Tradeoffs, the mathematic and logically consistent framework for understanding what they are, and why EOD's are bad.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

After the first two beta releases, the concept of Trade-offs has entered the conversation about their role in game design. The problem is...not very many seem to know what they are, in a fundamental or critical sense, and so the difficulty in understanding tradeoffs has resulted in bad implementation of un-fun gameplay elements for End of Dragon's Elite Specializations. The hope is that with this post, we can all, Arena-net included, get a better understanding what trade-offs are, why they are used, and pinpoint exactly what is wrong with said implementation. To begin, we first need to look at history.

 

History

 

A Trade-off is from a more basic concept; "To Trade" which we've been doing since the stone age. Way back before fiat currencies and bitcoin, people us-to trade goods and services with other goods and services. Take the following example:

 

Alice is a baker that loves to bake bread. Alice also lives in a house made of sticks and wood.

Bob is a craftsman that is a talented brick maker. Bob also owns a lot animals that he needs to feed.

 

Alice has an excess of bread, and Bob has an excess of bricks.  Alice's home isn't very sturdy, and Bob's animals are hungry...

 

Looking at this example, You can tell that both Alice and Bob have something to offer in excess, and have something they need that they lack. A trade is initiated between the two parties, where both are in mutual agreement to trade one thing for another thing, so that they can both have what they need. Alice gives some of her excess bread to Bob, in exchange for bricks to make her house more sturdy...and Bob uses that bread to feed his animals in exchange for those bricks he made.

 

Now...Alice isn't going to give Bob all of his bread...nor would Bob give Alice all of his bricks. The two understand that there is a certain amount of their good or service they are willing to give up, in order to satisfy both of their desired needs. This understanding is called the equilibrium or market value, and this value changes from person to person in a bartering system. Alice will give Bob 10 loafs of bread for 10 bricks maybe... Where as, Charlie might want 15 loafs of bread for 5 of his bricks. Every participant in this system has a differing level of tolerance for how much they wish to decide on their trade, and this is what the world colloquially understands as "tradeoffs." Currencies, are the universally understood equilibrium value for all goods and services across all participants in the system. Instead of Alice trading Bob and Charlie loafs of bread, she trades them cash instead, which has a universally agreed upon value, and Bob can also trade cash to some other participants somewhere else. Currencies are thus, meant to understand the value of tradeoffs across multiple differing goods and services in order to compare and contrast them and this actually helps currencies further reach a universally understood equilibrium (called fair market price).

 

Given the historical context, trade-offs are not supposed to be harmful or bad...in fact, they are "designed" to help further optimize society. And this is the first key difference between Guild Wars 2 tradeoffs, and well...tradeoff's that exist everywhere else. A tradeoff is not supposed to be "designed" per say, as a punishment...it's designed to help that player optimize themselves, and receive the most value from an exchange.

 

Thresholds, Feedback and Equilibrium

Let's look deeper into Alice the bread maker, and Bob the meat builder. One of the key things to understand about their trade (which is why I'm repeating it again), is that Alice and Bob both acknowledge, that there is some minimum threshold they will not cross in order to get the other's good or service. Alice doesn't want to give bob all of her bread, nor does Bob want to give Alice all of his bricks. This threshold is the equilibrium value that both parties believe is the best trade they can make. This threshold has a number of properties that should be fully understood :

 

1) Dynamical: This threshold is completely dynamic, and is controlled autonomously. This means that every player has the individual right to decide just how much of a tradeoff they wish to attain from a trade, and therefor changes and should be different from player to player.

 

2) Feedback: This threshold is governed by two factors: The participants haves and needs. If Alice is desperate for a brick house because it's raining, she is willing to sacrifice more of her bread, for more of Bob's bricks. Likewise, Bob can take advantage of such opportunities to raise the number of pieces of Bread she must exchange for his bricks. This interplay between both parties haves and needs is described by what's called "Feedback." Feedback is the dynamic interplay between two opposing forces. Positive feedback, is when a force is dominant and divergent in a system (toward infinity), while negative feedback, is a force moving the system towards convergence (toward an equilibrium value).

 

You can imagine the game between Bob's need for bread, and Alice's need for bricks, in this graphical representation.

 

Alice's need would be a "positive" while Bob's need would be anti-positive, while Alice's haves would be the negative, while Bob's haves would be Anti-negative. The place where the anti-positive force, cancels out the positive force, is called the equilibrium, and this act of moving toward an equilibrium is called negative feedback. *Traditionally in most fields, "anti-positive" and "anti-negative" is just referred to as being just positives or negatives. The distinction between anti- and non-anti is only made for the usefulness of this presentation here. 

 

End of Dragons

With the understanding of how Trade-offs work, and how they create equilibriums, we can look at End of Dragon's Elite Specializations, and we can uncover what is "wrong" with them and why they fail so hard.

 

Dynamics

First and foremost, let's look at dynamics. Immediately, we can identify that most tradeoffs (and lack thereof) currently in the game, especially PRE-EOD traits and specializations are NOT dynamical. This lack of dynamics means that you as an autonomous agent, have no control over for what you decide to tradeoff. "-300 vitality" or "-300 toughness" and other tradeoffs of this kind are the worst offenders. They decide for you and for everyone else, what the equilibrium value is and should be. Even if such a value is fair for Alice and Bob's exchange, such a value might not be fair for Charlie and Alice's exchange. This is the primary reason why these tradeoffs in the past, fail completely, as this concrete equilibrium decides for the players, what is "market fair,", and what is not "market fair." from specialization to specialization.

 

Looking at End of Dragons now, dynamic tradeoffs have actually been introduced, where the player can decide for themselves how much they wish to trade off, as seen in spec's like the harbinger and the Bladesworn... so this is actually a good signal...people are learning. However, they fail critically at the second factor mentioned above...that it lacks the understanding of haves and needs (feedback), and how this interfaces with the dynamics.

 

Bladesworn

Blade-sworn is a great example of both a working spec, and a non-working spec at the same darn time. The tradeoff here is very clear. You lose the ability to move, in exchange for damage. The more time you sacrifice, the more damage you do. So we can ask the following question, what is the equilibrium value here?

 

First we can look at the brokerage of movement. Even before casting the skill, you are rooted in place, as the damage ticks up exponentially the longer you remain rooted. This means that the movement penalty increases over time, in a linear fashion, until it crosses a certain threshold of damage, in which the amount of damage you do, makes sense with the amount of time lost to immobilization. Now remember, tradeoffs are based on the haves and needs of all participants taking part in a trade, and the equilibrium value, is representative of the universally agreed upon understanding of that trade...so if some enemy Bob takes on average 3 seconds to move out of the way from an attack, then Alice's threshold for her attack is going to be required to land within 3 seconds, meaning that with Blade-sworn, she has to tradeoff the damage to do that. Again I will repeat there is a minimum threshold of this trade before Alice decides where the trade off is not worth the trade...That equilibrium is therefor NOT DETERMINED by just the mechanic, it's determined ALSO by the behavior of BOB.

 

The Bigger Picture

This post is getting pretty long, so I'm going to wrap this up with some insight to take away. All classes have access to skills that they have and want access to things that they need. Giving a class "a bunch of tradeoffs and a maybe some payoffs" removes the understanding, that tradeoffs, are indeed trades. Just like in the real world...you want to buy a burger or an ice-cream for a fair price. If we had to sign a bunch of contracts, and speak to a bunch of lawyers before purchasing an ice-cream or a hamburger...how do you think that effects the dynamics and the equilibrium price for those products there?

 

So going back to the idea that all classes have access to skills that they have, and want access to things that they need, this should really give insight into how Arena-net should be approaching the concept of tradeoffs. If a class wants to cleanse conditions, and they have a lot of Life Force...or endurance...or whatever it is that you have an excess of, then skill A should be a skill that creates a dynamic trade between cleansing conditions, for some life force/endurance/whatever... This is dynamic meaning you...the player, decide that amount exchanged for how many conditions you cleanse. There is no need to tie anything to choosing a specialization or class mechanic...it all comes down to individual skills, and whether those skills can facilitate trades. 

 

Conclusion

I hope this post was somewhat helpful to both Arena-net and the forum goer's here, to get a better understanding for the EOD tradeoffs, and an attempt at pinpointing exactly what the issues are with this current implementation, so that we can maybe see something positive come out of all this hoo-haa. Cheers,

 

Edited September 26, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Just a follow up post that provides some real-game examples to show the above application.

 

Examples of good tradeoffs

Let's just say you are a Reaper, and the facets that describe your build is that you do a lot of damage, generate a lot of life force and have a high health pool.  You're now looking to further optimize your build with things that you need, like survivability, or mobility or condition cleansing.

• Skill A provides you a condition cleanse, that sacrifices x% of your life force, per condition cleansed on you. This is a truly dynamical tradeoff, that exchanges life force, for condition cleansing. The more conditions you cleanse, the more more life force you sacrifice for that cleansing. 
• Skill B provides you a skill that can teleport you and grant you swiftness, in exchange for receiving additional damage. Every second you gain x stacks of a damage-received de-buff.
• Skill C is a shout skill that bolsters your defenses in exchange for reducing the damage you can deal. For every player hit by this skill, you gain +x% less incoming damage, and inflict -x% of out going damage.

 

In all cases, when following the fundamentals behind tradeoffs, these skills gain a resilient behavior called "Scale Invariance." Scale Invariance is a special mathematical property that allows mechanics, to scale at all levels of combat, because the mechanic is self balancing as a consequence of finding dynamic equilibrium.

 

For Skill A, the more conditions you receive, the more conditions you can cleanse in exchange for more life force. For skill B, the more distance you cover before teleporting, the more damage you are susceptible to. For Skill C, the more targets you hit, the less damage you can take, but the less damage you can deal. 

 

In each situation, you can scale the size of combat, to analyze the performance of that skill and how it behaves at that scale.

 

• For skill A, if you are hit by 12 conditions, you need to have more life force to sacrifice to cleanse it. Thus it's a powerful cleanse at large scales, but it also costs you more to do that. This self balancing actually allows skills like this to have no cooldown...because the tradeoff mechanism is itself a kind of cooldown already. 
• For Skill B, if you decide to run really far way before deciding to teleport back, you'll have during that time, an increasingly higher de-buff that makes you vulnerable to dying from an attack quicker and quicker. This allows Skill B to not be required to even have a concrete duration.
• For Skill C, if the buff gives you 5% damage reduction per target hit, then If your shout is able to hit 20 targets, then in large scales, you'll be able to take no damage...but you also won't be able to deal any damage.

 

In each case, the scale invariance allows the mechanics to drop pseudo limitations like cooldowns and target caps, because of this natural way of seeking out the equilibrium in all scales of a fight. In other words, the way to know you've truly designed a good tradeoff, is if this tradeoff scales invariantly in all levels of combat and maintains balanced behavior. So you can put into question...do the EOD elite specializations scale at all levels of combat? If the answer is no, then it's time to go back to the drawing board.

 

Cheers,

Edited September 26, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Kuma.1503]

Lets see if I can apply this logic. 

Lets say a Catalyst... lets name him Carl, wants to engage in a trade with the enemy player. Carl has long slow animations that he needs to be in melee range for. 

He will need to sacrifice some hp in this trade in order to get off these long cast times. 

Carl has 11k hp and light armor. He attempts to trade by using earth 2. 

His opponent, lets name them "Actual functonal Class" is able to deal 4k damage per second to carl

Earth 2 has a 3 second cast time. 

4k x 3 = 12k. 

This means that Carl does not have the required hp to make the trade, therefore he cannot press Earth 2. 

Carl tires anyway and he kitten dies. 

RIP in peace Carl. At least you have Ele downstate memes to help ease the pain. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

54 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Lets see if I can apply this logic. 

Lets say a Catalyst... lets name him Carl, wants to engage in a trade with the enemy player. Carl has long slow animations that he needs to be in melee range for. 

He will need to sacrifice some hp in this trade in order to get off these long cast times. 

Carl has 11k hp and light armor. He attempts to trade by using earth 2. 

His opponent, lets name them "Actual functonal Class" is able to deal 4k damage per second to carl

Earth 2 has a 3 second cast time. 

4k x 3 = 12k. 

This means that Carl does not have the required hp to make the trade, therefore he cannot press Earth 2. 

Carl tires anyway and he kitten dies. 

RIP in peace Carl. At least you have Ele downstate memes to help ease the pain. 

 

Right. In essence, the trade occurring in this scenario is Carl exchanging 12,000 Health, for the usage of Earth 2, which takes more time to cast, than the health he actually has. This tradeoff is essentially "too expensive" for Carl, and thus he will decide simply not use it until the tradeoff actually benefits him (hitting equilibrium or "fair market price" if you will). You can imagine, that the less scenario's there are where the tradeoff benefits him, the less likely he is to make trades...and the skill is never "traded" as in it never gets used. 

 

Now, this application is good and it's great to exercise as you did, but this is more in line with talking about combatant to combatant trades, rather than talking about the mechanics of the skills we are trying to target with EOD. Instead of presenting a particular combat scenario, it's more appropriate to talk about individual skills, what their mechanics are, and whether their behaviors have well made tradeoffs...because in reality there's an infinite number of different scenarios in which the equilibrium solution is going to be different and combatants can meet their "fair market price" somewhere out there. A well made tradeoff, will be self balancing in all scenarios, via the aforementioned scale invariant property.

 

Just an example of that, Earth 2 has an equilibrium where Carl is going to use it; in which the opponent does less damage than Earth 2, in the time that it takes to cast Earth 2.

 

Cheers, buddy

Edit:

Just a little side note, there is a game called “Cookie Clicker” which at its core is a game that is fully scale invariant. The game is designed to present trade offs and payoffs to you, that scales at all scales…from a couple cookies to an octodecillion cookies? It’s some huge  HUUGEE number but technically it can continue into infinity. It’s just a good example of a guy who designed it with an understanding of these kinds of principles. With the creators numerous references to physics, chaos theory and fractals in the game it makes sense he would (fractals are the mascots of scale invariant geometry) 

Edited September 26, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Tescao.3042]

You have an excellent understanding of the development of market relations at the initial stage and the formation of  " tradeoffs. Only you missed one very important detail. It looks something like this. For a long time Alice and Bop lived like this in peace and harmony, until the bandits came to them....

 

I apologize in advance if this sounds utopian somewhere.

 

There are trade relations: a peasant and a craftsman. The peasant grows food, the artisan (various) produces tools, all sorts of services, etc. Everything is for the peasant - and the peasant feeds the artisan for this. A certain nominal value of trade relations is a measure of food: a pood of wheat, for example. Horseshoes for a horse - a pood of wheat, a doctor's reception, potter's pots, a harness, arable and other agricultural tools. There is a price for everything, but in the form of a measure of food. Money, as if it is not needed - natural exchange satisfies all needs. But then a certain bandit appears, with a gang and begins to rob peasants and artisans. And then he begins to clean up the villages under his hand and becomes a feudal lord. Above - another bandit-feudal lord, higher and so-to the monarch. This is how the thieves ' hierarchy is built. Thieves ' wars, for the division of territories and the right to plunder the peasantry. Let's call it a "state". But with the advent of the state, it is required to legalize robbery: to introduce "state levies" - taxes, dues, etc.But there is no money yet, because first there must be demand, then experts in rocks will appear and they will find valuable metal. Then they organize the extraction and stamping of coins. But the coins themselves do not mean anything until the sovereign puts them into circulation. How to do it? - To make purchases from the peasantry, public procurement. The money immediately gets into circulation. Then the sovereign charges each peasant, through the mediation of the feudal lord, to pay taxes, with the same coin. And artisans, too. And since the sovereign bought all the food, now they buy it from the state and the money is returned to the treasury, but with a profit: more products come than money is released. moreover: the sovereign gives these coins to vassals-feudal lords, who distribute money, for the turnover of trade. And a "sensible" feudal lord always drives the peasantry and artisans into debt. The state is always a usurious office, which is gradually gaining strength and is beginning to be called a "bank". And all the feudal lords are usurers: this is a single system of plundering the population. Taxes, levies, taxes, taxes, etc. There are people who argue about the varieties of kitten, to death: that cow kitten and goat kitten are not the same thing. What is a thief, what is a fraudster, what is an exploiter-they enrich themselves in one way: they take away part of the results of labor, the producer (Lat. "proletarian"). Now we will replace the peasantry - with farmers, artisans - with industry: what has changed? In principle, nothing.

As a result of the appearance of such things, Charlie began to have ideas, that he could also afford more than Bob for his bricks, reasoning with his mind, which told him that he was special.

I just wanted you to see your own described picture of market relations from a slightly different angle. What I have written does not apply to the "tradeoffs" related to specializations described by you. 

Edited September 26, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 9/26/2021 at 1:32 AM, DomHemingway.8436 said:

You have an excellent understanding of the development of market relations at the initial stage and the formation of  " tradeoffs. Only you missed one very important detail. It looks something like this. For a long time Alice and Bop lived like this in peace and harmony, until the bandits came to them....

 

I apologize in advance if this sounds utopian somewhere.

 

There are trade relations: a peasant and a craftsman. The peasant grows food, the artisan (various) produces tools, all sorts of services, etc. Everything is for the peasant - and the peasant feeds the artisan for this. A certain nominal value of trade relations is a measure of food: a pood of wheat, for example. Horseshoes for a horse - a pood of wheat, a doctor's reception, potter's pots, a harness, arable and other agricultural tools. There is a price for everything, but in the form of a measure of food. Money, as if it is not needed - natural exchange satisfies all needs. But then a certain bandit appears, with a gang and begins to rob peasants and artisans. And then he begins to clean up the villages under his hand and becomes a feudal lord. Above - another bandit-feudal lord, higher and so-to the monarch. This is how the thieves ' hierarchy is built. Thieves ' wars, for the division of territories and the right to plunder the peasantry. Let's call it a "state". But with the advent of the state, it is required to legalize robbery: to introduce "state levies" - taxes, dues, etc.But there is no money yet, because first there must be demand, then experts in rocks will appear and they will find valuable metal. Then they organize the extraction and stamping of coins. But the coins themselves do not mean anything until the sovereign puts them into circulation. How to do it? - To make purchases from the peasantry, public procurement. The money immediately gets into circulation. Then the sovereign charges each peasant, through the mediation of the feudal lord, to pay taxes, with the same coin. And artisans, too. And since the sovereign bought all the food, now they buy it from the state and the money is returned to the treasury, but with a profit: more products come than money is released. moreover: the sovereign gives these coins to vassals-feudal lords, who distribute money, for the turnover of trade. And a "sensible" feudal lord always drives the peasantry and artisans into debt. The state is always a usurious office, which is gradually gaining strength and is beginning to be called a "bank". And all the feudal lords are usurers: this is a single system of plundering the population. Taxes, levies, taxes, taxes, etc. There are people who argue about the varieties of kitten, to death: that cow kitten and goat kitten are not the same thing. What is a thief, what is a fraudster, what is an exploiter-they enrich themselves in one way: they take away part of the results of labor, the producer (Lat. "proletarian"). Now we will replace the peasantry - with farmers, artisans - with industry: what has changed? In principle, nothing.

As a result of the appearance of such things, Charlie began to have ideas, that he could also afford more than Bob for his bricks, reasoning with his mind, which told him that he was special.

I just wanted you to see your own described picture of market relations from a slightly different angle. What I have written does not apply to the "tradeoffs" related to specializations described by you. 

Wanted to respond to this sooner but I was banned from the forum for a few days…sorry.

 

the good thing is that this gave me some time to think about this post because it’s astute…well informed and I wanted to see if I could draw the parallel to Guild Wars 2.

 

In my opinion what you talked about has an analog…which is this idea that whatever the rules are, those rules can essentially be bypassed by exploiting the system of participants that follow those rules in order to create a system that systemically benefit those same exploiters (in a positive feedback loop). I’ve talked about this topic before…although it has nothing to do immediately with tradeoffs, but rather the behavior of players that are able to influence the government of control over balance (the balance team at Anet) for their continued personal gain under the guise that it is for the balance of the game, and not for exploitative personal gain.

 

So with tradeoffs…in a world where everyone follows the rules…tradeoffs do work as they should to facilitate fair trade…now are there people that can influence the design decisions of Anet in order to further exploit the game for themselves to bypass tradeoffs? Yes I think such people exist and it’s common…I think everyone who has been given a voice on the forum or a discord channel, have some kind of bias that if Anet decides to listen to, that exploitative element of their view is going to become part of the system.

 

Mostly this is what I believe happened in February patch of 2020. People didn’t want a fair game, they wanted their competitors nerfed and still do without mercy and the dev team has a group of players they listen to for balance changes…who are they and what do they really know about game design? This string of events would have huge consequences on balance as a whole because of how complex the game is and what was supposed to be a nerf to “fix” balance caused it to really…make a whole bunch of classes useless instead.

 

So ya…I like what you said in your comment here…although it’s a bit off topic…it’s still an interesting to talk about…by and large there is a lot to learn from history and I think your post goes into a topic that really deserves its own thread…because that history informs us on the issue of a small section of top players that are influencing the design discussions at Anet.

[Genesis.5169]

You guys are assuming a lot, like for the traitlines were designed for PvP in mind and Anet has a vision for the game. I'll keep this short, i have seen nothing in the past 9 years that can be called a direction for this game, Niether PvP or PvE has a direction unless you wanna call achievement hunting something.

There was a time character's were supposed to grow via skills and mechanics instead of stats that went no where they refuse to add elites or utilities. Raids are barely touched, Fotm is barely touched, Underwater combat gone, Spvp had no new content for years before the 2020 patch with 2v2 and 3v3s, OW living world might be it but OW PvE is not exactly a MMO direction as every MMO has OW PvE.  You guys are making wild assumptions about a design philosophy that clearly doesn't exist because it changes on a whim. I'm pretty sure not one of Anets devs have any backbone or vision outside of what ever they see on the forums or what ever small group of people they talk to on discord (If this discord community exists im on the mighty teapot discord no one ever talks thier and the official GW2 discord is filled with people with horrible opinions)

It's a real shame because this game is mechanically sound but devoid of any real meta game because there is no direction from the meta to drive from so you get these half kitten trade off measures instead of balancing the game via how class mechanics interact with each other instead of in a vacuum.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Genesis.5169
Additional Info and Grammar.

[Downstate.4697]

Catalyst isn't even a trade. Its repackaging the original product and selling to the customer twice.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

 

On 9/25/2021 at 11:22 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

Lets see if I can apply this logic. 

Lets say a Catalyst... lets name him Carl, wants to engage in a trade with the enemy player. Carl has long slow animations that he needs to be in melee range for. 

He will need to sacrifice some hp in this trade in order to get off these long cast times. 

Carl has 11k hp and light armor. He attempts to trade by using earth 2. 

His opponent, lets name them "Actual functonal Class" is able to deal 4k damage per second to carl

Earth 2 has a 3 second cast time. 

4k x 3 = 12k. 

This means that Carl does not have the required hp to make the trade, therefore he cannot press Earth 2. 

Carl tires anyway and he kitten dies. 

RIP in peace Carl. At least you have Ele downstate memes to help ease the pain. 

@Kuma.1503and @JusticeRetroHunter.7684, thanks for writing this out so completely. I would not have been able to without being overcome with revulsion at the fact that the only way the combat mechanics we have seen for Bladesworn and Catalyst thus far make sense, is if we assume they were designed specifically for people who hit or are hit by Havok AI. 

Edited October 2, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Tescao.3042]

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Wanted to respond to this sooner but I was banned from the forum for a few days…sorry.

 

the good thing is that this gave me some time to think about this post because it’s astute…well informed and I wanted to see if I could draw the parallel to Guild Wars 2.

 

In my opinion what you talked about has an analog…which is this idea that whatever the rules are, those rules can essentially be bypassed by exploiting the system of participants that follow those rules in order to create a system that systemically benefit those same exploiters (in a positive feedback loop). I’ve talked about this topic before…although it has nothing to do immediately with tradeoffs, but rather the behavior of players that are able to influence the government of control over balance (the balance team at Anet) for their continued personal gain under the guise that it is for the balance of the game, and not for exploitative personal gain.

 

So with tradeoffs…in a world where everyone follows the rules…tradeoffs do work as they should to facilitate fair trade…now are there people that can influence the design decisions of Anet in order to further exploit the game for themselves to bypass tradeoffs? Yes I think such people exist and it’s common…I think everyone who has been given a voice on the forum or a discord channel, have some kind of bias that if Anet decides to listen to, that exploitative element of their view is going to become part of the system.

 

Mostly this is what I believe happened in February patch of 2020. People didn’t want a fair game, they wanted their competitors nerfed and still do without mercy and the dev team has a group of players they listen to for balance changes…who are they and what do they really know about game design? This string of events would have huge consequences on balance as a whole because of how complex the game is and what was supposed to be a nerf to “fix” balance caused it to really…make a whole bunch of classes useless instead.

 

So ya…I like what you said in your comment here…although it’s a bit off topic…it’s still an interesting to talk about…by and large there is a lot to learn from history and I think your post goes into a topic that really deserves its own thread…because that history informs us on the issue of a small section of top players that are influencing the design discussions at Anet.

 

An insightful analogy. I want to add that we can only hope for a global revision of the approach to balancing Anet, after all, hope dies last.

 

In turn, in the real world, world-scale feudal lords appreciated the model of formation of modern society in China, their social ratings and even more accurate divisions into strata of society and total control.

Therefore, it remains only a matter of time when such a scenario will be implemented for the whole world. It will be veiled, hidden in the shadow of the economic situation, present or future epidemic.

To help this scenario, electronic currencies will also come on the scene, which will gain full force. Most likely, no one will mention this, but in their hearts many will be able to feel that this can be called a new world order.

Here, as with the analogy in balancing Anet, since they are the creators, only the creator can intervene to change the situation, in a visible or invisible way - some kind of discovery, the birth of a certain person, climate change and etc (this list goes on).

 

History had a very good period when she was able to put a sticks in the wheels, until the guys with deep knowledge took control of her (Divide and conquer - (с) Rome, although there is information that this was used long before Rome). This is used even in gw2 conquest, lol, but in game mode it's fun.

 

Now divide and conquer has gone too far and will continue to go further and further, it got a more bitter taste. Now this happens in games such as p2w. This happens even in such a giant as World of Warcraft, people were divided into raiders, key hunters, casuals, arena players, bg players. Each of these types of players thinks that others are not needed and Blizzard is quite satisfied with this.

 

The funny thing is that people have not learned how to play high-level pvp content called RBG(there is no meta here, there are only strategic counter between specializations) and consider this content dead. They did not even try to understand that the balance was not built for the arena, but for RBG - War Craft and to play RBG wisely, you need to have 2 tanks, because there are tanks who do not know how to carry a flag, but good pointers. There's even a hint from Blizzard in the raid profile settings, it sounds like this - Show the main tank and the gunner (meaning the second tank).

So WoW players made themselves meta slaves, not understanding what the highest skill of Warcraft is, stuck in stereotypes because of the separation between themselves. I hope Anet chooses a different path.

 

Thanks for the answer, it was interesting to read.

Edit:

P. S.  I do not even know what can help to get out of this template, but the ideal system can be only one scenario - the formation of a multi-faceted counter between specializations and their roles, but it is not a fact that this will work well in 5vs5, with an even greater increase in the number of specializations. Because 5 by 5 may already be too limited for such great opportunities, considering what a macro game can be with the addition of more participants.

Edited October 2, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436