GW2 "balance philosophy" is fundamentally flawed

[Elementalist Owner.7802]

As game developers your goal should be to provide a fun experience for your players. Period. That's what your balance philosophy should be based on: maximizing player enjoyment. (For all professions btw, not just your favorite ones)

 

When the game launched the devs understood this, but somewhere along the way this changed. It was some time after PoF launched when there seems to have been a shift in balance philosophy. Part of that philosophy was the idea of elite specs having tradeoffs. Some examples: mirage having one dodge, daredevil steal nerf, chrono shatter rework, etc. The EoD specs were designed under this philosophy, and as a result they are by far the worst elite specs the game has to offer. I'm sure you have internal data that confirms it: the playerbase does not like these specs.

 

So I think this is a very important question for the devs to ask themselves as they develop the new balance philosophy: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE BEHIND THIS PHILOSOPHY? Remember, it should be about maximizing player enjoyment. So how does the above philosophy accomplish this? Do you think that any player was thinking, "Hmm I would be having a lot more fun right now if daredevil steal had half the range" Of course not. The only consequence of this change is that daredevil feels more clunky and less effective to play. In conclusion: nobody benefited from this change, and overall player enjoyment was decreased. This leads me to believe that player enjoyment was not the reason behind this philosophy.

 

This leads me to a more damning example: the "bug fix" that made it so revenant legend swapping no longer triggers sigil effects. We now know that the devs reasoning behind this change is that revenant was "double dipping" sigil procs, and this was not consistent with other professions. So again I ask, whose gameplay enjoyment increased after this change? Obviously the answer is no one. The only consequence is that revenant players will have less fun, because a fun technical capability was removed.

 

This reveals a fundamental flaw in the balance philosophy: instead of being based around player enjoyment, it is based on some vague idea of "consistency" between professions. But why does consistency matter if it means that the players will have less fun?

 

Oh well, I guess we'll just have to "adapt" to a less fun experience. lol

Edited June 28, 2022 by Elementalist Owner.7802

[SponTen.1267]

Druid released in HoT and has reduced pet attributes. Most Elites fundamentally change the way that class’ profession mechanic works. To me, they looked like they were supposed to be a heavy specialisation with a downside, so you’d maybe trade the extra damage from a 3rd Ranger spec, for the huge extra healing from Druid.

To me, this is fun. It’s opportunity cost; you give something up to get something else. It’s the whole idea around theorycrafting builds in any video game that has a bunch of options.

Imho, this was kinda lost along the way when Elites started becoming so much better than Core in a bunch of important aspects. Now, most Elites offer at least two huge upsides, whereas the comparable Core spec offers one, or two small ones.

But we don’t know what ANet’s purpose behind their design decisions are; that’s why so many people have been asking for some communication on this, which it appears we’ll be getting over the next few weeks and months.

Edited June 28, 2022 by SponTen.1267
Removing extra spaces

[Elementalist Owner.7802]

1 hour ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Druid released in HoT and has reduced pet attributes. Most Elites fundamentally change the way that class’ profession mechanic works. To me, they looked like they were supposed to be a heavy specialisation with a downside, so you’d maybe trade the extra damage from a 3rd Ranger spec, for the huge extra healing from Druid.

To me, this is fun. It’s opportunity cost; you give something up to get something else. It’s the whole idea around theorycrafting builds in any video game that has a bunch of options.

Imho, this was kinda lost along the way when Elites started becoming so much better than Core in a bunch of important aspects. Now, most Elites offer at least two huge upsides, whereas the comparable Core spec offers one, or two small ones.

 

Druid had their pet attributes reduced in 2019, in the same balance patch as the daredevil steal nerf I mentioned. (see: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Celestial_Being#Version_history )

 

And yes, the original tradeoff for elite specs was that you take the elite spec instead of a third traitline -- the newer tradeoffs I'm referring to deliberately take away some kind of core mechanic of the profession, such as a 2nd dodge roll or Illusionary Persona.

 

If they need to make elite specs clunky and un-fun to play just to satisfy their philosophy of core specs being able to compete with elite specs, then obviously it is not a good balance philosophy. Clearly elite specs need to be more powerful than core in order to have fun new mechanics.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Elementalist Owner.7802

[Ferus.3165]

the second dodge roll for mirage that was removed and the daredevil steal nerf were neccessary. In PvE mirage still has two dodges so i assume you are not talking about PvE. And both of these specs were absolute kitten to fight in a pvp environment. And daredevil still is absolutely unkillable in wvw if played right (the best 1v1 spec in the game).

In PvE i agree, the mobs don't care how broken your spec is and that you are invulnerable for 90% of the fight, making the class feel fluent and fun to play should be the main balancing point here.

But that is not the case in PvP and WvW and that is why those nerfs were extremely justified.

[Fueki.4753]

There is no "balance philosophy" for GW2 to begin with.

All the changes are either done on a whim or with the specific purpose to neuter something they don't like (for example Warrior).

[Astralporing.1957]

9 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Druid released in HoT and has reduced pet attributes.

This (as well as other tradeoffs to HoT especs) was added only later, alongside tradeoffs to some of the PoF especs (like removing pet swap while in combat for Soulbeast). Those weren't originally there.

9 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Most Elites fundamentally change the way that class’ profession mechanic works. To me, they looked like they were supposed to be a heavy specialisation with a downside, so you’d maybe trade the extra damage from a 3rd Ranger spec, for the huge extra healing from Druid.

Of the original HoT especs, Druid is practically only one espec that follows the design of adding a completely different role to a profession. All others were flat out upgrades to core. Which has its own issues, sure, but that's something that's baked into those especs from the get go. Trying to add some "tradeoffs" was something that Anet thought up at some point later to try to make core builds more interesting. Or to make some PoF builds preferable to better HoT ones sharing the same design space. It was never going to work well.

Notice, btw, that while Druid, as mentioned, is by itself a tradeoff (because it specces you in a completely different role, and for old core roles it is generally subpar), Soulbeast was a flat out upgrade to core Ranger and never pretended to be anything else.

[Tycura.1982]

11 hours ago, Elementalist Owner.7802 said:

For all professions btw, not just your favorite ones

That ship sailed a long time ago 

[Gibson.4036]

3 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

There is no "balance philosophy" for GW2 to begin with.

All the changes are either done on a whim or with the specific purpose to neuter something they don't like (for example Warrior).

I would have rolled my eyes at this five days ago.

Now I'm sad that I can't.

[Einsof.1457]

Well said. When O'Brien was head, he made sure that fun was the primary goal of the company. It's a shame that philosophy went with him. 

[SponTen.1267]

Ahh, apologies, I thought Elites came with downsides from the start.

Personally, I find it less fun when Elites are upgrades to Core in every single way. One of the original design philosophies of GW2 was that old content doesn’t just get invalidated. There are so many interesting potential Core builds just waiting to be realised if they’re balanced appropriately.

ANet can’t really go back and change how Elites work now. I mean, look at Mech for example; you lose your toolbelt skills but gain Mech skills. Should the toolbelt skills be added back in on top of the Mech skills?

Imho, it’s much more interesting when Elites give up something (eg. Damage and pet attributes on Druid) for a huge specialisation into something else (healing on Druid). Isn’t that the idea behind Elite specialisation? You’re hugely specialising into one thing and thus sacrificing other aspects you could have diversified into instead.

To me, that is fun. What’s not fun is being pushed into one specific spec because everything else just pales in comparison. Why ever play Sword/Pistol Thief when Staff Daredevil is better in every way? - I’m honestly curious to hear what you guys think about this.

[Fueki.4753]

5 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

ANet can’t really go back and change how Elites work now.

Yes, they can.

They did it to Berserker in 2019 (with the full intent of making it worse) and to a lesser extent to Scrapper.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Imho, it’s much more interesting when Elites give up something (eg. Damage and pet attributes on Druid) for a huge specialisation into something else (healing on Druid).

The druid gives up something by the mere fact that druid traitline is support/healing focused, so taking it for a dps class will always be a downgrade from taking any option that can increase your damage. There's no need for any additional forced downsides like the pet nerf.

7 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Isn’t that the idea behind Elite specialisation? You’re hugely specialising into one thing and thus sacrificing other aspects you could have diversified into instead.

In theory, sure. In practice, out of the original initial especs, only Druid was like it. Others were either flat upgrades to a direction that was already a part of core identity, or added new options while also being an upgrade to core at the same time.

In reality, when imagining new especs, devs use three separate approaches. First is the one you mentioned - imagining a specific role for the espec. Second, is a theme - designing the espec to do the same thing as always, but in a new, visually cool way and with new aestethics. Third is mechanic change - designing an espec around some changes to core profession mechanics that devs think might be cool. So, you can have Druid (let's add healing/support capability to Ranger), Reaper (let's make Necro an unstoppable juggernaut from horror movies) or Tempest (let's turn attunements into active skills).

Like you see, there's no consistency here, and nowadays the last two options seem to be dominating while the first one got pretty much forgotten.

[Wolfshade.9251]

Imagine a world where...

- Either condition or power damage is favoured on certain encounters with an equal split between the two.

- Highest benchmarks go to high-skill glass-cannon specs.

- Classes with more built-in utility deal less damage than pure-damage classes.

- All support options are viable. Actually viable, not just in theory.

[eXruina.4956]

gw2 balance and design philosophy is apparently,

 

"you guys shouldn't play gw2, you're all bad, quit the game. you shouldn't have bought the game in the first place, you're all dumb and can't comprehend. nothing you can do about it."

 

now if only they'll give us a full refund of everything we spent for the past 8+ years, not counting the time and effort we invested. wish they told you this when they sold you the game.

Edited June 29, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[volca.7234]

You use the word "fundamentally" wrong, a fundamental flaw is a flaw that follows the logic of the solution to contradict its goals, what you mean is that you think that balance distract from fun, which is another topic.

Don't conflate the two