How do players judge Professions balance?

Is the balance assessment based on the tester's judgment or based on player statistics? How do testers know the balance of information about the player's career? I want the game to be transparent to the statistics, letting the player know if he has reached the Professions balance level so that the player knows his shortcomings.In addition, I want to know if the company has fired those who do Professions balance?

Common sense?

For example, like seriously, if it's too hard to understand why Mirage (evading while attacking and being able to reset a fight with ease compared to other classes) is not balanced then there is a problem. Some of the concepts apply to soulbeast too but at a lesser extent, though in soulbeasts case, the boon application makes them able to trade so easily.

But yeah, it should be common sense that is through how players see balance. Some people might say "this class beats me it's op." Well sometimes common sense also makes sense in a way that "mirage is the only class that can stealth reset the fight while being able to disengage while attacking" and soulbeast is just so tanky, escapes easy, has decent mobility, it has AI pet, and still deals damage while other classes have actual trade-offs.

I know it when I see it.

judging from the forums and past balance patches id say something is OP if it kills someone gold or below.

"I play boonbeast, I play game for 3 months, core guard kills me, core guard op, core guard need nerf, I pay for upgrades and core kill me, core op need nerf." is generally what I see.

@sephiroth.4217 said:judging from the forums and past balance patches id say something is OP if it kills someone gold or below.

This is generally what I believe this forum's definition of OP is.

If you want a more rigorous assessment of balance, ask yourself what role a profession or build is fulfilling. Is it a:

• Duelist?
• +1'er?
• Nuker (AoE Power)?
• Spiker (Single-target Power)?
• Heavy Pressure (Condi)
• Tank?
• Bruiser?
• Support?
• Decapper/Runner?

Generally speaking, if something fits 4 or more of these roles, people start to consider it OP. Take for example condi mirage (which everyone is pissing on right now). It functions as a Duelist, +1'er, Bruiser, Decapper/Runner, and Heavy Pressure, which is a lot of roles to fill for a single build. Or you can look at boonbeast, which functions as a duelist, tank, bruiser, and decapper/runner.

Compare these builds against vanilla builds which often only filled one or two roles (three tops), and you can see why people start to call things OP.

@"huluobo.7036" said:

Is the balance assessment based on the tester's judgment or based on player statistics? How do testers know the balance of information about the player's career? I want the game to be transparent to the statistics, letting the player know if he has reached the Professions balance level so that the player knows his shortcomings.In addition, I want to know if the company has fired those who do Professions balance?

This is pretty much how it works:

• About 25% of the community encompasses players that (A) Overestimate their own knowledge of the game and who (B) Possess large amounts of bias between the classes they main and the classes they don't play or sometimes © Just get in a bad mood about something because a player beat them. These are the kinds of players who come into the forum posting dumb stuff like: "Necor need buffz cause I R have troublez in 1v1s." or "Mirage needs to be nerfed into the ground, but my Boonbeast feels balanced and shouldn't receive much nerfing at all." or "Conditions are so broken and they need to be nerfed because I just died to a Burn Guard!" This is all the kind of crap that needs to be ignored, and not responded to at all. Don't acknowledge it, don't feed it.
• A good 50% of the community base their opinions & subjective experiences on raw obvious common sense. There a lot of things that don't need to be torn apart statistically or well explained in a thesis, to be able to see that they are over-powered. Or rather should I say this demographic of players can "feel" when something is entirely broken and full of shit. Uh let's take some historical examples: "Old Core D/D Cele Eles" "Busted no Mantra cool-down Chronobunkers in S1 S2" "Scourges on the intitial release of PoF" "Condi Mirage, in its current state immanently before the coming patch." These kind of things are so broken, that even new players & casuals can quickly identify the dominance presented by the raw nature of the build structure. Not only when engaging it in combat, but also when they log in and first try that build structure, and suddenly rise from silver 2, to gold 3. These are the kind of forum users who make vague remarks that sort are in the right direction of the problem, but don't really narrow anything down, such as: "Mirage is too powerful" or "Ele needs buffs." Hey, they aren't wrong in these comments, they just aren't elaborating.
• Now we have the 15% who are great & experienced players, who actually know what they're talking about in terms of "What abilities are over powered or underpowered and why" but they lack the quintessential understanding of the intra-class dynamic as a whole, to be able to give actual good feedback on balance. They may suggest nerfs or buffs to a class, but they are narrowly imagining the outcome of that one class's performance as if the meta around it would remain the same, instead of shaping around it. A good example is this next coming patch, when core guards will disappear. Suddenly we will have a huge meta shift, where things won't be getting countered by core guards anymore because they won't be around. So things that were once kept under control from core guard's presence or thrown out of viability entirely, will gain much more presence in conquest. And due to the presence of these builds rising up, they may become new counters for other builds, changing how the intra-class dynamic works entirely. All of that exampled domino effect really is the perfect explanation, seeing as how it regards the example of how 1 single change to the game, can stir up everything. Something as simple as Righteous Instincts going from +50% down to +25%. The point being is that this demographic of forum users will suggest something like this +50% going to +25%, without considering how it effects everything else in the intra-class dynamic.
• Then we have the rare 10%, who not only are great & experienced players, but they also actually possess the quintessential understanding of the intra-class dynamic as a whole. These are the players/forum users who tend to be incredibly non-biased. They'll make threads about their own main class, well explaining what needs to be buffed or nerfed and why. And they tend to be incredibly fair in terms of judgments passed on what needs to be done and what shouldn't be done, and why. These are the players who are as a priority thinking: "I just want the game to have more flavor and more viability amongst all classes & abilities used, because that would be amazing." These are the players who are sincerely seeking a very balanced game for everyone, because very balanced games are kick ass and fun to play. But even these type of players/forum users, are still only working from a standpoint of subjective experience because we are all human, but they do mean the best. Unfortunately, most of these types of users gave up posting serious feedback in this forum a very long time ago. There aren't many left.

About Arenanet balance: I'm pretty sure that competitive balancing sits in the backseat while pve balancing is doing the driving. If it's convenient to toss in some competitive balancing, they'll find a way to do it, but only after pve changes are achieved. At least that's the drift I get. Also, people complain about "How the game is never balanced" "How there is too much change" but truth be told, would any of us have not gotten bored and stayed here to play this game for 7 years if perfect balance had been achieved in year 1, and nothing had ever been changed to renew the play experience? The truth is that, the frequent shaking of meta keeps people interested and coming back to see how things have developed and how it feels. Aside from popular complaint, the ever shifting balance that never seems to settle is actually healthy for the game. In other words, it has nothing to do with if balance devs were fired or not. This is just clearly the model that they've been using ever since HoT release. Well, that's what it looks like to me anyway.

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"huluobo.7036" said:

Is the balance assessment based on the tester's judgment or based on player statistics? How do testers know the balance of information about the player's career? I want the game to be transparent to the statistics, letting the player know if he has reached the Professions balance level so that the player knows his shortcomings.In addition, I want to know if the company has fired those who do Professions balance?

• About 25% of the community encompasses players that (A) Overestimate their own knowledge of the game and who (B) Possess large amounts of bias between the classes they main and the classes they don't play or sometimes © Just get in a bad mood about something because a player beat them. These are the kinds of players who come into the forum posting dumb stuff like: "Necor need buffz cause I R have troublez in 1v1s." or "Mirage needs to be nerfed into the ground, but my Boonbeast feels balanced and shouldn't receive much nerfing at all." or "Conditions are so broken and they need to be nerfed because I just died to a Burn Guard!" This is all the kind of kitten that needs to be ignored, and not responded to at all. Don't acknowledge it, don't feed it.
• A good 50% of the community base their opinions & subjective experiences on raw obvious common sense. There a lot of things that don't need to be torn apart statistically or well explained in a thesis, to be able to see that they are over-powered. Or rather should I say this demographic of players can "feel" when something is entirely broken and full of kitten. Uh let's take some historical examples: "Old Core D/D Cele Eles" "Busted no Mantra cool-down Chronobunkers in S1 S2" "Scourges on the intitial release of PoF" "Condi Mirage, in its current state immanently before the coming patch." These kind of things are so broken, that even new players & casuals can quickly identify the dominance presented by the raw nature of the build structure. Not only when engaging it in combat, but also when they log in and first try that build structure, and suddenly rise from silver 2, to gold 3. These are the kind of forum users who make vague remarks that sort are in the right direction of the problem, but don't really narrow anything down, such as: "Mirage is too powerful" or "Ele needs buffs." Hey, they aren't wrong in these comments, they just aren't elaborating.
• Now we have the 15% who are great & experienced players, who actually know what they're talking about in terms of "What abilities are over powered or underpowered and why" but they lack the quintessential understanding of the intra-class dynamic as a whole, to be able to give actual good feedback on balance. They may suggest nerfs or buffs to a class, but they are narrowly imagining the outcome of that one class's performance as if the meta around it would remain the same, instead of shaping around it. A good example is this next coming patch, when core guards will disappear. Suddenly we will have a huge meta shift, where things won't be getting countered by core guards anymore because they won't be around. So things that were once kept under control from core guard's presence or thrown out of viability entirely, will gain much more presence in conquest. And due to the presence of these builds rising up, they may become new counters for other builds, changing how the intra-class dynamic works entirely. All of that exampled domino effect really is the perfect explanation, seeing as how it regards the example of how 1 single change to the game, can stir up everything. Something as simple as Righteous Instincts going from +50% down to +25%. The point being is that this demographic of forum users will suggest something like this +50% going to +25%, without considering how it effects everything else in the intra-class dynamic.
• Then we have the rare 10%, who not only are great & experienced players, but they also actually possess the quintessential understanding of the intra-class dynamic as a whole. These are the players/forum users who tend to be incredibly non-biased. They'll make threads about their own main class, well explaining what needs to be buffed or nerfed and why. And they tend to be incredibly fair in terms of judgments passed on what needs to be done and what shouldn't be done, and why. These are the players who are as a priority thinking: "I just want the game to have more flavor and more viability amongst all classes & abilities used, because that would be amazing." These are the players who are sincerely seeking a very balanced game for everyone, because very balanced games are kick kitten and fun to play. But even these type of players/forum users, are still only working from a standpoint of subjective experience because we are all human, but they do mean the best. Unfortunately, most of these types of users gave up posting serious feedback in this forum a very long time ago. There aren't many left.

Do you know what ESRB means?...It's the age rating of GW2, the classes were designed to be usable even by a 10 years old...it's a videogame for teens, everything else is self-explanatory won't you think so?

Until we change the main game type Conquest is the basis for balance, which is what renders a lot of arguments against some classes invalid.

People can complain about Mirages and DE all they want, but at the end of the day neither is a problem in the context of 5v5 conquest, and why Mirage although is getting nerfed is still going to retain evade while attacking and stunned, or why DE can continue to perma stealth with snipes. Yet things that can sustain for very long without getting pushed off point will always be nerfed first.

@huluobo.7036 said:

Is the balance assessment based on the tester's judgment or based on player statistics? How do testers know the balance of information about the player's career? I want the game to be transparent to the statistics, letting the player know if he has reached the Professions balance level so that the player knows his shortcomings.In addition, I want to know if the company has fired those who do Professions balance?

If you are talking about Anet balancing methodology. Not sure. While I do think, with the exception of last 6 month, Anet balance team does okay job in terms of monitoring. How do the monitor? I assume based on statistics collected directly from PvP games, WvW and PvE. However, hoe these date is analyzed no one knows.

From another MMO, the devs their mention that they consider recurring classes in winning compsition. Then see which builds reoccur in these compositions the most, to determine if they require a nerf.

PvE is usually simpler. The deva will have a targeted performance, then will nerf or buff the class till they get there.

I think the last 3 patches Anet devs balance team have been sucking pretty hard. Overall though, Anet have 3 major issues: first they do recognize when a specific build is a problem, but rarely put the effort to understand why. This why you see changes that do not make much sense. Example, Anet efforts to make guardian spirit weapons sPvP viable. You can go to wiki and see the changes (of which some started as PvP only).

Second, Anet almost completely ignores unused skills/traits. I sometimes feel like their moto, if no one uses it why fix it.

Third, Anet always hits class diversity. It seems Anet has been nerfing meta builds lately mostly by hitting core instead of where the out performing elites. This is why lately the number of viable builds keeps collapsing. This was not always the case, but has been for at least the last 3 patches.

Was anyone from the balance team let go? Maybe, but it seems the cuts where to player communication and outreach primarily. Plus none GW2 projects and some writers. I would not be surprised if 1 or 2 balance devs were axed. Nearly a third of Anet staff where let go.

In any case, the game good days seem to have passed. I think between PoF power creep, the major condi nerf more than a year ago and the over prevelance of boon rip and aoe CC, have ruined balance beyond repair. Major changes are required, but so far, none have been taken.

Educated guesses based on how tilted we get when losing to it.

personal experience

@"otto.5684" said:I think the last 3 patches Anet devs balance team have been sucking pretty hard. Overall though, Anet have 3 major issues: first they do recognize when a specific build is a problem, but rarely put the effort to understand why. This why you see changes that do not make much sense. Example, Anet efforts to make guardian spirit weapons sPvP viable. You can go to wiki and see the changes (of which some started as PvP only).

Second, Anet almost completely ignores unused skills/traits. I sometimes feel like their moto, if no one uses it why fix it."Anet never tries to improve underused skills" I say literally one sentence after talking about a line of underused skills they've repeatedly improved.

I think only 1vs1 can measure game balance, not 5vs5, there is no 5vs5 in the game, even if 5vs5 is tested 10000 times, it doesn't make any sense. Because the number of players is not equal. Someone will die first. There will always be people going to different places, enemies and teammates coming and going. 1vs2 2vs1 4vs3 1vs1 .... is the real situation, only balance 1vs1 is balanced, now 1vs1 is too much difference, players will not play games like testers.

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@"otto.5684" said:I think the last 3 patches Anet devs balance team have been sucking pretty hard. Overall though, Anet have 3 major issues: first they do recognize when a specific build is a problem, but rarely put the effort to understand why. This why you see changes that do not make much sense. Example, Anet efforts to make guardian spirit weapons sPvP viable. You can go to wiki and see the changes (of which some started as PvP only).

Second, Anet almost completely ignores unused skills/traits. I sometimes feel like their moto, if no one uses it why fix it."Anet never tries to improve underused skills" I say literally one sentence after talking about a line of underused skills they've repeatedly improved.

I can list at least a dozen of utilities and traits that no one uses in any game mode.

@huluobo.7036 said:I think only 1vs1 can measure game balance, not 5vs5, there is no 5vs5 in the game, even if 5vs5 is tested 10000 times, it doesn't make any sense. Because the number of players is not equal. Someone will die first. There will always be people going to different places, enemies and teammates coming and going. 1vs2 2vs1 4vs3 1vs1 .... is the real situation, only balance 1vs1 is balanced, now 1vs1 is too much difference, players will not play games like testers.

then how would you judge the effectiveness of support builds or builds for teamfights?

and even then how would you account for the difference between player's skill level

@derd.6413 said:

@huluobo.7036 said:I think only 1vs1 can measure game balance, not 5vs5, there is no 5vs5 in the game, even if 5vs5 is tested 10000 times, it doesn't make any sense. Because the number of players is not equal. Someone will die first. There will always be people going to different places, enemies and teammates coming and going. 1vs2 2vs1 4vs3 1vs1 .... is the real situation, only balance 1vs1 is balanced, now 1vs1 is too much difference, players will not play games like testers.

Did you ever see nerf threads for firebrand?

Players judge it poorly and with bias. It's been that way for a while and will continue until the end of this games life cycle.

@Solori.6025 said:Players judge it poorly and with bias. It's been that way for a while and will continue until the end of this games life cycle.Pretty muchEdit: remind me about trevor and incissor and NA incissor too

@huluobo.7036 said:

Is the balance assessment based on the tester's judgment or based on player statistics? How do testers know the balance of information about the player's career? I want the game to be transparent to the statistics, letting the player know if he has reached the Professions balance level so that the player knows his shortcomings.In addition, I want to know if the company has fired those who do Professions balance?

this is how balance work

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:NecromancerWe'll be pushing some of its damage higher through skill updates in PvE, but will be mostly leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes.

We need a base knowledge about the game first,Then a base knowledge about mentalityAnd at least players like you to spread that :)

Then statistics make sense for everyone.

@derd.6413 said:

@huluobo.7036 said:I think only 1vs1 can measure game balance, not 5vs5, there is no 5vs5 in the game, even if 5vs5 is tested 10000 times, it doesn't make any sense. Because the number of players is not equal. Someone will die first. There will always be people going to different places, enemies and teammates coming and going. 1vs2 2vs1 4vs3 1vs1 .... is the real situation, only balance 1vs1 is balanced, now 1vs1 is too much difference, players will not play games like testers.

I have already said it very clearly. All I can do is to say my thoughts.

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:About Arenanet balance: I'm pretty sure that competitive balancing sits in the backseat while pve balancing is doing the driving. If it's convenient to toss in some competitive balancing, they'll find a way to do it, but only after pve changes are achieved. At least that's the drift I get. Also, people complain about "How the game is never balanced" "How there is too much change" but truth be told, would any of us have not gotten bored and stayed here to play this game for 7 years if perfect balance had been achieved in year 1, and nothing had ever been changed to renew the play experience? The truth is that, the frequent shaking of meta keeps people interested and coming back to see how things have developed and how it feels. Aside from popular complaint, the ever shifting balance that never seems to settle is actually healthy for the game. In other words, it has nothing to do with if balance devs were fired or not. This is just clearly the model that they've been using ever since HoT release. Well, that's what it looks like to me anyway.

I'm still thinking that the seasonal system isn't really good.I entirely agree with you that all of this started on the big condition update that occured close after HoT release, and it got even worse with PoF.

That being said, although i'd agree saying condi mirage and scourge are pretty annoying, there's also a big l2p part.Gold division is way too diversified in terms of players level. One game you get 10 similarly skilled players, the one after you get players refusing to read and who keep getting rolled by the same mesmer.If we had a big whole year instead of short season, there would still be complaints regarding some builds, but probably less. What's causing complains is usually being teamed with lower experienced players, and dealing with conditions spamming isn't so easy for them.

some classes have access to too many roles, while some have barely 1 (regardless of the weapon set).

there are 5 classes that are meta-enough

if you feel the game is unbalanced, you main is not a part of those 5