Mmorpg interviews Anet about Class Balance

http://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/interviews/arenanet-discusses-the-balance-in-tyria-1000012242

Balance between classes in Guild Wars 2 is an always changing thing. We managed to take questions from community members like Metabattle and PVE Specialist to probe ArenaNet for their thoughts on the matter. Read on for some insight...MMORPG: Condition damage, like any damage over time, is designed to be more powerful the longer a fight goes for. Is there any concern that current condition based builds are dishing out their damage too quickly?ArenaNet: In a recent AMA, Irenio Calmon-Huang laid out our intentions regarding condition builds.Power is intended to be more spike damage-centric, wheras Condi is meant to be more ramping, sustained damage. Currently there are some issues with how quickly condition damage can be spiked up, negating the benefits of power damage.If I presented you with a power skill that dealt 1,000 damage instantaneously and a condition one that dealt 1,000 damage over 4 seconds there wouldn't be a question about what build to choose; you'd go with the instant option every time. Not counting other effects, condition skills must inflict more damage over their duration in order to make power vs. condi into a real choice.Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.MMORPG: How much does community feedback through official forums, reddit and in game, impact the team’s decision making? Does this ever create a feeling of unrealistic expectations that clashes with the team’s plans?Karl McLain: The team gets feedback from a variety of ways. Forums, Reddit, Discord, media outlets, direct communication in game, Vulcan mind-melds… we get a lot of it, and it’s easy to get lost in. When making changes, if we run across valid feedback on the area of interest that could potentially change the design direction we’ll do some evaluation by comparing it against other feedback, analytics, spreadsheet values, and a few other points. Feedback and general player discussion definitely does influence us. While it may not seem like we listen to players at times, this is due to how large the playerbase is and the variety of feedback that comes in as a result. Feedback can differ in the extremes even from players playing the same game mode using the same profession. We can listen to both pieces of feedback, but we may only act on one or the other (or neither of them if we don’t feel it’s a solid direction for the game).As for creating unrealistic expectations, feedback and ideas posted in forums and on Reddit can definitely frame player expectations in ways which are hyperbolic or run counter to profession goals.Metabattle Team: How much does the current metagame impact balance choices from the team? Is the balance directed strictly at currently used builds and setups, or is the team constantly looking at new ways to update and refresh underutilized specializations?Karl McLain: The team does indeed keep an eye on popular builds found on websites like Metabattle and takes them into account when making balance updates. When approaching balance updates, we try to not improve already strong builds as much, but instead make efforts to improve lesser-used aspects of the combat system. Sometimes strong traits or skills are increased, but these improvements are generally made to help support less popular builds and it ends up being more of a coincidence. We’re constantly on the lookout for builds that are just out of reach or are waiting to be discovered!PvE Specialist: When the team created instanced content such as high-level fractals and raids, what was their vision for class diversity? How has that changed and adapted as the game evolved through expansions?Jason Reynolds: A core tenant of Guild Wars 2 gameplay is that each class can essentially perform everything they need to play the game. Each class needs to feel thematically and mechanically unique, but they also need to be self-sufficient. That’s a critical component of designing for instanced group content. Making sure no class is explicitly cut out of an encounter due to a mechanic is always at the forefront of our design process. For example, we won’t create an encounter that requires players to use Memser portals to complete.As we were developing Raids early on we wanted the players to feel comfortable bringing whatever they enjoy playing. To achieve this we focused on developing Build and Play Roles into all our encounters. A Build Role will define what skills player are encouraged to bring: condition cleanses, stun breaks, crowd control, etc. Play Roles are where we get to be more creative, and typically they define mechanics in an encounter. They can be as simple as clustering a few players at a specific point to prevent raid-wide damage, or more interactive like smashing an orb with your attacks to move it through goal posts. What’s important is that these Play Roles encourage fun game play, and don’t punish players for playing the class they enjoy playing.Overall, that design principle hasn’t changed. Raids and fractals remain mostly unaffected as far as balance is concerned because we are able to design them around game play mechanics, and not around what unique class gimmicks are being brought. It is possible to run all raid and fractal encounters with a fully Thief party - and those videos are amazing to watch.

Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

"It may not seem like we listen to players at times but-"

I honestly think we need a fresh new team of devs to spearhead a professions revamp and a complete overhaul.

The comments section on that interview shows us the TRUE picture:

@ThupliSerious though, this is all just lip service. They have entire weapon sets and utilities that aren't even touched... they have literally not made them viable FOR YEARS.Don't count on them changing much, it is too much work amd they are stretched too thin with their resources, as the last "balance" update proves.

@Deadrites87These devs have shown time and time again that they just don't get it. Adding pof elite specs in the middle of season 8 and the powercreep combined with brainless class mechanics have reduced this once great pvp game pre HoT into a mindless spam fest with aoe's flying around everywhere.They have great feedback from the players they just refuse to listen to a lot of things or either overcompensate and nerf things into oblivion to the point that it's unplayable.

@PinoXCaptain's Log, Stardate 41235.25. Anet still suck at balancing. They should surrender.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

Why would people not use whatever rule-legal advantage the game gives them to maximize their chances of winning? Optimal "meta" builds are very much a part of what the game allows and what is considered meta changes with changes to the combat. Changes make the game more interesting. The only thing I see self-inflicted is the belief that players should be able to win while playing a sub-optimal build that doesn't work against meta.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/love-of-the-game-not-playing-to-win"I think of a game as a topological landscape with lots of hills and peaks that represent different tactics/strategies/characters. The higher the peak, the more effective that strategy is. Over time, players explore this landscape, discover more and more of the hills and peaks, and climb to higher locations on the known hills and peaks.

The problem is that when you reach the base of a new peak (say, the rock ball trap peak), it can be very hard to know that the pinnacle isn’t very high. It might be really difficult to climb (lots of nuances to learn to do the trap), but in the end, the effectiveness of the tactic is low compared to the monstrous mountains that are out there. You have reached a local maximum, and would do better to go exploring for new mountains."

Despite feeling salty, I'm going to attempt to make some comments that don't get deleted...

The entire design vision of professions is awful, despite this game having some great design elements to combat (such as targeting, movement based combat with few skill roots, dodging, fast paced nature of play). Main role to play is offense (not very creative mind you, considering you can have diverse roles to play while still keeping classes offensive- see city of heroes...), and the team didn't bother to even build in any decent non-heal support roles and skills.. and heal support designs are some of the worst of any mmo I've played that has healing classes. Support play was not even factored into the user interface... Takes the team forever, or never, to make proper changes or substantial fixes. The different control mechanics, and a few other things, built into professions for uniqueness end up causing unnecessary balance issues. The team does not remedy any majorly problematic things. Tons of skills have been and are awful... Most profession updates are out of touch...

IMO, Anet went on complete budget mode with the most important aspects of this game, and those happen to be professions and combat. The team does not care to strongly reinvest in these areas, and always takes the easier route with profession development... I've never see so many "please redesign x because it sucks, or this would be better for play" as I have with this game. Anet seriously needs to hire an extra team to help blow up professions and rebuild them with a new vision in mind.

@XenesisII.1540 said:http://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/interviews/arenanet-discusses-the-balance-in-tyria-1000012242

Balance between classes in Guild Wars 2 is an always changing thing. We managed to take questions from community members like Metabattle and PVE Specialist to probe ArenaNet for their thoughts on the matter. Read on for some insight...

MMORPG:

Condition damage, like any damage over time, is designed to be more powerful the longer a fight goes for. Is there any concern that current condition based builds are dishing out their damage too quickly?

ArenaNet:

In a recent AMA, Irenio Calmon-Huang laid out our intentions regarding condition builds.Power is intended to be more spike damage-centric, wheras Condi is meant to be more ramping, sustained damage. Currently there are some issues with how quickly condition damage can be spiked up, negating the benefits of power damage.If I presented you with a power skill that dealt 1,000 damage instantaneously and a condition one that dealt 1,000 damage over 4 seconds there wouldn't be a question about what build to choose; you'd go with the instant option every time. Not counting other effects, condition skills must inflict more damage over their duration in order to make power vs. condi into a real choice.Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

MMORPG:

How much does community feedback through official forums, reddit and in game, impact the team’s decision making? Does this ever create a feeling of unrealistic expectations that clashes with the team’s plans?

Karl McLain:

The team gets feedback from a variety of ways. Forums, Reddit, Discord, media outlets, direct communication in game, Vulcan mind-melds… we get a lot of it, and it’s easy to get lost in. When making changes, if we run across valid feedback on the area of interest that could potentially change the design direction we’ll do some evaluation by comparing it against other feedback, analytics, spreadsheet values, and a few other points. Feedback and general player discussion definitely does influence us. While it may not seem like we listen to players at times, this is due to how large the playerbase is and the variety of feedback that comes in as a result. Feedback can differ in the extremes even from players playing the same game mode using the same profession. We can listen to both pieces of feedback, but we may only act on one or the other (or neither of them if we don’t feel it’s a solid direction for the game).As for creating unrealistic expectations, feedback and ideas posted in forums and on Reddit can definitely frame player expectations in ways which are hyperbolic or run counter to profession goals.

Metabattle Team:

How much does the current metagame impact balance choices from the team? Is the balance directed strictly at currently used builds and setups, or is the team constantly looking at new ways to update and refresh underutilized specializations?

Karl McLain:

The team does indeed keep an eye on popular builds found on websites like Metabattle and takes them into account when making balance updates. When approaching balance updates, we try to not improve already strong builds as much, but instead make efforts to improve lesser-used aspects of the combat system. Sometimes strong traits or skills are increased, but these improvements are generally made to help support less popular builds and it ends up being more of a coincidence. We’re constantly on the lookout for builds that are just out of reach or are waiting to be discovered!

PvE Specialist:

When the team created instanced content such as high-level fractals and raids, what was their vision for class diversity? How has that changed and adapted as the game evolved through expansions?

Jason Reynolds:

A core tenant of Guild Wars 2 gameplay is that each class can essentially perform everything they need to play the game. Each class needs to feel thematically and mechanically unique, but they also need to be self-sufficient. That’s a critical component of designing for instanced group content. Making sure no class is explicitly cut out of an encounter due to a mechanic is always at the forefront of our design process. For example, we won’t create an encounter that requires players to use Memser portals to complete.As we were developing Raids early on we wanted the players to feel comfortable bringing whatever they enjoy playing. To achieve this we focused on developing Build and Play Roles into all our encounters. A Build Role will define what skills player are encouraged to bring: condition cleanses, stun breaks, crowd control, etc. Play Roles are where we get to be more creative, and typically they define mechanics in an encounter. They can be as simple as clustering a few players at a specific point to prevent raid-wide damage, or more interactive like smashing an orb with your attacks to move it through goal posts. What’s important is that these Play Roles encourage fun game play, and don’t punish players for playing the class they enjoy playing.Overall, that design principle hasn’t changed. Raids and fractals remain mostly unaffected as far as balance is concerned because we are able to design them around game play mechanics, and not around what unique class gimmicks are being brought. It is possible to run all raid and fractal encounters with a fully Thief party - and those videos are amazing to watch.

WvW has been destroyed.

Five years plus in, WvW is a mess more than ever.

I suggest a fix, one server against another, with tiers, real ones, and tournaments back where they belong with Legandary components as the top prize.

A few years of that, and we do want years more of WvW, it would still be relevant and important to those who play it, not a 'gee I am just here for the spike' dialog.

One server against one server.

Three ways are not getting anyone, anywhere except rage quitting and bored 'winners'.

a big portion of the problem is also some players are just better gamers than others. and those who are good adapt immediately and play. they may have gripes but, its reality.

balance of power is more on player skill x coverage.

@Sovereign.1093 said:a big portion of the problem is also some players are just better gamers than others. and those who are good adapt immediately and play. they may have gripes but, its reality.

balance of power is more on player skill x coverage.Yeah Anet should balance those players, break their legs!

This is all just bull to feed themselves. So many times do they "fix" something nobody was really concerned about. Most fixes in notes also say "we found", like how "they found" ogre watch tower unfair all the sudden after gliding had been how long in wvw already? Plus nobody I really saw scream that OMG move ogre watch because you can glide there. This company has marched to its own with very little player input to changes. Even stemming all the way back into GW1. And this company said for the GW2 developers not to listen to the playerbase for ideas into the game because they didn't want to much influences from GW1.

Remember when we use to get excited for our 2 free hats in GW1? That will be 5 dollars please.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

THIS. I miss the earlier days when you could roll with what you wanted. Now if you aren't in an optimal build you die or get moaned at.

@Swagger.1459 said:The entire design vision of professions is awful, despite this game having some great design elements to combat (such as targeting, movement based combat with few skill roots, dodging, fast paced nature of play). Main role to play is offense (not very creative mind you, considering you can have diverse roles to play while still keeping classes offensive- see city of heroes...), and the team didn't bother to even build in any decent non-heal support roles and skills.. and heal support designs are some of the worst of any mmo I've played that has healing classes. Support play was not even factored into the user interface... Takes the team forever, or never, to make proper changes or substantial fixes. The different control mechanics, and a few other things, built into professions for uniqueness end up causing unnecessary balance issues. The team does not remedy any majorly problematic things. Tons of skills have been and are awful... Most profession updates are out of touch...

This is plainly true, comes from the removal of the trinity, and (as they keep on saying), the view that each profession has to be "self-sufficient". Hence the non-existant supportive user interface. The only real point of the game is to deal as much damage as possible as fast as possible. Hence the constant power creep. Now, they wanted to add raids and high-level content, so they put back more heal/supportive elite specs and classes... without the interface allowing them to be efficient.

IMO, Anet went on complete budget mode with the most important aspects of this game, and those happen to be professions and combat. The team does not care to strongly reinvest in these areas, and always takes the easier route with profession development... I've never see so many "please redesign x because it sucks, or this would be better for play" as I have with this game. Anet seriously needs to hire an extra team to help blow up professions and rebuild them with a new vision in mind.

That too. Their balance updates are so thin they should be ashamed to only do that in a quarter. For a monthly one, why not, but that ? 3 months ? In the meanwhile, there's still no overhaul of neglected weapons and skills to shake the meta and bring more diversity. Because it takes far more time. So they're just running and running with new things and 0,25s aftercast there. Sorry. 0,28 ! That's plain nonsense. Don't forget also that some of those skills were designed with the idea of a "long" fight in head. Hence the insanely long CD's.

And this is where they're failing to balance condis. Because they still haven't acknowledged that their ideas of 15-30 seconds fights was really far from the sad truth of a 5 seconds maximum fight in WvW. This is why everything, includig conditions, is bursty.

I'm shivering at the thought of what GW2 may feel for a pure new player. All those odd old things, clucky because designed for a game that doesn't exist anymore.

As many others, I thoughtfully think of times when there were no meta, and everyone came with a weird build, and an approximative skill. This was more fun... Of course, players will chose the best possible path. The sad part is there're too few of them.

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

And its exactly that attitude that continues to cause Raids to get its toxic veneer. If we're to go by what Anet says, Sub-optimal builds are viable by the nature of the encounter design. And to some extent thats true. But if its not true, as your suggesting, then it means buildcraft is largely invalidated, as there is no wiggle room afforded in approach..... THAT breeds power creep as the only answer to "difficulty". Further more, it also means changes to the meta is a direct change to the formula.... which itself shouldn't happen with the kind of Content raids are meant to be.

The whole "meta or gtfo" attitude is unnecessary, which is what Ayrilana is saying is self-inflicted. Reaching a higher level performance is fine; and no one is saying the 3 man clears shouldn't be possible. What people take offense to is the justification of excluding perfectly viable builds, because qT's benchmark shows their "theoretical" DPS to be 2k lower then this other class. Not to mention the skill floor of Chrono being hoisted up, because its overloaded with the roles of Tank, Quickness/Alacrity, and the Group's Panic button. Before Mirage's damage potential was realized, Mesmers were "expected" to be Boonshare..... no boonshare, or there already being 2 Chornos in the group, and the Mesmer would be told to bring another class.

Revanent makes another good case study of this toxicity, as it was a class thats designed FOR RAIDS, and was "Mandatory" when Facet of Nature was powerful, but then not even a back up pick after the nerf, because it "lacked DPS, and was now redundant". Renegade adds insane amounts of Condi DPS and a new stackable buff, and suddenly the class is "acceptable again"..... but only if they run Renegade.

And this isn't even a new problem. Dungeons runners were only accepting 4 classes for a time (Guardian, Ele, Thief and Mesmer). And the main reason Mesmer/Thief was in demand was for its ability to skip sections of the dungeons. It doesn't stop other group comps (like 5 rangers) from beating it..... it just takes them longer. The way Raids are designed, there needs to be a minimum DPS to beat the rage timer..... but according to qT's numbers, a Meta comp has a major surplus of DPS. Faster kills are safer, but its not the only viable option.

One thing I hate about metrics is that once a metric is created, the behavior that the metric is supposed to change isn't what gets changed. Usually there's a work around that ends up being the new standard behavior.

The real problem is that Anet's metrics ( all classes/builds are viable) are different than the player's metrics (time to kill).

I don't think that the players are going to change their metrics so it's up to Anet to rethink their metrics.

Time to post on Metabattle about all types of builds!

Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

Well if they say they're listening to suggestions about conditions, specifically the ramp:

Bleed: Cut damage per tick in half, double the duration

Burning: Cut damage in half, double the duration

Poison: Cut damage per tick by 33%, extend duration by 50%

Torment: Cut damage by 33%, extend duration by 50%

Confusion: Cut damage per tick and ability by 33%, extend duration by 50%.

Total damage is kept the same per abilityDamage×Duration=11/2Damage×2/1Duration=12/3Damage×3/2Duration=1

@Sovereign.1093 said:a big portion of the problem is also some players are just better gamers than others. and those who are good adapt immediately and play. they may have gripes but, its reality.

balance of power is more on player skill x coverage.

It's actually the complete opposite. GW2 doesn't require skill anymore. Just run the build any spam your shit.

It's a funny interview. It's like they try to understand the problem but still can't grasp how they caused that mess with a series of terrible balance decisions.

'Open your eyes, ears, mind and consciousness for the truth is right in your face. You can see it...!!'

Anet is telling us exactly that gw2 class designs, class mechanics and class balances are perfectly fine as it is.-that there are build diversity--that they always welcome our feedbacks--that we are valued--that there are no issues with the game--if there are, that's our doing-

Are you satisfied?

@Bish.8627 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

This x 2. We try a few new things in my guild being we run small, but it doesn't matter. There's too many outnumbered encounters with players running the most toxic you tube builds in game. Build diversity is a myth in this game.

@Maugetarr.6823 said:

Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

Asking myself if they knew that the questions were about GW2 ...? Maybe the interviewer should have pointed that out more clearly..

Edit says : shows the complete different oppinions about balancing .. when players rage bcz of all the broken bs Anet is fine with it and uncle M only showing up if PvE gets heavily afflicted. Cute :)

@Maugetarr.6823 said:

Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

This would be too easy. that just cannot be right.

@Hyper Cutter.9376

That would also require condition removal and resistance gutted across the board accordingly. Strangely you left that part out.

Yes but what is the Problem with that? changing that would be most easy since this is just a number per skill that Needs to be changed. Give me the Tools and i will do that for you for free. And then i ill w8 for a month. see what happens and then i will Change it again accordingly.

Sooo don't post my build on websites.. Got it

Why is this posted in WvW if all they care is about pve builds???

They talk about self suficient.. in pve......?? LAWL but on pvp is only works unless u buy the new expantion, or play the builds dev's ended play..... damage/survival gimmicks...

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:"It may not seem like we listen to players at times but-"

they only listen ... to PVE...

Note: that interview really worries me, (Anet is not good at class design nor skill balance...) so.. they want to had barrier to guardian but they look at pve build on metabalttlething, with might mean that they will add barrier on guardian in a place that will be mostly useless for pvp, and will work only under a certain gimmick while that gimmicks stats wont help the barrier values o guardians....On PVE Guardian/DH, every one plays DPS... while barrier needs defensive stats to work... ... (vitality and healing power...)