it’s community is that it is hopelessly unbalanced, and even amongst the people liking it and speaking well of it, it is well known that only a select few builts have any place in competitive pvp…
all this together should make it more then clear to anyone not in complete deniel that GW2 pvp balance is in a horrific state, and doesn’t qualify at all as "most balanced mmo on the market as you claim
—————————————

@Eleandra.
again ty for your kind words.
you are right that it is getting increasingly hard to continually defend myself against attacks which seems to be grounded in nothing but lack of knowledge, intellect or patiance to read what has already been sad.
i most admit that i am about my limit and will stop answering in the discussion soon if it keeps up like this.
:)

i did come to the forum to contributed with a design method that is very commonly used, taught and proofed for balancing pvp.
models and names varie for the method but in short it is about insuring a fair playing fields for pvp’ers which is more likely to lead to a fun experience.

i would have expected the vast majority of the pvp community to want such a system introduced and maybe with a little luck put some pressure on Anet to actually do, what i consider the job of a lead balance designer, the effort to insure that such a system was used to the extend which was needed to bring balance to the game.

true there is a lot of other balance methods which could be used. but due to the complexity due to the variaty of builds possible to make, most systems will work poorly at best because changing individual skills/aspects/mechanics have a huge impact on most systems or/and require a very much higher amount ressources to mentain when changing area’s that have effect on more then one class: like the burn change as example.

anyway. i would expect Anet have seen the post by now and either found the idea enlightening and something they will look into or as yet another idea they don’t care for since “what they are doing is working so well, and people like it”

now as for the suggestion and your follow up on it

i believe a TTK system would be the best way to balance out skills, roles, and group combat.

i believe that the issue with movability vs. fighterbility is a map issue and should be solved on a map basis.
meaning that you would design maps to have area’s where one is prefered over the other for certain points, so that it would enable more diversity in which builds was required as a team.

as an example from the top of my head:
having points reletively close to each other, with high area’s above some of them for good long range damage, and very strong map buffs at a good lond distance from the points(could be high up where you need to run a lot to get up to the top for the buff, so not to take up too much map space):

which would need “tankish” to hold points, dps ranged which could be in relative safety supporting the points, or tankish ranged to counter the support.
fast moving builts to insure you could get the buffs and get back to help points fast.

in this manner you would created room for all roles, all with very importent area’s to help, and all with good amount of playtime.

but this is just a suggestion of the top of my head ^^

i firmly believe that if the combat is very balanced and fun, where you feel every engagement is very much skill based and the better player/players win, and actual fighting time is reasonable on both sides.
then whatever the scenario is, and even if whoever wins the match isn’t “fair win of match”, people will still enjoy the fighting more then enough to keep people going.

comming from aion before any pvp scenario’s ever where introduced; i recall people dualling for Many hours a day, for no other reason then it was fun to fight.
looking at successfull pvp games those i know of seems to all be driven by it being fun to fight each other, more then any objective that is there.

objectives should be secondary for you to have fun. if it is not fun without the objective i think there is something fundamentally wrong with the pvp.
by that i am not saying objective can’t add a good reason to fight which can be importent, but it should be fun enough for you to do without getting rewarded with shiny stuff.
IMO at least ^^

edited: due to misquote ^^

Shadow.1345:

@Nyx

I have noticed you keep saying things like “it’s simple” and “you don’t understand it” and I want to go into the parts where I believe you are misunderstanding it.

First, it’s not about whether it could run on an i7 or not. That is really pretty negligible at this point without having an algorithm to run. What is missing is an algorithm and that is where this problem gets hairy.

Can you make the algorithm for it?

This isn’t a thing about doing it for free or not. If you can just submit it as your application to get a job at ANet. They’re hiring. If you can do a better job then by all means apply and take the dev’s job and make the game, in your eyes, perfect.

But let me guess, you can’t because you don’t know how.

If you don’t know how to make the algorithm then in truth you don’t know how simple or easy it is. Even for a mathematician. If making these types of models was easy they wouldn’t get paid so much for coming up with them. Insisting that it is easy doesn’t make it so and you have no idea how hard or easy it is because you don’t even know how to begin to make a model mathematically for even one 1v1 duel much less every game on every map. So please stop insisting that this is easy and people don’t understand it because without at least a firm understanding of Differential Equations and Combinatorics you yourself don’t understand the subject either.

Also, stop comparing this to chess.

This again highlights your lack of understanding on this subject.

Chess is, as difficult as it is to master, is really a very simple game compared to GW2. GW2 is a far more dynamic game than chess. First, chess is turn-based and GW2 isn’t which puts them into different leagues when it comes to possible games and positions. Chess can also only move one piece per turn and each of those pieces has only a small possible amount of moves. Even the queen at any one given time has less than 1000 possible moves and when discussing possibilities that makes that number very very very small. GW2 has 10 players moving at all times at the same time with far more possible moves. And it’s not as easy as understanding the computer program to make the model because the program is not the model, the human brain is. The reason I enjoy PvP so much is that it is a creative human mind behind the other object on the screen instead of a machine running an AI algorithm to determine it’s next move.

How easy is human creativity to model?

So chess with it’s inherent limitations makes it far easier to model than a more dynamic game like GW2 when considering the human factor. Take the article you posted about the chess thing, it has the total possible logical positions was guesstimated at about 140 million and this seems like a really big number, but it isn’t. It seems big compared to things like the number of dollars in your bank account but compared to the number of events in the universe it’s really very small. Then that is just different positions. The number of logical games only game in at about 4 million. Again, compared to possible events in the universe that number is tiny.

Now before you go into saying that you didn’t bring up possible events in the universe let me just state that the comparison is there to highlight just how small a number of things that is being calculated here compared to the infinite possible numbers we could compare it to and how that is the determination of how large or small a number is. It is based on what you compare it to. Looking at it this way the chess problem is not hard to solve and is probably why it was the first functioning AI created that can now run on your smart phone.

How many possible positions are there for one game of Kyhlo over a 15 minute period? Keeping in mind that those positions for the chess question overlap geographically and are based on turns ie. time for GW2 so simply saying all of the possible locations to stand in x10 will not solve that problem. Especially when considering time as a 4th dimension in your model along with acceleration ( as considered by the scientific definition for a change in the velocity vector) due to changes in direction, conditions like chilled, crippled and slow and boons like swiftness and quickness.

So consider an answer for that. How easy is it to come up with that? Because that would be just one step in determining a model for this.

Ok I am a bit confused over your argumentation.
My whole thread involving performance was simply answer the people who said the issue with making such a system would be a performance issue and showing them why they are/were wrong.
I do know that the issue is not a performance issue, which I have been more than clear about, so trying to attack me with that is just silly.

As for the algorithm needed, this is what you need to make. That is kind of the entire assignment, which is the main meat of solving the problem. Which I also already made clear in the thread.
Now this is the second time someone is trying to argue the “if it is simple or easy, proof it by doing it”. I already answered this argument and it makes me a bit annoyed to have to defend myself against it once more.
As I said last time, it being easy or simple is relative to the person doing it and it does not mean that it is fast or quick to do.
I already explained all this in detail so I suggest you go read that instead of repeating an invalid argument.

As for your twist on it “why don’t you just do it and use it as a job application”.
There could be tons of reason why someone wouldn’t do this and using it as an argument is again very silly.
Just to mention to most obvious:
Not currently interested in a job at Anet. Most properly course:
1. Already got a job you like.
2. Not interested in doing the type of work they are hiring for.
3. Expertise in another area of coding.
4. Salary is low, compared to other industry sectors.
Take your pick/picks.

Even if someone where interested in getting hired, it is highly unlikely someone would do so much work for free, before even applying for the job.
As said easy doesn’t mean fast. On top of that without access to the algorithm currently used in the system making, it wouldn’t be a precise model.
On top of that when did you last hear of someone applying for a job and already having done the assignment of which they were applying for a job to do?

For me personally I am not currently interested in a job at Anet, and I do not have the extra time to do a TTK system for Anet (and even if I had the time, I definitely would not do it for free and would need the data to built it from).

My lack of understanding on the subject?
No actually, it perfectly shows my understanding on the subject.

Weather it is real-time or turn based really doesn’t matter much for the mathematical model of a TTK system. Neither does the real time pose a problem for it.
Your logical possible moves for perfect play are not changed due to it being realtime or turnbased. There is a specific time-lapse which is the minimum required for any valid move you could do when doing perfect play. This time-lapse would also determine movement distance possible within the timeframe, as well as possible counter move and if none, possible counters.
Depending on the choices of output you can do and the counters opponents can do, there will be 1 best suited move and best suited counter for that move.
Due to the limited counter and output you need to look at in GW2 you would have a much lower amount of logical moves per “time-lapse”.

as an example if you are stunned, by the only stun ability the enemy got, you using your stunbreak is the only logical move: contrary to chess where logical move is upwards to 10.000.000 per move.
Due to counters being pretty specific and situations being “easy” to determine what course of action would be the best to take, it is easier for the system to determine the best move compared to something like chess.
Which should be obvious, because in chess you got time to think for much longer per move, and it is entirely about this aspect.
In GW2 you are expected to make choices in less than a second max a few seconds.
So expecting the game to require more logical deduction and thinking in a vastly smallest amount of time, would just be silly.

However, a system for calculating TTK wouldn’t be restrained by having to do its operations in split seconds, since timeframe is just a concept and it doesn’t matter if 1 seconds realtime is taking 10min for the system to analyse.
This is what seems to be what the people with the argument “realtime makes it much harder” don’t seem to understand.

As an example to simplify it to the point where most can follow.
Take the example of the most basic of a realtime game. Each player can move and have 1 attack, now even though you can argue that there is an unlimited amount of possibilities due to a character being able to move anywhere he wish and choice to attack or not attack there is only ONE logical move for perfect play, and that is “attack”, the character that chooses not to attack or will lose, doing anything else while attacking, aka moving makes zero difference in this situation, so you are not even looking at whether or not a character is moving, you are just looking at the attack.

This is the extremely simple version all can understand. If you throw in a counter skill, if the only skill it counters is the attack, then using it as much as it can is the only logical move at perfect play.
If you got 2 skills it counters and by countering skill A it negates x dmg, and counter skill B negates y damage then it is simply a matter of which is biggest x or y, and it will be used to counter the skill which makes it negate the highest dmg.

As said these are extremely simple example’s done so most can understand and follow them.
Now making it extremely complex doesn’t make it very hard to do if you got the knowledge to understand it and to create the model for it. However, it does make it take considerable more time to make…
You can say it is like counting for people that can do basic math, if you can do basic math counting to 2.000 is no more difficult than counting to 100. However, it does take considerable longer time to do.
————————————————

Now the believe you in anyway need or benefit from making a model to consider human creativity is wrong.
It got nothing to do with the system. You can be as creative as you will not and it won’t change the rules of mathematics.
No matter how you twist and turn it, you can only make the skills do what they do by the design of the algorithm. The interaction of different skills is in the algorithm.
It is not a question of creativity. It is pure mathematics and your creativity will change nothing to the TTK system.

I assume this question comes from the notion of “what when someone comes up with a built which the system didn’t foresee”.
Well you didn’t, because that is not possible. Unless the creator of the program left out some skills, forgot something in the algorithms or did another screw-up, then it wouldn’t be possible to come up with a built which wasn’t already considered by the system.
Skill x,y,z vs. skill a,b,c will always only have 1 most efficient way of using them when played perfectly. Trying to use them in any other way then that will get you are worse output result.

It is like saying you got 2 numbers number A and B. whichever number is the highest is the winner, now each number is build up of 3 numbers: 1, 2 and 3. You can only add two of them together and subtract the last number from the result.
Meaning:
2+3-1=4 will always be the largest number possible.
Trying to combine them in any other way will always give you a lower number.

This is essentially all GW2 is, a bunch of numbers interacting with each other. Your job if you made a TTK system would be to see how with the rules for each skill combo or skill, you could create the best output number vs. other skill combo’s or skills.
Which should be pretty clear would take quite a lot of time to set up all the rules for movability and range, then for each skill, then set up rules for combination of skills, then for effects, then for priority (skill danger basically, to be able to decide which skills would be prioritized when negating skills).
Then figure out the algorithms to bring it all together.

As said time consuming

As for the number of possible events in the universe: it is silly to even use such an example because no human can even comprehend such amounts ^^
Just thought I would add that hehe :P

But GW2 as explained in details above does not have endless perfect play possibilities.
It actually got very few. As explained if your opponent does X and you can do y to negate it, and y is not more useful vs. something else he got. Then you only got 1 logical move, do y. (again simplified explanation)

Now you moved the discussion of TTK system to a “balance of map” system which it is not made to do.
For balance of maps you would need another system which built on the data which it is made for.
You can always make a map that is badly balanced. Believing a TTK system automatically fix a map problem which essentially have nothing to do with the TTK system is silly.
However if you got proper balanced TTK it is much easier to balance maps since you know what the movement time from a to b is for a built and you will know with such a built your TTK would be x.
Meaning you could much easier balance the map setups due to the exact knowledge of how long someone could hold a point, while being able to move to another point in x timeframe.
As well as knowing how much TTK support a person that could move between point in x time could bring and how much TTK GvG x people would then need for it to be balanced compared to the gained points/second scale.

edit:
sorry for typos ^^

also to add on, the more precise you want the TTK to be the longer it will take to make, but even a approximately TTK system could do wonders for balancing and would take considerably less time to make

btw:
chess was actually choosen as the system because it was seen as a test of intellect and if we could make an actual “thinking” machine.
it was diffinately not because it was “simple” which is also anything but true, it is not an easy game to become good at (even when just considering understanding why x is a good move opposed to y).

ebslike.1852:

Nyx just a word of advice, if you want to discuss things in a civil manner on a gaming forum don’t use passive aggressive emoticons or randomly capitalize words.

capitalized words is true, those can be considered provoking or negative in their nature, i will remove those
i don’t see any passive aggressive smilies?

An idea for Condition damage

So first a little explanation. I have always seen condition damage as intended to do large amount of damage over LONG periods.
Like when you get hit by a condition damage build you know that you got at least 30 good seconds before the condition damage can kill you. However you also know no matter what you do if you don’t get that condition damage cleansed you will die, might be in 30 sec might be in 120 sec but die you will.

I feel this would be the proper way for condition damage to work since I do not believe condition damage should overlap with direct damage. When you can make condition damage do higher or close to the burst damage then direct damage can it is getting silly IMO.

So with this in mind here is my suggestion:

I would suggest moving burning back towards the old days and make bleeding react in the same manner.
By this I mean that more burning/bleeding doesn’t stack damage but stack longer duration.
Now the problem here becomes that most “1-2” condition removers will remove all your many stacks of burning/bleed making the damage you did not worth the built/effort. Due to you, stacking let us say 2minutes of duration being removed by a single condition removal.

Because I this I believe that conditions should have a counter on it (as it does now) which isn’t a damage increase but a “removals needed” this counter could be 1 counter for each 20 sec of duration.
Meaning each condition removal would remove 20 seconds of the duration of the burn/bleed.

I would also have each condition applied be personal specific, so if two people apply the same condition, they would not stack but work as individual burns/bleeds.

Now the numbers is guaranteed totally off since I haven’t done any of the calcs needed (either would I be able to due to lack of the data needed to do such a thing). But the idea itself I think would be a nice way of doing it

extra:
not sure if poisen should work in the same manner, not familiar enough with poisen skills to say, since it is quite rare to run into large amount of poisen damage ^^

1: unbalanced. (only considering meta build of balance is absurd; consider all builds when talking balance, and here it is woefully broken balance wise. even more so when considering GvG with those premises)
2: therefore pvp dying, which equals people leaving, which equals pve slowly dying, due to no endgame to do (pve is always limited in games, even though it can be very fun).
3:too narrow in its current scope (due to the balance properly).
4:boring to play, meaning you don’t really feel the awesome clutch moments. and you do not feel that it is truly rl skillbased; aka do x build or handicap yourself (balance again).
5:GvG unless tank build you die instantly (TTK system needed as well for GvG to insure fun GvG play for all role/builds)

think it could all be fixed+- with a good TTK system. which i would love to see save gw2, but sadly i doubt it will happy. one can hope right hehe
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PVP-basic-game-design-TTK-time-to-kill/page/2#post5483352

Exedore.6320:

This thread is such a farce. Its promoters don’t really understand what they’re talking about. For example, chess is easy to solve conceptually, but its decision tree quickly becomes immense and takes too long to realistically process. We have multiple models for weather, especially if you look at hurricane path prediction. If they’re so great at what they do, why do we still run multiple different ones which come up with different results? The result is that models aren’t perfect. And grandmaster chess computers and meteorological models are run on supercomputers. Much more than what a game developer would have.

When you talk about an MMORPG, there are many more variables and possible decisions than in chess. And because it’s real-time – not turn-based – timing of each decision becomes a further variable. It becomes so ridiculously complex that you can’t realistically solve it. You can try and model it, but models aren’t trivial to do and aren’t perfect. But you can only model what normally happens. If someone puts together an unexpected combination of abilities or traits which wasn’t in the model, what then? Do you put every possible permutation in it and make it even more unwieldy, uncertain, and require immensely more time to run? If it didn’t turn out well, you need to tweak some numbers and do it again.

The best you can realistically do is make a lot of assumptions and look at subsets of encounters in a vacuum. Developers do this a lot and come up with “good enough” balance. It can never be perfect because you’ve made so many assumptions and limited the scope. But maybe once you actually go play it, it may turn out differently. So you go back and tweak it again. Now consider you have a myriad of match-ups and skill interactions which vary. In order to realistically examine that, you make further assumptions about a generic enemy. But that can’t always account for details. For example, slower attacks are more susceptible to blind and block. A defender may end up with an advantage against those.

Worst of all, the OP’s original assumption is that ANet hasn’t balanced TTK. Maybe they have, but your assumption of the value of TTK is incorrect and ANet uses once which is much higher. Maybe they actually balance DPS vs bunker and it’s working how they want it to?

Dear sir/miss.

Due to your post content i decided to dedicate a post only to answer you.
I apologise that I didn’t answer you sooner but I’ve been busy and to be honest your post made me very angry because not only is it a personal attack, but it is also filled with misinformation which are directly wrong.

I will go through it one stop at a time so everyone can follow

1:
first of I never mentioned anything about meteorological models eleandra did, I assume it was him you attacked here since you write the thread.
However he is not wrong.
First of one of the commenly used meteorological models is MM5 which easily run on an i7. You do not need a supercomputer to run these models.

Now your complain then comes up to “why are they not always 100% correct” well this is quite obvious but I will go into it anyway for the sake of people wondering about this.
This is actually a problem with our understanding of the phenomenon more than the models. If we don’t know exactly what is happening and why it is happening making a model for it will be guess work.
Now this issue is something that happens IRL only because we do not have the algorithms in front of us to see what exactly is going on and why.
however, in a computer program you know exactly what is going on, there is ZERO parameters that cannot be fully understood by the programmer looking at it. Therefore you wouldn’t need any guesswork to come up with a precise model to solve the mathematical problem (you might however use statistical estimates to insure simpler algorithms etc.)

I think that should cover your first “farce” issue.
——-

2:
You are saying that grandmaster chess programs are run on supercomputers, again this is not true.
An i7 can do over 100.000.000 operations a second, which is more then enough for anything a chess grandmaster program needs and can do. You can actually reach grandmaster on a mobile devices capability.
Just to give some basic info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_chess_matches
(Ow yes I know how wrong it is of me to link wiki, but seriously this is common knowledge so lazy research is completely accepted, for people within the field it is like asking if humans can breathe without help in space.)

This should pretty much clear up your misconception about chess programs and what is needed (you could have done this with a 1min google search, even using wiki would have solved this issue. You should really do this before calling others out next time, since it is bad behaviour to do as you did).

Next part:
3:
This part is again going on the assumption that you will need a supercomputer to do the calcs needed.
Now this is at a worse spot then the chess argument you had let me explain you why.
First of with the chess computer or with any “AI realtime system” where the computer have a low timelimit to act the operation needed per second is obviously extremely important because the system only have x seconds to act.
However in a model simulation it doesn’t matter if it takes 0,1 second or 10min for the system to do the operations, since it is a model simulator and realtime doesn’t apply since you are working with raw numbers and all you need as output for success is a number, not a bot playing.
Therefore even if we assumed that the dataflow of the system was to big to do in realtime it wouldn’t matter because the simulation of a 20min fight could be run over 20-40-60-100 hours if needed still give us the data we need and therefore be a success.
(you could easily do the operations in bulks doing 1 hours at a time as an example).

Now that this is said. The believe that the data variants on perfect play for GW2 at a mathematical level for gw2 is too large to do with 100.000.000 operations per second within a reasonable timeframe is just absurd and shows a complete lack of any understanding of the subject. As I have said before in this, thread and as I have just said, again it is an absurd notion to believe so.
You can run grandmaster level chess programs on a mobile phone, which variants of moves is higher than anything you will ever see in gw2. The believe that an i7 couldn’t run a simulation of the gw2 mathematical model for TTK is completely wacked and the only reason anyone would believe such a thing is a complete lack of knowledge on computer science or/and math.
Just for you math nerds (if there is any) here is a fun little thread about the mathematics of it
http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/mathematics-and-chess

4:
My assumption is built on what is seen on the pvp front, it is more than clear that the GW2 system is not built over a TTK system or with a TTK system in mind. You don’t need to make more than a handful of builds designed to test this theory to notice that the TTK versus each other could never add up with current balance.
————————————————
Now I think I answered and cleared up all your misunderstandings/misinformation.
If there is anything more please do ask, but I urge you to do so in a better manner and do your basic research beforehand.

Best regards
Nyx

:::
to every one else, i am sorry i haven’t addressed your post yet i will do so soonish.
It takes a bit of time and effort to address the different concerns/post in a goodm constructive and nice manner.
especially since a good deal of it have been addressed/explained and need to be explained in a better/different way
therefore it is something i will do when i have the time/energy to give you the proper respect you deserve, by using that time and energy on answering the good post that have been made in the best way i can

editing:
typos etc

ebslike.1852:

So in this alternate reality where TKK is perfectly balanced, I guess every class also has the same attack-range? The same mobility? Every PvP match is played on Courtyard (as opposed to maps where killing the other team does not mean an automatic win)?

Since balancing videogames is so easy, could you provide 1 example of a perfectly balanced multiplayer videogame? I can’t think of any, which would mean the people making these videogames are all idiots (since it’s so easy to balance). Hell even MarioKart has a best kart setup and there are waaaaaay less variables then in an MMO like Guild Wars 2.

you haven’t read the discussion i can see
please do and ask again if there is anything you are in doubt off and i will address it as well as i can.

just to answer you shortly on your concern. TTK takes into account any difference on players advantage; ranged vs. melee, speed, etc.

apharma.3741:

I think I can speak for a great many here when I say this Nyx.

If it is so easy as you claim, do it.

Again though you and no-one else has addressed my point of TTK does not correlate directly with winning. Examples of such are in oRNG games where they lost due to not holding caps but nearly always won the fights. In your entire TTK premise you do not factor in a characters ability to disengage from an unfavourable fight to find a more favourable fight or a more favourable circumstance to win.

Example: Thief/ele/mesmer choosing to leave a team fight putting his team at a TTK disadvantage but decapping the 2 points held by the opposing team.

In this case if you balanced TTK completely but left out factoring in mobility around a map, both horizontally and vertically, you would end up with only classes and builds with teleports/movement skills. This is due to the ability of classes with superior movement to be able to rotate around the slower classes and be able to win in engagements.

The notion that some ones suggestion is wrong because they don’t work for free and do the job which they are suggesting for free, is quite weird too me.
It is not that it would be HARD to do, it would take TIME and EFFORT to do.
Which both is something people are paid a lot of money for. If GW2 had interest in hiring someone for this, I am sure they would be searching for the person right now.
Thinking that a software developer, preferably one with expertise within the area, should just do it for free because it isn’t “hard for them to do” is just absurd and I frankly don’t know how to address that point in any other way then I have here.

Eleandra addressed your point quite well earlier in this post, he also came with some different purposals

I will however address it as well as your example is not correct.
TTK is calculated on ALL your abilities in a fight, if you use movement abilities in a fight you effectively change your TTK compared to using other abilities.

Depending on how the movement ability works, what the focus of it is, and how strong it is, would determine how it is used best in a combat situation (perfect play).
Also depending on the design of is it TTK designed in a 1v1 or XvX or both? Would determine which impact it would have.

If the ability makes you “immortal” to an enemy.
Meaning it is a “get out of jail free card” where the opponent can’t stop you from disengaging completely when played perfectly (everything stated is when played perfectly), then when using this ability you shouldn’t be able to kill the opponent either.
I gave the example of the assassin vs. Templar earlier, which is actually such a case.
The assassin can ALWAYS disengage effectively making it 100% impossible for the Templar to ever kill the assassin (again everything is assumed when played perfectly from both sides), therefore according to the principle of TTK the Templar can’t be killed by an assassin when played perfectly. It will be a stalemate forever, the assassin can always reengage and 100% controls when the engagement happens, but if the Templar plays perfectly he can’t kill the Templar. But neither can the Templar kill him.

That is an example of movability/disengage being so strong that it essentially makes you immortal vs a specific class/role.
Which is there because it follows the TTK principle ^^
(BTW played wrongly both classes can kill each other in a handful of seconds, I around 5-10 seconds+- depending on how much the opponent screws up: engagement can also easily take 30-120 seconds if both plays extremely well but not perfect.. so the time wearies a lot: remember TTK is the calc of Perfect play)

There is one aspect that TTK does not take into account though which is another aspect you would need another formula to look at.
It is “difficulty of execution”. Meaning not playstyles are equally difficult to pull off.
In Aion as an example, playing a Templar perfectly is WORLDS easier than playing an sorcerer perfectly.
So the problem which can occur with the TTK system is that if some abilities are harder to do correctly compared to others, the RL skill needed for one playstyle will be higher then another.

Now this is only really an issue in:
1: badly designed games (where reaching skill ceiling is impossible).
2: on lower RL skill level play/players (when looking at players not yet masters at the game).

For this difficulty it is not an issue of the TTK system, more an issue of insuring that all classes/roles got both “hard to master” and “easy to learn” setups.
Which would negate the issue while not punishing the top-level play

Of couse there will always be some issues when talking balance on ALL rl skill levels due to people being at different skill levels and most of us thinking we are really better then we actually are
It is nearly impossible to truly SEE the skill level on anything then top players
(although it is “easy” to calculate with a system what skill level would be needed to pull something off).

Hope that cleared up my view a bit
and do keep in mind that other tools would be good to combine with a tool like TTK if one needs even creator/better balance.
the TTK is just a tool which overall garantees a very good balance baseline in a relatively easy and fast manner (and cheap, compared to so many other ways you could try and do it)

So i have read all the comments (up to a few hours ago, reading the rest now) and most of them are saying the same things

From what I can see there is 2 issue points people that highly disagree seems to have from when I read the comments, I will try to address them one at a time.
Let us first establish what perfect BALANCE is.
Prefect balance is two equally good players win/lose 50% of the time. I hope no one can disagree on this point at least

First one, which is sadly the worst one to try to explain it for, is:

1: some people lack some understanding of the mathematics (no offense meant).
I see people arguing that balance can be achieved having different TTK’s fighting each other, by this it means that class A got TTK x versus class B, but class B got TTK y versus class A.
To put numbers and names on it to make it easier to understand:
Class A called “tank”, class B called “dps”, TTK x lets say that is 20, TTK y lets say that is 10.

Therefore, the statement is:
Pvp balance can be reached even when; Tanks can kill dps’s in 20 seconds, and dps can kill tanks in 10 seconds, when both are played perfectly in all aspects.
Now if tanks die in 10 seconds and dps dies in 20 seconds that means tanks will ALWAYS lose the fight.
Because 10 is less than 20.

Now the next follow up is “stone/paper/scissor” balance.
Now the problem with the “stone/paper/scissor” is that it is inherently “unbalanced” that is the whole point of the “stone/paper/scissor”.
Stone wins 100% of the time over scissor, paper loses 100% of the time to scissor etc. which is not balanced pvp, since balanced pvp is 50% win when facing equally good players.

Anyway to address the complaint about the TTK not working when talking “stone/paper/scissor” I will explain how it is used, again this is simple mathematics.
You simply determines what the win % should be for stone to beat scissor.
Do you want stone to win 60%? 80%? 100%? Or whichever % you want the stone to win when facing a scissor, and you use the TTK to determining this.
Meaning if you want stone to be at a 20% advantage facing a scissor, you simply make the scissors TTK 20% longer than the TTK of a stone facing a sciccor.
Meaning is stone TTK is 10 sec vs. a scissor, then scissors TTK is 12 seconds when facing a stone.

In this manner, you can VERY precisely control the advantage a role/class shall have in a “stone/paper/scissor” setup.

Now to get back to the inherent problem of a “stone/paper/scissor” setup, it is NOT balanced in its core design.
However, this can be adjusted by focusing on GvG opposed to 1v1.
But by doing so you are again bringing in the TTK to the GvG, so instead of calling it “class A” it would be “group A”, and instead of calling it “class B” it would be “group B”, and the same rules applies.
TTK of group A against group B should be the same as group B against group A.

Now it will be a bit more complicated to explain the issue is when going up to groups.
Because ONLY looking at TTK will insure that it is balanced, but it will not insure that it is equally FUN for all members of the group.

Let us assume that in a group, you need one class X, if you do not have that class X you lost the fight (if not no one would ever bring class X in a group), but class X will die in the first 10 seconds of the fight when attacked and the fight will then last for 2minutes.
Now who do you think will have the most fun, class x which is dead after 10 seconds then have to wait for 110 seconds before the fight is over? Or the other classes which gets to play and engage in the game for over 10 times as long?
Now this is not really a question, more a statement

So how does games normally fix this?
Two ways are often used together:
1: by allowing equalizing of TTK amongst the team itself, meaning that the team stays alive together and all die together with very little time span between, equalizing their TTK.
This is usually done by having a trinity setup.
2: switching importance of targets, making targets have abilities that forces them to be priority targets but once that ability is used makes them low priority targets, forcing target switch (or losing the fight).
A good example of this is the spirit master from aion, which have an ability called fear shriek (insanely powerfull CC in pvp) which means it is primary focus, but if it gets off the ability it is very low priority for the next 60 seconds (cd). Thereby making the dps needed to kill it much more important to be used on a high priority target.

Lots of around explaining for something simple, yes I know :P hehe
But all in all and in short.
Without the TTK equal between 1v1, you will have an issue which needs to fixed in GvG, if you don’t use equalizing in GvG you will severely impact the amount difference on game time each player of the group gets, thereby impact the amount of fun a player gets out of the game.
True you can do Balance in GvG in such order, but the fun factor for each player will be wildly different, which is bad pvp design and definitely won’t get you an e-sport scene
(not to mention you also eliminate the 1v1 and XvX scene for any other setup then the one GvG you balanced it around. which severely hurt players thinking other XvX then the one you made is fun to do… 1v1 is always a Huge fun factor for top pvp’ers and oftend a way to measure personal skills, so i personally think it is bad to exclude it)

When that is said it is pretty clear that 5 meta builds will ALWAYS win over 5 people having very diverse builds (let’s say 2full dps, 2 full tank, 1 healer setups).
So the TTK for GvG is not good either because the group build (lets call it a build since it is a single entity as a group when we are talking balance. Same as individuals are a single balance entity when talking 1v1) is still very locked down and the TTK of other builds is in no way balanced when facing the meta builds setups

So in short it isn’t balanced.

Ok that was the First part hehe…
Pretty crazy :P

Now next part:
“The complexity of such an algorithm would be too big to be practically possible.”

Now for anyone that follows research within physics, AI, AGI, Algorithm optimization, or just general computer science, it will be clear that this statement is woefully wrong.
The complexity of doing calculations on black holes or AGI cognitive architecture, software architecture, environment task, neuro structure, mind philosophy, or even within narrow AI doing stuff like chess computers which uses machine AI is all using algorithms and systems that are Extremely complex compared to anything that would be required to do the TTK system in GW2.

The TTK could basically be done in a spreadsheet by a mathematician. True when done by a human in a spreadsheet it would properly take a bit longer and be considerably less accurate due to tweaking parameters would be much harder to do, but it would be durable.

Therefore, the notion that doing a TTK system on GW2 would be “impossible” due to the complexity of the various parameters involved is just an absurd notion, which have no hold in reality

Now as a last point TTK is a TOOL, and like any other tool it is meant to be used in the way which gives you the result you wish to archieve.
If your goal is to have an extremely “stone/paper/scissor” focused setup which is 100% focused on GvG then that is what you will use it for.
But currently it should be no discussion that builds for each roles in GW2 is woefully broken, and that many classes cannot build effective specific roles and are stuck in a very few meta builds to be effective.
If the TTK was used even to created the before mentioned “stone/paper/scissor” focused setup which is 100% focused on GvG system you would see ALL classes be able to do extremely effective in the designated roles build, and all Roles available be usefull and effective in the GvG setups. Which isn’t the case right now.

When that is said I will add that I PERSONALLY think it is a bad design choice if you want to go with a system that is so narrow as to only want “stone/paper/scissor” focused setup which is 100% focused on GvG pvp, instead of balancing it from 1v1 and up to XvX, allowing all sizes of pvp to be balanced and fun in all roles.
I doubt such a narrow system as mentioned before even when done perfectly using TTK and other balance tools, would ever stand a chance to get a large Esport following due to it being so narrow in scope.
Again, i will say that GW2 is in no way balanced even for that narrow of a scope, and even if they wish nothing else then that scope they should still take into consideration how to balance this out, i would suggest using a TTK system since it is simple to make and use and give very good balance compared to ressources used on it.

hope that cleared some points up and gave some info to people

Archon.6480:

I find the OP to be incredibly arrogant and self indulgent in it’s tone. Some of the responses as well. You obviously have no idea how the game is coded underneath the covers and the real programming has more to do with managing how the game plays over a WAN while keeping everything in sync.

Your conceptualization of how to balance is skewed as well. The “simple” mathematics you describe are not simple in any way. How do you account for the effects of combo fields and finishers? Boons? AoE effects on a group vs. single target effects. It’s only simple to you because you, obviously, don’t understand what you are talking about.

And, I am fairly certain the most complex part is designing the game so that it will work on a variety of hardware and the clients will be able to communicate over the network. The game you are playing is a very small part of what the developers work on. The code that makes it work (at all) is the hard part, for sure.

I am sorry if i sounded arrogant.
I must admit when I wrote my OP I was a bit too annoyed of the “lack of competence” I felt the devs have shown on this area and it properly shows through my tone

The coding beneath is irrelevant for the TTK system. Since the TTK is just tweaking the already existing attributes value, in other words it is just changing the numbers. It got no relevance how any of the design structure etc. is made when doing this ^^

The mathematics on this area is actually very simple in comparison to other systems.
As I mentioned the chess computers, which reaches 3200 ratings (the max humans have reached is around 2800 for comparison) have vastly higher amounts of possibilities that the system will need to evaluate to make the best move.
The TTK system is essentially a Static system, which means the algorithms to figure out the perfect TTK numbers would be much simpler and easier to make. Do not forget that such a program would not be part of the actual gw2 game code itself. It would simply be used as a fast way to find the perfect balance of the TTK while making it easy to adjust parameters if needed.

Of couse as I mentioned before everything is relative. For someone who is not educated or haven’t worked within the field before, making such program and finding the right algorithm could be a big challenge.
However, I would assume if you are a company creating a game for 100mill + that you do have the funds to hire someone, which actually have the fully developed skills, knowledge and experience for the task. Especially since such a task could be done by people of various expertise areas, since it is essentially “just” number crunching. In addition, while number crunching can be extremely challenging, there is several fields where expertise within this area is a must.
(Mathematics, algorithm optimization, statistics, and game balance designers should have the knowledge needed. Just to mention a few of the top of my head, that should be more then capable of such task)

Eleandra.4859:

So many good points made here.
Especially your opening post Nyx! Kudos for that.

Just as a short introduction of my background:
I myself own a MSc in Computer Science and work in the field of “safety critical systems” basically the total opposite of game designing as for us everything is about crunching the numbers so that the Boeing/Airbus/car/highspeed train/nuclear powerplant does not go boom.

The ranting part:
There is virtually no evening when I am logged into this game where it does not scream into my face that the class developers/designers of GW2 are not only no mathematicians but most likely not even programmers (as indicated to me by the absolute lack of understanding of basic principles of programming – I might be wrong though) but game designers.

Back to topic:
I totally agree with you, Nyx that crunching the numbers is the only way to get pvp right at this point and that there is most likely no one at Arenanet who has the mental capacity/skillset to do that (perhaps the trading post experts, as they seem to have at lease a firm knowledge of statistics).
I also fear that no one will be hired for this, unfortunately because some of the basic concepts of GW2 pvp are very, very promising I think.

Just one question about your stance Nyx:
What I am not sure of is the following:
You say that TTK should be equal over all classes. How is your stance to offsetting this equilibrium by e. g. saying: “It is okay if it takes 20 seconds to kill class A if Class A needs also 20 seconds to kill everyone else.” and (using your 10 second example).
Is this something you find acceptable or would it already, in your opinion, corrupt the principle of using TTK as a balancing axiom?

For me this is actually important in order to promote the bunker, dd, bruiser playstyle which I like in its versatility.

Neverthelsee your basic idea that there needs to be a basis of numbers that give a metric of the tradeoff one makes if deciding to play a bunker setup instead of a dd setup is exactly what I feel is needed.

Hi eleandra.

First of thanks for the very nice words.

I am quite tired right now but would like to answer before I go to sleep. So I apologise if my wording is not the best in this answer

As I can hear we are very much in the same mind-set when it comes to the view and look of the development (it would do GW2 so much good to hire someone with expertise within game balance design, or just a mathematician or computer science with expertise in algorithm who could help them solve these formula problems.).
Anyway will jump directly to the question now

As I understand your question, it is “if the actual amount of seconds for TTK is important for the design”, meaning if 10 sec is the upper limit, 20 as you mention or 120 seconds for that matter. Correct me if I misunderstood

The time itself is not important, weather it is 2 seconds or 2.000 seconds. As long as the balance is equal so the class which takes x seconds to kill you, you can kill in x seconds.
As an example if we look at Aion the TTK between a Templar and an Assassin is infinity, the Templar will never be able to kill the assassin and the assassin will never be able to kill the Templar if both are played perfectly in an fair environment for both.
As such, the TTK principle is still in effect.

Most devs have acknowledged that players enjoy different type of playstyles and TTK timer.
To accommodate this they have made a “role system” so different roles have different TTK and playstyles.
Meaning Tanks usually have a very high TTK timer, so it always takes them a long time to kill but equally it takes a long time to kill them.
Equally dps classes will kill very fast but also get killed very fast.
Lastly, we got the “immortal class” type, healers which can’t normally kill anyone but neither can they be killed. Often to balance out GvG some classes gets the ability to equalize their TTK with another class, meaning they use their time to die or time to kill to enhance another role TTK which in return diminish their own effective TTK. (this would in game design translate to healing others instead of yourself, or protecting others with your skills, etc.)

But essentially as long as you insure that the TTK is equalized and always in balance you could design any kind of class/role setup and it would still work.

Chapell.1346:

No thanks, i roleplay.

you are either trolling or you will need to explain what that have to do with the subject

Good Tofu.9376:

Returned after a couple of years and was top player in 4 games (despite not keeping up with the meta), went 1-8….matchmaking is a joke.

Also, no surprise that regular servers show 30 total people playing at one time.

Oh…and Ele’s everywhere stacking burning. Great fun.

Horribly imbalanced PvP + broken matchmaking + low player count = game is beyond saving right now. Maybe expansion will help.

you might be interested in reading my post about the TTK ^^
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PVP-basic-game-design-TTK-time-to-kill/first#post5472267
it is kinda on the same wave link, and explains quite the major issue of balance in the game

the issue i see with the condi damage right now is that condi damage is supposed to be SLOW applied over time damage, but very high overall damage. (it never really was this… it was always applied WAY too fast for this concept)
any condisetup which will fully kill you in 10 seconds or lesss, is not slow :P

condi damage in my view is suppose to be the opposite of the “direct damage” it is suppose to SLOWLY weather your opponent down while you defend yourself.
but at the same time it is suppose to last for a LONG time, so just moving away won’t stop you from dying 30 seconds later.
without condi clear you will die after fighting a condi-specced class, even after you win.

so the downside should be it takes a loong time for the damage to ramp up.
upside should be “the damage ticks last Forever” (ofc. not forever but for a LONG time 30-120 seconds), forcing you to get condi-clear to continue.

TorsoReaper.8530:

SkiTz.4590:

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

I think you are right in that only GW2 pvp’ers are watching but the 10,000 viewer count is low because right now anet is proactively driving people away from playing GW2 PVP. Think about the matchmaking balance issues, no soloq, no visible MMR or ranking system, etc… LOL wouldn’t have 25m players if they had all these shortcomings.

If anet wants more eyeballs and wants gw2 to be a serious esport, they have to start with the basics. People can complain about D/D ele all they want but if each team each had 1 D/D ele and those 2 were of equal skill, the complaining would be less relevant. Instead we get 1 good premade team fighting 5 people of whatever class is on the daily reward list and it ends 500 to 50.

i think it has more to do with a balance issue amongst the playstyle/roles then anything else.
most large esport games didnt even have spectator systems when they became HUGE esport successes.
it is a question about having good very well balanced pvp that people find easy to learn, hard to master and which equals out to have a RL skills as the primary deciding factor.

i think the issue is primarily in the balance of the TTK.
as i explain here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PVP-basic-game-design-TTK-time-to-kill/first#post5472267

Schurge.5194:

I am curious what MMO had TTK that was equal among classes and roles.

talking pvp balance:

Two that pops to mind which is heavily influenced by a TTK is Aion and B&S when talking 1v1 as well as group.
When talking group vs group you got something like lol, smite and other moba’s which are building their systems GvG focused TTK.
nwo based their design as well on TTK.

Actually, TTK is something which almost every pvp orientated game has in their design because it is 100% essential for Good competitive pvp gameplay

i assume this is also the reason most games does trinity, because if you want TTK to only be group orientated (or want some diversity/counter class setup types), you need Clear role defined and number caps to insure that the group environment keeps the TTK balanced.

I also assume that GW2 was planning a system based around group combat.
When looking at high-ranged dps builds, their support for the group is quite good, which would make their TTK GvG good if they had proper Trinity setup, meaning that you had the ability to truly shield and protected the dps’s from getting nuked down in seconds.

if you look at aion as an example due to the dps burst from more tanky classes, if there was no support that could stop Templars+clerics from rolfstomping dps classes, the best pvp would always be temp+cleric because their TTK is vastly superior to pure dps classes in GvG. (assuming no hardcounter support was present)
However, because of stuff like Bodygaurd, pull, burst heals, shields, etc. it is very valid to include the dps focused classes as well. Since true if they aren’t hard protected, healed, etc. they would simply just die in such group environment. But because it is GvG and they do get protected the GvG TTK equals out.
(due to defensive classes taking of lowering their dps by focusing on protecting, healers needing to focus more on the healing/protecting, and the dps having much higher dps making up for the loss in TTK that is suffered by the healers+tanks not focusing on dps’ing)
Since more diverse teams opens up for more tactics and better/different ways to deal with other teams the more diverse teams are often more sort after.

In GW2 you have no such trinity setup to make up for the LARGE difference in TTK for 1v1. Which means in GvG it isn’t much different, there isn’t much a team can do in the Setups of sPVP(or organised fair pvp enviroments) to protect some builds and more of “the advantage of having such builds that Really need protecting is in no way Worth the trade-off, that the other roles/builds will have to do, to try and do so. Especially since the protective power is vastly more amplified by keeping to the most efficient TTK 1v1 builds compared to diversifying.
Which then comes to the issue of GvG TTK being extremely off when working with most, if not all, diverse build setups vs. meta setups.

Sabull.5670:

From your language it’s obvious that you like to talk in the extremes and state things as simple, incredibly, easy, obvious, extremely laughably ridicolous facts.

PVP basic game design: TTK (time to kill).
…
TTK is one of the most basic concepts of pvp design.
…
It is the most essential and basic in pvp game design when it comes to balance (also some of the first you will run into in any course if you actually educated yourself, which any serious dev should have done if they want a job or want to keep a job within the industry).
…
It is actually an INSANELY simple concept of pvp gamedesign and extremely important to get right.
(which there really is no excuse because you can just make an algorithm which calcs the exact needed numbers for the TTK to match overall for all roles/classes/skills)
…
Now my complain is that in GW2 the TTK is off by so much it is laughably bad, meta builds will completely and utterly destroy full dps builds (as an example).
Only VERY few build setups is valid and you can EASILY make builds, which is 100% impossible to win with (which completely proofs that the TTK of skills/classes haven’t been done correctly).
…
“Hire a competent balance designer which is Actually Educated within game design (meaning he actually took the education or at least followed up his old education with the courses of this decade)”
Moreover, get all classes, skills, etc. into a spreadsheet and fix it up OR get a mathematician/programmer to make an algorithm to do it for you.

Since you are a multi hundred million dollars company so you not having such basic concept locked 100% down is not ok.
Especially in a game you “pride yourself” on being a pvp “gem” and wanting an esport.

Perhaps you read this on a introductury course for table top games. While that is probably true for a turn based game or a MOBA, or something like that.
I do not think solving outcome of absolutely perfectly played duel is as simple for a interactive combat like MMO. Or solving what even happens in a perfectly played fight anyway. There would be incredible amount of variables in such a problem, what skills you dodge, what do you blind? Do you blind, dodge, stunbreak, absorb and condi transfer? First minute both players are perfectly kiteing and avoiding every single attack? This is such a huge problem and full of questions.

I’m referring to your claim that TTK is such a incredibly easy thing to apply for a game like GW2. It is not.

And secondly, what sense would such make anyway. People don’t play perfectly, would I balance um say S/D thief based on perfect gameplay that it can avoid every single attack attempted by the enemy, while this doesn’t reflect reality. Or that Fresh Air with full deck of arcanes will instantly kill anyone – perfect gameplay is based on reacting right.

Thirdly why base balancing of a teamgame on a 1v1 model.

While GW2 balance obviously isn’t perfect and I’m not trying to defend that. But your post is quite simplistic and bold in it’s claims and narrow in it’s ideas…

Everything is relative
When I am saying it as it being “easy” as you interpret it. It is seen from a person which specialty, job, education and work is within the subject.

If we are talking someone with no knowledge within game design, balance, mathematics and programming, then YES it will be extremely complex to the point of impossible.
However, I think we can all agree if you are such a person you shouldn’t have a job as a “lead balance designer” on a game that cost 100million + to develop. That is just crazy to assume that.
If you have the credentials to get such a job, we must assume that you have a vast knowledge and/or are educated within pvp game design, mathematical statistics, or/and programming of such algorithms.
With THAT in mind, this is quite simple/basic. No one, which is educated within the last 10+- years within game design, should be clueless to TTK and pvp balancing.
———————————-

Good pvp design core concepts apply to ALL genres.
Whether you are going with a TTK for group vs group or 1v1 is not relevant for the core concepts of the design.
The TTK will still have the same issue’s if 1v1 TTK is off (unless you got a VERY heavy trinity setup where capability of negating damage for team members and healing them is in such high focus, that the TTK overall equals out in diversed group builds played perfectly, targeting perfectly vs. any other team setup.
Which is not the case in gw2)

Actually it is “that simple”
(well as mentioned if you are not highly educated within the subject it isn’t, but neither is coding the system itself. It takes experts within the fields for it to be “easy/within reason”, but as mentioned for a product of this scale there is really no excuse for not having such people leading the pvp balance design)

In addition, no there isn’t much variation in how to do it perfectly from both sides. It is pure number crunching and you can make an algorithm to check which patterns/solutions gives the best results.
(we have chess computers at 3200 ratings, you don’t think we can make an algorithm to do a little mathematics for number crunching skills in an mmo?)

The sense of it is “balancing the game”
Pretty obvious when you think of it.
And no humans don’t play perfectly, but the TTK insures that the person who plays “BETTER” will always win.
(or almost always, there could be some edge cases due to critical chance’s etc. which is only relevant when we are talking two players that are very close to each other’s RL skill lvl).

I would assume that for PVP’ers that the preferred state of the game would be such a balance where their own RL skills was the primary factor of whether or not they win, and the build is a preferred playstyle more than a determining factor of success.

The problem with balance is PURELY a number tweaking; it is actually extremely simple to do balance if you just have the knowledge of how to do it….
Which is why 100mill+ products shouldn’t be suffering from a large issue with simple stuff like TTK, which is also why I am posting this on the forum to bring light to an issue which should be basic knowledge.
It is definitely fixable by the devs if they just hire someone, which is educated within the subject, or have educated themselves within it

PVP basic game design: TTK (time to kill).

TTK (time to kill).

TTK is one of the most basic concepts of pvp design.
TTK is the time it takes to kill a target with everything taken into account and when played perfectly with zero mistakes. For gw2 that would be with perfect dodge, defensive skills, combinations, cc, heals, gap closing/creating etc. everything done perfect on both sides (every skill used at the perfect timew).

It is the most essential and basic in pvp game design when it comes to balance (also some of the first you will run into in any course if you actually educated yourself, which any serious dev should have done if they want a job or want to keep a job within the industry).

So to go into it deeper:
The design is to insure balanced pvp across classes and roles.
It acknowledge any skill/difference and advantage a player might have and balance out the numbers.

As an example:
if a class can kill you in 10 seconds when he uses every manoeuvre perfectly and you use every defensive manoeuvre perfectly, your dodge, defensive skills, gapcloser/creater, heals, etc perfectly.
Then you should be able to kill that class in 10 seconds as well when he uses his skills perfectly and you uses yours perfectly.

In such a manner you can insure 100% balance across all classes.
Equal skill wise you look at individual skills and insure that the TTK difference of changing to that skill stays in place.
Meaning if you change a skill which effectively slows your TTK with 10%, then that skill needs to slow the enemies TTK by 10%.

It is actually an INSANELY simple concept of pvp gamedesign and extremely important to get right.
(which there really is no excuse because you can just make an algorithm which calcs the exact needed numbers for the TTK to match overall for all roles/classes/skills)

Now my complain is that in GW2 the TTK is off by so much it is laughably bad, meta builds will completely and utterly destroy full dps builds (as an example).
Only VERY few build setups is valid and you can EASILY make builds, which is 100% impossible to win with (which completely proofs that the TTK of skills/classes haven’t been done correctly).

Now there is only one suggestion to this issue which will properly never happened but I will state it anyway:
“Hire a competent balance designer which is Actually Educated within game design (meaning he actually took the education or at least followed up his old education with the courses of this decade)”
Moreover, get all classes, skills, etc. into a spreadsheet and fix it up OR get a mathematician/programmer to make an algorithm to do it for you.

Since you are a multi hundred million dollars company so you not having such basic concept locked 100% down is not ok.
Especially in a game you “pride yourself” on being a pvp “gem” and wanting an esport.