What needs to be addressed about balance philosophy

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

This isn't a thread about what balance changes should be made, but rather about what the upcoming balance philosophy should address.  One of the most frustrating thing about making suggestions to improve the game is that we players have little to no knowledge about the overall vision, goals, and methods that Anet has.  Our ideas could be accepted or rejected silently, regardless of their quality, depending on the vision that Anet has.  It's like playing a game of darts blindfolded.  So, I encourage everyone to propose a series of questions and ideas that Anet should consider when hammering out an overall vision for profession balance.  I'll start, in no particular order:

1. Intra-profession balance.  How are the elite specializations and core regarded in respect to another.  Is a profession and all of its parts seen as a whole, or are individual elite specializations considered by themselves when evaluating a profession.
2. How does the scattered ownership of expansions packs and the different tools available to players affect balance decisions?
3. How is a profession or elite specialization considered imbalanced?  What is the metric used to determine this?  Is it representation in content, benchmarks on a golem, overall performance on specific bosses, overall performance on all bosses, tournament wins?  Do the developers just crash each profession against one another and see how they fare?
4. Solo vs. group PVE performance.  The tools available to each profession vary wildly in value depending on how many players are nearby and how many of them are running buff builds.  How are professions judged when in the overworld?  Are professions balanced around how they perform while alone?  Is the baseline how fast, or how safe, a profession can complete content, or is overworld content considered too easy to regard? 
5. The divide between strike and condition damage.  Are they considered balanced currently?  What is the standard used to determine the overall performance between the two, and what are the justifications for their differences?
6. Sustainability and Durability vs performance.  AKA the Elementalist question.  How is the fragility of a profession considered when making balance decisions between the game modes.  We already know that you don't regard complexity as a justification for performance, but do you consider frailty?  Is the balance done around versatility, damage, mobility, or the volume of boons and conditions that a profession can output?
7. The social hurdle.  To what degree does social acceptance of a profession factor in to how a profession is balanced?  Not just in raids, but in PVP and WvW as well.
8. Crowd Control and Stun Breaks.  What are the determining factors when deciding how much crowd control a profession gets.  Are certain professions to be themed around having good quality CC?  Same question with stun breaks.
9. Invulnerability and sustain.  How is self-healing and other-healing regarded when balancing a profession?
10. Combo fields and finishers.  What determines the overall effectiveness given to each type of finisher, and how highly are they considered when adjust skills?
11. Group support.  What is considered the standard amount of boons and uptime considered for each profession.  How is the overall damage output and versatility considered in comparison to pure DPS builds on the same profession?
12. Gear diversity.  Is this considered to be important across game modes, and why.
13. Profession identity.  What is being done to ensure that a profession has a unique feel and role to their play?  Is game content designed with the intention that certain professions be used in specific places?  How is the demand for a profession considered?  Is there any solution for the growing homogeneity of the professions?  
14. PVP and WvW roles.  What are the soft roles that each profession is considered to fill, if any at all?  Are duels and solo performance considered for balance?  If not, what are the standard group sizes that a profession is balanced around?
15. Complexity.  How is the skill ceiling of a profession rewarded?  This also ties into accessibility, with how easily a new player can play and learn a profession.
16. Mobility and forced movement.  How is the mobility, or the lack thereof, considered when balancing PVE and PVP content?
17. Range vs. Melee.  How is the damage output between the two styles considered in the different game modes?  What are the intended tradeoffs for each?  Is the current level of projectile destruction/reflection in PVP and WvW intended?
18. Boon removal, theft, and corruption.  How is boon hate and boon spam regarded in this game?  Are we at acceptable levels of each?
19. Skill Queueing and Skill Interruptions.  How is it decided which skills should pre-empt one another?
20. Is the potential to acquire loot and rewards considered when designing each profession's skills?
21. Finally, what are the guidelines, if any, that are given to each developer around how they balance a profession?  Is there a tight control on balance philosophy, or are the developers largely given independence when making balance decisions?

I'm certain there are many more questions to be asked.  However, my brain is melting.  Now, preferably, the answers to these questions would include metrics and more concrete information.  Answers such as "We changed it because we felt like it needed changing," and "This non-specific issue is important to us and we are always thinking about it," might as well be silence.  Now, I open the floor to you guys.

[Astralporing.1957]

You've forgotten an even bigger hurdle they have yet to cross: Regardless of what it will be in specifics, the balance philosophy needs to be consistent across all professions and especs. We can potentially live with design team making decisions we do not like, as long as they are a part of a greater, consistent design. What we can't have is some classes getting nerfed/buffed on basis of design philosophy when other classes in similar situations are being skipped over. We can't have different classes being adjusted on basis of different design ideas, nor should we ever see stated design ideas for the same class change from patch to patch. Or even conflict with the actual changes implemented in said patches.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You've forgotten an even bigger hurdle they have yet to cross: Regardless of what it will be in specifics, the balance philosophy needs to be consistent across all professions and especs. We can potentially live with design team making decisions we do not like, as long as they are a part of a greater, consistent design. What we can't have is some classes getting nerfed/buffed on basis of design philosophy when other classes in similar situations are being skipped over. We can't have different classes being adjusted on basis of different design ideas, nor should we ever see stated design ideas for the same class change from patch to patch. Or even conflict with the actual changes implemented in said patches.

...That's #21.  Or rather, taking a hard stance on #21, given that the point of a design philosophy is to have more consistent balancing.  

[Geoff Fey.1035]

I feel cadence and revision would help with the design philosophy.

The current cadence is described as a a big balance patch touching on some combination of mechanics and coefficients every 3 months, with smaller tweaks in between each patch. If something is determined (by whatever ANet metric) to be a negative mechanical change, is there room for either reverting to a previous version or are the mechanics locked in until it reaches an acceptable balance? (related to #13 in OP)

As well, if something is overperforming (by whatever ANet metric) what's considered an acceptable timeframe to address it? The longer an imbalance persists the more extreme the community becomes, which can cause cascading issues such as skewed metrics towards/away from certain things.

An example of this would be X profession overperforming, causes Y & Z professions to stop using skills A & B (respectively) due to those no longer being required. Therefore, professions Y & Z use skills C & D (respectively) more frequently. These skills are then considered "commonly used" and may be balanced or left alone (depending on metric). However, the only reason they're used in the first place is because profession X is overperforming, invalidating skills A & B on other professions. 

The whole "anything you can do I can do better" situation, so people stop using A & B because X is better at it, which hides the issue that A & B individually or X overall need to be addressed.

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You've forgotten an even bigger hurdle they have yet to cross: Regardless of what it will be in specifics, the balance philosophy needs to be consistent across all professions and especs. We can potentially live with design team making decisions we do not like, as long as they are a part of a greater, consistent design. What we can't have is some classes getting nerfed/buffed on basis of design philosophy when other classes in similar situations are being skipped over. We can't have different classes being adjusted on basis of different design ideas, nor should we ever see stated design ideas for the same class change from patch to patch. Or even conflict with the actual changes implemented in said patches.

Bumping that. There will NEVER be balance as long as the various balance team devs can set their own rules for how class mechanics can perform. Like, for some reason, class A can overcap their boon application in Alacrity or Quickness and class B can't even get 100% uptime. WHAT IN THE HELL IS THIS GARBAGE! These are MASSIVE disparities that need to be addressed before we can even begin to talk about class performance equality. 

They need some BASIC design rules and ideally, we know what those are so we can intelligently give feedback instead of guessing. I don't really care HOW things work, as long as they work the same for everyone. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[smiiirf.3201]

The first fix would be that the Dev play all classes and not only Guardian & Engineer. That is the main problem atm.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

These are some good questions to ask @Blood Red Arachnid.2493 but it feels like you are diving deep into the Micro and could stand to back up and look at the Macro of GW2 development.

Comparing Strike to Condi, or Range to Melee is definitely a subset of the overall profession and game design.  These are variables that should arrive at a balanced state when reviewing all factors, but what does balance actually look like, and what is it balanced against?  Balance isn't just the Professions, eSpecs and Builds compared to each other, but compared to the overall vision for player fun and efficiency.

I think most players care more about the feeling of success and engagement when playing their chosen character whether it be PvE, PvP or WvW.  The 'balance' doesn't matter as much unless specific professions or builds do not feel successful.  For example, some Quick or Alac providers have to jump through hoops to meet 100% uptime and others can provide 100% uptime almost passively.  That doesn't mean that complex rotations are bad, but it does mean that complex rotations reduce the ability to feel successful, especially if there is no payoff for the added complexity or even worse, failing the complex rotation punishes you and the group you are supporting.

However I also don't think that Passive Alac or Quick feels that fun or engaging either, as the player now has nerfed their personal DPS to provide group support, but aren't actually doing anything active to provide that support.  But when you compare 'Passive' vs 'Overly complex and prone to punishment if failing' players will usually gravitate towards the 'easier to play' option, even if that option is boring to play.

There should be a middle ground for player Actions Per Minute and Complexity of Rotation/Priorities and the Payoff (DPS/Boons/Heals etc) should align with this.  Sure there can be overly complex or low intensity builds but the average builds should be fairly close in APM and ease of Payoff.

Until the deciding factor for your chosen role is 'how do I want to play' and not 'what is easier, more efficient, less likely to fail' most players will will choose the safe route.

 

[Angesombre.4630]

What is your logic? You increased everything for several years and since 2 years you nerf drastically without compensation and study of what you did. Except for certain professions.
I can't understand it.

A single person makes the balancing decisions with no one to know what he is doing behind it or does he know nothing and does it anyhow?
 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Angesombre.4630

[oscuro.9720]

I’m going to focus on weapon skills, as this is something I’ve made some posts on recently. Weapon skills seem to have variable consistency imo (though this may feel skewed as a warrior main). I would venture to guess this extends to other skill categories. It would be interesting to find out how they are determining what is “balance” amongst these skills, as the model used for plotting these skills and the stated method of balance would be telling of where potential shortcomings could be. 
 

I’m actually doing a little project on this, building a cost benefit model of specific skills to be able to plot out balance in some way. (Dw, I find mathematical analysis fun). My most recent post breaks down some of the weapon skill dysfunction. If you are interested; 

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

#22: What tier of play are PVP and WvW professions balanced around?  AKA the Mesmer question.  Are the professions balanced around the peak performance of the best players, the average performance of average players, or how well newbs can scrap it out while pressing random buttons?

[smiiirf.3201]

On 7/15/2022 at 9:51 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#22: What tier of play are PVP and WvW professions balanced around?  AKA the Mesmer question.  Are the professions balanced around the peak performance of the best players, the average performance of average players, or how well newbs can scrap it out while pressing random buttons?

Its balanced around Guardian & Engi, the only classes which the devs do play in WvW or PvP (I guess there is also not any dev who plays these modes mainly, only Grouch was a dedicated PvP Player but yeah he is now a Manager).

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, Leolas.6273 said:

Its balanced around Guardian & Engi, the only classes which the devs do play in WvW or PvP (I guess there is also not any dev who plays these modes mainly, only Grouch was a dedicated PvP Player but yeah he is now a Manager).

I'll explain a bit more.  There are professions, particularly mesmer, which have high performance in low ranks but poor performance in high ranks.  Mechanically, the mesmer is confusing for new players to fight, while veterans know how to spot the real McCoy and all the different movement tricks that mesmer has.  This creates a large divide in balance, where certain professions are great in some levels of skill, but much more terrible in others  This is an issue that should be openly discussed, since changing which mode tier of play the game is balanced around can have impacts on player accessibility and veteran retention.

[smiiirf.3201]

45 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I'll explain a bit more.  There are professions, particularly mesmer, which have high performance in low ranks but poor performance in high ranks.  Mechanically, the mesmer is confusing for new players to fight, while veterans know how to spot the real McCoy and all the different movement tricks that mesmer has.  This creates a large divide in balance, where certain professions are great in some levels of skill, but much more terrible in others  This is an issue that should be openly discussed, since changing which mode tier of play the game is balanced around can have impacts on player accessibility and veteran retention.

 

PvP in this game is ded because the devs are bad. They do not even play the game and when.... only on certain classes which always gets the flavor and are often low skillfloor.  This Dev is completely out of touch with the Battle Gameplay of this game/community and it seems they also have no real Vision. Gw 2 Started as a game without the boring 0815 holy trinity kitten every other MMO has. And now we have the same kitten like in ESO where you have boonball stupidness. Today i came across to some immortal Revs. It IS the same kitten now like in ESO. Anet kills this game with every new Balance Patch.

 

They abadoned Dungeons, then came Fractals, then the raids and now the strikes. That is a example that Anet doesn't really know what they do and what they want. This example is the same with the balance of the classes. We have Classes which are necessary and some others who get insta kicked. The balance is kitten and even more after this Dogshit patch.

 

The same kitten was even anno 2013. They do not Listen and that's a kittening shame.

 

How many peoples and whole guilds asked for a dedicated GvG Mode? 10 Years later there is still none.  🤡

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Leolas.6273

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/13/2022 at 9:43 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

You've forgotten an even bigger hurdle they have yet to cross: Regardless of what it will be in specifics, the balance philosophy needs to be consistent across all professions and especs. We can potentially live with design team making decisions we do not like, as long as they are a part of a greater, consistent design. What we can't have is some classes getting nerfed/buffed on basis of design philosophy when other classes in similar situations are being skipped over. We can't have different classes being adjusted on basis of different design ideas, nor should we ever see stated design ideas for the same class change from patch to patch. Or even conflict with the actual changes implemented in said patches.

Ele abides by different rules than the rest of the games balancing.

[X Anthony A.8409]

but warrior quickness is fine not sure what your talking about equality would destroy class identity? are you confused or something?

[Osmose.5893]

Design inequality between professions is the biggest factor for me. The fact that something like Mechanist F2 exists where nearly every other class bar Guardian would have to use 6 different buttons to achieve the same affect (if they even had the kit to do it in the first place) is such glaringly obvious inequality from elite spec to elite spec that they haven’t attempted to address in any way at all. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

#23: Similar to #22, but in PVE.  What is the average skill level of the player?  What is the desired skill level of the average player?  How are balance decisions made under the assumption of the competence or incompetence of the average player?  Is individual class accessibility a factor?

[otto.5684]

I think this is a great list, though Anet is highly unlikely to answer most of these. I have few.

 

1) Not necessarily looking for a number, but is there benchmark that would be considered the “median?” And how much deviation off the median should there be?

 

2) Why are well documented, clearly not working things take forever to fix? Classical example, Renegade SB (honestly, renegade as a whole). It took nearly 3 years to remove the reverse shout gun on bow 3. And during that period, SB, which was heavily reliant on that skill, was beyond sub optimal. I could list dozens of weapons, traits and utilities here.

 

3) From PvE standpoint, there are so many weapons that are near obsolete, yet they rarely, or ever see updates. Example, Warrior Daggers. Animations are so good, yet outside of being a utility weapon in pvp (and even there is has been performing for quite a while), it is very weak. I can list at least 1 weapons per class, but usually there are more.

 

4) Why is there a difference in damage between small and large hit boxes? Should not the damage output remain consistent? 

 

Edited July 17, 2022 by otto.5684

[Obtena.7952]

On 7/16/2022 at 6:31 PM, X Anthony A.8409 said:

but warrior quickness is fine not sure what your talking about equality would destroy class identity? are you confused or something?

Is that sarcasm or ??? 

How is warrior quickness fine? I mean, no one is complaining is about self-quickness ... but that's not the focus here when we are talking about balancing classes, especially for roles in a team. 

Personally, I don't expect Anet to change their approach ... IMO, the level of disparity we see between classes is an indicator that Anet just can't balance all these things for performance and the fact they are reluctant to even mention it ... tells me it's low on their list of consideration. They never have. It's an actual game interaction problem for players now because Anet has formally established this role system. 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

I think this is a great list, though Anet is highly unlikely to answer most of these. I have few.

 

1) Not necessarily looking for a number, but is there benchmark that would be considered the “median?” And how much deviation off the median should there be?

 

2) Why are well documented, clearly not working things take forever to fix? Classical example, Renegade SB (honestly, renegade as a whole). It took nearly 3 years to remove the reverse shout gun on bow 3. And during that period, SB, which was heavily reliant on that skill, was beyond sub optimal. I could list dozens of weapons, traits and utilities here.

 

3) From PvE standpoint, there are so many weapons that are near obsolete, yet they rarely, or ever see updates. Example, Warrior Daggers. Animations are so good, yet outside of being a utility weapon in pvp (and even there is has been performing for quite a while), it is very weak. I can list at least 1 weapons per class, but usually there are more.

 

4) Why is there a difference in damage between small and large hit boxes? Should not the damage output remain consistent? 

 

I can answer #2 and #3: Man-hours.  After the initial denial phase for #2, the greatest limitation the devs have to revamping skills is the time it takes to do it.  Animations have to be re-done, tested, bug-fixed, an elaborate game of telephone gets played between the coders, animators, and the balance team, and even then there's still bugs in the live version.  There's a bizarre spaghetti-code made by temp coders underlying the whole thing, which is why random stuff like the Dagger Earth 1 bug can squeeze through.  Finally, for bugs, sometimes the coders just have no clue what's going wrong.  I once mentioned that the average time it takes for an exploit to be detected and fixed is six months.  But really, the life of a coder involves a lot of copy/pasting other people's code, then calling them up and asking they it mysteriously doesn't work.  

There's a schedule of a sort.  It's not publicized, but each balance patch clearly states that the professions or underlying mechanics that are being focused on at that time.  There's a calendar that outlines which professions and weapons will be looked at.  In theory, if Anet had limitless workers and a more comprehensive balancing philosophy to follow, they could produce massive changes and fix most of the problems within a single balance pass.  This would be incredibly expensive and produce little tangible income, but it is possible.  

[Voyant.1327]

On 7/15/2022 at 3:51 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#22: What tier of play are PVP and WvW professions balanced around?  AKA the Mesmer question.  Are the professions balanced around the peak performance of the best players, the average performance of average players, or how well newbs can scrap it out while pressing random buttons?

All of your listed reasons I'm a fan of, great summary of it all. Devs should definitely make use of it for their team.
This one struck out to me the most though, as heard all sorts of negative about the class is set situations yet find it does exceedingly well in every scenario when played at peak performance on Virtuoso, Mirage....
Yet throw on the Chronomancer and play it at top skill & you'll maybe do half the dps. But they've identified it and are patching that on August so hoping it's good changes... Though will it end up making the other two too strong somehow if it's focused on weapon changes?
Still I feel like they should use the commonly placed e-Specs as baselines, as a good virt or mirage can still separate themselves from the pack over auto-attack. But the distance between different classes DPS output should not be such large gaps. An auto-attacking Virt or Mechanist shouldn't outperform a skilled Warrior in DPS. Think Mech's damage needs to be brought back down a bit right in line with the nerf they did to Mesmer/Elementalists in the June patch...
Unless the Rifle Mech is the new baseline, which seems a bit contradictory to every other change.
I like that people enjoy their mechs so don't want to see em nerfed to high heavens, but just the same treatment so that it promotes people to play what they want vs. play what performs best.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Voyant.1327

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 7/15/2022 at 9:51 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#22: What tier of play are PVP and WvW professions balanced around?  AKA the Mesmer question.  Are the professions balanced around the peak performance of the best players, the average performance of average players, or how well newbs can scrap it out while pressing random buttons?

 

On 7/17/2022 at 10:36 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

#23: Similar to #22, but in PVE.  What is the average skill level of the player?  What is the desired skill level of the average player?  How are balance decisions made under the assumption of the competence or incompetence of the average player?  Is individual class accessibility a factor?

The answer to these is that you generally do not balance around your players. At least not fundamentally. You tend to balance around what is possible to do. To some degree that reflects what the best does, a ceiling, and there is also a floor, however you do not approach it like that at first, it may be something you look at later. So while notions of floors and ceilings exist, they are constructs and outcomes you only pay attention to after the fact, if at all. The average player is not really ever considered at all, it is hard to do and it is completely divorced from the idea of balancing around what can be done. The floor, or barrier to entry, mainly studies what players struggle with that keeps them out of participation and the balance there is not very sensitive. The balance at the ceiling is rather sensitive because that is the closest comparison to what can be done and players pushing the developers notion of what can be done is what keeps them informed.

It is a bit of an abstract perspective to wrap your head around, but hopefully you see where the gist of it comes from: That it comes from a completely different perspective and order of things that only ends up in familiar player-centric territory at the fringes.

That is the same discussion that we've seen recently regarding the Elementalist for example, that some people think it should get compensation at its ceiling for its floor - or a broader discussion of it that goes back to what to expect from balance at floors. The former discussion was mainly held in recent PvE threads while the latter discussion is fairly common looking at the WvW meta (where the meta concerns itself with floors more than ceilings; which confuses alot of players; especially if they come from PvE or as PvE-typical perspectives are beginning to inch themselves more and more into the PvP discourse with eg., people equating cleansing the most conditions with playing that flavour of support the best, which just isn't indicative of playing well in its more difficult content).

Edited July 20, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Zaret.1450]

On 7/12/2022 at 12:10 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

This isn't a thread about what balance changes should be made, but rather about what the upcoming balance philosophy should address.  One of the most frustrating thing about making suggestions to improve the game is that we players have little to no knowledge about the overall vision, goals, and methods that Anet has.  Our ideas could be accepted or rejected silently, regardless of their quality, depending on the vision that Anet has.  It's like playing a game of darts blindfolded.  So, I encourage everyone to propose a series of questions and ideas that Anet should consider when hammering out an overall vision for profession balance.  I'll start, in no particular order:

1. Intra-profession balance.  How are the elite specializations and core regarded in respect to another.  Is a profession and all of its parts seen as a whole, or are individual elite specializations considered by themselves when evaluating a profession.
2. How does the scattered ownership of expansions packs and the different tools available to players affect balance decisions?
3. How is a profession or elite specialization considered imbalanced?  What is the metric used to determine this?  Is it representation in content, benchmarks on a golem, overall performance on specific bosses, overall performance on all bosses, tournament wins?  Do the developers just crash each profession against one another and see how they fare?
4. Solo vs. group PVE performance.  The tools available to each profession vary wildly in value depending on how many players are nearby and how many of them are running buff builds.  How are professions judged when in the overworld?  Are professions balanced around how they perform while alone?  Is the baseline how fast, or how safe, a profession can complete content, or is overworld content considered too easy to regard? 
5. The divide between strike and condition damage.  Are they considered balanced currently?  What is the standard used to determine the overall performance between the two, and what are the justifications for their differences?
6. Sustainability and Durability vs performance.  AKA the Elementalist question.  How is the fragility of a profession considered when making balance decisions between the game modes.  We already know that you don't regard complexity as a justification for performance, but do you consider frailty?  Is the balance done around versatility, damage, mobility, or the volume of boons and conditions that a profession can output?
7. The social hurdle.  To what degree does social acceptance of a profession factor in to how a profession is balanced?  Not just in raids, but in PVP and WvW as well.
8. Crowd Control and Stun Breaks.  What are the determining factors when deciding how much crowd control a profession gets.  Are certain professions to be themed around having good quality CC?  Same question with stun breaks.
9. Invulnerability and sustain.  How is self-healing and other-healing regarded when balancing a profession?
10. Combo fields and finishers.  What determines the overall effectiveness given to each type of finisher, and how highly are they considered when adjust skills?
11. Group support.  What is considered the standard amount of boons and uptime considered for each profession.  How is the overall damage output and versatility considered in comparison to pure DPS builds on the same profession?
12. Gear diversity.  Is this considered to be important across game modes, and why.
13. Profession identity.  What is being done to ensure that a profession has a unique feel and role to their play?  Is game content designed with the intention that certain professions be used in specific places?  How is the demand for a profession considered?  Is there any solution for the growing homogeneity of the professions?  
14. PVP and WvW roles.  What are the soft roles that each profession is considered to fill, if any at all?  Are duels and solo performance considered for balance?  If not, what are the standard group sizes that a profession is balanced around?
15. Complexity.  How is the skill ceiling of a profession rewarded?  This also ties into accessibility, with how easily a new player can play and learn a profession.
16. Mobility and forced movement.  How is the mobility, or the lack thereof, considered when balancing PVE and PVP content?
17. Range vs. Melee.  How is the damage output between the two styles considered in the different game modes?  What are the intended tradeoffs for each?  Is the current level of projectile destruction/reflection in PVP and WvW intended?
18. Boon removal, theft, and corruption.  How is boon hate and boon spam regarded in this game?  Are we at acceptable levels of each?
19. Skill Queueing and Skill Interruptions.  How is it decided which skills should pre-empt one another?
20. Is the potential to acquire loot and rewards considered when designing each profession's skills?
21. Finally, what are the guidelines, if any, that are given to each developer around how they balance a profession?  Is there a tight control on balance philosophy, or are the developers largely given independence when making balance decisions?

I'm certain there are many more questions to be asked.  However, my brain is melting.  Now, preferably, the answers to these questions would include metrics and more concrete information.  Answers such as "We changed it because we felt like it needed changing," and "This non-specific issue is important to us and we are always thinking about it," might as well be silence.  Now, I open the floor to you guys.

My question about balance would be.

What do they consider balance?

yeah it sounds stupid but its not, we have 4 main game modes, pvp wvw open world and instances, how do they balance? or better said, what is their base for the changes?

there are classes like revenant, or elites like spellbreaker, that are more oriented to pvp modes or wvw, while other classes shine in pve instances, and things like firebrand that shine everywere, is that conaidered balance? why? and how do they deal with this, and i domt mean the separation in balances, wich are mostly number or boon changes in game modes, but mecanic changes, a class that mecanicaly shines in pvp and has no use in pve, is considered balanced overall? like spellbreaker shines in wvw but has very little use in pve, but berserk and swornblade are good in pve, thats the balance? or do they try to make every elite useable overall? would they change the core mecanics of a class like rev, seing that its mecanic is quite clunky and too much penalty?

 

Also one thing i have been troubled for a long time, how is the composition of the balance team? i mean do they have enoight people? how is the process? like they look at forums and such, look at wiki and decide? then change things and try them themselves? or are there testers for each class for example? (if you want testers im in XD)

And also one last thing, open world, in my opinion its the game mode things shouldnt be balanced around, meta events, world bosses, elites, all the content, or almost all of it, will be completed with numbers, i mean you will allwais have at least 2-3 more people, not counting you, to kill an elite or do an event, every class and elite, every stat combo, is viable on open world, you can kite, use minionmancer or pet strategies, i wont say its not important as a game mode, but even without optimizacion you can deal with almost everything, so balancing around it looks like a bad idea to me, how does it realy work then?

[Salt Mode.3780]

Every point you made seems to be common knowledge to players to actually play the game. Again perhaps the devs need to spend more time playing their game to understand what changes need to be made. 

I hate bringing other MMO into the conversations but there is a reason why FFXIV devs are widely respected across many MMO platforms, its because they actually do their own raids, cap out their weekly currencies, play PvP to know what changes are needed to be made. Which is why every single time they have a patch note it touch base across ALL aspects of the game and balance accordingly. 

Again has an ANET dev ever step foot into sPvP? I can't recall the last time I saw a ANET tag in WvW. You don't play your own game once in a blue moon and suddenly know what needs to be changed. 

Remember ANET wanting to remove AI aspect part of the game...? Due to this logic some class suffered but now suddenly they are ok with Mechs with AI combat? I can't recall how many times they have shot themselves in the foot and they simply dont care.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, zaswer.5246 said:

My question about balance would be.

What do they consider balance?

yeah it sounds stupid but its not, we have 4 main game modes, pvp wvw open world and instances, how do they balance?

That's a very good question. Especially considering that the general policy they based balance on was stated only once, and it was somewhere around the first year of the game.

They idea they mentioned then was so called "dynamic balance". Unlike someone might expect, it wasn't about having class balance at all. Quite the opposite, the idea was that the classes will be intentionally imbalanced, and the "balance" would be "achieved" by changing which classes are at the top and which are at the bottom on frequent basis. This was supposedly to "keep the meta fresh". Fortunately, since that time this idea was never voiced again, but considering how the balance looks like even now, one has to wonder if it's still not used by at least some devs. Because that would explain a lot of things.