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Game balance


Soulbrew.7165

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I am playing this game since 2014 and theres one thing I don't understand.Did anet talk somewhere about the way they handle balance? Since I started it seems scarce and random, they rarely address to what I see people talking about in the forum or reddit.Is it intentional? The classes simply dont have an identity in their trait lines... (like the mess that ele traits are)I mostly play with what I can give support/healing in pve and seeing the state of chrono (meta everywhere) made me afraid of what they can do and how easily they can make my favorite playstyle worth and do nothing trying to "balance" it.

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They definitely take an “isolationist” approach to it. No test server or even a feedback sub forum, and they don’t really react to player feedback unless it is some huuuuuge bug requiring an emergency hotfix. Balancing seem entirely based upon their internal data and numbers.

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@Blocki.4931 said:Listening to te fans who always believe to know best is definitely not a good idea, in any game. I trust their playtesters (some of which are players, not devs)

Especially in a class-based game with PvP. Not saying feedback should be entirely ignored, of course, but there are few people more biased than players of such a game.

Just look at the phenomenon where people seem to get personally insulted/offended when nerfs to their favorite class is discussed, for example.

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Balance changes seem to be based almost entirely on internal decisions (and are rather random most of the time) unless there's some big public outcry. What is and what isn't currently "meta" as well as the general consenses of the playerbase seem to have little to no impact on their desition making (not that they feel the need to justefy their desitions). A-Net employees are not required to use the official forum / engage with the player base outside of scheduled events iirc so I doubt that most of the feedback even reaches the responsible decision makers (not that they seem to care much otherwise they would have been a lot more active here and we would have something like subforum for suggestions).

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I think the meta is a curse.I tend to have fun making up builds and farming.Saves me the frustration of doing a build and it gets nerfed the second I complete the armour set.Games are about having fun, not bowing down to a web site that people worship, that stop people joining in or flamed because they aren't 'meta'Having a site which shows builds is great - for ideas.
Not for alienating.

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@Dami.5046 said:I think the meta is a curse.I tend to have fun making up builds and farming.Saves me the frustration of doing a build and it gets nerfed the second I complete the armour set.Games are about having fun, not bowing down to a web site that people worship, that stop people joining in or flamed because they aren't 'meta'Having a site which shows builds is great - for ideas.

Not for alienating.

Fun is subjective mate. Some people find fun in perfection.

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I sometimes wonder if they have written simulators that can automatically run through all the permutations of weapons, sigils, skill, traits, armor, runes, food, etc. to calculate damage, healing, etc. over time in various fight scenarios., and use that to check for obscure but OP combinations that cause something to get nerfed, or conversely, to boost something else that's weak, or to test out new skill or buff or equipment.

Either that, or the last dev to ragequit after dying repeatedly gets dibs on what to change. :)

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@"Mongk.2467" said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Fun is subjective mate. Some people find fun in perfection.

But in this game, this perfection isnt a optional thing.

It is. You can run whatever you want and it's fine for most of the content. What you probably mean is that you won't be accepted with "imperfect" build in a party seeking perfection. Which is only normal - perfection is a group effort in a party.

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There is no perfection. If we copy the meta armour piece by armour piece get the runes, the weapon, do the rotations, in a few short weeks a nerf would render that build useless.I'd rather have a build I made up, that works, that no one has according to a site.Surely the game's not that rigid that only one Build works anyway.

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@TheAgedGnome.7520 said:I sometimes wonder if they have written simulators that can automatically run through all the permutations of weapons, sigils, skill, traits, armor, runes, food, etc. to calculate damage, healing, etc. over time in various fight scenarios., and use that to check for obscure but OP combinations that cause something to get nerfed, or conversely, to boost something else that's weak, or to test out new skill or buff or equipment.

Either that, or the last dev to ragequit after dying repeatedly gets dibs on what to change. :)

If the former were true then we wouldn't have historically had so many blatantly broken things like bunker mesmer, release scourge, release gunflame berserker, boonbunker druid... bugged meteor shower, etc. etc.

Nor so many blatantly weak kits that have no purpose in virtually every area of the game or skills which have no purpose or real use-case outside of very niche circumstances (lower numbers, low reliability, no other value).

Not to mention a lot of failings to balance for the splits in PvP/WvW/PvE.

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@Tails.9372 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:You can run whatever you want and it's fine for most of the content.Yeah, if we go by:

"for most of the content" = "OW"

and

"it's fine" = "the 49 man zerg will do the work for you"

that is.

Yeah, no. I've been on both sides. Occasionally I still do the "imperfect" path - you can even do raids with off-meta builds. You just need to know your stuff and your build needs to make sense. That's all.

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As far as I can tell there are two main things happening:

Anet collecta data through monitoring of game modes. They are aware when something is frequently used and under performing or over performing. The problem is anet does very little to understand why something over or under perform, and thus you see these bizarre and nonsensesical changes all over the place. On top of that, if something does not get used at all anet completely ignores it.

Then anet has these remake projects, like Mesmer phantasm remake in Feb 2018. These tend to be good but are accompanied by major balance debacles, because there is no testing involved. It is just theory thrown live.

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It’s really disheartnening to see these small patches every 3 months. You’d think they’d give and fix more stuff within that period but very often things barely truly change. How come Deadeye or more especially Mirage can cheese their way through victory with minimal effort and be left alone for months or even years?

There’s just no balance or work similar to most pvp games which is extremely dissapointing.

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They balance the game primarily around raiding, with what looks like a focus on dps against mostly stationary targets with large hit boxes. When the game first came out, their primary focus on endgame was PvP and WvW; that has no changed, to raids. So most changes seem to come with raiding in mind which completely messes up the balance of PvP and WvW

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I mean, they made three supportish specs last expansion (Firebrand, Renegade and Scourge) and none of them are used for their intended function. Funny cuzz anet never tried to actually address that, they kinda just accepted that even PvE balance is fucked up with mesmer and ranger being mandatory for every comp and the rest just being dps bots.

Alacrity (Chrono) seriously needs a nerf to open room for other tank/heal builds. Necromancer really needs to have one strong solid single target dps build, since everyone cares so much about sucking every drop possible of dps out of a comp (despite deliverying crap gameplay and rarely if ever providing good damage numbers) and the idea of carrying a necro into the raids seems absurd because of that.

Don't get me started with PvP.

Run before it is too late and this game's good combat actually gets you addicted.

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@Feanor.2358 said:You just need to know your stuff and your build needs to make sense. That's all.Things are not as easy as you want to make them out to be, A-Net just isn't doing that good of a job in this regard. There's a difference between something not being meta and something not being viable and there is some stuff were s**t just doesn't work even if you have the right stats and all.

@otto.5684 said:if something does not get used at all anet completely ignores itThis is very true, A-Net seems to assume that if people don't use X it's because they're not interested in it even though this couldn't be further from the truth. I'd love to have a working version of various skills but that's not gong to happen anytime soon.

The frustrating part about this is that people constantly tell them exactly where the problems are and how to fix them but they just don't want to listen to community feedback even if a general consensus exist.

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@DeadlySynz.3471 said:They balance the game primarily around raiding, with what looks like a focus on dps against mostly stationary targets with large hit boxes. When the game first came out, their primary focus on endgame was PvP and WvW; that has no changed, to raids. So most changes seem to come with raiding in mind which completely messes up the balance of PvP and WvW

...which is why each patch splits more and more abilities between PvE and PvP.

And honestly, that’s something they should’ve done from day one. Having abilities work the same in PvE and PvP while trying to balance them for both is an exercise in futility.

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@Sorem.9157 said:I mean, they made three supportish specs last expansion (Firebrand, Renegade and Scourge) and none of them are used for their intended function. Funny cuzz anet never tried to actually address that, they kinda just accepted that even PvE balance is kitten up with mesmer and ranger being mandatory for every comp and the rest just being dps bots.

Alacrity (Chrono) seriously needs a nerf to open room for other tank/heal builds. Necromancer really needs to have one strong solid single target dps build, since everyone cares so much about sucking every drop possible of dps out of a comp (despite deliverying crap gameplay and rarely if ever providing good damage numbers) and the idea of carrying a necro into the raids seems absurd because of that.

Don't get me started with PvP.

Run before it is too late and this game's good combat actually gets you addicted.

They did that already maybe they need it do more . They reduced alacrity from 33% to 25% and made it a general boon from a class specific. Druid lost some class specific boon and got for that the ability to stack might. I think druids easier to replace then chrono for Tempest there where some suggestion in the board to make him a better replacement for Druid or just strengthen its support role . Firebrand is a good healer in PvP and WvW but its munition system which came in the form of its books makes him suboptimal for PvE

Back to alacrity they basically built Weaver around this boon alternative the attunement change needs lower CD but I doubt that the only way to create a real alternative is by a new elite spec of another class with the next expansion.

But in general boons like alacrity and quickness screaming power creep I played once a game where you can stack such effects until a hard limit kicked in reducing a cast time form 5 sec to 0.5 for the mage class this had drastic side effects like boss fights which run usually 30 minutes where done in 2 minutes even in newer content.

But this power creep seems what they wanted for raids but now its seems they want to turn it back which ...doesn't make sense.

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GW2 easily has the worst balance team I've seen in any game. It's like they just randomly pick things to do to the classes and throw it out there without testing. They never post about what they are thinking about doing or have a test server because they must know people will just tell them exactly how horrible the changes are. The game is dying because of piss poor balance decisions, if I was in charge of one of the other areas of the game I'd be super pissed. Every other aspect of the game is trying to listen to players and make improvements. Balance team, they just do whatever, and they don't do it well, it's like they are actually trying to make things worse.

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@Rufo.3716 said:GW2 easily has the worst balance team I've seen in any game. It's like they just randomly pick things to do to the classes and throw it out there without testing. They never post about what they are thinking about doing or have a test server because they must know people will just tell them exactly how horrible the changes are. The game is dying because of kitten poor balance decisions, if I was in charge of one of the other areas of the game I'd be super pissed. Every other aspect of the game is trying to listen to players and make improvements. Balance team, they just do whatever, and they don't do it well, it's like they are actually trying to make things worse.

I think that it's a company issue here instead of an issue with the balance team devs. It's true that the balance team doesn't communicate much and doesn't seem to ever listen. However, their job is incredibly difficult, because I am certain that they are understaffed. There are just 2 balance devs at the moment, unless somebody else just joined the team and we never found out. Roy used to be part of the team before he left the company, but now only 2 are left. Also, Roy was working on mounts before he left, which makes me wonder if the 2 people in the balance team also have other tasks, while having to balance, and while having to develop new elite specs. This is hardly a team that is capable of doing all of this work. With such a criminally understaffed team, I'm not even sure if they could properly respond to feedback even if there was a test server. Anet needs to start paying proper attention to this, because bad balance is a huge issue. It causes some players to quit games, and it makes some people less likely to take a game seriously when all they hear is that the balance is terrible.

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@Tails.9372 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:You just need to know your stuff and your build needs to make sense. That's all.Things are not as easy as you want to make them out to be, A-Net just isn't doing that good of a job in this regard. There's a difference between something not being meta and something not being viable and there is some stuff were s**t just doesn't work even if you have the right stats and all.

You can never have "everything" working. So long as the game offers meaningful gameplay choices, you will be able to make a bad build which "won't work". Hence my remark about your build making sense. Consider the absolute state - all classes are exact copies of one another. Perfectly balanced. And totally boring. It's always a tradeoff between balance and identity in these games.

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