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PvE Balance, does it really matter?


Agrippa.1693

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@DoRi Silvia.4159 said:Example; gorseval in spirit vale raid requires an x amount of dmg done by x % of hp or else your group wipes. This isnt the only boss but there are end game content that requires dps check and if anet was to balance pve dmg they would need to adjust those mechanics too and probably is too much work

DPS checks in this game are a joke. Even the sefl enforced once like no updraft Gorseval and Xera mid dont require a lot of dps. They wouldnt have to adjust anything.

Tell that to pugs doing less than 5k dps as a dps :cry:

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PvE balance is important to the game, but in a completely different way than PvP/WvW balance.

In PvP/WvW- balance is focused on giving all classes a relatively level competitive playing field. No class should be stronger or weaker than any other when played well. These game modes build balance around player skill rather than class strength. No class should be able to do really in competitive modes well just by mashing buttons.In PvE, balance is focused on making classes strong enough to overcome challenges without making them too strong to be challenged. There is much more room for differing strength between classes without any class being too strong or too weak. It's fine if some classes can reach their power peak by players just mashing buttons, while need players who can bring out the best in their class through skillful play.

In PvP/WvW, balance is achieved mainly through changing the classes. In PvE, it can be changed be changing classes or by changing the enemies. In fact, it's often better to tweak the difficulty in PvE than to change the classes.

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@CaelestiaEmpyrea.2617 said:In PvP/WvW, balance is achieved mainly through changing the classes. In PvE, it can be changed be changing classes or by changing the enemies. In fact, it's often better to tweak the difficulty in PvE than to change the classes.But since Anet seem to refuse to tweak the difficulty in PvE and would rather spend hundreds upon hundreds of developers hours thinking out how to skillsplit something, it is rather stupid.

How it looks today:sPvP - skill X does 1000 dps due to sPvP splits and sPvP stats.WvW - skill X does 2000 dps due to WvW splits and PvE stats.PvE - skill X does 3000 dps due to PvE splits and PvE stats. Killing mob Y with 30k hp would take 10s.

How it could look:sPvP - skill X does 1000 dps due to normalized stats.WvW - skill X does 1000 dps due to normalized stats.PvE - skill X does 1000 dps due normalized stats. Killing mob Y with 10k hp would take 10s.

But PvEers would have a complete hissy fit because their numbers after the patch would be lower than their numbers before the patch and scream bloody hell on the forums. And those are the ones Anet cater to. Always has been, always will. But I digress.

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While I'm a main PvE player and don't bother much with PvP/WvW, I think balance in a player vs player environment is far more important than PvE balance will ever be. This is not to sell short the importance of PvE being balanced, but in PvE you will not face other players, which can potentially abuse a broken balance system, whereas PvE, you might have broken enemies, but you can put effort into understandig them, and have far more room to strategize around that enemy.

My issue with PvE balance is not damage numbers from players, but rather the enemies not being properly scaled, or engaging enough, to pose any challenge or danger to a player. Bjora marches suffers a lot from this, as all the mobs are extremely outdated and pose little to no threat unless they are 10 at the same time spamming homing projectiles at you <- not fun, not engaging, where are our expansion level content enemies?

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Balance is important for both modes, PvP and PvE. But not in the same way.

PvP: if lets say Thief always wins independent of who plays it, there is something wrong.

PvE: if everyone plays only Thief, then there is something wrong.

You'd expect there is no monopoly of a single class. You can expect that some classes are more popular then others, dunno because they are more shiny. But there should be no "dead class".

And another thing, atleast for PvE, its not about DPS. Its OK if for example Thief does more damage then Warrior. But in this case, youd expect that Thief is squishy glass cannon and Warrior can take a lot of beating.

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PvE doesnt require balance patches at all....Atleast not in the way PvP and WvW needs them.PvE doesnt require an even playing field. The foes in PvE are not programmed to complain or have enough AI to be capable of doing so.So skill balancing in PvE should focus on two things.1: ensuring that there is no all powerfull class that is the number one pick for content. Each class should have its advantages and disadvantages I think there is no problem that some classes are more efficient, specially for the hardcore gamer, when there are also classes more forgiving for the more average gamer. This will result in the more average player to feel left out of hardcore content, but they would feel left out there anyways as they are average players . I an ideal world, this should be achieved by traits and elite specialisations, but it is an illussion that this is perfectly possible, so a difference should be there and is much more acceptable.2: PvE balancing should focus on creating a pleasurable experience for each gamer. Both hardcore or more average. This can be done by skill balancing, but also in changing the encounters. The balance is therefor much wider as Arenanet can manipulate the environment much more then the builds picked by your PvP opponent.

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Now, pvp/wvw in EVERY game eternal are in a constant state of imbalance. You just can't leave very OP builds as they are cus open world exists. The balance in PvP/WvW is a core part of the game mode, since it's based on competition, you need things to be as fair as you can to ensure average joe and his trailblazer mirage can't kill someone by facerolling their keyboard no matter what someone tries to do to counter it just because it's that OP.

Balance IS important in PvE, there are still lots of traits that are solely useful for raiding but aren't even the best trait to take and those traits therefore become useless, and ask ANY raider who isn't a guardian main about firebrand and you'll get an earful about how brokenly OP it is. Lets not forget how basically every PvE chronomancer change has been based around it's raid viability, and while i do like the "new" shatters much more than core mesmer shatters, balance changes based around making chrono less raid viable have hurt chrono so much that it's basically useless now- yeah pchrono stacking is meta in a few places, but its easier and more effective to stack guardians more often than not. Ofc, in general, if firebrand was nerfed chrono would be more useful. Anyway............... it's nowhere near as integral to enjoying PvE as balance is for competitive.

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All modes are important.

When I started GW2 I was pleasantly surprised to see ANET had done something that Blizzard refused to do, which was split abilities between game modes. So in WoW (At least in my day) you regularly saw your raiding toon get hit with a nerf hammer because of QQ from the battlegrounds or Arena.

Since GW2 does split abilities between PvE, WvW and PvP, there is no excuse not tweak all 3 game modes in an effort towards balance. Sadly sometimes this realizes itself as mechanical changes (eg change to Scourge shades) but I can see this is preferable to what I've seen in other MMOs like WoW. I kid you not, during one two year expansion I saw my "main" characters spec reworked 3 separate times, and they played very differently (with varied results) from one tier of raiding to the next. That was one of the reasons I abandoned that game and the company behind it.

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Re opening post, the real issue is patch cadence, and anet have acknowledged this as an area of improvement. If you leave patches for month on end then have a big patch that targets either pvp or pve then people fixate on that. If however you have patches every couple weeks then it becomes a non issue, because patch prioritisation can be based on near live game state rather than some stale view from months ago that's been thrown in a big high risk bucket.

Bear in mind Anets recent efforts spent on splitting pve and pvp is also for pve ultimately.

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Anyone who has been kicked or shunned out of a group because they are playing a non meta class/build know that PvE needs to be balanced just as much a PvP or WvW. I would go as far as saying that since PvE is the bread winner of the 3 game modes that priority should be given to PvE balance. I say this even though my go to game mode is WvW.

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PvP and WvW need to be balanced in order to not stifle competition and make all classes viable.

PVE balance is not about the open world -- every class has powerful builds for soloing, story missions, and open world events like the world boss train. PVE needs to be balanced around the structured group content -- dungeons, fractals, strikes, raids. All classes should be useful in group content in more than one build -- "Sorry, no necros or rangers unless you're a healer" -- and NO class should be absolutely mandatory -- "Can't go without a Chrono." The meta concept will always exist among the toxic 1%, but PVE balance needs to address keeping the elitism and exclusion in group content to a minimum.

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PvE re-balancing is far less important. Barring extreme outliers such as running 8 or 10 of a class, there really isn't a need to push constant balance updates just for PvE because the encounters and content do not change. Actually it is likely to break things if a certain thing is designed with a damage/sustain in mind and all of sudden skills get massive powercreep and/or tuning down.When chrono was popular it was arguably overpowered (I used to play chrono and it still has 1/3 of my total hours , my mesmer is from GW2 pre-launch day), right now firebrand guardian (mine is from launch day) is the predominant class , and to a lesser extent alacrity renegades are considered in vogue along with all sorts of warriors running banners.

Currently, if Zealous Blade is bugfixed (the 10% damage increase has persisted since July 2019) and Feel my Wrath is cut short (see the "Global" Balance update), then power Dragonhunter will no longer be as desirable as a damage class when there is a single target (due to Big Game Hunter).

If you break it down by class:Warrior - has been popular since the start , also banners provide a massive squad/party boost : I'd say it has been well balanced because banners don't stackGuardian - popular but not meta defining until Firebrand quicknessRevenant - was not popular until alacrity from chrono mesmer was dropped severely to what it is now ; herald is popular in WvW due to swiftness/might/fury uptime on 10 peopleEngineer - holosmith is getting the explosives improvement from the balance patch that should push it to the top , the condition damage bonus to others (Pinpoint distribution) is typically not run ; condi variants are repetitive strain inducing with grenadesRanger - druid was extremely popular when chronomancer was in vogue, but the nerf to glyph of empowerment as well as spirit changes makes it much less appealing, now soulbeast with frost spirits/stances/ frost trap (PVE only change doubled damage , it is almost a joke otherwise) is competitive but not meta defining even if spotter is nice to haveThief - staff daredevil does respectable damage even in competitive modes , people run rifle deadeyes in PvE and WvW (but I just dislike that playstyle and it has no cleave)Mesmer - chronomancer was meta defining but post nerfs it is used mainly as DPS , mirage is well regarded when condi is required despite not having much burst other than pistol offhand and staff ambushElementalist- not relevant until sword was improved , power overwhelming was added to fire attunement, and ferocity bonuses on air attunement . Master's Fortitude isn't that much of a damage loss as you only lose 10% crit chance vs weakened enemies. Condition variants still have the minor drawback of packing toughness if you run the earth traitline, however.Necromancers - generally not well regarded in PVE but in cases where there are many boons and ranged condi AOE is preferred they have shined (see epidemic, condi scourge with barriers, scourge heal) ; power reaper has self-quickness from Reaper's Onslaught

The way that necromancers could be made more sought after is by introducing enemies with more offensive boons instead of purely defensive ones such as aegis, protection,regeneration. Might flips into weakness which makes healing less needed ; fury into blindness, quickness flips to slow, swiftness into cripple , vigor into bleeding. If it's a purely defensive boon you can just strip it (which is why spellbreaker is a popular choice for fractals): regen goes to poison, protection to vulnerability, aegis turns into burning, etc.

Per GW2efficiency the least played classes are Revenant at <4% and Engineer <6% of playerhours. So if any balance decisions are made, the most played classes need to be considered first (guardian at just over 15% and warrior at ~14% followed by ranger at ~13.5% in terms of hours) because you ideally want the most played classes to be usable to reduce player wait times for grouping. That's why a firebrand guardian + renegade meta is actually healthier than a dual chronomancer meta , as the skill needed to pull off chronomancer has generally been higher (i.e. less capable of doing it). Would actually be better if additional alacrity was restored to chronomancer shield however (as shared quickness on shatter doesn't help it fulfill the renegade spot) as that's essentially the only use for it and the well of recall is a nightmare to get people to stand in with unorganized groups.

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@"Jimbru.6014" said:PvP and WvW need to be balanced in order to not stifle competition and make all classes viable.

PVE balance is not about the open world -- every class has powerful builds for soloing, story missions, and open world events like the world boss train. PVE needs to be balanced around the structured group content -- dungeons, fractals, strikes, raids. All classes should be useful in group content in more than one build -- "Sorry, no necros or rangers unless you're a healer" -- and NO class should be absolutely mandatory -- "Can't go without a Chrono." The meta concept will always exist among the toxic 1%, but PVE balance needs to address keeping the elitism and exclusion in group content to a minimum.

Pve does need some balance in gw2 But not to prevent prevent meta swap bullying, it is needed to keep npc enemy interesting to fight. The perceived nerd to swap profession/Meta tends to come from players who spend their time looking at meta sites and comparing needlessly with others on meters.

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basicly first big patch for wvw from a loooong time and u say pve is forgotten. nahpve dont need so many balance patches, as meta is kinda good (outside of 1 blue class). ofc some big balance changes are good once in a time, but pve get new content in terms of fractals(hmm), raids(hmmm) and strike missions. big balance changes in pvp are way more meaningfull to the gameplay than in pve (where even if meta changes u still play the same stuff).its good as its happening, lets just hope they will keep their promises

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Leave pve alone. When I am roaming maps, I want to have fun, not be killed every 10 seconds by mobs or feel the need to run past everything because it takes forever to chunk through everything because I now do the damage of a wet noodle. Or being forced to use a weapon -- like a stupid sword on my guard because some arrogant dev thinks my scepter shouldn't be a top option -- that I hate.

Plus fractals, dungeons, and bosses would become a nightmare if pve is nerfed as hard as other game modes are getting. I am so sick of the "it's too easy" mongers ruining stuff. They don't play more. They "conquer" the content and move on, never coming back, leaving the rest of us with content we can't solo and no one to help us. Now they want to take away the tools we have to even try.

I don't want to waste time on 5 million builds and armor and what not just do I can play a pve map. Leave that to pvp and wvw where that experimenting is expected. I certainly don't need stuff that will keep me on maps longer or pve content to be slow and methodical. If I wanted that I would replay dark souls-like games.

You find pve content easy? Good for you. Not all if us are that talented, or possesses with the ability to get that perfect build. And some of you think only in terms of your own experience. Like the fecent world boss. Some are like "it is so easy. Make it harder," and they did. Still the same whine for harder. But all I have seen is the event fail more frequently. I don't want to waste effort on failure. See enough waste on failure in bad pvp match ups. Get enough abuse hurled at me there, I don't need people calling me worthless trash in pve maps because they decide I am the reason we lost. I get enough of that in pvp.

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I hate the fact that I know I'm holding the group back in raids and fractals playing Necro. I main a Necro. I am a better Necro player. Yet the DPS and buffs to others from the Guardian or Warrior is far superior. It's obvious that it matters when looking at meters. It's not close.

I have other people heckling me to play other classes... Apparently number 3 on the meters is not good enough....when I can be number one on the meters and buff others. It just sucks.

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@Josiah.2967 said:I hate the fact that I know I'm holding the group back in raids and fractals playing Necro. I main a Necro. I am a better Necro player. Yet the DPS and buffs to others from the Guardian or Warrior is far superior. It's obvious that it matters when looking at meters. It's not close.

I have other people heckling me to play other classes... Apparently number 3 on the meters is not good enough....when I can be number one on the meters and buff others. It just sucks

Don't worry about it, people getting obssessed about winning a meter wars are never going to happy unless they have the biggest number on a chart. Those players are not team players. For them the result is more important than the gameplay - they will never be happy.

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PvE balance matters in that sense that every class should have a role in it. Beyond that, it really doesn't matter.

However, there is no point in impacting pve with unrelated changes in other game modes. I'm glad it took like 7 years to figure that out but hey.

Also this is a pve focused game. Any idea that pve has been neglected relative to pvp and especially wvw is a terrible joke.

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