The Core Problem to Balancing WvW & Solution

So, the games been out a long time. I doubt what I say will have an impact as it would require radical changes, but who knows. There's a new game director and some big changes coming to world restructuring. I remain hopeful.

This idea may not be original. I think it may have been mentioned about 4 years ago.

While I do see solutions, they are flawed and, having played since launch, I see why we have the system that we have.

There have been lots of balancing of skills and classes over the years. While these balances have been much needed, and perhaps more may need to be done, it's really all in vain when it comes to WvW. That's because all game balancing is based on 2 things. Player vs, static monster is one. Since this doesn't effect us, we'll disregard it. The rest of game balancing is based on one person damaging another or up to 5 players. This is the core problem. Because in WvW, you are taking damage from not one, or a party of 5, but up to 120 players at once (the mythical cap of EB). OK, so you're probably not going to face a zerg of 120, but 20-60 is more reasonable. This is the core problem.

How on earth is balance supposed to be made? It can't. If the weakest, wet noodle skill hits for 500 damage, no big deal, right? Well, multiply that by 20 and now you have 10,000. Multiply that by 50 and you get 25,000. Make it a harder hitting skill and the damage is off the chart. WvW is an open game mode and there's no way to control how may players work together. How can this be balanced? It just can't. You can nerf and nerf and nerf skills as much as you want, but multiply that by large amounts of players and it still kills. What makes this worse is that while you can take damage from every player in an enemy zerg, you can only be healed, cleansed, or buffed by 5 players around you. That is always going to favor damage over defense. Balance with this design is geared only towards a 5 vs. 5 group. But that is not WvW. Again, that is the core game design of WvW and why balance is totally flawed.

So, how do we solve this? There are only 2 ways I see and it has always seemed obvious. First: if we can only have defense from 5 people then we should only take damage from 5 people at any given time. Fore example, if I'm by myself and stand in a 50 man bomb, I can only take damage from 5 of the enemies. Now, lets say I'm in a group fighting another group. There's lots of movement and damage being thrown around. I might be in a bomb one moment, then move out, but still taking damage from ranged, single target and a few aoes. Not matter what, at any given time, I can still only take damage from 5 people.

The second solution is to get rid of the 5 player cap on healing, cleanses, buffs. If I can take damage from 50 people, then I should be able to be healed by 50 people. This would be a lot easier than the first but it would severely favor zerg size. Basically, whoever has the largest zerg would surely win as they would be able to out heal. The game actually had this in origianllybut it was removed about 6 months after launch as a small, well coordinated group could easily out sustain most damage. But perhaps at that time, healing was too strong and damage too low. It can be argued that damage has definately gone way up since launch. But even if a good balance was made towards damage and healing, this model would still highly favor the larger group. This is why I favor the first solution.

The first solution is a good compromise to having group number zerg dominance and lowering the damage healing to the least common denominator of party size, party composition, squad composition, and group coordination. It is one of the fundamentals to WvW, and the first solution would preserve that rather than throwing everyone in the same pot as the first solution. Besides the monumental task of programming this idea, there are some questions what would need to be determined. For example, what 5 players would take priority of doing damage? First in first out? Highest vs. Lowest? Distance. No matter what, there will be winners and looser. First in, first out seems best to me and would require a greater amount of teamwork to truly be efficient. It would also cause issues with pugs laying down damage and totally negating your damage if they lay theirs down just before you do. That would be unfair as well. Maybe taking a hybrid of the first solution and raising the damage cap to 10 enemies. This would also make sense as there are more skills now that effect 10 people.

No matter what, Everyone complains about balance. Balance never happen with our current system. In order to achieve this, one of these two systems would have to be adopted. However, in order to do this, some players would be hurt having 0 effect, so perhaps the system we have now is best. I don't know what is best for the game. I personally would like to see a 10 enemy cap on damage.

@"Spurnshadow.3678" said:If I can take damage from 50 people, then I should be able to be healed by 50 people.

Healing works the same as damage. You can get healed by 50 people.

I have argued that it's the incoming damage that's unbalanced before, yes. But few are really in favor of some kind of limitation to that (I like to call it "glancing blows" if too many hit you too fast, which would have reduced damage). Alternativly something that divides damage, such as if a warrior hit 5k on 5 peeps normally with full counter, actually hitting those 5 means you only do 1k damage to each instead - or 5k to 1 person if it was a 1v1.

But most instead will go the complete opposite route to achieve balance for some reason. I call this the Warhammer Online Argument, that's always what's referred to. Like a meteor storm balancing zergballs by being able to dump all damage on unlimited targets in its AoE. Because we all love insta kills while stunned.

@"Spurnshadow.3678" said:So, the games been out a long time. I doubt what I say will have an impact as it would require radical changes, but who knows. There's a new game director and some big changes coming to world restructuring. I remain hopeful.

This idea may not be original. I think it may have been mentioned about 4 years ago.

While I do see solutions, they are flawed and, having played since launch, I see why we have the system that we have.

There have been lots of balancing of skills and classes over the years. While these balances have been much needed, and perhaps more may need to be done, it's really all in vain when it comes to WvW. That's because all game balancing is based on 2 things. Player vs, static monster is one. Since this doesn't effect us, we'll disregard it. The rest of game balancing is based on one person damaging another or up to 5 players. This is the core problem. Because in WvW, you are taking damage from not one, or a party of 5, but up to 120 players at once (the mythical cap of EB). OK, so you're probably not going to face a zerg of 120, but 20-60 is more reasonable. This is the core problem.

How on earth is balance supposed to be made? It can't. If the weakest, wet noodle skill hits for 500 damage, no big deal, right? Well, multiply that by 20 and now you have 10,000. Multiply that by 50 and you get 25,000. Make it a harder hitting skill and the damage is off the chart. WvW is an open game mode and there's no way to control how may players work together. How can this be balanced? It just can't. You can nerf and nerf and nerf skills as much as you want, but multiply that by large amounts of players and it still kills. What makes this worse is that while you can take damage from every player in an enemy zerg, you can only be healed, cleansed, or buffed by 5 players around you. That is always going to favor damage over defense. Balance with this design is geared only towards a 5 vs. 5 group. But that is not WvW. Again, that is the core game design of WvW and why balance is totally flawed.

So, how do we solve this? There are only 2 ways I see and it has always seemed obvious. First: if we can only have defense from 5 people then we should only take damage from 5 people at any given time. Fore example, if I'm by myself and stand in a 50 man bomb, I can only take damage from 5 of the enemies. Now, lets say I'm in a group fighting another group. There's lots of movement and damage being thrown around. I might be in a bomb one moment, then move out, but still taking damage from ranged, single target and a few aoes. Not matter what, at any given time, I can still only take damage from 5 people.

The second solution is to get rid of the 5 player cap on healing, cleanses, buffs. If I can take damage from 50 people, then I should be able to be healed by 50 people. This would be a lot easier than the first but it would severely favor zerg size. Basically, whoever has the largest zerg would surely win as they would be able to out heal. The game actually had this in origianllybut it was removed about 6 months after launch as a small, well coordinated group could easily out sustain most damage. But perhaps at that time, healing was too strong and damage too low. It can be argued that damage has definately gone way up since launch. But even if a good balance was made towards damage and healing, this model would still highly favor the larger group. This is why I favor the first solution.

The first solution is a good compromise to having group number zerg dominance and lowering the damage healing to the least common denominator of party size, party composition, squad composition, and group coordination. It is one of the fundamentals to WvW, and the first solution would preserve that rather than throwing everyone in the same pot as the first solution. Besides the monumental task of programming this idea, there are some questions what would need to be determined. For example, what 5 players would take priority of doing damage? First in first out? Highest vs. Lowest? Distance. No matter what, there will be winners and looser. First in, first out seems best to me and would require a greater amount of teamwork to truly be efficient. It would also cause issues with pugs laying down damage and totally negating your damage if they lay theirs down just before you do. That would be unfair as well. Maybe taking a hybrid of the first solution and raising the damage cap to 10 enemies. This would also make sense as there are more skills now that effect 10 people.

No matter what, Everyone complains about balance. Balance never happen with our current system. In order to achieve this, one of these two systems would have to be adopted. However, in order to do this, some players would be hurt having 0 effect, so perhaps the system we have now is best. I don't know what is best for the game. I personally would like to see a 10 enemy cap on damage.

You are confusing amount of players and individual player skill caps.

The devs are not going to make any changes like "only take damage from 5 attackers". Also, the devs are not going to go "crazy" with loosening skill effect caps for support skills. I'm sure the devs would be open to a discussion about stuff like "cap all aoe offensive and support skills at 10 for balance", or whatever.

While I like this idea, and have mentioned/suggested same/similar in the past, I should also mention one problem with this: If you limit damage to 5 targets against any one person, you can easily end up with 1 roamer run through a zerg almost invulnerable.

Between the personal survival of a good roamer build, a good player that knows how to use it, and the basically pretty random system of who gets to damage that roamer, it becomes very plausible/possible.

(Would be hilarious to watch though)

@joneirikb.7506 said:While I like this idea, and have mentioned/suggested same/similar in the past, I should also mention one problem with this: If you limit damage to 5 targets against any one person, you can easily end up with 1 roamer run through a zerg almost invulnerable.

Between the personal survival of a good roamer build, a good player that knows how to use it, and the basically pretty random system of who gets to damage that roamer, it becomes very plausible/possible.

(Would be hilarious to watch though)

This^. Spellbreaker says hi.

You damage 5 targets per skill, but you have multiple skills -> you damage more enemies.

You heal 5 allies at once per skill, but you have multiple healing skills -> you heal more allies.

If 6 people stand in one lava font/geyser, only 5 take damage/get healed. But if one person move outside of that aoe, the 6th one will get affected. While there's a 5 target limit on aoe, you're still able to affect more than 5 people in total, unless skills are instant and static, but for most part they arent.

OK, there's a big flaw in my argument I realized. Dawdler help me realize this:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

Healing works the same as damage. You can get healed by 50 people.

At first I was like what? Then I realized he's right. If I'm standing by myself, and 50 people do a ranged heal skill, then I'll get healed by 50 people. I'm just so used to healing skills being player aoe and having crappy range. This is due to there just not being a dedicated heal class. Tablet Rev is probably the best example, but still not like other games. Because of this, healing really depends on people being close together, therefore hitting the 5 player and party caps.

Damage on the other hand has much more range options. I'm also used to people just not being disciplined and staying close to the tag. That type of player is more and more rare. That would inevitably limit the damage to the 5 people that their aoe caps have limitation on allowing a group to survive longer in bombs. Even if you did have a good, disciplined group, odds are, there are going to be people getting crippled, immobilized (especially with the dumb resistance/immob change of late) and you're team will get spread out thereby taking more damage.

So, yes, on paper, the game mechanics are in balance, however in practice, it isn't because there are always ranged players hanging back, positioning themselves off tag, getting CCed to death (stab change of 2015) and the 5 player cap damage goes out the window when compounded by multiple sources. I think that's the big issue that people have with the balance in large group combat. It seems most of our game play is centered around cleansing/anti-CC tactics and spend very little time on actual damage. This, for me, is not fun.

As a compromise to what I concluded above, I still think it'd be a good idea to limit damage to no more than 10 players at any given moment, but conversely, one would have to limit healing /buffs/cleanses to no more than 10 people at any given time as well, as it is possible to currently get healed by 50 people. Or perhaps my gripe is just with the power creep, stab change, and too much boon conversion.

Hmmmmm

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:OK, there's a big flaw in my argument I realized. Dawdler help me realize this:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

Healing works the same as damage. You can get healed by 50 people.

If the above could be done without dramatically increasing the server side calculations or even the client calculations, I MIGHT be ok with it. The increase in conditions, ticks, calcs etc have contributed to the increased lag.

You would also need to drop the invuln times down a lot, and decrease the amount of heal per skill as well.

Bubble warriors set up right would still waltz into a group, plant their bubble and make it back out.

If you lower incoming sources of damage to 5 at a time or increasing healing/cleansing targets, you'll only give them a bigger excuse to make skills hit even harder or to put in even more crown control skills, which will make every small scale fight worse. Increased Boons and usage such as having protection resistance regen up almost 100%, damage immunity skills and now shields, gave them the excuse to increase power damage, condition damage, and corruption.

Balance wise I don't think any skill should be hitting you for more than the minimum health in the game. Or at this point I feel like every class should have an Elixir S for 2s on like a 120s cooldown that procs at under 10% life, enough time to get a heal off and react to whatevertf hit you. But would prefer if balance wasn't so extreme to either I can one shot you to I can negate all damage.

I used to play this game a lot, and stumbled up this thread well thinking about coming back.

The issue imo has always been 2 things. #1: There needs to be an incentive to do smaller groups. Group size of like 8-10, and you only get kills or bonuses if you're in a group with someone who also get credits. #2: You have to get rid of the 5 target limit for skills. These 2 changes would break up zergs and promote medium group size gameplay. The fact it isn't done after all these years is really disappointing.

These are core game mechanics that have made DaoC the best open world group PvP game ever.

That's it. Change those 2 things and make WvW great.

@"Ozoug.4158" said:I used to play this game a lot, and stumbled up this thread well thinking about coming back.

The issue imo has always been 2 things. #1: There needs to be an incentive to do smaller groups. Group size of like 8-10, and you only get kills or bonuses if you're in a group with someone who also get credits. #2: You have to get rid of the 5 target limit for skills. These 2 changes would break up zergs and promote medium group size gameplay. The fact it isn't done after all these years is really disappointing.

These are core game mechanics that have made DaoC the best open world group PvP game ever.

That's it. Change those 2 things and make WvW great.

Breaking up zergs is already in effect. Its called winning by PPT, not PPK. People like to pretend it doesnt exist, but it does. Five 10 mans spreading out across 4 borders capping everything in sight will easily out PPT one 50 man zerg karma training. Sure that 50 man will beat anything it meets but there is no way it can be at five places at once. Fact is that its human nature to zerg. You seek out others and follow the flow. Some are happy to follow someone in front, some are happier being the one in front. There is no need to artificially break up the zerg. The game mode itself is moderating this. Unless we are talking about T3 and a 50 man dumping 10 rams at every gate, the time it takes to cap 50vs10 isnt all that different. In fact you could argue that any problem is the things "forcing" 50 mans, which has nothing to do with players and combat between them. Its all in the strength of T2 to lesser degree and T3 to a massive degree, especially when covered by cheap and oppressive siege.

Newer pvp oriented mmorpgs usually make it worth well defending special objective because these special objectives can bring special benefits to the fraction or nation or server as a whole, likewise the people who cap these special objectives too will receive rewards of their own.

Gw2 is just a simplified version of fraction wars with casual objectives. Unless gw2 decide to break away from its casual oriented philosophy, we shouldn't expect any major changes to WvW in term of playstyle.

A lot of the problem is't all skill balancing.Although a lot needs to be done when you consider the current meta but that can be discussed some where else for now. .The problem is when a large group encounters a very small group the rewards are the same as a balanced fight .This includes kill points or PPk .As long as the defeated player gets hit a reward is given to whom ever hit that person.So all anyone has to do is tap as many people they can and a reward is given for each tap .Very rarely will a blob (zerg) seek a fair, evenly matched fight.Large groups will intentionally avoid other large groups and pursue the small easier groups for easy rewards . No one can say this doesn't happen with a straight face . What needs to happen is serious diminished returns for unbalanced fights .This can be calculated by "ratio in proximity" .The AI already knows where everyone is on the map so the numbers of opposing players in a given area would be easy to calculate . The actual area may be different but I'll use 3000 as an idea.Since the concentrated battle might occur with in a 3000 diameter battle area or target-able area the ratio of opposing players would determine the rewards . If the ratio is 1:1 that would give the best returns .If the ratio goes to 2:1 then the rewards are less 3:1 or 4:1 then no rewards are given. Gankers would receive lesser or no reward if the ratio goes to high.No more 5:1 gank squads .Large blobs would get lesser or no rewards if they fight groups that are very small.This would virtually eliminate large blobs farming smaller groups for bags .This would break up blobs into smaller groups and promote a higher skill level as opposed to a higher population level. PPk can be adjusted accordingly to ratio as well .A group of 20 defeats a group of five they would receive no PPK because the ratio is 4:1. The smaller group gets point for point on the kills it makes .Theirs no honor in mismatched fights so make it a part of the mechanics.