Definition of "balanced"

[Shaigat.8935]

Regarding professions (and alleged lack of holy trinity):

 

- what conditions should be met in pve so you could say it's balanced?

- what conditions should be met in wvw so you could say it's balanced?

- what conditions should be met in this-badly-glued-to-mmorpg-arcade-minigame-for-cc-and-condi-lovers ("pvp") so you could say it's balanced?

 

Should games 1-on-1, 100% offensive character vs 100% defensive character (controlled by equally skilled players) have 50/50 win ratio?

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Shaigat.8935

[Infinity.2876]

1. HoT should be hard PoF should be easy OW should be in between (in level 80 zones)

 

2. No stealth gankers pls (don't nerf stealth, just maneuverability)

 

3. all of the above

the meta should not be able to kill you in less than 5 skills

Supporters should just support, damage dealers should be 30% sustain 70% dps, bunkers should be 70% sustain, 30% dps, get rid of quickness and alac.(update cooldowns to accomodate and cast times)

Edited February 25, 2023 by Infinity.2876

[Yasai.3549]

 

3 hours ago, Shaigat.8935 said:

Should games 1-on-1, 100% offensive character vs 100% defensive character (controlled by equally skilled players) have 50/50 win ratio?

Very troubling scenario. We're all well aware that if two characters are not allowed to run away or what not, the Defensive character will win always due to a battle of attrition. This is a serious issue with having a game giving players freedom of builds. Inversely, a character who is good at running can beat a defensive character due to their ability to keep chipping away at a defensive build while creating space for themselves. That's why PvP is the way it is: with two teams of 5. It offers a certain amount of variety between teams so that each team has strengths and weaknesses. 

 

And that's why things without inherent weaknesses like cough cough a certain Elementalist spec keeps getting complaints. Inversely, people who wants to play build X for example comparing to this certain Elementalist spec always want buffs, but those buffs will prove troublesome to builds who are countered by build X, creating an endless cycle of complaints and begging. 

 

If you ask me if you want PvP balanced in general do this: 

 

1. Introduce Roles which a player can pick for their build, and grants them bonuses that help their "Role" better:

Tanks: Gain bonus damage reduction, takes lesser damage from enemies more than 600 units away

Tacticians: Gain bonus Outgoing Healing and Damage

Skirmishers: Gain bonus 25% Movement speed, and reduces immobilizing effects on themselves. 

 

2. Limit certain Stat amulets to certain roles:

Tanks would mostly get Toughness and Vitality focused amulets for example while Skirmishers will get access to things with pure offensive stat bonuses. Tacticians get a mix of stats to choose from, usually focusing on Healing power and damage. 

 

3. Add a Role specific special action which comes online occasionally and can be used to benefit their team or themselves. 

Tanks: Gain a life saving barrier every time it's up and when it triggers, you break stuns and gain defensive boons 

Tacticians: Activate to convert conditions to boons for allies around you and heal over time 

Skirmishers: Activate to Reveal a target and inflict them with 25 Vulnerability stacks. You move 50% faster toward your marked target. 

 

 

 

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

PVE balance is about profession representation.  In the community's eyes, this comes down to largely two factors: how high their realistic damage output is, and what support options are available to that profession.  There's an important distinction to be made between potential damage and realistic damage.  The damage potential of a profession naturally gets counter-balanced by how difficult the profession is to play, which in itself comes down to rotation complexity, effective health, and broad applicability of their skills.  It's very hard to gauge the realistic damage output of a profession.  Once a profession becomes popular due to varying shifting paradigms, this will lead to an increase in skilled players playing that profession, which will then spike up its representation and overall recorded performance.  In all irony, the support side of this is much easier to balance, since it is about giving professions a lot of boons.

This is extra-class balance.  Then, there is intra-class balance.  That is, how a profession's elite specializations and tactics compare to each other.  Intra-class balance isn't as important, because it is easier to change builds on a profession than it is to roll an entirely new one.  However, it is still worthy of consideration, since each elite-spec comes with its own style that will attract people into playing that spec.  Often times, this will come down to giving each e-spec one of quickness or alacrity, or giving it a good focus in condition or power damage.  Engagement range, which is the distance abilities travel and also the size + shape of their hitboxes, is another important consideration.  Finally there is mobility, which is less of an issue but has been growing as of late.

In theory, PVE is balanced when each elite spec on each profession gets roughly equal amounts in playtime.  In practice, it is only the potential for that to happen, because the whims of the players are fickle and chase trends.  

[Acanthus.8120]

My definition of balance is relatively simple. After deciding on a minimum and maximum baseline for each role (maximum/minimum dps, boon diversity/length, number of active defenses, and minimum/maximum healing potentials), you simply want reach a state where the following statements are true all at once:

1. Every class and e-spec has a viable, intended use case.
2. There isn't a balance environment where one class or e-spec is objectively a better option than all the others in a specific role.
3. There isn't a balance environment where one class or e-spec is objectively never a better option than all the others for its intended role(s).
4. No class or e-spec is so potent at a role that the meta is defined around what it does. (Sometimes #2 isn't broad enough.)
5. Every class has access to at least 2 roles across core and all e-specs while obeying #3.
6. (PvP only) There are no hard-counters from class mechanics, only soft-counters. Build choices are another matter.
7. (PvP only) Every class and e-spec has reasonable counterplay, and every class has options to facilitate counterplay against the other classes/e-specs, even if those options are sub-optimal against other classes/e-specs. (In other words, every class should have tools to handle every potential meta, but not necessarily every potential meta at once.)

As an addendum, I do think that mechanically higher difficulty and riskier classes should be rewarded with theoretically higher outputs, but within reasonable amounts. There should never be a situation where it is so much better that the more skilled playerbase only wants those classes.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Acanthus.8120
simply, not simple

[Dadnir.5038]

The conditions for a perfect "balance" is "uniformity".

It mean that all professions should have the same appeal/performances in every single gamemode no matter which role they want to take on. It mean that skills and traits should merely have cosmetics differences while their fonction should ultimately be the same no matter which profession you choose.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Dadnir.5038

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

The conditions for a perfect "balance" is "uniformity".

It mean that all professions should have the same appeal/performances in every single gamemode no matter which role they want to take on. It mean that skills and traits should merely have cosmetics differences while their fonction should ultimately be the same no matter which profession you choose.

 

 

Yep, like you said the condition for balance is uniformity. Here’s the kicker: Such a task is impossible to accomplish, as by definition, things that are different (heterogeneous) can not be the same (uniform). 

This is actually the balance problem. It is a paradox, and solving it is non-trivial (requires a theory of everything). If you’re wondering why it’s non-trivial is because the same problem exists in the world we live in where real smart scientist people study exactly this.
 

It’s funny to me, folks have “their own definitions” of balance which makes no sense…it’s like saying that one has their own definition for the earths shape…or what the laws of gravity are.

 

There are strict definitions for what balance means…often times the language used to describe the properties of these concepts is not sufficient either and need the exact terminology (homogeneity, heterogeneity, equilibrium, where equilibrium is the state we interpret a system as being balanced) and this is what leads to the subject not being well understood in gaming forums…like at all.

 

Even those precise definitions I mentioned above are not precise enough in describing how deep the concepts really are (they are actually duel/unified concepts of a singular construct; complexity; hence why they produce a paradox).
 

 A more functional answer for the Op : the way to design a game to be balanced is to basically do what nature itself does, which is to let elements that follow rules exist, and if those rules are turing universal, they will produce all possible behaviors, and selection principles takes over. We don’t question the “balance” of the space of computer programs…we simply create and use programs for whatever purposes we find meaningful. Just like this game, we move around the building blocks (skills) to turn them into builds to get something we think is useful for our purposes…

 

but the truth is that the building blocks in gw2 are far too rigid…they don’t allow you to make that many builds and I strongly suspect that the rules(mechanics) of most spells in the game are in not universal, or weakly universal, and the game struggles to reach change of state (meta changes) during the games evolution. Conversely it could also be the case that the rules are just not complex enough and so the state of the game collapses far too fast, and arrives within an extremely short time period, to the equilibrium state of the game (the meta) Where players are playing the optimal builds within days…it’s too simple to figure out.

 

lastly, if the game has a most optimal state (a meta game)…it means the game isn’t balanced (using the gamer definition of balanced here) because by definition, all possible things in the game must be the optimal solution. So if anyone’s answer to this problem contains a meta in its answer, then by definition it’s not balanced, because if an optimal solution exists there must be solutions that are not optimal and therefor not the same/balanced.

 

cheers,

 

 

[Shaigat.8935]

 

Thank you very much for all responses.

 

On 2/26/2023 at 11:48 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

The conditions for a perfect "balance" is "uniformity".

 

I was drawn to the game by the assurances that there is no holy trinity and you can play any class (slash specialization) and choose any role you want (implicit message is, that it all will be - more or less - balanced, 'uniform', the difference is only in style). So, for now, it's 3.5k+ hours of playing zerker with axes, only. Even in pvp, no matter what (achievement 'masochist' unlocked). But well, someone unaware of warriors situation in this game, probably would laugh hard hearing about 'heal warrior' build for example...

 

Practical (but general) solution, in my opinion, would be something like this:

a.) make a 'digital twin' of GW2 system, but simplified as possible for the combat testing purposes;

b.) construct the bots that can play on prepped arenas;

c.) attach a neural network to learn from the duels;

d.) if the resources allow, widen the number and vartiety of participants configurations;

e.) construct a supervisor (genetic algorithm) that will speed up the learning process and allow to point out / filter the weaknesses/strong points;

f.) the very same supervisor can help with the system evolution, where demanded result is 'equal win ratio'.

 

That would require the know-how and the money.

Lots of money, as I doubt that any small-to-mid developer has the demanded horsepower (lots) and they would have to rent it (consider testing from the scratch after each change, at least at the beginning, without supervisor). Maybe if they had a rendering farm it could be used for another purpose... but Anet artists are more 2d oriented.

 

So far I can bet all Anet is doing is more or less 'manual testing' with maybe a little help of few simple equations.

 

On 2/26/2023 at 9:37 PM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It’s funny to me, folks have “their own definitions” of balance which makes no sense…it’s like saying that one has their own definition for the earths shape…or what the laws of gravity are.

 

Let me give you a simple example: class B shoots twice as fast as class A, but each shot deals twice less damage.

In my opinion most people would agree it's 'balanced'. We can't apply game theory here (and we're not aiming for that), all we could have is to get most people feel that the gameplay is 'fair', 'uniform' or 'balanced'.

 

You said that there are strict definitions for what balance means, and I agree. In exact sciences.

Do I have to add that if these definitions are not equivalent, they are not describing the same object?

 

If you mock the question about 'balance' definition, then let's use yours, it/they should give us something to start with.

So, according to these, mentioned by you definitions, is GW2 balanced or not balanced game?

 

Maybe you wanted to say that it's silly to claim that someone has it's own definition (and not equivalent to the official one) of energy balance in thermodynamics, but I can be wrong of course.

 

On 2/26/2023 at 9:37 PM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This is actually the balance problem. It is a paradox, and solving it is non-trivial (requires a theory of everything).

 

So, we need a theory of everything. Interesting.

You didn't say anything about the game or its classes.

Essay not on topic.

 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

7 hours ago, Shaigat.8935 said:

If you mock the question about 'balance' definition, then let's use yours, it/they should give us something to start with.

So, according to these, mentioned by you definitions, is GW2 balanced or not balanced game?

 

 

Gw2 is not a balanced game. In fact, there is no such thing as a truly balanced game and there never will be. The only kind of balanced game would be something like...Rock Paper Scissors and that's if we ignore that such a game had diverse agents that played it, or that it is extremely simple and falls apart when it becomes more complicated.

 

But lets talk about "balanced" and what this actually means. Normally when people hear that word "balanced," it is implied that we are talking about the idea of having a scale and you place two objects on this scale. When the scale reaches the same level, then both objects are "balanced."

 

But there is a very deep problem about this setup. When you place objects on a scale, you are only measuring a single metric for those objects : Weight. Just because these objects have the same weight, doesn't mean they also have the same size, or shape, or color, or taste, or texture and so on...and in fact if you wanted to "perfectly balance these two objects, you have to make equal every parameter that defines what these objects are and as you do so, they lose the qualities that actually make them different objects, therefor the statement that two different objects could ever be "perfectly balanced" like they could on a scale must be false, and if it is true, means they must be the same object.

 

People realized these kinds of problems centuries ago, and more exact terms were needed to define what it actually meant for things to be "equal." The concept of equality turns out to be very difficult concept and most people take what it means today for granted. But the following terms came about

 

Homogeneity: The state of being uniform, periodic or repetitive (where things are the same as one another)

Heterogeneity: The state of being different, random or unpredictable (where things are different to one another) 

Equilibrium: The state of a system in which a system is heterogenous at one scale, but homogenous at a larger scale (like this image of color noise, where the pixels consist of every color of the rainbow and are distributed randomly throughout the image, but on a larger scale approximates a uniform color grey)

 

Most systems, tend to a state of equilibrium...where there is a dynamic interplay between heterogenous actors, that fall closer and closer to a stable configuration over time...and this is what a meta game is...it is the state of class and skill dynamics, that settle into a constant state. Clearly in a game like guild wars 2, this happens because people choose skills, they evaluate which skills are the best and then they play each other over and over again, each time improving on what they think they should play, until they are playing the best skills, against players who are also playing the best skills. In such a system there is and always will be a meta game because the actors that play are heterogenous...it is the fact that skills are different from one another and not equal that allows such an optimization process to occur at all.

 

Conversely, in a game that is homogenous, where all actors have the same skills, there would be no metagame, because there is nothing to optimize or improve on... everyone's got the same stuff...everything is equal...therefor a homogenous game is a quote  "truly balanced game" and obviously nobody wants to play a fair balanced game of guild wars 2 where all the skills do the exact same thing. 

 

What people actually want, is the equilibrium state (the metagame) of the game to be more complex, have depth,  persistent novelty and great diversity, not be homogenous...and this is what true balance means... true balance being the kind of balance you would see in a natural system, requires the game to be in some intermediary of these states (called being complex). To understand how natural systems do that and ultimately to solve this paradox...requires a theory of everything and it is a non-trivial problem. If you want to learn more about the problem my suggestion is to start here with this video.

 

Quote

Maybe you wanted to say that it's silly to claim that someone has it's own definition (and not equivalent to the official one) of energy balance in thermodynamics, but I can be wrong of course.

 

Ya this is what I mean. I already gave some good example, but just to say some more : it's like if someone said they have their own definition for what gravity is...like "objects always fall up to the sky" or something... which is fine... to make ones own definitions for things, it just not applicable anywhere but for oneself, and that's the actual problem. When people have their own definitions for what balance means...that results in non-constructive discussions about the topic, and very little verifiability. How can I be sure that your bullet points make sense when your definitions are not backed up by any kind of information i can look into anywhere else? How can i confirm your logic to be consistent? It all just amounts to such things being no more than opinion and that's it...which is why you want to actually use definitions people can go check and then execute to prove if someone's assertions are good or bad.

 

There has already been, people much smarter than you or I, that have done research into what balance means, and that holds a lot of credibility...that is my point. Example: If we are gonna talk about gravity, we should be talking not about our own definitions for gravity...but to be basing discussion on what the hardcore thinkers have already developed and it should be no different to balance, which is a scientifically studied concept too with definitions you can source. Folks just like to treat it like it is some special thing they can make up their own definitions for that's all.

 

Don't get me wrong, not shutting down the discussion of balance, but what I said is still a valid comment about the topic.

Edited March 2, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[MarzAttakz.9608]

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

Gw2 is not a balanced game. In fact, there is no such thing as a truly balanced game and there never will be. The only kind of balanced game would be something like...Rock Paper Scissors and that's if we ignore that such a game had diverse agents that played it, or that it is extremely simple and falls apart when it becomes more complicated.

 

But lets talk about "balanced" and what this actually means. Normally when people hear that word "balanced," it is implied that we are talking about the idea of having a scale and you place two objects on this scale. When the scale reaches the same level, then both objects are "balanced."

 

But there is a very deep problem about this setup. When you place objects on a scale, you are only measuring a single metric for those objects : Weight. Just because these objects have the same weight, doesn't mean they also have the same size, or shape, or color, or taste, or texture and so on...and in fact if you wanted to "perfectly balance these two objects, you have to make equal every parameter that defines what these objects are and as you do so, they lose the qualities that actually make them different objects, therefor the statement that two different objects could ever be "perfectly balanced" like they could on a scale must be false, and if it is true, means they must be the same object.

 

People realized these kinds of problems centuries ago, and more exact terms were needed to define what it actually meant for things to be "equal." The concept of equality turns out to be very difficult concept and most people take what it means today for granted. But the following terms came about

 

Homogeneity: The state of being uniform, periodic or repetitive (where things are the same as one another)

Heterogeneity: The state of being different, random or unpredictable (where things are different to one another) 

Equilibrium: The state of a system in which a system is heterogenous at one scale, but homogenous at a larger scale (like this image of color noise, where the pixels consist of every color of the rainbow and are distributed randomly throughout the image, but on a larger scale approximates a uniform color grey)

 

Most systems, tend to a state of equilibrium...where there is a dynamic interplay between heterogenous actors, that fall closer and closer to a stable configuration over time...and this is what a meta game is...it is the state of class and skill dynamics, that settle into a constant state. Clearly in a game like guild wars 2, this happens because people choose skills, they evaluate which skills are the best and then they play each other over and over again, each time improving on what they think they should play, until they are playing the best skills, against players who are also playing the best skills. In such a system there is and always will be a meta game because the actors that play are heterogenous...it is the fact that skills are different from one another and not equal that allows such an optimization process to occur at all.

 

Conversely, in a game that is homogenous, where all actors have the same skills, there would be no metagame, because there is nothing to optimize or improve on... everyone's got the same stuff...everything is equal...therefor a homogenous game is a quote  "truly balanced game" and obviously nobody wants to play a fair balanced game of guild wars 2 where all the skills do the exact same thing. 

 

What people actually want, is the equilibrium state (the metagame) of the game to be more complex, have depth,  persistent novelty and great diversity, not be homogenous...and this is what true balance means... true balance being the kind of balance you would see in a natural system, requires the game to be in some intermediary of these states (called being complex). To understand how natural systems do that and ultimately to solve this paradox...requires a theory of everything and it is a non-trivial problem. If you want to learn more about the problem my suggestion is to start here with this video.

 

 

Ya this is what I mean. I already gave some good example, but just to say some more : it's like if someone said they have their own definition for what gravity is...like "objects always fall up to the sky" or something... which is fine... to make ones own definitions for things, it just not applicable anywhere but for oneself, and that's the actual problem. When people have their own definitions for what balance means...that results in non-constructive discussions about the topic, and very little verifiability. How can I be sure that your bullet points make sense when your definitions are not backed up by any kind of information i can look into anywhere else? How can i confirm your logic to be consistent? It all just amounts to such things being no more than opinion and that's it...which is why you want to actually use definitions people can go check and then execute to prove if someone's assertions are good or bad.

 

There has already been, people much smarter than you or I, that have done research into what balance means, and that holds a lot of credibility...that is my point. Example: If we are gonna talk about gravity, we should be talking not about our own definitions for gravity...but to be basing discussion on what the hardcore thinkers have already developed and it should be no different to balance, which is a scientifically studied concept too with definitions you can source. Folks just like to treat it like it is some special thing they can make up their own definitions for that's all.

 

Don't get me wrong, not shutting down the discussion of balance, but what I said is still a valid comment about the topic.

Gotta say with absolutely no sarcasm that I love it when you get involved in a conversation. You're the type of person I enjoy talking to in real life.

[Yme.6145]

9 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

Gw2 is not a balanced game. In fact, there is no such thing as a truly balanced game and there never will be. The only kind of balanced game would be something like...Rock Paper Scissors

Rock Paper Scissors is absolutely not a balanced game, in the sense that's applicable to GW2. If you play as Rock, you never have any chance against Paper. Paper is OP in that scenario. It's like if a raid boss in GW2 did a check on your armor class and instakilled anyone wearing light armor. Would people say it's a balanced design if another raid boss did the same to medium armor?

 

You always balance against an objective. Something can be balanced against one objective and at the same time unbalanced against some other objective. Players' perception of the quality of balance will largely depend on the importance (to them) they place on each of the objectives (and there are A LOT of these).

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

55 minutes ago, Yme.6145 said:

Rock Paper Scissors is absolutely not a balanced game, in the sense that's applicable to GW2.

This is absolutely correct, and I pretty much said that.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

8 hours ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

Gotta say with absolutely no sarcasm that I love it when you get involved in a conversation. You're the type of person I enjoy talking to in real life.

I appreciate that. Honestly i know I  can sound like a jerk sometimes and what I say can be hard to hear for some, but I genuinely have people’s and the games best interest at heart.

[Ferus.3165]

On 2/25/2023 at 3:20 PM, Infinity.2876 said:

the meta should not be able to kill you in less than 5 skills

 

meta should be able to kill you in 1 skill if the setup is right or the enemy is just dumb enough. E.g. hundred blades should kill people if they stand in it for the whole duration. On the other hand e.g. ele has so many instant cast abilites that you can easily "chain" 5 skills together and still have less then half the casting time of just one hundred blades.

Expressions like this are completely meaningless.

 

But balance would be far easier to achieve if quickness and alac would be gone for competetive that is right. Superspeed should then probably also be removed.

[Jski.6180]

For pve i say balance is being able to replace an roll when more then say 2 classes (not just elite spec so not replacing an FB with an DH or something). Pve is NOT balanced for farming speed runs.

For wvw i say balance is the ability to 5v5 with an real mix of classes and builds filling rolls and not just having one class fill all of the rolls. Wvw is NOT balanced for 1v1.

For spvp i say balance is being able to play objectives with an mix of classes and builds. Spvp is NOT balanced for Kill/Deaths.

Over all if you have one class filling all of the rolls there is a problem with the balancing. Gurd in my view is too overwhelming needed in most game types there for it is not balanced more so then any thing else in the game. The best thing for the game would be to take gurd only effects and give them to classes that are not used as often say give stab support and block support to maybe thf. Every class should be able to do any thing in the game and fill any roll with the right build and set up. That should be the goal of balance in gw2 (play how you want).

Edited March 2, 2023 by Jski.6180

[Cuks.8241]

Balanced rpg is against its nature. Because that would mean any character choice that affect combat should be meaningless. 

On 2/25/2023 at 2:47 PM, Shaigat.8935 said:

Should games 1-on-1, 100% offensive character vs 100% defensive character (controlled by equally skilled players) have 50/50 win ratio?

Thats not even a question of balance, I think, its just a design choice. But my answer would be depends on winning conditions of game mode. If game mode is last man standing, offensive character should have the upper hand because otherwise games would never end (see early wow arena seasons).