Entropy Rises: More Classes = Worse Balance

As we have seen from the recent patch, the developers are losing control of balance, if, indeed, they ever had it.

• There are 1/3 more classes. The balance developers are doing 1/3 more work: Are they working 1/3 longer? Is the team 1/3 bigger? I doubt it. More classes = Less Balance being done.
• Where players are concerned, buffing under-performing classes comes across much better in terms of public relations than nerfing does, and the developers know it.
• It is with this logic in mind that I predict very little of the necessary balance will be inflicted on the evidently overpowered PoF classes. The balance team isn't going to be doing their job with the vigour that it requires because it will reflect badly on the company to nerf a lot of new content all at once (why is the policy to introduce new classes as powerful? Sales?) - so they'll either not do it at all or do it incredibly slowly.

As more classes are introduced to the game, control over balance will decrease. Entropy always rises.The company has to add classes with new expacs to make money, but with more classes comes worse balance, inherently.

They have a dilemma here.

It's ovious yes. Just look at revenant for exemple. The class isn't properly functionnal after 2 years soo... Yeah more class are not wanted and needed. They already have bad time to balance 9 professions.

Not even as simple as 33% more to balance. It's nearly 40% more content to balance as traits and skills treated as components of other classes which massively increases the possible combinations of any given class, further exacerbated by interwoven dependencies within those classes. It makes systemic changes even harder to do. And then make it worse with more gear stat combinations and power creep.

To make this work, ANet needs a potent understanding of their classes and a willingness to make substantial changes. History shows a substantial lack of both.

I think that ANet can balance the classes, even with 2 elite specs for all of them. I really do believe that they are capable of that. Where it breaks down, in my opinion, is that the balance team is also responsible for implementing the new elite specs. So while they are trying to balance classes, they are also responsible for designing, implementing, and balancing 9 new trait lines along with those skills. That is the core of the problem. Soon, very soon, Anet is going to have to either expand the skills and balance team, or create a new team for designing the elite specs. That new team should work closely with the balance team mind you, but the work of designing brand new elite specs should never compete with developer time for balancing. That's taking away from the skills and balance team from redesigning "old" traits and skills, or even entire skill types/weapons, and making them better. It makes it harder for them to balance the game since their attention is divided.

Dota 2 has over 100 different heroes, yet it usually manages to keep the vast majority of them competitive in any given patch (at one of the largest professional tournaments, 105 out of 110 heroes were picked at some point). To be fair, balancing 1 hero in Dota is easier than balancing an entire class in GW2. Regardless, games such as Dota show that achieving high degrees of balance is not impossible, even within extremely complex systems.

People seem to forget that GW2 has always had terrible balance. This isn't because of increasing complexity, it's because (for whatever reason) these specific balance devs just aren't up to the task. That sounds harsh, but it's true. The team has made consistently poor balance decisions since before the game even launched. Rangers at launch were so bad that they were laughed out of groups in all game modes. Healing and tank builds were pointless in PvE, so everyone always went full glass cannon (because why wouldn't you, at that point?). In some ways balance has improved, but even up until the latest balance patch 3 specific class builds were considered all but mandatory in endgame raiding and fractals (chronomancer, druid, and warrior). Don't get me wrong: I still really like the game. I'm just not under any delusions. The game will never be well-balanced, and anyone that wants a truly competitive game would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

They just don't have time to actually work on balance. I'm sure there is a team that does it, but I don't believe that for a second that all that team does is actually work on balance.

No, most of anet is working either on new LS content, or the next xpac. Very little time is actually devoted to changing numbers, skills, and traits.

@gannondorf.7628 said:It's ovious yes. Just look at revenant for exemple. The class isn't properly functionnal after 2 years soo... Yeah more class are not wanted and needed. They already have bad time to balance 9 professions.

This. Core game was hard enough to balance. Now we have added a new class entirely, and 17 new specs (not counting Herald since the rev was still new). They never got anything balanced before they added more, and it just keeps compiling.

I and others have proposed that PvP should be only core builds. WoW released a vintage game set up like the original. From what I've read, it's very successful. Now if WvW and PvP were core only, I think it'd resolve many problems.

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I and others have proposed that PvP should be only core builds. WoW released a vintage game set up like the original. From what I've read, it's very successful. Now if WvW and PvP were core only, I think it'd resolve many problems.

What the fuck ? Killing diversity is not an option ._.

@Svarty.8019 said:As we have seen from the recent patch, the developers are losing control of balance, if, indeed, they ever had it.

• There are 1/3 more classes. The balance developers are doing 1/3 more work: Are they working 1/3 longer? Is the team 1/3 bigger? I doubt it. More classes = Less Balance being done.
• Where players are concerned, buffing under-performing classes comes across much better in terms of public relations than nerfing does, and the developers know it.
• It is with this logic in mind that I predict very little of the necessary balance will be inflicted on the evidently overpowered PoF classes. The balance team isn't going to be doing their job with the vigour that it requires because it will reflect badly on the company to nerf a lot of new content all at once (why is the policy to introduce new classes as powerful? Sales?) - so they'll either not do it at all or do it incredibly slowly.

As more classes are introduced to the game, control over balance will decrease. Entropy always rises.The company has to add classes with new expacs to make money, but with more classes comes worse balance, inherently.

They have a dilemma here.

Some aspects to consider:

-Features were added or changed to facilitate easier balance with new elite specs in mind, namely the entire purpose the game was changed to use specialization lines and locking in adept, master and grandmaster traits was so elite specializations could be added.

-They have utilized game-mode splits where in the past, they worked to make all game modes as similar as possible. While that mentality is still present, they have expressed willingness to diverge balance from one game mode to the next. This is a huge factor change you're brushing aside.

-Elite specs are exclusive, i.e. you can only use 1 elite spec at a time. This means you don't have to retain an equal amount of work on something that is relatively balanced so your attempt to rationalize their work load is faulty to begin with.

You're concern there is a dilemma assumes Anet was targeting balanced performance across all classes in the first place. I'm not sure what you see that convinces you they ever were; I'm certainly under no illusion it was ever part of their plan.

I think the more honest answer is that there appears that players need to accept a very wide range of balance in GW2. Make no mistake though, I see nothing different about the balancing issues Anet faces in GW2 than other multi-class MMO's I've played; there is always some variation and there are always players that see that variation as a failure to balance. That's OK ... the wiser will simply play and enjoy the game, irregardless.

@Svarty.8019 said:As we have seen from the recent patch, the developers are losing control of balance, if, indeed, they ever had it.

• There are 1/3 more classes. The balance developers are doing 1/3 more work: Are they working 1/3 longer? Is the team 1/3 bigger? I doubt it. More classes = Less Balance being done.
• Where players are concerned, buffing under-performing classes comes across much better in terms of public relations than nerfing does, and the developers know it.
• It is with this logic in mind that I predict very little of the necessary balance will be inflicted on the evidently overpowered PoF classes. The balance team isn't going to be doing their job with the vigour that it requires because it will reflect badly on the company to nerf a lot of new content all at once (why is the policy to introduce new classes as powerful? Sales?) - so they'll either not do it at all or do it incredibly slowly.

As more classes are introduced to the game, control over balance will decrease. Entropy always rises.The company has to add classes with new expacs to make money, but with more classes comes worse balance, inherently.

They have a dilemma here.

The main problem lies in the original design of the professions. They weren't made with elite specializations in mind, and it shows.

Also, it doesn't help core professions haven't gotten any upgrades since pretty much release. New weapons and slot skills are necessary to keep them fresh, it's a huge mistake to only add new stuff through elite specializations.

They should redesign all the professions from the ground up, using modularity for the mechanics, and then balance around those modules, instead of one by one. For example, "transformation" should cover necromancer, druid, and holosmith, and they all should use the same foundation, with minor variations.

A complete redesign would take a lot of work, but it will be unavoidable in the future. The longer they take, the worse it will become.

I’d rather they just delay a living story episode and focus on a big balance rework. Balance is more important than content in the long run.

@"Obtena.7952" said:You're concern there is a dilemma assumes Anet was targeting balanced performance across all classes in the first place. I'm not sure what you see that convinces you they ever were; I'm certainly under no illusion it was ever part of their plan.

I think the more honest answer is that there appears that players need to accept a very wide range of balance in GW2. Make no mistake though, I see nothing different about the balancing issues Anet faces in GW2 than other multi-class MMO's I've played; there is always some variation and there are always players that see that variation as a failure to balance. That's OK ... the wiser will simply play and enjoy the game, irregardless.

This is an interesting perspective. I believe you are correct in your suggestion that the developers don't intent for the classes to be completely balanced. The ongoing policy of deploying minor tweaks when there are evidently yawning chasms between the different classes/elites just reminds us that balance is a public relations exercise and not a problem that the developers truly aspire to resolve. Revealingly, the recent balance patch was preceded by the statement, "We’ve heard your frustrations", as if to appease an upset client with a token effort.

I disagree that "the wiser will play and enjoy the game, irregardless". I don't believe it wise to ignore glaring issues - rather, I consider it helpful to discuss them for the benefit of future generations. Imagine the great wealth of knowledge they will gain from browsing these forums regarding customer satisfaction and reasonable expectations! [cough] ...back on topic...

I think it's not unreasonable to expect companies to actually attempt a semblance of balance, and that it would be more to the players' satisfaction if they did. It won't become any easier if there are Elites in every expac, but I fear that they have now become something of an expectation.

I was just having some self thoughts on this topic, so the response is timely. I don't believe players that desire 'balance' have any other choice BUT to adjust play to the situation. I don't believe that's ignoring a glaring issue because to label it as an issue assumes there is something wrong with the inbalances in the first place. I don't think that's the case here because in THIS game, you are going down the wrong path if you choose a class because of performance anyways. Let me explain a bit.

I think it's reasonable to say that there are many people here that have been 'trained' in MMO's that have a holy trinity ... A game that has this structure REQUIRES class balance, otherwise it's deficient in classes that people NEED to do content.

GW2 has thrown that philosophy away and because there is no NEED to have any particular class in this game, there is no REQUIREMENT that classes are balanced for performance. Think about the first time you logged in .. did you choose a class because of it's performance? There is no way you could have; you have no experience with it. The best way to choose a class in this game is based on concepts you enjoy playing, not any role or performance based factor. That freedom has a cost; the lack of needing relative equivalent performance between classes. This is even true in the competitive parts of the game, because there is so much more to those parts of the game than the mechanics of the class, as well as the fact that the game changes frequently.

So to the topic ... there is no way that more entropy is actually a bad thing for a game where there is no NEEDED class roles or a reason to have equivalent class performance in the first place. There isn't a need for order bringing balance when the game is designed to handle chaos associated with the existence of so much choice.

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:As we have seen from the recent patch, the developers are losing control of balance, if, indeed, they ever had it.

• There are 1/3 more classes. The balance developers are doing 1/3 more work: Are they working 1/3 longer? Is the team 1/3 bigger? I doubt it. More classes = Less Balance being done.
• Where players are concerned, buffing under-performing classes comes across much better in terms of public relations than nerfing does,
  and the developers know it.
• It is with this logic in mind that I predict very little of the necessary balance will be inflicted on the evidently overpowered PoF classes. The balance team isn't going to be doing their job with the vigour that it requires because it will reflect badly on the company to nerf a lot of new content all at once (why is the policy to introduce new classes as powerful? Sales?) - so they'll either not do it at all or do it
  incredibly slowly.

As more classes are introduced to the game, control over balance will decrease. Entropy always rises.The company has to add classes with new expacs to make money, but with more classes comes worse balance, inherently.

They have a dilemma here.

Its not the classes, that weren#t designed with E-Specs in mind, no, its the whole outdated combat system, that anet keeps on ignoring all the time, while they are permanently focused only on skilsl and traits, while abandonding all the rest of the olf 2012er state combat system of this ganme, which doesn't get along anymore with all the changersNAt did pover the years to the ganme, which haven't all been in mind for this old combat system and its balance, that was designed around the fact, that all those many changes and features originalyl dont exist.ANet has to finalyl greatly adapt and rework these outdated combat system elements and brign them up to date with what the game offers now all for combat relevant mechanics, that need to be all revalued, reconsidered and reconstructed based on all these factors, that Anet keeps on ignoring for 5 years now.

Yeah, they have finalyl made a tiny nerf to conditions, by changing basicalyl their ramp up time, so that their damage takes now longer to build up..but this alone is no solution.

The game needs a redesign on the complete Condition and Boon System... obsolete Conditions and Boonds, that can easily work besser as Trait Effects, as Upgrades or KSill Effects to improve making some classes more unique and outstandign from all of them, will help much better in balancign this game, if Anet gets finally to reduce the whole effect clutter and makes while working on this also sure, that condi cleanse and boon removal gameplay mechanics get properly rebalanced around these changes, so that it isn#t anymore the case after the chances, that you can be like 10x faster spammed to death with conditions permanently, than you can remove them, so that you just need such a stupid obsolete boon like Resistance just to get the time you need to get some room for breath from all this overwhelming condi spam to remove some, before you instantly suffer again on a whole crap load of them a few seconds later...Removal of Conditions needs finalyl to create some kind of IMMUNITY SYSTEM.

If I remove Poison from my character, the character should become for a few seconds IMMUNE to poison, so that I can't suffer instantly after the removal again on Posipon.Thhats how the Resistance Boon should get reworked and by the rework should get removed to reduce effect clutter.Resistance shoudl become a mechanism, or an attribute effect, that should become part of DUAL EFFECT ATTRIBUTES, which helps to determine, how long your character becomes immune to a removed condition after the removal. Simpyl said, resitances needs to become a BASELINE MECHANIC and the player should have with skills, with traits, with upgrades and with an attribute a way, how he/she can influence the efficiency of your immune system.

Merge Vitality with Resistance, call the Attribute then still further Vitality, but now the Attribute doesn't increase only your Max Health, which should get its values rebalanced, so that Vitality becomes more important, by raising the number how much each Vit point incrases Max Health significantly from laughable 10 HP per Point to more significant 25 HP per Vit Point!!! Plus on top of that would work Vitality then as Dual Effect Attribute to increase your characters immune system, makign them more resistant to Conditions (or at least physical conditions, ANet could eventually split of Conditions intp Condition Types as of Physical, Mental and Natural Conditions, so that Vitality becomes not too op by affectign the resistance of too many conditions, Physical would be Poison, Weakness, Blindness, Vulnerability, Cripple, mental is Confusion, Natural would be Chill and Burning for example)

So higher your Vitality would be now, so more immune your character becomes and so longer would last your Immunity Effect after removing a Condition to give you some protection agaisnt gettign spammed to death with Conditions, what woudl especially help in this case balancing the WvW format of the game...., but also a bit PvP naturally, so that pure Condi Builds aren't anymore in siuch a big advantage over power builds and so that intelligent usage of cleanses makes finally also some influence on the outcome of battles.Cleanse skills could then get also reworked to the point, that the become also finaly useful, even if you don't already suffer on a condition. A design element, that always disturbed me, that skilsl that can remove conditions, can be only useful literally, if you already suffer on conditions - when its basically already too late for you and you can use them only in rtegard of a reactions..Condi Clease skills should be useful in BOTH WAYS - as a form of reaction by removing a condition and activatign your Immunity.But also as a form of PROACTIVE PROTECTION, by activating your immunity (Resitance towards conditions), before you already suffer on them, so that there will exist acchance, that you won't suffer on the conditions, if you get hit by your enemies attacks, that would normally cause conditions on you!! Because thats literalyl the way how resistance as boon works currently - but for this is no obsolete boon effect neccessary, when it can work instantly baseline as proactive effect when using a skill, that can remove conditions, when you dont suffer yet on any conditions, then you can use the skilsl in advance, when you are expecting about to be hit by condition attacks, without having to suffer from the conditions then, if your upraised immunity/resitance was strong enough to protect you from the condition.

And this brigns me to a final point in which Conditions have to get reworked to make Condition Builds have to use more Attributes, to make them finalyl equal with power builds, that need more attributes, than pure condi builds to be effective.Condi Builds should need to use an attribute, like Wisdom, which effects the EFFICIENCY of Conditions. With immiunity/resistance beign there, which affects the chances on you, if you get to suffer on a condition, or not, the other side needs also a way how thery can positively increase the chances that theiur skilsl will cause conditions.

For balance sake it needs to become so, that Conditions shouldn't beanymore a 100% granted thing to be applied always. Players need to have ways how they can protect themself against receiving Conditions/receiving conditions again, after removing them....If Conditions would have an Efficiency Value, which describes the chance for the condition to be applied to your enemy, then there would be also a way to work on it, how condi players can increase their chances to apply conditions on their foes, even if they have proactively ramped up their immunity/resitance towards conditions, because even if you are resitant to condition,sa for balance there can't exist 100% immunity - and thats the mistake that Anet did with Resitance, to make it a boon, that 100% > 0 works against Consitions, which is why many people at the release of Hot saifd immediately, that Resoistances is just only a silly quick band aid solution by anet, to fix their own mess they had created with the patch of june 23rd of 2015, where HoT made everythign after that only worser, so that Resistance was from that point on in its current form needed, otherwise the game would have become completely unplayable!!

This Efficiency Value of Conditions would be then the counter to the Immunity/Resistance Value of an enemy player.Is the resistance/immunity higher, than your efficiency of your condition, then the enemy palyer is completely protected from receiving the Condition.Is the Efficiency of your Condition higher, than the Immunity/Resitance value of your enemy, then based on a calculation between the difference value of your efficiency and their immunity/resitance should exist the chance, that your skills cause conditions first to them. plus/minus effects from skills, traits, and upgrades on both sides, that could influence these values for the total calculation that decides over it, if you get to suffer on a condition after being hit, or not.But GW2 must get definetly get away from this bad balance, that every condi skill applies 100% of a time always also a conditionö.A power build also doesn't 100% of all times, unless extremely haviliy build for it maybe, cause 100% guaranted critical hits with always maximum critical damage..So why should conditions have the right here, to cause always granted 100% sure a condition???

Thats the right and important question here!

@DeceiverX.8361 said:To make this work, ANet needs a potent understanding of their classes and a willingness to make substantial changes. History shows a substantial lack of both.

you got the don't understand their classes part. take scourge for example. necromancers are balanced based around their shrouds. the shroud is their to lock out the necromancer from receiving sustain heals while its in its short lived power mode. (minus the self sustain traits) what do the devs do to make them seem creative. that's right remove the one thing that not meant to be removed from the class.

rev just a complete mess from its foundation that will never be balanced until they remove energy completely its already the main reason thief difficult to balance allowing repeat skills to be spammed in bursts. unlike thief rev gets CD's as well to over complicate the balance.

rangers main balance around its pets and they messed with that because people wanted pet less rangers but I don't think soul beast a great turnout.

deadeye people wanted a ranged thief but they new they would never be able make it viable as it could become totally overpowered if not reigned back.

mirage is just Mesmer receiving the mistake that was daredevil. providing lots of evades to a burst class with stealth access and blind access as its main damage mitigation tactics.

balance issues with the classes down to their ridiculous elite spec mechanics and not numbers and cd's. but they will never go back and change that stuff so each expansion they will create something more powerful to overshadow the mistake of the last spec. the foundation of elite specs as been flawed since the start and the hole they dug with the concept is getting deeper.

Actually it's only a few builds now that are giving problems, and they synergize. Scourge is actually not that bad now, it's when it's coupled with like a firebrand that you have a huge issue. And Mirage is just overly tuned regardless but we don't want builds nerf to extinction. Reducing more builds in fear of balance isn't healthy, you can have basic templates for balance and tweak with more frequent balance patches.

Softer tweak nerfs but more frequently > massive nerfs less frequently.

@Despond.2174 said:Softer tweak nerfs but more frequently > massive nerfs less frequently.

Well they don't do either.

I'm of the mind that change is more important than balance. With frequent changes, the number of classes is a non-issue. I'd personally put out changes every 1-2 weeks. Unfortunately, the people doing the balancing are too cautious, and the changes too infrequent/negligible. This worries me that we might not get another class. :/

I've been telling people that the spec system was the absolute heat death of this game. Bloat had reached critical mass long before the first expac. Nobody listened.

So I'm not a science doctor but I think balance looks pretty okay right now.

On Metabattle 7 builds are listed as Meta.I think the best we've ever had is 8 Meta builds.The current meta builds are 2 HOT and 5 POF so there is a bit of a lean towards POF but it's not dreadful.

When we include all 90+ builds it's 2 core, 5 HOT, 5 POF. Pretty good. I dunno if these are lingering ratings from HoT though.

It seems to me like a fundamentally flawed argument. The issue is not that there are more classes which then creates more of a balance load; it's that there are only so many roles that can be filled and so many team slots that can be filled that to some degree, builds just can't express themselves.If ANet decided that only one copy of each espec could be in a single game you would see the meta category expand to 10 classes overnight. But is that a sign of good balance or good game design? Probably not.