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Guild Wars 2 - Imperfect Balance - MMORPG.com

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
edited November 2017 in News & Features Discussion

imageGuild Wars 2 - Imperfect Balance - MMORPG.com

One of the biggest problems for Guild Wars 2 developers facing this stance in on balancing lately, however, has been the frequency that patches are being delivered to the community, with the meta shifts being too slow, too far between and too small for a great deal of the vocal community.

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Comments

  • RemyVorenderRemyVorender Member RarePosts: 4,006
    Having defined roles would have made things a lot easier to balance.
    KyleranViper482LionShard

    Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!

  • viddiotviddiot Member UncommonPosts: 14
    Plan on getting the latest Expansion. I didn't care too much for Heart Of Thorns.
  • APThugAPThug Member RarePosts: 543
    edited November 2017
    Perfect balance across all classes/professions is impossible, and if it is all balanced, it's boring. Especially when you've got a lot of diverse preferred play styles.

    Since GW2's spvp mode only seems to cater towards conquest, I feel like having faster balance patches would be better, but at the same time, shouldn't interfere with current spvp seasons.

    If GW2 had more spvp maps with different objectives, than I think larger scale updates that take a longer time would make more sense.

    image
  • AeanderAeander Member LegendaryPosts: 8,063
    I've always had a low opinion of Arenanet's balance team. They're probably the weakest link in the studio and have been since Guild Wars 1 launched. Balance patches are too rare, too small, and, quite frankly, too baffling. 
    ScarranViterzgir
  • maskedweaselmaskedweasel Member LegendaryPosts: 12,195
    Balance has always been all around the board. They've had to completely remove stats from gear in SPVP over the course of the past couple years, rework the way  damage was calculated, and lest we not forget how they completely redid the skill tree system entirely to "streamline" it.

    It all wouldn't be so bad, but build options and synergies between all the different classes are impossible to balance when half the abilities available for each class are basically useless.  

    They really should be spending time making current abilities more viable for different builds rather than spending time creating new elite specializations that just bring in more balance problems.


    Anyways, that being said..  I've seen worse balance.



  • ThupliThupli Member RarePosts: 1,318
    There are weapons people don't even use because they are so bad. They can't even balance weapons within a class...
    HuntrezzViterzgirViper482
  • ThupliThupli Member RarePosts: 1,318
    There are weapons people don't even use because they are so bad. They can't even balance weapons within a class...
  • April-RainApril-Rain Member UncommonPosts: 316
    I like my ranger and I am not keen on the elite spec's, but the ranger at level 80 and twinked out is not fun like in the earlier parts of the game, they listened to the few who said it was to easy and went the other way rendering a lot of the xpacs mobs just frustrating and too much like work, I want to feel powerful and steam roll through mobs when I am at the top level.

    Barrage which is one of the best ranger skills is useless 80% of the time due to having to dodge or move which cancels the skill.

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  • KanethKaneth Member RarePosts: 2,286
    edited November 2017
    I have to mirror much many of the other comments. The balance team, and balance in general, are pretty atrocious in GW2. There are plenty of weapons that flat out don't work. Plenty of skills that are plain bad. An entire class that only made it into the raid meta because of a bug, and when fixed went back to dumpster tier. On top of it all, ANet moves at the pace of a glacier.
    Having defined roles would have made things a lot easier to balance.
    Defined roles would have done nothing. The problems lie in how entire sets of skills are completely worthless across the board. Gear being attached to a prefix that has specific stats is also a problem, since you basically need Berserker for power damage, Viper for condi damage and Magi for healing. All other prefixes pretty much don't see the light of day, outside of specific situations like Valkyrie gear having a unique interaction with power Reaper. Skills need a fundamental rework across the board. I don't think ANet is up to that challenge.
    Thupli
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    edited November 2017


    Having defined roles would have made things a lot easier to balance.



    Defined roles in a ROLE PLAYING game...no ...say it ain't so?
    Ok joking aside,yes roles are exactly what the game SHOULD have been doing all along but i would by now HOPE people can see an agenda was in place all along in that they were simply aiming for a CHEAPER way to deliver a game and NOTHING they claimed to be doing was for the game or gamer's.
    However ,here is the problem, you cannot and NEVER will have balance in a rpg and imo you never should have balance.
    So the question is could it still work?Well somewhat and if you give the players the truth instead of your BS agenda's AND you have to keep it totally separate from the PVE.

    If i remember correctly,are not a few of the original system designers gone,not even working there anymore,like Peter's for one?So if your original team/vision are gone,how do the new people carry on the same vision or is that old vision even viable?
    IMO the old vision and bull they were feeding people was NOT viable and never would be,if they want to make a good solid FAIR pvp system,it takes a LOT of work a lot of testing and some smart people.They would have to make a lot of changes to the game and a lot of restrictions to pvp.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • ScarranScarran Member UncommonPosts: 102
    edited November 2017
    I must admit im not a fan of the balance team on GW2 and I think they are the ones holding the game back and causing alot of the issue's with the game.

    I do not think that having long periods between balance patches is helping them any, but they seem intent on messing around with stuff that is working and yet constantly ignore things that really need to be fixed.

    I have played alot of mmo's and the team here is not the worst ive seen but pretty close. I know in these games there will never ever be balance but normally in other mmo's ive seen attempts to fix glaring balance issue but this team wants to bury their heads in the sand and ignore them.

    Add onto the fact they refuse to hold their hands up and say we f'ck'd up and revert something when it doesn't work. They keep trying to polish a turd and expect it to be different rather than admit they made a mistake and go from there.
    Post edited by Scarran on
    Thupli
  • meonthissitemeonthissite Member UncommonPosts: 917
    As usual we have a whole bunch of people making excuses for shoddy work in the balance department backed up by fanboys who support the author's conclusion that it doesn't matter how many holes exist in certain classes that have been there since beta and that have not even been mentioned by the developers, it's okay because somehow that makes the game stronger despite making certain outsider classes that the developers don't really like....weaker.
  • FyrseyFyrsey Member UncommonPosts: 7


    Balance has always been all around the board. They've had to completely remove stats from gear in SPVP over the course of the past couple years, rework the way  damage was calculated, and lest we not forget how they completely redid the skill tree system entirely to "streamline" it.

    It all wouldn't be so bad, but build options and synergies between all the different classes are impossible to balance when half the abilities available for each class are basically useless.  

    They really should be spending time making current abilities more viable for different builds rather than spending time creating new elite specializations that just bring in more balance problems.


    Anyways, that being said..  I've seen worse balance.



    Or maybe they just better to look at the meta, and make changes/elites according to popular demand, tweaking under-represented classes to fill those roles.
  • advokat666advokat666 Member UncommonPosts: 93
    Balance in GW2 is horrible and it was always horrible. Arenanet does not balance classes, what they are doing is creating the next fotm cheese specc every six month. "Broken builds rarely come up" lol i don´t know if the OP ever played that game competitively because broken builds come up every time.
  • sayuusayuu Member RarePosts: 766

    Wizardry said:





    Having defined roles would have made things a lot easier to balance.






    Defined roles in a ROLE PLAYING game...no ...say it ain't so?

    Ok joking aside,yes roles are exactly what the game SHOULD have been doing all along but i would by now HOPE people can see an agenda was in place all along in that they were simply aiming for a CHEAPER way to deliver a game and NOTHING they claimed to be doing was for the game or gamer's.

    However ,here is the problem, you cannot and NEVER will have balance in a rpg and imo you never should have balance.

    So the question is could it still work?Well somewhat and if you give the players the truth instead of your BS agenda's AND you have to keep it totally separate from the PVE.



    If i remember correctly,are not a few of the original system designers gone,not even working there anymore,like Peter's for one?So if your original team/vision are gone,how do the new people carry on the same vision or is that old vision even viable?

    IMO the old vision and bull they were feeding people was NOT viable and never would be,if they want to make a good solid FAIR pvp system,it takes a LOT of work a lot of testing and some smart people.They would have to make a lot of changes to the game and a lot of restrictions to pvp.



    ROLE PLAYING SHOULD HOPE CHEAPER NOTHING BS NEVER AND PVE IMO NOT LOT.



    is the secret message off of my handy decoder ring. . .
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 44,069
    edited November 2017
    Gorwe said:
    Balance, balance...balance. Everything must be balanced. Once everything IS balanced, people are rather quick to change the tune: "Everything's the same + boring! Please Fix / make it fun again". Damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh?
    I'v been playing MMORPGs a very long time,  I've never heard of a single game achieving "balance", at least not where a majority of forum posters agree that it is.

    With so many variables I'm thinking "perfect" balance, or anything close to it is impossible. 

    I also think if any developer actually achieved it most players would quit soon after. 

    Chasing after the next fotm build  has always been a core progression driver of the genre.

    Heck, it's a big incentive to create a new character of a different class or even one of the same class as often you needed at least one or more for PVE, and perhaps multiples for PVP.

    A friend of mine had 5 level 50 Shammies in DAOC,  each with a separate purpose.

    Perhaps the real problem isn't how slowly balance changes are made, or how quickly players figure out the next new fotm build.

    Perhaps the issue is players are able to respec into a new build too easily.

    My first MMO Lineage 1 had no respecs,  not even when devs drastically altered the class, you were expected to reroll. A bit too extreme and one reason I left but it slowed things down.

    DAOC had it about right at launch. You could respec twice while leveling up, and had to choose your final spec at level 40, 10 levels before cap.

    Once you got to 50 you had a choice,  live with your build, try to obtain a respec stone which were very rare and expensive, or since you likely wanted to keep the build,  reroll a new character.

    So yeah,  you never will stop the need to rebalance, nor likely would want to.

    But there is definitely ways to slow down player's consumption of the new changes.


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  • AvarixAvarix Member RarePosts: 665
    Ugh, balance has become a dirty word to me. Too many fun and interesting classes, and abilities, have been made into a homogeneous bland goo that is current MMORPG classes in the name of balance. I use the term class loosely since every class these days can do it all. It also obliterated things like crowd control. For what? If balance was perfect you would essentially be playing rock, paper, scissors. That sounds pretty boring to me.

    What would perfect balance even entail? I think an 80yr old with slower reflexes should still have a chance to beat a twitchy tween all hopped up on redbull while playing World of Warcraft. Others would say that should absolutely not be allowed to happen.
  • Viper482Viper482 Member LegendaryPosts: 4,101
    I hate this meta crap. We have games like Rift and GW2 that boast all of these different builds, yet 99% of them are useless due to "meta". Everyone ends up with the same cookie cutter crap.
    maskedweasel
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  • AeanderAeander Member LegendaryPosts: 8,063
    Viper482 said:Jim
    I hate this meta crap. We have games like Rift and GW2 that boast all of these different builds, yet 99% of them are useless due to "meta". Everyone ends up with the same cookie cutter crap.
    That's on the player end though. You can't stop players from theorycrafting or min maxing. 

    Plus, a meta build is just a template. You can change utilities to fit the situation. You can change some of the gear stats if you need additional defensive stats. You can change your sigils and sometimes your runes to a viable alternative. You can change a trait if you would prefer a different one. Even changing one of these things effectively makes it a different build. And that's awesome. It represents a type of community interaction and organic build iteration.
  • RockardRockard Member UncommonPosts: 206
    Sorry,but BS.
    I wish that what is described in the article was really the case with GW2.

    The problem with builds and combat in GW2,is not that they try to provide relatively balanced builds that each is unique,but the exact opposite.
    They deliberately make builds over perform and they've been doing so for years now,and they've bloated everything to the point where playing the most powerful builds has no downside to it.The newer and more desirable builds don't simply add flavour,they achieve everything their predecessors did,only way more efficiently,with less effort required.
    All those features described in the article as characteristics of GW2 class balance atm,is what the game doesn't have.

    Look at the top tier builds of the newest "meta".
    Some of the easiest builds to play,and arguably some of the most powerful that we've ever seen.
    For example,when you introduce a class/build that essentially prohibits melee combat to 8 out of 10
    other melee builds,I'm talking about Scourge,then your problem is not that your game allows for build diversity and aims for imperfect balance,but that it is simply,not balanced.

    The class balance team has been producing one sub par patch after the other,and they are mainly responsible for the PvP and WvW scenes reduced numbers and player loss.

    There's no excuse for the current state of combat in PvP and WvW.The vibe I get is that they are not even trying.They allow for obviously over tuned builds,with the expectation that these might contribute to new players staying with the game.

    I won't even touch general issues that the community's been pointing out,and have been ignored for years now.

    Just look at the latest patch,and tell me if there is anything included in it,that will entice players that left WvW and PvP after PoF because of the cluster f@ck combat,to return.

    I hope they have more 120 Euro mount packs inc.They are going to need them.

  • Octagon7711Octagon7711 Member LegendaryPosts: 9,004
    I always called imperfect balance, rolling buffs and nerfs. WoW does it and a few other MMOs.

    I'm looking for them to allow us to create templates so we can switch to the most appropriate one depending on what we're doing. That way I can play Reaper then click on the Scourge template when I want to change. Instead of have to go in and redistribute points, gear, and weapons. SWLs, Rift, and a few other MMO's has this and it's really nice to be able to change builds with just a click of the mouse.

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