Guild Wars 2

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve put forward, Indigo.
But I do think you might accidentally be misrepresenting our options a bit.

You’re kind of giving the impression combat dynamism is this binary situation where ‘Human Opponent=Yes, AI Opponent=No’ . It’s more of spectrum depending on where the enemy behavior falls on Scripted vs. AI, how much the combat supports snap desicion-making vs. simple reflex checks, and how much of your ability to affect the playingfeild is Automated vs. Manual (and there’s probably others I’m not remembering).

Right now our enemies are Scripted, the combat pans out to mostly Reflex Checks and much of your impact on the battlefield is Automated. So, yeah, not exactly a great spot to be in. But you make an effort to change those, and things start looking much better.

Maybe not ‘never have to update the content ever again’ better. But a far sight better than we have now.

The whole Meta/Non-Meta discussion is a bit academic.

Although we tend to conflate viability with ‘not having bugs’ and ‘allowing progress’. Technically in order for something to qualify as Viable it has to be among the options in a choice you make – especially when you have a sincere desire to play well, with full understanding of the game’s mechanics, at the highest level of play.

For the purposes of forum discussion, regardless of what joe newbie and jane coffeebreak are doing; playstyles aren’t considered viable until the Meta starts arguing over them.

I know that sounds dazzling; but that’s only because this genre is notorious for presenting calculations as choices, not because optimal is a design inevitability that causes every game’s Meta to result in a single choice. Metas arguing is actually pretty commonplace in more skill-based and action-oriented genres, which is why they have Tier systems.

Which is ideally, the sort of a situation an RPG/Actiongame hybrid would like to find itself in. Getting to the point of balance where players started categorizing in Tiers would make this game amazing.

But before we even think of getting there, we have got to stop giving game mechanics a gold star just for showing up at work today with it’s pants on. Functioning and having that function do something Relevant is the least a game mechanic can do and still rightly call itself a game mechanic.

And there is nothing wrong with that – if you force certain roles you end up having unpopular ones which nobody wants to do….

It’s only natural that people have preferences like enjoying certain roles and not enjoying others.

…But that same logic applies to the Berserker role itself.
So you either have a gamemode that involves roles you may not like, or a gamemode with only one role you darned well better like.

You have certain classes brought for passive buffs, you have offensive buff-stacking pre and during fight and you’ll normally have a “defensive” buff class like guardian or mesmer for aegis, projectile reflection, stability and condition cleansing. Then you have engi and thief that can stealth which is unique to them and is a whole separate role entirely from the usual combat ones.

Let me try to illustrate my thoughts on the differences between boons/conditions and roles using different language.

Let’s say a trinity Warrior is striking mobs with melee attacks. Along comes a Paladin, and he also starts striking the mob with melee attacks. Although this looks the same on the screen, inside the player’s minds they do it with different intentions. A Paladin is using melee strikes to get the mob’s attention; a Warrior is using melee strikes to do damage while avoiding it.

Along comes a Mage. He has all sorts of nifty spells; fireballs everywhere, burning things one minute, disorienting enemies the next. While this seems really different on not only a superficial visual level, but also on a sincere mechanical one…inside the player’s mind he shares the Warrior’s intent.

If you asked any of them what their Goal in combat was, they wouldn’t say; punching things and burning them. Punches and Burns are just Tools, their Goals involve the specific uses of the aggro system. Tools are related but ultimately divorced from Goals; as illustrated above the same Tool can be used to accomplish a different Goal, and different Tools can be used to accomplish the same Goal.

Oh wait, I can see now that I should probably try to figure a better way to put this.

As far as I understand the roles in this game, they pan out to something like;

sPvP:
Bunker
Far Point Defender
Home Defender
Roamer

WvW:
Front-Line Zerg
Back-line Zerg
Havok
Roamer

PvE:
Berserker

Open World:
AOE Berserker
(Although the living story content is great at shaking this up)

I know Support/Control/Damage is how the skills and ultimately the classes differentiate themselves from eachother. But, for the most part, these three categories aren’t the Roles themselves. They seem more like tools selected in varying portions to fulfill roles.

(Like how in league of legends roles are a description of territory you’re responsible for, and champs with different abilities like tanking or ranged damage can fulfill the same role in different ways).

In PvE there seems to be very little in the way of spatial or resource things going on to create differing responsibilities among party members. The ones I’ve noticed so far are things like Ooze Bait in the TAether path puzzle, that exist only on an encounter basis. Standard combat against challenging foes in and of itself doesn’t seem to have these kinds of noticeably different roles between party members.

It kind of leaves me a bit unsure about what to say regarding PvE roles.

As a note, I want to be very clear that we’re looking for comments from all game modes, PvE, PvP, and WvW included.

Hopefully I’m not going to come off as passive aggressively snarky when I say this, but;

I’m kind of at a loss to describe how classes can fill differing roles in PvE, because I don’t really feel like there are any?

Everything is viable. Everything is NOT optimal.

…
Actually the existence of a build that is ‘optimal’ (as in superior to all other choices) across a large range of encounters is pretty much a sign that it needs to get stepped on/nerfed because that’s the product of bad design

/agree
By every design standard I’ve read; Optimal is just Imbalance with good PR.

And the suggestion list is where all of this breaks down.
Unfortunately, with current combat paradigm (which is unlikely to change in any foreseeable future), every class needs to be equally good at two things – damage (either sustained or burst, likely both), and some kind of support (either defensive, offensive, or what you dubbed as Control Enemy Agency to Act). Any class that is weaker in one of those points than other classes will drop out of PvE meta (and while there are differences for pvp and wvw, pve does remain the most played aspect of this game).

The devs vision for the class balance needs to account for that

A fair point.
I’m kind of operating under the assumption we’re talking about Strengths, Weaknesses and Kryptonite more in the Team Fortress 2 Class Matchup sense than the strict and unforgiving Rock, Paper, Scissors sense.

(Like, when I played an Engi in TF2; I knew to fear Spies and Snipers…but that didn’t mean I wasn’t trounching them left and right. This sort of a Predator/Prey system is more about making how and if you engage enemies an interesting decision by giving you the ability to analyze risk at a glance, and less about actually determining the outcome of a fight.)

So, yeah, I’m not supporting the creation of paradigm shifting rigidity that damages the the ability of a class to support/control/damage at a baseline. I just think, on top of that, there should be clear and simple class identities established through meaningful combat differences.

That said, I’m not trying to brush aside your PvE concerns.
But, I tend to think my griefs with that format are more Structural than Class Balance. Like; Defiant, AI, ‘junk’ conditions, etc…

Ultimately I’d like all the major aspects of combat to be clearly represented in classes. Right now we have some cases of a single class double-dipping (Warrior), classes without a clear aspect at all (Ranger), or aspects without a clear representative (Control Movement).

As far as I can figure combat breaks down into;

• Support Allies Defensively
• Support Allies Offensively
• Control Enemy Movement
• Control Enemy Agency to Act
• Damage Burst
• Damage Over Time
• Mobility
  I’ve also put Variety in there, because having a single jack of all trades class is good…just so long as it’s a sincere representation of the concept and not a catch-all category for any class whose purpose isn’t clear.

Class:
What I’d want it Strong at doing > What I’d want it Weak at doing
[When enemy uses it, it would be this class’s Kryptonite]

Warrior:
Damage Burst > Support Defensively
[Mobility]

Thief:
Mobility > Variety
[Control Movement]

Necromancer:
Damage Over Time > Support Offensively
[Damage Burst]

Guardian:
Support Defensively > Damage Burst
[Damage Over Time]

Ranger:
Control Movement > Damage Over Time
[Variety]

Mesmer:
Control Agency > Control Movement
[Support Defensively]

Elementalist:
Support Offensively > Control Agency
[Control Agency]

Engineer:
Variety > Mobility
[Support Offensively]

Some of that is self-explanatory, some of that is harder to parse logically and would need some blue sky. (Like, Kryptonite of Variety for Ranger could mean things like making empathic bond/survival of the fittest only take a full stack of one thing. A Strength in Offensive Support for Ele could involve making a lighting field + blast finisher = group Quickness and putting that on more air attuned skills.)

Because a lot of mechanics are too difficult for the average player to understand and use.
Hell – lots of players don’t even know how combo fields work.

The core concepts of GW2 combat aren’t anymore complicated than the kind of stuff I find in FPSs or MOBA all the time. I’ve seen the average folks manage so much more than a rudimentary timing/spatial challenge. They can do this because they learn to play the game by playing the game. And part of why that can happen is because the combat in those games is as simple and clear in execution as it is in concept.

Like,
Setting an arrow alight by passing it through a fire field and seeing it cause a mob to burn for ‘x’ damage is a clear teachable moment. Kind of less so for the reality of the situation, which is more like; Setting an arrow alight if it passes through a fire field but only 20% of the time and only if it was the first thing on the floor and only if it has charges left, and then maybe seeing the mob burning if you can successfully distinguish it from other particle effects and if the stacks are working in your favor you might maybe get to see your damage sometime soon.

Between the particle effects jubilee and the host of balance minutia attempting to wrangle this game’s ungodly condi/boon spam; there is one heckuva’ signal to noise ratio to overcome for what should be some simple cause and effect style hands-on-learning.

I’m more of an ‘All Welcome’ sort of a person.
So I can only comment from that perspective.

On the Plus side; Newbies seem genuinely eager to learn, I have no problems controlling the pace of the dungeon, and most people that join seem to have read the LFG description. On the whole people seem in good form on an execution level; they may not always know what to dodge, but actually doing it they manage well.

On the negative side; Less consumable use, and I have to do alot more wrangling to preserve the ‘no exploit’ clause I make my groups with. On the whole folks seem to have less fight knowledge and less grasp of structural mechanics (ex; combo fields).

I think Hornet’s Sting is pretty good as it is.
You use it for it’s evade most of the time, so using that skill often feels like reactive/twitch gameplay. I don’t think that would be benefited too much by giving you options to think about like direction, and more buttons to press might hurt that gameplay more than help.

What could be improved by offering more direction control is Monarch’s Leap. Because it’s at that point in the chain when you decide what to do with your new position on the field, and there could stand to be more robust choices than ‘go back to the mob’, ‘stay here’ or ‘godawfully awkward double retreat’.

I think I’d prefer omnidirectional steering ala’ dodges over a ground targeted arrow. Like, press the walk left button at the same time as monarch’s leap, and you’ll leap to the left instead of forward. I see how ground targeted arrows can be bit micromanagey, and think omnidirectional steering could offer similar potential functionality with less required interaction.

Serpent’s Strike, though, that could use an actual targeting system of some kind.
Because the pathing really doesn’t work out reliably enough, I don’t want to roll to the right every single time, and I think what makes a weapon feel skillful should be skillfully executing an attack somewhere (instead overcoming a frustrating autoattack).

/edit: edited to explain why I think hornet’s sting is in a good place

Fighting games achieve this sort of a shifting situation in more aggressive ways by ‘putting the fight on your terms/the enemy’s terms’. That’s pretty abstract stuff though, and not too useful for us because an AI can’t really replicate mindgames.

FPSs probably have more relatable examples.
It’s pretty normal for a sniper bullet to come from out of nowhere and chunk down over half your health. It’s not that these things don’t have animations, but, the first person camera limits your battlefield awareness to the point you can’t keep all the action on screen at the same time (much less watch it for telegraphs). So you end getting forced into situations you have to respond to alot.

Side Note: SSB blocking actually has more than a 1 frame execution time (about 4 frames for full block) and it is enough when approaching to sometimes change up your plan to just grab him instead.

I tend to think the ~~13 frame rule is a pretty good quick and dirty measuring stick for human reaction time. But, I recognize and respect not everybody agrees with that. So, rather than go into sheild/powersheild/framecount stuff and ending up agreeing to disagree; I’d like to focus on the second part because I think it illustrates where we might be having a communication breakdown.

There’s two things we’re talking about;
1: I see you’re about to do X -> I do Y to stop/mitigate it.
2: X happens immediately -> I have to decide to respond by doing either Z or Q

Both of these could be classified as ‘the player reacting to something’. But the first case is about keeping the enemy from achieving their intended effect, and the second case is about responding to the effect. Choosing to Shield Grab after seeing someone has Shielded is the second case, and it’s what I’m advocating.

If an attack is untelegraphed. How are you supposed to avoid it? Thats not good design. If its a 1hit KO then thats just unfair and forces stacking passive defence. If its weak then you just ignore it and its not good design either.

The gameplay centers more on how you deal with the sudden situation you find yourself in, than how you’re suppose to manage avoidance of that situation. To reiterate; I only support this when it involves complex situations, I don’t support it when it involves simple situations. (Like a 1 hit KO is much too boring, as realistically your only choice is to get back up).

Yes, but it is a fundamental element.

Most good action games have good enemy AI scripting with a slight mix of RNG.
Basically sort of a fighting game since the element of zoning is important.

Tells are a huge fundamental element since when a player gets hit or dies he should know it is his fault. Not saying telegraphs have to be obvious like kohler but there has to be a tell, even quick jabs have it.

Even fighting games have things that are more about changing the situation. Like the 1 frame Shields in SSB. You’re not really supposed to do something to stop the shield from going up, you’re just supposed to figure out how to respond once it is.

How do you mean?
I’ve never really felt like I was choosing between two or more things as a result of being kicked by Lupi.

Sorry, I totally didn’t complete my train of thought.
What I was driving at was ‘snap decision making’.

I know RPG folks tend to think of action titles as the ‘dumb jocks’ of videogames. But all the good ones burn brain cells to some extent. They just focus on doing it during combat, instead of during character building.

So, I’m actually alright with important attacks being non-telegraphed…when they’re being used to strong arm you into making a decision. For example, I can agree Belka’s non-telegraphed knockback isn’t too spectacular. But put that exact same mechanic on Fyonna*, and suddenly I’m all for it. Because there’s dozens of ways you can choose to manage adds, but there’s really only one way to roll out of a fire.

(* assuming the hallway exploit would be fixed first.)

I don’t know if I would immediately equate telegraphs to good design.

A telegraphed attack is basically a reflex check. That is a good thing and it has it’s place, but, reflexes aren’t the alpha and omega of a good action game.

@Bri
Not quite what I was after.
Bear with me a sec, I might have figured out a good metaphor.

Imagine a game of Tug-o-war.

On left side is all the ways the game compels you to clump up in melee, on the right side is all the ways the game compels you to scatter apart and keep your distance. Tugging between these two creates gameplay, it gives you things about movement and space to choose between in the middle of combat. In PvE there isn’t much of a game to be had; because the clumping-melee side is populated by body builders, and the scatter-distance side is populated by school children.

I’m not trying to suggest the total elimination of the game compelling you to clump up by universally removing range from all support. That’s like the school children pulling a rope against nothing, it ends the game just as much as having unequal tension does.

What I am saying is that one of the options on the table is removing a few body builders here and there so that the middle schoolers have more of a fighting chance. And, you’d try to do this where it makes the most sense for furthering the game’s gameplay for the better.

(ex: Something like; Fire Field + Blast or the Downed State is in a pretty good place gameplay wise and wouldn’t be a good idea to mess with. Something like; Empower Allies or certain shouts could be messed with like crazy, because on a practical level there just isn’t much gameplay there to screw up.)

There’s gotta’ be a point in any balance discussion where you sort of have to step back and figure out what you want to get out of it. Oftentimes there are multiple ways to approach a problem, and the question is less ‘how do we fix it?’ and more ‘what kind of a game will this become if we implement this fix or that fix?’

For example, another way to attack this is how support is structured.

Relative to the tight spaces we find ourselves in, the small opponents we fight against, and what little meaningful opposition they give to our clustering; ‘aiming’ a 600 range buff just isn’t very difficult. These Buffs feel more like an automatic result you can take for granted by building a certain way, than something you have to use a skillful or nuanced execution to get the most out of. So what’s the point of a 600 radius if it isn’t really furthering any gameplay?

If people only seem to notice something while wielding 2 out of 60-odd weapons in the entire game, it might be better to find some other way to engage a player’s skillset.

There’s just so many ways you could attack this thing. Support changes, AI changes, ranged vs melee changes. I’m just not sure changing weapons to conform to the current state of things is necessarily the biggest bang for our buck on a format that most people can agree is not exactly at the top of it’s game right now.

/edit: edited to be less choppy.

@Rasimir
Might be worth adding, try asking the Ranger subforum. If you can manage to wrangle the inevitable sword autoattack derail you’re going to get more ranger eyeballs there.

I kind of think PvE just needs more opposing forces so that ranged options are more relevant. What I mean by opposing forces is where a player mechanic persuades one behavior, and an enemy mechanic persuades the opposite. Or, where two of your own mechanics persuade you in different directions with a clear set of pros and cons, and you have to consciously choose when to make that tradeoff.

Like, fights that tend to use heavy targeted AOEs to the point your active defenses are overwhelmed, are better than fights that can’t make it past them. Because that’s when your Buff mechanics are persuading you to cluster up, but the enemy’s targeted AOE mechanics are persuading you to scatter apart; so you experience an internal conflict and start having to make heat of the moment choices about movement and space.

A game encouraging you to perform a one certain way is nice and all, but without something opposing it the gameplay’s more of a simple knowledge or reflex check than something truly active and interesting.

Melee and Ranged are usually opposing forces of the second variety.
There’s clear risk/reward pros and cons to doing Ranged or Melee, and you’re expected to switch off in the middle of a fight as your healthbar demands. For a number of reasons, that dynamic ends up pretty choppy and inconsistent in this game. To the point I don’t really think it works.

It might be more interesting if it went about it another way.
Like, making the tradeoff different so that going Melee or Ranged has a different set of Pros and Cons that avoids some of the problems trading off risk has. (ex: giving mobs more natural locomotion and less reliance on melee autoattacks. So that risk is no longer a factor, and melee is higher DPS but needs somebody else using control skills to help them land things, and ranged is lesser DPS but more self sufficient.) Or something added to mob melee autoattacks that pushes you to retreat by overwhelming or undermining active defense, but there’s also ‘other things’ going on during the fight. (So a fully melee character doesn’t have to stop contributing they just switch gears for a bit.)

I kind of think your post makes a better argument for fixing cheesing than altering dungeon rewards, OP.

@Cog
In general I tend to think defense oriented conditions are in a better place than offensive ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the idea behind an Attrition Battle and I like it when a game supports that sort of gameplay. But I kind of feel like I’m just going through the motions in this game.

In other games I might invest into DoTs because they offer something tactically I can’t get elsewhere. I might use it for securing the kill on running targets, or as a tool to threaten others off of strategic locations, or because there’s some kind of spacial or resource superiority.

In this game, it’s like I build into conditions just for the sake of building into conditions. I don’t have this clear list of pros and cons for doing so, or new options for approaching combat opening up for me, I’m just generally choosing which side of the condi/cleanse dynamic I want to be on.

Sure it sorta’ feels like it’s attrition gameplay and it undoubtedly adds a layer to combat that would otherwise be a bit plain…but it just doesn’t have much a point. So it kind of ends up feeling like lemon scented Power than something truly unique.

I don’t think counterplay is the right word for it.
I tend to feel like they just don’t have much gameplay at all.

Too much of it just sort of happens; with no real intent, respect for timing, or truly distinguishable tactical difference to direct damage. The whole process has alot of churn; icons are appearing and dissapearing, colors are changing, particle effects are doing their thing… but on a mechanical level it all feels so featureless.

I can’t say I ever really put much thought behind removing conditions or applying them beyond immobilize and stuns. I think I can count on one hand how many times I feel like I’d applied a damaging condition for it’s damage properties in a ‘clutch’ way. Even the ones that have secondary effects that should be promoting gameplay, either under-emphasizes the decisions the opponent has to make or tends to err towards encouraging constant uptime over timely execution. (Like, Poison, which is way more fascinating on paper than I’ve ever experienced in practice).

Lord Byron,
I think you might be confusing Subjective vs Objective and Quantitative vs. Qualitative.

Something like a Matchup Chart or a Tier Ranking is Subjective Quantitative data.

Sure, there’s numbers involved, but the conclusions are ultimately reached by pooling an aggregate of people’s experiences creating a common consensus. If it were Objective, conclusions would be reached solely from measurements outside of playing matches with no room for debate or interpretation.

Haha, sorry. I suppose that was a bad example. The game designers can define the ‘factors’ as anything they want, I just picked ‘walking out of AOE’ at random.
Let me change that so it’s less confusing.

Ah, I remember these guys at GDC a couple years back.
Programming’s not quite my forte’, but as far as I can follow the concept, their Utility AI stuff is pretty fascinating.

As far as I can figure what we have now is just straight responding to thresholds, like, if you get ‘x’ distance away Subject Alpha will use Dragon Tooth. The sort of stuff these guys specialize in is choosing a response based on non-linearly weighing factors relative to eachother. Like, the farther you get from Subject Alpha the more exponentially likely it is he’ll use Dragon’s Tooth on you, but he may or not actually do that, because (hypothetically) he also tries to Down low HP players and your ally’s HP is lower than you are farther away.

Throw in enough responses and a dash of random, and it’s a pretty solid illusion of thought process by mimicking situational awareness and prioritization.

EverQuest Next is supposedly going that route, too.
So good on Anet for keeping it competitive.

This might be a good time to mention,

OP, around the beginning of the year Anet did make a post that referred to the Berserker/DPS meta as a problem they were actively seeking a solution to. We have no idea what that solution entails, all we know is that lessening the impact of critical damage by changing it into ferocity was a first step.

If things are driving you crazy now, maybe consider giving it a few months to see if the game can’t act on that statement and get it’s ducks in a row?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think dungeons are in a good place at all.

But (largely) I blame the content for this, not my fellow player.

@Keltach

I understand your frustration, but, I don’t agree with Villifying Metas.

Metas encourage players up the skill curve, and act as a space for discussion that accumulates strategies and knowledge. This player discussion causes the meta to shift, because they make new discoveries or take stances on incomparables, which attracts people to try a different aspect of the combat system and view things from a new perspective.

A healthy Meta keeps your gameplay fresh and the players informed.

Our Meta is legitimately falling short, but it has it’s reasons.
There just isn’t much to teach or discover or debate about when the game-mode only meaningfully engages a shallow linear slice of the combat system. The content just doesn’t tap into enough of the game’s depth to garner a truly healthy Meta.

It’s a “Dead Meta”.
It’s not Toxic*, which is generally when you start pointing fingers at your fellow player. It just doesn’t have enough to go on to shift of it’s own volition, it only moves a little bit when the devs push a patch through to poke the corpse with a stick.

(*with the exception of Fight Knowledge, which ends up being ignored instead of taught to others, and is a pretty legit case of the Meta undermining one of it’s worthwhile features.)

Since release? Good god, OP, that couldn’t get any more tragic unless it involved a drowning basket of puppies.

I don’t know of any guilds, but you can still find some like-minded folks in the LFG if you make a concentrated effort to find them.

Well, maybe auto-attacks shouldn’t be doing so much of the heavy lifting?

I kind of don’t quite get why there’s a combat-only stipulation at all?

I really don’t want to derail.
If you feel that strongly, why don’t you make another thread?

Truthfully, it was behaving more like a Preparation than a Signet.
So on a gameplay level I do agree with this change.

Power Ranger is still in quite the state, but one little freebie attack of opportunity wasn’t going to have much of an impact on that.

@Lilith
Unless there’s some insight to it they’re not sharing, I can’t imagine why.
If nothing else I guess it’s debate fodder folks can reference when they say AP’s a silly thing to put in a group description?

@maha
That’s a discussion for another thread.

Well, in their defense, it’s not all that intuitive.

Sure, people posting on this forum might have some idea that Personal Defense options are just sort of these unspoken deadzones in PvE character building. But it’s not like the game itself does anything to make it clear those options are PvP only.

Imagine how confusing that is for somebody new?

And before anybody pulls the Meta card on me. This would also be true even in the ideal scenario where the Support/Control/DPS trinity existed. Because personal defense doesn’t seemingly have anymore relevancy on those two lost roles than it does DPS.

I think I remember it was more of a ‘Play whatever activity you want and advance your character’ message. Like, being able to get EXP from exploring a map, crafting, hearts, dungeon, personal story, etc.

But, does that matter?

When word of god treats single vector building as a problem in need of solving, it’s not like you need a handy dandy catchphrase to validate a stance contrary to the dismal state of things. So does it really matter where people found one?

But what dictates the balance you experience in game, if not numbers?

Game theory defines it’s terminology from the end user experience.
If you study up, you’ll see the word ‘choice’ abso-freakin-lutely everywhere, and words like ‘formula’ are far and few between.

The reason for this is that games involve things like incomparables, the dazzling complexity of player input in things like skill levels, and so many options interacting the possibility space goes beyond human capacity to mathematically model. Nobody’s really got an interest in devoting the rest of their life towards developing a game. So numbers are used to carve out a foundation for balance but after that the focus is on responding to player feedback with educated guesswork, intuition, and feel.

Usually you’ll see people define balance by the player’s behavior towards their options, because balancing options purely from an objective mathematical stance is just so technologically and productively unfeasible (if not outright impossible).

However, you can’t complain and say the game didn’t give you options to be viable and competitive when you blew right past them. If you choose a suboptimal build that wouldn’t mesh with any arena group, then that’s on the individual.

What Sirlin is describing here is not letting yourself invent excuses for not climbing the skill curve and embracing the depth a game can offer in it’s Counterplay and Strategy.

He’s not sanctioning Optimal as a design concept or inevitability in the slightest.

If anything his writing condemns it, as a game lacking multiple viable options at upper level play is considered imbalanced. What he’s saying in the Scrubs article would be non-applicable in such a system, as there’s no depth for you to embrace. Because Strategy and Counterplay and Mindgames all require a player to make choices in response to another player, and there are no choices to make if Optimal exists.

Ah, apologies Fenrir.

Balance is an analysis of subjective feedback.

That is to say, options are considered balanced when players choose between them. Especially if they’re making choices when they know enough about the system to fully understand the implications of that choice.

Or in Sirlin’s own words;

A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable—especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-2-viable-options.html

I can’t say I’ve played many MMORPGs that are honestly capable of fitting that definition. For the genre, I actually think this game is pretty good. …But I don’t know if I’d go so far as to use it’s balance as leverage to put down other people.

I thought the Holy Trinity was Power, the Father; Precision, the Son; and Ferocity, the Holy Spirit.

Hahaha. Ah~h.
That was actually pretty clever.

In general people like to be followers more often than leaders.

But, that’s not exactly what you’re alluding to, here. You’re more asking about forum discussion than actual group dynamics. Which little gem of a back and forth are you talking about?

This one?
>>> ‘Problem x!’
<<< ‘Just make your own group!’
>>> ’That’s a total cop-out!’

Or this one?
>>> ’I’m new to this game, and this happened in a group. Is this common?’
<<< ‘Just make your own group!’
>>> —--silence——

That is to say,
Are you wondering why people give push back to the concept when it’s talked about abreast design decisions and game mechanics and deeper systemic observations someone with experience in the game might talk about? Or are you wondering when people’s initial expectations of a ‘normal run’ are so different from what actually happens, they come to the forums to complain and don’t really seem all that receptive to the suggestions of a work-around?

If you didn’t know what the holy trinity was, you probably don’t have enough history in the genre to start making educated guesses as to why the combat in this game feels so lackluster.

You know, a newbie doesn’t know that stacking is weird, they would just know combat isn’t all that great.

I agree with this change.

/cringe
Ehhhh, kinda’?

This game is kind of the odd man out as far as dungeon experiences in the genre go. Because they’re trying to be a place for coordinated team play by all PR indications, but they’re also oddly laissez-faire about dungeons as hyper accessible farming spots. Which you can imagine, meshes together about as well as peanut butter and cyanide.

But, things aren’t entirely bleak.
For example, once herr metaguy was shown the door in my example above, another level 80 and I had a blast with the lowbies for the rest of the run. You do kind of have to make an effort to find like-minded people, but they’re out there more than the forum would imply. Also, the living world has been managing much better fight mechanics than anything you can find in a dungeon, so it might be worth sticking around to see if Season 2 will end up delivering some noteworthy experiences.

Generally speaking, though.
I don’t recommend this game to other people for it’s dungeons, because I don’t actually think they’re in a good place.

I’d also add lower levelled and newer characters to that ‘maybe not such a hot idea for stacking’ list.

I was running AC the other day with a group of mid range characters.
You know, the sort of group where you have a few people still trying to puzzle out what all those weird words on skills mean and what this whole ‘dodging’ thing is all about.

And here comes herr metaguy, totally unable to read the situation.

After lecturing on the finer points of group contributions to some folks that had like, maybe, 7 trait points between them. He launched into fuming at the lowbies in patchwork levelling armor for not being thrilled about the idea of standing perfectly still and saying to the mob ‘thank you sir, may I have another?’.

And I wish I could say that’s the first time I’d seen that, too.
But, I’ve actually come across quite a few people that seem to think it’s a ‘one size fits all’ kind of a deal and genuinely don’t seem to realize there are rational limits to any tactic.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why somebody thought that might be worth their time. But, yeah, it actually used to happen about a year-ish ago before the revamped rewards.

Anytime I hear ‘Zerker’ I’m instantly reminded of Runescape and other turn of the millenium MMOs. Back when we still thought Z was apparently the most fascinating letter in the english alphabet, so we just started sticking it in the place of S’s where ever we could.

So everytime one of ya’ll mentions it, it doesn’t sounds like you’re saying you have Berserker’s armor, but that your dope armor is so all that and a bag of chips you’ll be rolling in mad phat cheddar.

It’s so ridiculous.

I’m not going to say whether or not you should be playing mentor.
But, as a general rule of thumb, if you ever feel like doing it just try to be tactful.

Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it. Although it doesn’t work all the time, ‘Praise in public; criticize in private’ is a pretty easy way to make sure you’re being respectful to people. So, keep something like this in /tell territory.