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General Balance - PvE


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In light of the recent announcements and Cal's good threads on PvP and WvW balance, I wanted to take a minute to express a few thoughts/concerns on balance in the bigger picture -

Most people seem to be excited by the idea of doing more skill splitting between PvE & PvP, but I'm not sure I share this. It feels a bit like band-aid fixing things that are facets of larger systemic issues. I think it's important to keep a holistic perspective on combat balance across all three game modes and avoid letting them become too siloed. Many things get missed when there's a hyperfixation on balance in one mode or another. There are a few examples I can think of right off-hand:

Historically, balance changes have been more concerned with PvP (even though PvP balance isn't particularly good). This has a few effects, but one obvious one is the assumption of shorter engagement times, which diminishes the role of the #1 skill and enhances the role of cooldowns in an encounter. One of the big "misses" here is the relative balancing of auto-attacks, which carry a lot more weight in PvE than they do in PvP. Since the auto-attack on a weapon sets the baseline damage pressure of a weapon in a longer engagement, a weapon with an undertuned #1 skill will absolutely underperform in PvE while it doesn't necessarily in PvP. This is something that at times has gone years seemingly without being noticed or corrected (such as Thief's P/P or Ranger's Longbow) and in some cases is still a problem in the game (such as Elementalist staff). The issue is there doesn't seem to be any coherent design philosophy around how this is balanced and managed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd be surprised.

Other examples are the efficacy of control effects & stealth which are also balanced around PvP and therefore the assumption of short engagements with quick deaths/quick resets. This leaves most control effects as well as Stealth feeling underpowered in PvE. Stealth should be a fun strategic utility in PvE when instead it's mostly just used to get big damage on an opening attack. Shouldn't there just be a general design rule that control effects and Stealth last x% longer in PvE than they do in PvP to accommodate the difference between mobs & players, and wouldn't that help reduce the need to try to balance individual skills between PvE and PvP without touching their damage components? After all, shouldn't mob statistics be modeled after player statistics so skills can work in the same way for both?

Secondly, a huge portion of the unhealthy power creep in the game revolves around two things - a.) the over-proliferation of boons, and b.) the mechanical changes made to conditions since launch. In my opinion, these are not PvP issues but are game-wide issues. Condition damage scaling is too high with durations that are too long, so there's a reliance on overpowered mechanics to combat it. For example, most condi-clearing skills and traits are overtuned as a way of dealing with high condi damage and Resistance negates all condi damage instead of doing something sensible like reducing it by 50%. In PvP, this forces players to build around being able to deal with incoming conditions. In PvE, it means that too much condi damage goes to waste, making it generally inferior to Power builds rather than simply a bit more specialized like it should be.

It really feels like most of need for skill splitting between PvE and PvP is to deal with issues that are more foundational and needing to be corrected either with mob mechanics/AI or with generalized differences such as the control one above.

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split pvp and pve to allow specialisation of 2 streams of build to suit the target content. Do not split and you need to design a shape that somehow fits perfectly into a square and a circle. You cant ofc, so the answer is to have 2 shapes. thats ignoring the fact the this post doesn't seem to understand a fundamental difference between pve and pvp (opponent is a real person versus a scripted bit of code)

from a software design perspective, there is a well known design principle: composition over inheritance. 1 aspect of this is recognising that trying to create some kind of perfect core design that can somehow be extended to suit all possible use cases is futile and leads you down a road where everyone gets tied to everything and nothing can change.

Splitting pvp and pve is the correct approach.

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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:split pvp and pve to allow specialisation of 2 streams of build to suit the target content. Do not split and you need to design a shape that somehow fits perfectly into a square and a circle. You cant ofc, so the answer is to have 2 shapes. thats ignoring the fact the this post doesn't seem to understand a fundamental difference between pve and pvp (opponent is a real person versus a scripted bit of code)

from a software design perspective, there is a well known design principle: composition over inheritance. 1 aspect of this is recognising that trying to create some kind of perfect core design that can somehow be extended to suit all possible use cases is futile and leads you down a road where everyone gets tied to everything and nothing can change.

Splitting pvp and pve is the correct approach.

I agree and because of this I believe Templates should also be split if we continue down this route

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It should have been split right from release, as GW1 was it worked yes.... it was harder work dev wise but in the long run splitting the skills worked well.

I agree with most everything else you said though, condi and boons have lost the plot character and enemy wise..

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yes... what I've been thinking for some time, altho no way I could so it so eloquently. i'm of the opinion that every class should have 1 or 2 burst condi's, with 1 or 2 debilitating condi's for survival. cutting out the over abundance of cover condi's will allow cleanses to be nerfed, and people will feel less cheated when they die to a condi build. on to boons. both boons and condi's need caps imo. getting 30+ seconds of protection is the norm in wvw, while a tenth of that can save someones life in pvp. boons should matter, they shouldn't be spammed off of cd for optimal usage. condi caps are sort of a no brainer. getting hit with 20+ seconds of cripple or 30 stacks of burns is no fun. in fact its quite horrible. I don't know where to set said caps, but there has to be something lol. its just too ridiculous. lastly, and off topic, is power creep in terms of ez 25 might and damage modifiers. one shots are bad design for this game. everything should get looked at and brought back down to normal levels. getting 100-0'ed shouldn't be the norm. these things first then look at sustain and see where its too strong.anyway some pipe dreams right there.

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The OP is close, but still misses the mark in a major way. The Disparity between PvE and PvP/WvW is largely boiled down to PvE encounters not valuing skill (as in play/counter play), and mostly skewed in favor of overwhelming damage. This is VERY clearly seen in the level of frustration voiced by PvE-exclusive players when Mobs have the ability to mitigate damage output for more then a couple of seconds, be it invul, blind, blocks, movement speed, or teleports. HOT and POF mobs are most notable for the fact that they actually pose a real threat to players, and many players go out of their way to avoiding fighting them (unless overwhelmingly stacked in their favor).

The need for splits is a direct result of the sheer difference in how players approach AI Mobs, verses how they approach other players. Many PvP skills are heavily toned down, because the durability threshold of players is significantly lower then most Mobs. Most normal mobs have around 12-15k HP (and average armor), while Vets have somewhere around 75k-100k (and upward). When the average player build can drop 20-30k damage up front, thats lethal to other players, but just a chunk of damage against non-trash mobs.

What exacerbates this issue is how defense doesn't scale symmetricly in these encounters. The attack patterns of mobs are part of the problem, since they front load a lot of damage into single hits (in order to make then threatening), but gaining multi-hit and AOE rapidly scales out of control (since the per hit damage is pretty similar in a lot of cases). Increasing the number of mobs in a fight multiplies this effect even further, since player defenses are optimized against specific types of attacks. So mixed attack patterns become a major problem, as defenses are a resource quick to exhaust, and taking hits (even for tanky builds) doesn't sustain for very long.

In essence.... much of PvE is designed around a "Tank & Spank" style combat, including HP pools and damage scaling. But then in the Xpacs, it does this thing where mobs scale up massively in their damage output, the variety of attacks and defenses, they group up more, and their compositions start complimenting each other...... but the foundations of Core Mob design still govern how they balance them. Because now matter what skills the Devs give them, the AI still operates on a very narrow minded set of rules that inhibit their dynamics. And players LIKE IT this way, because it makes them predictable and easy to react to. PvE-exclusive players openly admit (and love to play as a victim card) the fact that other players are incredibly adaptive, often unpredictable, and regularly utilize overwhelming force; and they absolutely despise that...... If those were AI Mobs, they'd be decried as being unfair, bad design, and overtly punishing, because they simply got outplayed or made a poor decision during the engagement.

I've long been an advocate for PvE mobs displaying more Player like skills and behavior..... but that has to be very finely balanced on the fact that Players in this type of game are on a power fantasy trip, and expect to have the advantage in most scenarios. Enemies that can be ground through like hamburger feeds into this notion even further. So anything that takes significant effort to fight, but doesn't give some major validation (be it reward, or achievement) at end, they simply view it as being not being worth the frustration. If all enemies are like that, they accuse the game of stacking against them.... again, out of frustration.

But when your entire combat system is designed around a PvP foundation, with very tight thresholds to avoid snowballing, its nigh impossible to keep that system in harmony with an encounter design that favors almost the exact opposite. A lot of players like the fact that GW2 stacks so much in their favor.... but paradoxically lament a feeling of dissatisfaction with the hollowness of the victory. But the moment you face them with any sort of challenge that demands effort, they cry foul and demand the rules be changed. Even though GW1 had similar issues.... the number of factors in play were much lower, and a lot less complicated.

But "solving" this, if you can even call it that, is beyond impossible without having to rework the entire catalog of PvE content to a completely new paradigm. Players will always take the path of least resistance whenever possible. But with all the content being brain dead simple, and players ultimately having no fear of doing grossly inefficient tasks with a low enough investment cost, they will systematically fall back to the most profitable, easy farms they can find, IN ORDER, until its no longer worth the effort at all. Given this set of circumstances, the amount of past content that would need to be updated, and the limited resources Anet has, I'm now completely in favor of them Considering a GW3 in their not so distant future. Take everything learned, and try to get a fresh start from a better design position, and a more usable platform (ie revamped engine), and cut the baggage of legacy system that has grown as far as it could.

But unlike GW1 when they started GW2, GW2 is has gone on for waaaay too long, and created too heavy of an investment from players into their accounts, that we're now facing an EverQuest 2 situation. We NEED some kind of fresh start... but no one wants to give up what they already have. As much the new Competitive teams can work to at least bring some of the biggest issues in line..... the simple fact of the matter is that the game is currently being design backwards from the way it should see things. They started on PvP, but eventually went all-in on PvE...... thats not something you easily come back out of. PvP adapts, so it never has to worry about keeping old content around if its not actively helping. PvE is the exact opposite- and players expect it to always be its best version for all eternity. FOMO killed what benefits LS1's format offered. But POF has become a reminder that what players "want" [a bubble of comfort, but constant change] is fundamentally a paradox.

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I'm the one who noticed. About a year ago I did a bunch of auto attack tests, and this was largely done to show the vast disparities between player performance and certain classes. However, very strangely, this information has been useful in a large amount circumstances. I think I reference it every month or so. It has remained my biggest criticism of the game's combat system: it is idiot prone and overly punishing for mistakes. The only reason why people don't know this by and large is because the overworld PVE environment is so easy as to mask how bad everyone is playing. There's no tutorial to remedy this, either. I wrote more about my complaints here. Also of trivial interest, I did a CCPS (crowd control per second) analysis of the different professions once, and found that they were wildly unbalanced.

PVE balance has been a tricky subject to talk about, because it doesn't actually exist. There is balance in PVP and WvW because players are actually pitted against each other. There, the minuscule differences between cast times and range make up a big difference. But in PVE, the player is weighed against nothing. A class either succeeds, or it does not succeed. The community adherence to the meta is not done out of necessity, but convenience. Given that a player is competent with their class, all PVE content can be completed with all classes. So long as that fact does not change, all of the community enforcement of meta classes and builds is all arbitrary.

When I say that it doesn't exist, this is in the mind of the developers themselves. For evidence, I'm going to cite the July 16, 2019 change to Holosmiths that locked out the toolbelt skills when exploding. These changes were implemented for thematic reasons. Anet didn't feel that exploding was punishing enough. This patch also introduced dynamic scaling, making all of the previous skills and traits much weaker. These changes crippled power holosmith so much that it became the worst spec in the game. It is only after two weeks of unending negative feedback that Holosmith received two paltry changes: Glass Cannon went from 5% to 7%, and Laser's Edge went from 15% to 25%, making ECSU the only PVE build. Every other class just received bugfixes during the July 30 patch, meaning that these buffs were specially added in to the bugfix patch to quell the complaining raiders PBM lies twitching on the floor and PVE performance everywhere but organized raids suffers. It is very clear that PVE performance didn't come up once during the discussion on Holosmith changes, because otherwise somebody would've noticed something.

There is no set benchmark at which auto attacks are expected to perform at. There is no set level of expected PVE DPS for a class to meet. There is no requirement for unique, useful group utility for a class to have. There is no true hierarchy that PVE classes are supposed to be ranked within. There is no transparency for PVE decisions because there are no PVE decisions. Every balance patch has some PVE spec getting hit hard (Scourge, Chronomancer, Scrapper, Holosmith, Revenant, etc), because of PVP or WvW changes. Splits between game modes are done so the developers don't have to worry about upsetting PVE players, and not out of some preservation for the grand PVE design. Any complaints end up with raiders getting a bone thrown at them, wherein the class receives a minor buff that only works in a raid meta comp and nowhere else.

The real thing you have to do is convince the devs that PVE balance matters, and it does so in more than just raids.

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The thing with pve is that you don't actually need to balance the classes, you just need to make them viable in battles with npc.and interesting to play. What skews things is dps watchers, and players who gravitate towards trinity fights and stack and burn rush through content. Bring that into the equation and you have an aspect that is allways going to be damaging to pvp, so you have to separate or somehow change this sub culture.

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@"Einlanzer.1627" said:Other examples are the efficacy of control effects & stealth which are also balanced around PvP and therefore the assumption of short engagements with quick deaths/quick resets. This leaves most control effects as well as Stealth feeling underpowered in PvE. Stealth should be a fun strategic utility in PvE when instead it's mostly just used to get big damage on an opening attack. Shouldn't there just be a general design rule that control effects and Stealth last x% longer in PvE than they do in PvP to accommodate the difference between mobs & players, and wouldn't that help reduce the need to try to balance individual skills between PvE and PvP without touching their damage components? After all, shouldn't mob statistics be modeled after player statistics so skills can work in the same way for both?

Not sure where this is coming from. Last I checked, a vast majority of skips, shortcuts, time saves, etc. are still being done with stealth in pretty much all content besides raids (and even here you can stealth Reapers in the Dhuum fight to affect enforcer movement). As such, the mechanic was, is and likely will remain a "fun strategic utility" already. Not sure where you want to go from easy group perma stealth.

The rest of the thread, well the usual open world player discussion on balance. Suffice to say, as far as open world content, dungeons and normal fractals (up to T4), the game is fine.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The thing with pve is that you don't actually need to balance the classes, you just need to make them viable in battles with npc.and interesting to play. What skews things is dps watchers, and players who gravitate towards trinity fights and stack and burn rush through content. Bring that into the equation and you have an aspect that is allways going to be damaging to pvp, so you have to separate or somehow change this sub culture.

There is literally no content besides maybe raids where pve classes need to get balanced for due to general lack of difficulty. The last time balance was skewed, the challenging content of this game was hit hard with exclusion of classes and requirements. Thanks, but I'll pass on returning to that.

If you aren't rolling over content in this game outside of CM fractals and raids, you need to improve your personal player skills first before arguing balance, because you are absolutely unqualified if challenged by this easy of content. Metabattle has a section for open world builds and general pve and Woodenpotatoes has a series in which he recommends and explains a good general pve build for each class. I'd recommend checking out both.

As far as pvp/wvw and pve split. That was a long overdue and a good thing.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:The last time balance was skewed, the challenging content of this game was hit hard with exclusion of classes and requriements. Thanks, but I'll pass on returning to that.

You dont have to return to it. Its already the case.For months we are stuck with PChrono/Firebrand/Guardian as BiS pretty much everywhere because they provide good damage and quickness.

Only Matthias, Cairn, Mursaat, SH, Largos and both Qadims dont favor any of these classes.Thats 7/19 Bosses.Yes, you might play a Firebrand for quickness coverage, but you dont stack them on these encounters.On Matthias and Mursaat you play Boonthief anyway, so you dont have to provide quickness.That leaves 5/19 Bosses.Thiefes can steal Ectos on the pylons for boons on the first qadim encounter. Once again, quickness covered.That leaves you with 4/19 bosses where you dont have to play a DPS class that provides quickness.On 3 of these you play Mirage since forever and on PQadim you play Renegade. Mainly because torment is absolutely broken on this boss. If it wasnt for that it would probably be firebrand.

Balance is skewed and stale since months now.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:The last time balance was skewed, the challenging content of this game was hit hard with exclusion of classes and requriements. Thanks, but I'll pass on returning to that.

You dont have to return to it. Its already the case.For months we are stuck with PChrono/Firebrand/Guardian as BiS pretty much everywhere because they provide good damage and quickness.

Only Matthias, Cairn, Mursaat, SH, Largos and both Qadims dont favor any of these classes.Thats 7/19 Bosses.Yes, you might play a Firebrand for quickness coverage, but you dont stack them on these encounters.On Matthias and Mursaat you play Boonthief anyway, so you dont have to provide quickness.That leaves 5/19 Bosses.Thiefes can steal Ectos on the pylons for boons on the first qadim encounter. Once again, quickness covered.That leaves you with 4/19 bosses where you dont have to play a DPS class that provides quickness.On 3 of these you play Mirage since forever and on PQadim you play Renegade. Mainly because torment is absolutely broken on this boss. If it wasnt for that it would probably be firebrand.

Balance is skewed and stale since months now.

You are comparing best in slot and perfect raid setups (which not all groups run, only a small fraction) with previous performance general raid meta with disparities of over 40% in performance on single classes (power elementalist meta) and required classes on each boss (chrono+druid). The current meta and possibilities are far wider and diverse compared to 3 years of HoT meta with multiple support setups and multiple viable damage dealers.

Throwing balance out the window would in favor of general open world pve would result in pretty much the HoT meta, which was far more stale than any meta since.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:You are comparing best in slot and perfect raid setups (which not all groups run, only a small fraction)

I mean, yeah? Why would you balance around people that dont care for BiS anyway? They will play whatever they like and thats completly fine.

with previous performance general raid meta with disparities of over 40% in performance on single classes (power elementalist meta) and required classes on each boss >(chrono+druid). The current meta and possibilities are far wider and diverse compared to 3 years of HoT meta with multiple support setups and multiple viable damage >dealers.

Throwing balance out the window would in favor of general open world pve would result in pretty much the HoT meta, which was far more stale than any meta since.

I agree, stacking Elementalists was stale. However, i still liked it more. At least you needed dedicated support for quickness. Its more diverse than back then, but is it better?Most played classes are Firebrand/Guardian and Chrono/Mirage. 4 Specs, 2 classes. Not much better than ele.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:You are comparing best in slot and perfect raid setups (which not all groups run, only a small fraction)

I mean, yeah? Why would you balance around people that dont care for BiS anyway? They will play whatever they like and thats completly fine.

with previous performance general raid meta with disparities of over 40% in performance on single classes (power elementalist meta) and required classes on each boss >(chrono+druid). The current meta and possibilities are far wider and diverse compared to 3 years of HoT meta with multiple support setups and multiple viable damage >dealers.

Throwing balance out the window would in favor of general open world pve would result in pretty much the HoT meta, which was far more stale than any meta since.

I agree, stacking Elementalists was stale. However, i still liked it more. At least you needed dedicated support for quickness. Its more diverse than back then, but is it better?Most played classes are Firebrand/Guardian and Chrono/Mirage. 4 Specs, 2 classes. Not much better than ele.

Well then we are on the same page, but my response was towards the argument:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The thing with pve is that you don't actually need to balance the classes, you just need to make them viable in battles with npc.and interesting to play.

Which given the open world tone of this thread would result in balance around the low skill end. That's what I disagreed with.

As far as power ele meta and diversity: more diversity is better since it allows more classes access to the content.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Well then we are on the same page, but my response was towards the argument:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The thing with pve is that you don't actually need to balance the classes, you just need to make them viable in battles with npc.and interesting to play.

Which given the open world tone of this thread would result in balance around the low skill end. That's what I disagreed with.

Oh, my bad. I probably flew over that while reading the thread and didnt catch it. Sorry about that.

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About mob AI: Alot of games solve the "players hate good AIs" problem by giving mobs varying intelligence, which allows players to still chew through swarming mobs like wolves while having a tough time with say, a Human enemy. In a way GW2 tries to do this with Veterans/Champions/etc. but it falls short because they don't actually have a better AI they just have more health and skills to use.

Because of this "encounters" in GW2 don't really exist, even the most elite bosses are just glorified wolves.

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Lots of good posts here, good read.

Just poking in to say that at this point of time in the games life, I think skill-splits are going to have to be the solution. I don't think it is optimal, and would much prefer to see the game go back to pre-hot where PvP determined the balance. But honestly I agree with everyone here that said that the monster AI's feels like fighting against a sack of potatoes.

In short, the entire combat system feels like an utter waste for the PVE part of the game. I get the feeling that the majority of the players on the PVE side would probably cheer if they removed the combat system and replaced it with a standard rpg system closer to wow/ff14 instead. (And I'd quit on the day).

I think Starlinvf called it, at this point a gw3 designed around the combat system and with proper ai.

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pvp and pve are different. That's never going to change. Therefore we want a skill to be designed such that it is perfect for both, and that means splitting. If anet could automagicallty create this split overnight with day 1 being that the skills we're simply split and cloned ready for future divergence we would be applauding anet. The issue therefore isn't the split concept, it's the resource cost in doing it.

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Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

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@"Dante.1508" said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

I wouldn't go so far as to say on a whole that PvErs aren't as skilled as PvPers and just enjoy the game casually; I doubt that PvErs who raid just to get leggy armour enjoyed it every step of the way...

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

PvP is different than PvE and PvP skills are different than PvE skills. PvP skills are: "How do I kill my foe(s) controlled by real humans with my teammates / solo?". PvE skills are: "How do I kill my AI foe(s) with my teammates / solo?".

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

If nerfing and buffing won't work, then what is a guaranteed way to balance which will work?

I'm all for the split because each game mode can now be separately balanced independent of each other without having to throw each balance patch under one umbrella and affecting all game modes

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@Dante.1508 said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

There are PvE games where players have to have just as much skill as in PvP modes, so the two aren't exclusive of each others. It's a matter of encounter design and AI among other things. And many PvE players does enjoy that, despite popular belief around here. I have guildies that stick to playing wvw/pvp because they find PvE in this game a joke, and rather go play other games for challenging and interesting PvE.

Personally I think there is room for both, and wish the devs designed for a much greater variety of skill levels, the game does have one of the best/easiest handicap systems in existence in open world, just bring more numbers if there is difficulty.

Besides, the actual balance between PvP and PvE has absolutely nothing to do with this, we already have Open-World Tyria for example, which where designed while the entire combat system was balanced around PvP (2012-2014), and they made the majority of the mobs so easy that we still suffer that a large section of players never had to learn and develop much skill in the first place.

So they've already shown that they can make PvE easy without affecting balancing at all. (And thus we also have the problem that Open World Tyria doesn't actually teach new players how to play, so they don't develop actual skill. Making for some rude awakenings when they enter other modes and get pulverized by the first thing they meet).

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@Melech.4308 said:

@Dante.1508 said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

I wouldn't go so far as to say on a whole that PvErs aren't as skilled as PvPers and just enjoy the game casually; I doubt that PvErs who raid just to get leggy armour enjoyed it every step of the way...

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

PvP is different than PvE and PvP skills are different than PvE skills. PvP skills are: "How do I kill my foe(s) controlled by real humans with my teammates / solo?". PvE skills are: "How do I kill my AI foe(s) with my teammates / solo?".

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

If nerfing and buffing won't work, then what is a guaranteed way to balance which will work?

I'm all for the split because each game mode can now be separately balanced independent of each other without having to throw each balance patch under one umbrella and affecting all game modes

Splitting the content completely and focusing on both separately.

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@Dante.1508 said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

There are PvE games where players have to have just as much skill as in PvP modes, so the two aren't exclusive of each others. It's a matter of encounter design and AI among other things. And many PvE players does enjoy that, despite popular belief around here. I have guildies that stick to playing wvw/pvp because they find PvE in this game a joke, and rather go play other games for challenging and interesting PvE.

Personally I think there is room for both, and wish the devs designed for a much greater variety of skill levels, the game does have one of the best/easiest handicap systems in existence in open world, just bring more numbers if there is difficulty.

Besides, the actual balance between PvP and PvE has absolutely nothing to do with this, we already have Open-World Tyria for example, which where designed while the entire combat system was balanced around PvP (2012-2014), and they made the majority of the mobs so easy that we still suffer that a large section of players never had to learn and develop much skill in the first place.

So they've already shown that they can make PvE easy without affecting balancing at all. (And thus we also have the problem that Open World Tyria doesn't actually teach new players how to play, so they don't develop actual skill. Making for some rude awakenings when they enter other modes and get pulverized by the first thing they meet).

It has everything to do with it.. Open world Tyria was perfect it was accessible to everyone. The later content pushed a lot of customers away and they needed to overhaul it to be more accessible again, even though its still incredibly tedious to enjoy.. bar those that consider themselves hardcores..

Splitting the content is the smartest decision even if it is the most work.

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@Dante.1508 said:

@Dante.1508 said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

I wouldn't go so far as to say on a whole that PvErs aren't as skilled as PvPers and just enjoy the game casually; I doubt that PvErs who raid just to get leggy armour enjoyed it every step of the way...

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

PvP is different than PvE and PvP skills are different than PvE skills. PvP skills are: "How do I kill my foe(s) controlled by real humans with my teammates / solo?". PvE skills are: "How do I kill my AI foe(s) with my teammates / solo?".

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

If nerfing and buffing won't work, then what is a guaranteed way to balance which will work?

I'm all for the split because each game mode can now be separately balanced independent of each other without having to throw each balance patch under one umbrella and affecting all game modes

Splitting the content completely and focusing on both separately.

And by splitting the content, how far do you want to go? Throw PvP and WvW out of the game and make a own "Guild Wars 2: PvP edition" and split the pve into "Guild Wars 2: PvE edition" ? I'd say that goes against ANets design philosophy of "Theme Park", where everyone should find something they like, and easily be able to jump inbetween them.

@Dante.1508 said:Because as a whole pve customers are not as skilled as PvP, they just enjoy the game casually but still like to progress their gears and skills better, the pve on a whole prefer to destroy content not be obliterated by it..

PvP are all about balance and team skills.. PvE just want to pass content as fast as possible to gain shiny objects.. Yes thats basic but its true the difference in skill levels is insane.

Thats why nerfing and buffing both will never work.. As a person that quit GW2 completely for 4 years at HoT release becareful how you make PvE content, i am far from alone speaking to other PvE customers..

There are PvE games where players have to have just as much skill as in PvP modes, so the two aren't exclusive of each others. It's a matter of encounter design and AI among other things. And many PvE players does enjoy that, despite popular belief around here. I have guildies that stick to playing wvw/pvp because they find PvE in this game a joke, and rather go play other games for challenging and interesting PvE.

Personally I think there is room for both, and wish the devs designed for a much greater variety of skill levels, the game does have one of the best/easiest handicap systems in existence in open world, just bring more numbers if there is difficulty.

Besides, the actual balance between PvP and PvE has absolutely nothing to do with this, we already have Open-World Tyria for example, which where designed while the entire combat system was balanced around PvP (2012-2014), and they made the majority of the mobs so easy that we still suffer that a large section of players never had to learn and develop much skill in the first place.

So they've already shown that they can make PvE easy without affecting balancing at all. (And thus we also have the problem that Open World Tyria doesn't actually teach new players how to play, so they don't develop actual skill. Making for some rude awakenings when they enter other modes and get pulverized by the first thing they meet).

It has everything to do with it.. Open world Tyria was perfect it was accessible to everyone. The later content pushed a lot of customers away and they needed to overhaul it to be more accessible again, even though its still incredibly tedious to enjoy.. bar those that consider themselves hardcores..

Splitting the content is the smartest decision even if it is the most work.

Wow, that's subjective.

When you say that OW-Tyria is perfect, it certainly wasn't for me, and of all the people I've talked with I'd say a fairly small amount is still happy with OW-Tyria, I'd guess about 1 out of 10, small sample and obviously not defining in any way. So I think it is wrong to simply state that it is perfect based solely on your own opinion.

I find the OW-Tyria is a large part of the problem, because it was nerfed repeatedly since the beta until it has become so easy (through the entire map/level range) that people doesn't need to learn the combat system any-longer. I wish that OW-Tyria had a more diverse difficulty and challenge, so players actually had to improve a bit each time they went to a new level-tier map. That way, when people came to the expansions for example, they wouldn't feel so overwhelmed or get trashed by pocket raptors and hydras the moment they entered the map.

This game is skill-based, we need to level up the player, not the character/gear. And at the moment, the game doesn't teach players that. That's the biggest problem with OW-Tyria. Splitting the balancing isn't really going to fix that, splitting the modes isn't really going to fix that. Replacing the entire combat system with WOW's probably would... but then I'd quit the game.

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