Would you rather Anet focus on making professions Fun and unique or Balanced and homogeneous?

[Einsof.1457]

Would you rather Anet focus on making professions Fun and unique or Balanced and homogeneous? 

[Gibson.4036]

Leading question is leading. But yeah, I value fun and unique over balance.

I don't, however, want fun and unique without any sense of balance. Fun and unique only goes so far if your class is the one that vastly underperforms others. It's a spectrum, not an either/or.

[Einsof.1457]

Just now, Gibson.4036 said:

Leading question is leading. But yeah, I value fun and unique over balance.

I don't, however, want fun and unique without any sense of balance. Fun and unique only goes so far if your class is the one that vastly underperforms others. It's a spectrum, not an either/or.

That's fair. I should have worded the question "Would you rather Anet focus on primarily on fun or focus primarily on balance?" Oh well. Ship has sailed. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Einsof.1457

[Gibson.4036]

4 minutes ago, Einsof.1457 said:

That's fair. I should have worded the question "Would you rather Anet focus on primarily on fun or focus primarily on balance?" Oh well. Ship has sailed. 

Totally understandable. I was thinking, if the forum could do it, something like those 1-5 polls would be great:

Fun 1... 2.... 3.... 4.... 5 Balance

Circle the number where'd you'd weight design decisions on the spectrum.

[Mesket.5728]

stupid question... for many if not all unbalance != fun

 

aim for both if you're a professional and have any sort of standard

[Zyreva.1078]

Balance =/= homogenisation.

Ideally all classes and specs have their own unique strenghts and weaknesses that balance each other out. Arguably homogenisation leads to worse balance actually, because if everything does the same, you just pick whatever does "it" the best and there is no reason to pick anything else. As this patch beautifully displays ...

[Polar.8634]

why not  balanced and fun

[Einsof.1457]

14 minutes ago, Vladisimissius.2594 said:

why not  balanced and fun

perfect balance is by definition not fun. perfect balance would be everyone plays the exact same thing. 

[LadyKitty.6120]

Kitty would kinda like to hear anyone explain just how did this patch make professions homogenous aside from basically changing the name and effect of some unique boons to standard ones (Spirits, Banners, AP, Spotter, PD) and giving some classes similar capability to some trait (Fury in Ele's Air and Mesmer's Dueling)? True, now Quickness and Alacrity aren't just Chronomancer's staple anymore but at least booning isn't the trade of four anymore and basically they're unlocking support roles for other classes as well now. After all, it's hard to be unique if you're not around to begin with.
Also, contrary to belief of some here, Perfect Balance doesn't mean playing the same exact thing. It means getting similar results through possibly different means. Even the results don't need to be the same as long as all the competitors have similar advantage/disadvantage ratio. As far as Kitty's seen, GW2 doesn't even have any major issues with classes feeling the same as most have totally different profession mechanics, though some do share minion/illusion/pet-type of mechanic but pretty much every single MMO has that particular thing 'cause everyone likes having friends (usually). Kitty does admit that they did reuse some animations on the new e-specs but even then, they do have different feel and use.
Think of Paper-Scissors-Rock. Not everyone plays the same and choosing any of them has the same chance of win, draw or loss depending on what your opponent chooses. (excluding possible personal biases making a person take one more often than others but that's on player, not the game)

Besides, banners work the same as before though you can now move them (though they really need their old bundle skills back and either Martial Cadence or Vigorous Shouts moved to different column so Heal Quick Warrior could become a thing as it can't exist when Quickness and Shout heals are exclusive).
Spirits work the same as before, just changed the buff. Druid actually has more room to choose 3rd spec now as Skirmishing isn't "mandatory" anymore. Alacrity Soulbeast is now an option since you can either take Moa Stance or Ritualist gears for Boon Duration and take 3 Spirits for full Alacrity. In other words, ranger got AlacDPS as new role.
Rev's Tablet can now be used a lot more actively and versatilely since you don't need to worry about energy cost of moving the tablet anymore, don't need to spam Natural Harmony for Alacrity and that opens some interesting plays. Though admittedly Heal Vindicator was sacrificed as result but it might rise again. Power Rev builds also can now choose between 250 extra power or furybotting while previously AP was the default.
On Tempest you're not a pure healer anymore nor a suppressed boonbot healer (which became a case with Heal Catalyst) with the addition of Alacrity. Now Tempest has basically doubled amount of builds available based on trait choices and it's has a role as a healer again. If you think it doesn't heal enough, just a friendly reminder: Frost Bow (kinda must with boonbot healers on Ele due to boons being tied to attunements). On a sidenote, good Mightbot Heal Tempests were using it already before EoD.

And that's just what happened with this balance patch. Kitty won't go any deeper here 'cause she's not feeling like writing an encyclopedia and light novel about the whole spectrum of playstyles and builds in this game and how they get affected by balance patches. If you're ready to accept 15-20% handicap in DPS race, the number of your available playstyles increases exponentially compared to sticking to meta.

Edited June 28, 2022 by LadyKitty.6120
Fixed formatting as apparently markdown doesn't work anymore.

[Hotride.2187]

13 minutes ago, LadyKitty.6120 said:

Kitty would kinda like to hear anyone explain just how did this patch make professions homogenous aside from basically changing the name and effect of some unique boons to standard ones (Spirits, Banners, AP, Spotter, PD) and giving some classes similar capability to some trait (Fury in Ele's Air and Mesmer's Dueling)?

1. Cause there will be best picks for quickness and alac, and those will be the ones you'll see in LFG. Though that already is the case anyway, you can argue the patch made no change in that regard (it did delete the need to bring a ranger or a war).
2. I'd be surprised if the changes stop here. Won't be the first game where everything is made to feel the same for "balance" reasons.

[Mesket.5728]

1 hour ago, Einsof.1457 said:

perfect balance is by definition not fun. perfect balance would be everyone plays the exact same thing. 

You clearly have no idea what balance means

[KeoLegend.5132]

i prefer the middle ground. I want all classes to heave nearly every buff so it comes down to who plays what better in a mostly fair enviroment.

This or clearly make rock-paper-scissors specs

[Lighter.5631]

they never ever achieved balance in anytime anyway, while they kept forgoing fun.

the new banner change is literally anti-fun for the sake of "balance?". except there's no balance come from the new changes either.

would've achieved the same by simply deleting the skills from the game

Edited June 28, 2022 by Lighter.5631

[Labjax.2465]

I'm not sure they're capable of doing either at this point, but I will say while I voted for Fun and Unique, I don't think that's necessarily incompatible with Balanced. Incompatible with Homogeneous, yes, but you can balance power and contribution levels somewhat while still maintaining the Fun and Unique attributes of a class, it's just going to require more analysis than napkin math and an overview level understanding of the classes. Hypothetically speaking, if I was doing such, probably first thing I'd do is gather as much information as possible from people familiar with each class on how it normally contributes uniquely and to what extent, and then I would look at weighing those things against each other, including perceived player value of the class, for the major game modes. And to protect against erasing fun, I would gather information on what people familiar with each class find most uniquely fun about it and what its identity means to them.

[Einsof.1457]

2 hours ago, Mesket.5728 said:

You clearly have no idea what balance means

I'd say the same of you.  

[Kalocin.5982]

You can kind of have both, look at a game like Monster Hunter where each weapon is relatively competitive with another but have vastly different play styles. Part of the problem with GW2's balancing is that stat system is all over the place and being fully buffed is dramatically different than not. To give some perspective, FFXIV recently changed a Samurai skill to be an auto-crit because the performance of a Samurai's dps changed a lot depending on what you brought to the raid. By changing the skill, it reduces the reliance on specific buffs to be competitive.

 

In other words, what's not currently balanced is not the classes themselves but rather the systems in place. Now I'm not recommending this, but think about how easily it would be to balance all the builds if gear/stats didn't exist and there were no dramatic buffs (ie, 10% speed increase as opposed to 50%). I guarantee you that you could make everything still fun but the playing field would be more even. Therein of course lies the problem with such a large discrepancy, if buffs/stats aren't more equalized, the players on the lesser half end up feeling less useful and/or not played with. The bring the player not the class idea wasn't a bad one, they just shifted so far away from that idea and that's what today's problem with banners is about.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

The poll wording is very biased.  Unique and fun are not necessarily the same, certainly not across the entire range of players.  Balanced and homogenous are also not necessarily the same, though bringing two classes closer together in terms of capability can be an easy way to aim for balance.  So, what we have here is a poll creator who has already made up his mind and is looking for agreement, not discussion.

 

That said, I'm in favor of fun, and I'm in favor of balance.  I don't give a fig about "uniqueness" as an absolute, though differences in how classes play is something I do like.  The truth is that GW2 does a decent job of offering different play-styles as is.  I also don't care about homogenization -- at all.  In fact, if this patch is any indication of the overall direction the game is going in that regard, I dislike it.

 

It's pretty obvious that ANet is pushing harder, instanced content.  They (seem to) hope that they can entice players who've avoided such content in the past into participating, probably so that committing resources to making such content is effective at keeping the larger player-base engaged with the game.  They seem to think that standardizing boons across more professions is going to accomplish this.  I'm skeptical.  Most of the people I've seen are either comfortable with changing to a different character who fills a given role OR they want to play their "main" using their build of choice regardless of what the group needs.

 

Frankly, what's much more likely to make a difference in increasing player counts in instanced content are the low-intensity builds that have surfaced on streams and YouTube.   These builds allow players to participate in harder content and contribute to the outcome, without having to play one of the intricate, lengthy-rotation builds out there .  Obviously, profession design makes these low-intensity builds possible.  However, I don't know whether ANet deliberately crafted build components with that objective in mind, or whether they were just a by-product of overall profession design that were then theory-crafted by the build tinkerers in the community.

Edited June 29, 2022 by IndigoSundown.5419

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

3 hours ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

You can kind of have both...

 

...Therein of course lies the problem with such a large discrepancy, if buffs/stats aren't more equalized, the players on the lesser half end up feeling less useful and/or not played with.

 

Just to clarify for the OP. The issue with talking about balance is because there is a lack of understanding, and language to use in order to describe what "balance" actually is.

 

When people refer to "balance" there are two concepts that come to mind. the first thing that comes to ones mind is a scale. You place some objects on a scale...like 5 rocks and 2 chickens and they arrive at the same weight and thus are "equivalent". The second concept people think about is the more archaic notion of "the balance of nature," something that's not well understood and usually referred to in a kind of mysticism sort of way.

 

However the issue with thinking about the concept of balance as a scale, is that it was too primitive to actually describe the behavior of things. 

 

The best way to understand why is using the following example where you try to perfectly balance two skills:

 

Skill 1: Damage- 1000

Skill 2: Damage- 200

 

The most commonly thought answer...is to subtract 300 from the first skill, and add 300 to the second skill so that you get this...

 

Skill 1: Damage- 500

Skill 2: Damage- 500

 

You can already see the issue here. In the attempt to balance the skills, you've simultaneously lost the differences between them. The example isn't limited to just a single parameter...it extends to any arbitrary number of parameters, and so your lead to a paradox...that balance and diversity are mutually exclusive in the attempt to balance things that are different, in this way.

 

The concept of pre-Newtonian balance was reevaluated when it started showing up in thermodynamics in the late 1700's early 1800's as the following descriptions:

 

homogeneity = sameness/uniformity

heterogeneity = differentiation/randomness

One of the reasons for the reevaluation and for why they are mutually exclusive is because the two concepts are both equivalent. They are duel descriptions of a single unified mechanism that for now, can only be described as system evolution, where heterogenous systems collapse to homogeneity over time. If you've ever seen a picture of white noise it becomes obvious to see how the two things are equivalent to each other. A heterogenous (random) arrays of pixels...when viewed from a distance look like a homogenous (uniform) shade of grey.
 

Another way to understand that equivalence is that it is of the same kind, as the equivalence made by Einstein’s theory of space and time, unified by a single mechanism of spacetime geometry. 

 

In this way, balance, when referenced by it's mathematical operation of making things equal, is synonymous with homogenous...because "perfect balance" can only be achieved by making a system of skills completely homogenous.

 

When people talk about the other kind of balance...this is the "balance of nature" which follows from those two concepts being equivalent, and unified by a single mechanism. Further understanding on this kind of balance is much more complicated...far richer than rock-paper-scissors...and is not achieved by making things equal.

 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Dante.1508]

So far they are neither fun or balanced.. Fun left classes some where when they went crazy focused on cc and melee, Anet are obsessed with melee and have been systematically destroying ranged classes for years..

 

At this point i've completely given up on melee specs as an Australian with 250+ ping.. Melee just gets me killed.

[Astralporing.1957]

At this point i would take either of those over the heavily unbalanced and unfun mess we're getting.

[The Boz.2038]

14 hours ago, Einsof.1457 said:

perfect balance is by definition not fun. perfect balance would be everyone plays the exact same thing. 

Literally not true. This daft idea needs to die.

[Hirosama Nadasaki.6792]

My personal philosophy is uniqueness makes balancing easier and more attainable.

If you're comparing apples to oranges, the comparison is rough and subjective, so you get a lot more wiggle room to develop cool stuff while maintaining an equivalence. If you're comparing apples to apples, a single digit higher is already an imbalance.

[eXruina.4956]

in what point in time did they achieve balance anyway, not since i started playing that's for sure, not even close, like the gap is literally and evidently wide.

 

as for fun, you know what's not fun? when you are patient, trusting and hopeful and stuck with the game for 8+ years, only to find out no real work is being done towards either balance or fun, because you're not part of the select, and that they are only catering to the select. that you are being blatantly lied to, belittled and ridiculed behind your back. and you paid them for it. does that sound fun?

[draxynnic.3719]

False dichotomy.

 

Including this argument:

 

8 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The best way to understand why is using the following example where you try to perfectly balance two skills:

 

Skill 1: Damage- 1000

Skill 2: Damage- 200

 

The most commonly thought answer...is to subtract 300 from the first skill, and add 300 to the second skill so that you get this...

 

Skill 1: Damage- 500

Skill 2: Damage- 500

 

You can already see the issue here. In the attempt to balance the skills, you've simultaneously lost the differences between them. The example isn't limited to just a single parameter...it extends to any arbitrary number of parameters, and so your lead to a paradox...that balance and diversity are mutually exclusive in the attempt to balance things that are different, in this way.

...which completely ignores that there are other ways to balance Skill 1 and Skill 2. Maybe Skill 2 activates in one-fifth the time of Skill 1. They can then both do 1000 damage in the same timeframe, but in different ways, which might have different strengths and weaknesses in terms of how they interact with other mechanics.

 

On the broader topic, the idea right at the start of GW2, which they kinda lost for a bit and are now coming back towards (the sheer lack of understanding showed by the Jun28 patch notwithstanding) is that every profession can perform any role, but they do so in different ways. We now have six professions that can, theoretically, take the alacrity role. But does a mechanist play the same as a renegade? Does a druid play the same as a tempest? Okay, an alac chrono probably does play much like an alac spectre (see above comment about lack of understanding in the Jun28 patch), but alacmirage certainly doesn't.

 

You can have balance while still having fun and uniqueness. Maybe it won't be absolutely perfect, but it can be close enough.

[Gajex.2386]

The main goal should be to make every class fun, bring something unique to the table and still be balanced in the greater picture.

Difficult, yes, but that's why it's a good idea to pay dedicated people to find a solution.

 

But, since Balanced is sorted with homogenous, which really is the death of fun, I go with Fun and unique.