The Sidenode Paradox

This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?

@"Ragnar.4257" said:This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?You know you are not supposed to sit on the node when there are two people after you, you are supposed to kite around, that is why there are jumping puzzles around the nodes.

@Vancho.8750 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?You know you are not supposed to sit on the node when there are two people after you, you are supposed to kite around, that is why there are jumping puzzles around the nodes.

Yes?

Is that relevant to the topic?

Sustain includes kiting tools. When I say "survival tools" that doesn't just mean heals and blocks, it also means teleports, leaps, stealth etc.

simple, give anyone the tools to kill fast in 1v2 scenario.most survivability in gw2 arn't just damage reduction but pure dodge or invicibility or block. those are the survivability skills.the problem is not about doing high or low damage but in stats. toughness don't give enough sustainability against a burst build. even with 3000 armor and 20k hp i still get one shot (killed in under 1s) by a sudden mesmer shatter glass canon.

what i could see is, in the addition of better damage, protection scaling with armor. the more armor you have the more protection give you damage resistance.so that true tank builds will not get destroyed in few seconds if they get hit between their "sustain" state but still get wrecked if they just stand still and not use their protection buff.this problem especially touch elem. if you wat damage you need a somewhat glasscanon build. and the elem archetype provide enough protection via aura and other means to feel like a high armor class when it is not.regen could scale on max HP. power could scale on max power. fury could scale on max precision. etc. so buffs directly depends on the build. so that a tank will be a tank and a pure glass canon will still be able to kill the tank but other builds wont as fast or wont at all.

force people to make strategy and take different class/build instead of making everyone bunkers with glass canon damage.

Lower sustain while removing boon rip maybe. Also lower condi burst in compensation for lower sustain

if u want 1v1s to end then you need to end the ability to re-sustaincut down on healing, adjust some casting times of certain heals, defensive abilities, mobility

if u have full cooldowns, you shouldn't die regardless of 1v1 or 1v2 - like extreme burst spikes shouldnt happenbut in exchange you need to run out of cooldown at some point leaving you utterly useless

look at trash like eternal life giving 750 life force per sec (1500 ehp), massive barrier on scourge and scrapper, perm regen and other healing traits that actually give way more healing over time than heal skill itself

I think the only way to solve this problem is to dramatically reduce the amount of sustain and damage, but there are a lot of variables that effect this issue. One is that +1's are often hidden with stealth or los+tp's. If the ability to heal and resustain is reduced, then it shouldnt be possible to hide +1's so easily. Sidenoders would need to have time to kite away and create safe distance instead of instantly getting jumped on. Secondly, nerfing sustain and damage again would likely make overall balance worse since classes havent been designed for that kind of gameplay. It would require multiple class wide reworks and balance overhauls to make this work, and I think we have seen that anet isnt capable of doing that.

The problem with this paradox, is that it’s just an element of an overarching paradox...and that’s the paradox of equalization.

Most have this perception of balance as if you could say if A=B then it is balanced. The problem with this is that A can never be equal to B unless they are exactly the same.

For example, a Block is not the same as a Teleport. How would you qualitatively try to describe that the two can be balanced with one another? Even if they were equal, you would have no way to properly say that they are.

So essentially, forcefully trying to equalize builds leads to a single meta game...the stick. The only way to truly balance using equalization is to give everyone a stick and call it a day...in turn this eliminates player choice, and this is the conclusion you came to in your post (remove tons of damage and remove more healing)

This paradox only arises when thinking about balance in this way...and there are more ways to balance than just simple buffs and nerfs.

It is definitely possible, imo it would just need higher base hp (or less dmg, but I'd prefer the first variant) while drastically cutting resustain, limiting it to pretty much exclusively the dedicated heal skill when it comes to selfheal. This way 1v1s would end eventually, but a 2v1 would still be survivable unless the +1 hits an already very low hp enemy.

CMC said during the TeaPot interview is that it's a real goal of their to make sure fights end 1v1, with +1s being able to force the fight to end faster rather than being required. And that it's just more fun for the side noders if the fight ends with a victor rather than stalemating by default. One of the things he said that I actually really agreed with.

Conquest could use some variations for experimenting.

For example, there could be a map with 5 capture points instead 3, but with the catch that you can only capture a point if either point clockwise and counter-clockwise is in your possession. Since all points would start neutral, your strategy can start at any point, even split to all 5. And once you capture 3 adjacent points, the one between them is safe while the other two points are in your control, allowing you to focus on less points.

"You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere."

Sounds like Spellbreaker to me

@"Ragnar.4257" said:This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?

The point is giving enough tools to sidenodes so they can survive and kite 2v1 with ALL cds with stuff like stealth , cc , movement skills and this kinda stuff but make them waste this cooldowns at a 1v1 to stay on the fight so the better duelist will have more cds to survive a +1 or pressure enough a non cooldown enemy to win the node or get the kill . By deffensive cds i mean break stuns , condi cleanses evades blocks etc.

Imo this "paradox" could be at least softened by making class/elite specialisation roles clearer. Right now everyone can do anything(especially since PoF released, thief cannot play healer but thats literally it, anything else goes), and in this context it is indeed impossible to make sure 1v1-s end, but 2v1-s arent lethal within seconds.

Maybe have unique sets of amulets for each class. Maybe use a system that picking a traitline unlocks(or the exact opposite, locks) some amulets to choose from. The aim is to force builds into a role. For example, a tactics/discipline/defense warrior should lock itself into being a support bunker, so no offensive mainstat amulets for this guy. This could turn out terrible, I'm just trying thinking of a way to really force people into making specialised builds without wiping off build diversity.

@"Bazsi.2734" said:Imo this "paradox" could be at least softened by making class/elite specialisation roles clearer. Right now everyone can do anything(especially since PoF released, thief cannot play healer but thats literally it, anything else goes), and in this context it is indeed impossible to make sure 1v1-s end, but 2v1-s arent lethal within seconds.

Maybe have unique sets of amulets for each class. Maybe use a system that picking a traitline unlocks(or the exact opposite, locks) some amulets to choose from. The aim is to force builds into a role. For example, a tactics/discipline/defense warrior should lock itself into being a support bunker, so no offensive mainstat amulets for this guy. This could turn out terrible, I'm just trying thinking of a way to really force people into making specialised builds without wiping off build diversity.

Ranger and holo are the only two classes I can think of that do "everything at once". What else does?IMO only engineer and elementalist should do "everything at once", I have no idea why ranger was buffed to the state it's in.

heart of thorns had a good balance one moment in 1v1 thing

like there were 4 class "1v1"

scrapperdruidcondi berserkercondi chrono

druid beat condi chronocondi chrono beat condi berserkercondi berserker beat druidand scrapper had +- 50% MU in all 1v1

and there were so much damage that real tank can't exist xd

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Bazsi.2734" said:Imo this "paradox" could be at least softened by making class/elite specialisation roles clearer. Right now everyone can do anything(especially since PoF released, thief cannot play healer but thats literally it, anything else goes), and in this context it is indeed impossible to make sure 1v1-s end, but 2v1-s arent lethal within seconds.

Maybe have unique sets of amulets for each class. Maybe use a system that picking a traitline unlocks(or the exact opposite, locks) some amulets to choose from. The aim is to force builds into a role. For example, a tactics/discipline/defense warrior should lock itself into being a support bunker, so no offensive mainstat amulets for this guy. This could turn out terrible, I'm just trying thinking of a way to really force people into making specialised builds without wiping off build diversity.

all meta teamfighters are also the best sidenoders e.g nec, guard, rev, engiranger doesnt even have the edge over them at sidenode and also suck in tfroaming is small part now

@"mortrialus.3062" said:CMC said during the TeaPot interview is that it's a real goal of their to make sure fights end 1v1, with +1s being able to force the fight to end faster rather than being required. And that it's just more fun for the side noders if the fight ends with a victor rather than stalemating by default. One of the things he said that I actually really agreed with.

That would implies CMC planning to make a pass on stealth application in this game....something We both know won't happen as it never did after all , how can there be a situation where a 1v1 ends on its own when some professions are designed to reset endlessly ? Unless other professions meant for the same role can somehow keep up with that constant resetting there is no real 1v1; at least before we had the dmg to warrant the constant stealth resetting..not anymore, barely we have the sustain and hope for a kill, if they're planning to nerf sustain even further without again touching stealth then there will be less people than now in PvP.

You don't balance a triple A MMO based on what you read on the forum

@"Ragnar.4257" said:This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?

There is no way in hell to balance a MMO with 1v1 in mind when you have 9 different professions and definitely you cannot apply blanket changes without considering each case scenario , reducing dmg and healing for the highest HP/armor class won't be the same as for the lowest HP/armor class

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:CMC said during the TeaPot interview is that it's a real goal of their to make sure fights end 1v1, with +1s being able to force the fight to end faster rather than being required. And that it's just more fun for the side noders if the fight ends with a victor rather than stalemating by default. One of the things he said that I actually really agreed with.

@"Ragnar.4257" said:This is my explanation for why balance never feels achieved.

Where most people want Balance to be at is that a 1v1 should reach a conclusion after 30-60 seconds. You don't want unkillable bunkers rubbing faces for eternity, but neither do you want fights to be one-shots over in the blink of an eye.

However, the primary game-mode is 5v5 Conquest, with 3 capture-points. This inevitably leads to situations where 1 person is trying to survive against 2 hostiles. Not necessarily to keep the capture-point, but just to stay alive.

You don't want this 1v2 scenario to be an insta-kill on the 1, you want to provide the 1 with the opportunity to stall-out the fight if they play well. Not necessarily to win, but to draw the fight out for another 20-30 seconds either for help to arrive, or to buy time for their team elsewhere.

So, you have to provide the 1 with sufficient survival tools to sustain 1v2 for a short time.

But if you give the 1 sufficient survival tools to sustain a 1v2 for 20+ seconds, then you'll make them basically unkillable 1v1, and violate the initial principal in the first line of this post. This is because the mechanics of GW2 combat do not scale linearly. If a 1v1 would end in 60 seconds, that doesn't mean a 1v3 will end in 20 seconds; the 1v3 will end in 5 seconds, maybe 10s max, because additional players reduce your survival exponentially, not linearly.

However if you don't provide these tools to the 1, then anyone getting +1'd on a sidenode will in most cases insta-die and come complaining that x/y/z does too much damage.

The contradiction between these 2 goals is what gives rise to the constant back-and-forth between "balance is bad, too many bunkers" and "balance is bad, too much damage".

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. It's a paradox.

The only possible way out I can see would be to have another massive cut in damage output across the board (I'm talking 50% or even more), but to COMPLETELY remove healing skills, traits, utilities, combos, etc from the game, outside of a very few RARE specialised healing mechanics (Druid CA, Ele Staff Water #3 & #5, FB ToR etc), which would have 0 baseline healing and therefore require heavy investment into healing stats/traits/gear to do anything at all.

However this would represent such a massive change that it will never happen, and therefore we will be locked in the bunker/burst sidenode paradox forever. Unless anyone else can see a way out?

Conquest isn't just team fights, it's also roaming and it's also the side noding experience. So 1v1 is an aspect that deserves attention, just like teamfight and roaming. If the game devolves into two scrappers or two bunker revs literally just slapping each other while their HP bars don't move like we've seen then an important part of conquest is literally nonfunctional.

Also nothing that actually wins the side nodes is just sitting in stealth for minutes at a time, side noding demands that you're out of stealth and able to prevent getting capped against or decapped. Stealth is by design far more valuable for roaming than side noding, even if having a bit of a stealth can be an important survival tool for a side noder.

CMC didn't say "All balance is going to be based around 1v1." Simply that the side node experience should be fun and fights should have capacity to end rather than the endless stalemates we've been seeing since the Megabalance.

If 1v1 is horribly balanced than so is 2v2/3v3/4v4/5v5 btw.

@Shiyo.3578 said:If 1v1 is horribly balanced than so is 2v2/3v3/4v4/5v5 btw.

Ehhhhh I don't particularly agree here.

You can have a meta where there's a variety of builds that are super good in 1v1 but less valuable in team fights and roaming, a variety of builds that are super good in team fights but less valuable in roaming and 1v1, and a variety of builds that are good at roaming but less valuable in team fights and 1v1 and maybe a few builds that are generally pretty good at everything but not the best, and have all that blend together into an interesting meta with a variety of interesting and varied comps. In fact that's actually what the game should be looking like.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:If 1v1 is horribly balanced than so is 2v2/3v3/4v4/5v5 btw.

Well for example, let's say thief or power rev automatically won any 1v1 within 15 second against ANYTHING. You would literally not be able to play the game as they teleport all over the map. 1v1 can't be completely neglected when balancing.

@Shiyo.3578 mesmer vs thief would like to have a word with you PepeLaugh

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Bazsi.2734" said:Imo this "paradox" could be at least softened by making class/elite specialisation roles clearer. Right now everyone can do anything(especially since PoF released, thief cannot play healer but thats literally it, anything else goes), and in this context it is indeed impossible to make sure 1v1-s end, but 2v1-s arent lethal within seconds.

Maybe have unique sets of amulets for each class. Maybe use a system that picking a traitline unlocks(or the exact opposite, locks) some amulets to choose from. The aim is to force builds into a role. For example, a tactics/discipline/defense warrior should lock itself into being a support bunker, so no offensive mainstat amulets for this guy. This could turn out terrible, I'm just trying thinking of a way to really force people into making specialised builds without wiping off build diversity.