Weaponmaster training and the inevitably boring meta

[Gaiawolf.8261]

10 hours ago, itspomf.9523 said:

Unfortunately, the balance team is heavily focused on raiding, which is what Snowcrows and others are known for.

So when the meta collapses down to an even more reductive version of the "best in slot" mentality we already see, no, unfortunately it means that these prevailing mindsets can and will alter the very makeup of the game and its balance, as we've seen for the past year or so.

And that means that persons like myself (and presumably you as well), who really only play open-world PvE, are still being held hostage by whatever someone with a training golem decides is good balance -- which I'm sure no one has forgotten that debacle over using completely artificially-inflated numbers in an equally synthetic environment as a platform for real gameplay analytics.

It's the same reason that Quickness and Alacrity have become both ubiquitous and expected in any and all group content, including fractals and dungeons (for the 5 or so people who still play the latter).

Agreed. The devs need to spend less time on the webpages (except this forum, so they can gage player satisfaction 😉) and instanced content, and more time actually playing the professions across all game modes.

[Ghertu.7096]

On 7/2/2023 at 11:54 PM, Batalix.2873 said:

Eh I still disagree. Class identity in GW2 since 2014 has been placing jobs into clear boxes (especs) and then managing a smaller subset of options for them to play around with. It has been about balancing the tension between job fantasy restrictions and buildcraft options. Which I generally enjoyed, apart from maybe core weapons needing a little love for a long time.

 They say "a bad apple spoils the bunch" and ANet only sells stuff in bunches. 

My general problem with GW2 design approach is that even if one skill in a bundle (be it a weapon, a profession mechanic, an Engineer's kit or a Revenant's legend) feels clunky to use, the whole thing feels less enjoyable to play, and almost every skill bundle in this game somehow contains at least one skill I find clunky. 

Also, they put themselves in quite narrow design confines. They decided that an elite spec should has at least one weapon, a new profession mechanic, one healing skill, four utility skills, one elite skill, all of the same skill type, three minor traits and nine major traits. Doesn't matter how creative they may be, no surprise that at some point they started to struggle to come up with ideas to fill all of theese checkboxes.

[Batalix.2873]

14 minutes ago, Ghertu.7096 said:

 They say "a bad apple spoils the bunch" and ANet only sells stuff in bunches. 

My general problem with GW2 design approach is that even if one skill in a bundle (be it a weapon, a profession mechanic, an Engineer's kit or a Revenant's legend) feels clunky to use, the whole thing feels less enjoyable to play, and almost every skill bundle in this game somehow contains at least one skill I find clunky. 

Also, they put themselves in quite narrow design confines. They decided that an elite spec should has at least one weapon, a new profession mechanic, one healing skill, four utility skills, one elite skill, all of the same skill type, three minor traits and nine major traits. Doesn't matter how creative they may be, no surprise that at some point they started to struggle to come up with ideas to fill all of theese checkboxes.

I would agree with finding pieces clunky, although things were somewhat improving with the incremental balance patches we were getting.

I think the EoD specs were definitely pushing up against the devs' limitations. I think with more time and development they could have been polished into something on the level of HoT/PoF depth and creativity, but obviously it was an uphill battle. What is clear to me is that the EoD weaponskills (Specter scepter, WB sword, Harbinger pistol), traits (Virt, Untamed, Catalyst), slot skills (Vindi, Specter again, Catalyst again), and overall unique mechanics (Mech, WB again, Vindi again, Virt again, Cata again, Specter again) were clearly just kind of...thrown together and then never really workshopped or refined. Even the especs that come together the best, BS and Harbinger, mayyyyybe Untamed or Virt, still feel like they could have used another pass for being either kind of clunky/unintuitive or otherwise shallow and lacking much of an identity.

So while yes I agree that the espec system was going to run its course, and sooner than later, I just see so many deficiencies in the EoD spec design that were either obviously not thought out much, and/or have pretty obvious alternatives that would have done much more. We could have gotten one last set of solid especs and the devs totally botched it.

[Leo G.4501]

13 hours ago, Ghertu.7096 said:

 They say "a bad apple spoils the bunch" and ANet only sells stuff in bunches. 

My general problem with GW2 design approach is that even if one skill in a bundle (be it a weapon, a profession mechanic, an Engineer's kit or a Revenant's legend) feels clunky to use, the whole thing feels less enjoyable to play, and almost every skill bundle in this game somehow contains at least one skill I find clunky. 

Also, they put themselves in quite narrow design confines. They decided that an elite spec should has at least one weapon, a new profession mechanic, one healing skill, four utility skills, one elite skill, all of the same skill type, three minor traits and nine major traits. Doesn't matter how creative they may be, no surprise that at some point they started to struggle to come up with ideas to fill all of theese checkboxes.

From a fantasy roleplay perspective, I like to think this is the "kink" in the armor, the ventilation port in your death star, the Achilles heel. Every hero needs a weakness, so to speak. Some players will obsess over mitigating the flaw or clunky mechanic which is part of what makes up actual diversity in the game, taking up build resources to get past that flaw, just embracing the flaw and avoiding the things that could exploit it or, like in your case, avoiding using the build entirely.

Giving players the option to just avoid negative aspects of a build is going to get a bunch of....gasp!.... homogenized builds. That's just the path of least resistance. Could you make a bunch of quirky build that barely anyone would bother with tho? Sure, but that's not diversity if it's not fun or useful so no one uses the options.

As for designing themselves into a corner with the limited bundles, I think it's more to do with the designers. Watching the expansions release, a lot of vets could tell which devs made which espec. Some were just more unique and ambitious than the others. They really needed to slow down and make sure every espec was as good as it could have been out the gate even if it would mean staggering the espec releases over the course of the xpack. I think there is plenty they could do with the amount of variables you point out.

[Ghertu.7096]

44 minutes ago, Leo G.4501 said:

From a fantasy roleplay perspective, I like to think this is the "kink" in the armor, the ventilation port in your death star, the Achilles heel. Every hero needs a weakness, so to speak. Some players will obsess over mitigating the flaw or clunky mechanic which is part of what makes up actual diversity in the game, taking up build resources to get past that flaw, just embracing the flaw and avoiding the things that could exploit it or, like in your case, avoiding using the build entirely.

Giving players the option to just avoid negative aspects of a build is going to get a bunch of....gasp!.... homogenized builds. That's just the path of least resistance. Could you make a bunch of quirky build that barely anyone would bother with tho? Sure, but that's not diversity if it's not fun or useful so no one uses the options.

When I say "clunky" I don't mean "mechanically weak", I mean "annoying to use", like inconvenient controls.

[Leo G.4501]

37 minutes ago, Ghertu.7096 said:

When I say "clunky" I don't mean "mechanically weak", I mean "annoying to use", like inconvenient controls.

I know exactly what you mean. But it'd be hard to advocate for intentional design where some players just complain about it while others are too busy enjoying those same mechanics. Some examples:

- targeted dragon's tooth changed to homing dragon's tooth

- stationary kneel on deadeye

- currently Bladesworn as a whole

If you go around picking a couple of things to declunk, it's not so bad but they do it constantly to a bunch of things, sometimes for no apparent reason (daring dragon on Bladesworn). I guess I'm saying a bit of clunk can be a good thing. 

[Batalix.2873]

11 hours ago, Leo G.4501 said:

I know exactly what you mean. But it'd be hard to advocate for intentional design where some players just complain about it while others are too busy enjoying those same mechanics. Some examples:

- targeted dragon's tooth changed to homing dragon's tooth

- stationary kneel on deadeye

- currently Bladesworn as a whole

If you go around picking a couple of things to declunk, it's not so bad but they do it constantly to a bunch of things, sometimes for no apparent reason (daring dragon on Bladesworn). I guess I'm saying a bit of clunk can be a good thing. 

The inefficiencies add meaningful tradeoffs to play and contours to playstyle. Bladesworn and other Samurai classes want to have that root -> focus -> big strike fantasy because its cool and satisfying to pull off. Same with kneel and Deadeye. Same with confusion on Mirage, same with corruptions on Necro, same with a bunch of other things that were removed/streamlined over the years.

This is fundamentally why the collective playerbase demanding "balance" should generally be ignored. Because players--whether they realize it or not--will in aggregate always advocate for the *removal* of uniqueness and complexity in favor of "viability", "consistency", and "getting my kitten clears" instead of respecting it. I joined this game because it seemed like the sort of game that could just let me have fun with the messy inequity of the espec system, numbers be damned. I tried pushing back against on-demand/auto-apply boons, against overtuend ranged builds, against broken/shallow EoD spec design, against the deprioritization/erasure of healer/tank/support niches. Precisely none of that was listened to, the Mechs and Virts have only amassed even more apologists, and whole swathes of content and meaningful player choice have been even more trivialized by power creep. And for that reason I am leaving the game.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

On 7/1/2023 at 11:29 AM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It's important because the WORD has baggage...science/math baggage that is very relevant to it's discussion...and without that baggage (the background knowledge for why the word is even used in the discussion to begin with) you will say the wrong things LIKE saying that opening options is a bad thing.

I also spent 4 years gathering the right ammunition to support these concepts so it doesn't even matter what people really think. I've condensed all of those years of research into words you can read in under about a minute, and just tailored to gw2 for its specific situation. But you don't have to hear it from me, hear it from smart game designers, or scientist themselves. 

 

Probably wouldn't link videos to the dude who created Spore--the best counter-argument to your 'hetroization = good' argument.  

Choices are only good if they are meaningful.  Most of them were not in Spore, and at present, Weapon Master training by and large doesn't provide meaningful choices, it provides choices that will inevitably yield unintended consequences which may or may not be interesting in a positive or negative way.  

This is what I believe OP is referring to prior to topic getting derailed into pretentious mathematical concepts.  Essentially, opening up all the choices inevitably creates a path where one thing is most efficient.  You then are forced to go down that path in majority of content unless you specifically have a group which understands you taking choices that are less than optimal.  

Going back to the broom vs. vacuum choice brought up here, Weapon Master is like that but if you were to be cleaning as part of a job.  You have choice of broom vs. vacuum, but in majority of cases vacuum is faster and thus you are bound to a single choice or risk being dismissed. 

As GW2 is an MMO, we cannot ignore this same reality--only the best choices are the ones you must use or be dismissed from most groups.  Adding spurious options is pure marketing.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Probably wouldn't link videos to the dude who created Spore--the best counter-argument to your 'hetroization = good' argument.  

Choices are only good if they are meaningful.  Most of them were not in Spore, and at present, Weapon Master training by and large doesn't provide meaningful choices, it provides choices that will inevitably yield unintended consequences which may or may not be interesting in a positive or negative way.  

This is what I believe OP is referring to prior to topic getting derailed into pretentious mathematical concepts.  Essentially, opening up all the choices inevitably creates a path where one thing is most efficient.  You then are forced to go down that path in majority of content unless you specifically have a group which understands you taking choices that are less than optimal.  

Going back to the broom vs. vacuum choice brought up here, Weapon Master is like that but if you were to be cleaning as part of a job.  You have choice of broom vs. vacuum, but in majority of cases vacuum is faster and thus you are bound to a single choice or risk being dismissed. 

As GW2 is an MMO, we cannot ignore this same reality--only the best choices are the ones you must use or be dismissed from most groups.  Adding spurious options is pure marketing.

1) it's "Heterogenization"

2) Your entitled to whatever your opinion on Spore is.

3) Regardless of that opinion, Will Wright received a BAFTA fellowship for his contribution to the understanding of game design. Do you know what that is? It's the equivalent to winning the Oscars or Nobel Prize. Of the 100 or so people that have received this: Hideo Kojima, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and of course, Will Wright.

So whatever your opinion is on Will Wright, the world generally speaking, does not agree it.

4) This argument here:

 Choices are only good if they are meaningful.

Is mainly what my argument is based on...that it's not just about the number of options, but the meaningfulness of those options (If I didn't say that here, then it's probably on some other similarly named thread) Will Wright even states this in the lecture, that it's not just about the size of this possibility space (Though, the larger the better), it's also about what the options do and how meaningful they are...it's the other half of the equation : What options can you give that yield a large possibility space. Additionally, the arguments are based on the operations (adding choices, vs homogenizing choices are different operations that are not in equivalence. They yield completely different outcomes) 

Most people that are not informed on this topic, don't even realize they are agreeing with the argument in the first place.

About the Broom vs Vacuum argument : Vacuum's cant be used in corners, or on anything that isn't the floor, where as hand held brooms (dusters), are for cleaning hard to get to surfaces and things that are not the floor, like behind your television or shelves on a cabinet. Vacuum's use electricity, Brooms do not. This example is exactly the reason why differences between things matters, because optimal choices only exist when two things are closer to being the same thing (homogenous).

Edited July 10, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Leo G.4501]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

1) it's "Heterogenization"

2) Your entitled to whatever your opinion on Spore is.

3) Regardless of that opinion, Will Wright received a BAFTA fellowship for his contribution to the understanding of game design. Do you know what that is? It's the equivalent to winning the Oscars or Nobel Prize. Of the 100 or so people that have received this: Hideo Kojima, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and of course, Will Wright.

So whatever your opinion is on Will Wright, the world generally speaking, does not agree it.

4) This argument here:

 Choices are only good if they are meaningful.

Firstly, it's "You're".

Secondly, it's a cop out to lean on awards as some justification on a stance. We all know who Will Wright is, his accolades and accomplishments are great and prestigious. It's quite pretentious of you to assume we don't know who he is, but that's a running style with your posts. Just because the guy made some highly popular game series doesn't mean he didn't portray some things...hyperbolically to the point he ended up being wrong in some cases...but that's neither here nor there because there's a reason appeals to authority is among a category of fallacies but in this context it's worse because the authority is completely irrelevant. He's not here to defend his statements. Don't prop up your step-dad as your defense here. Make your own points, preferably without lecturing people in an overly verbose and pretentious fashion.

Lastly, your examples need work. Lectures are meant to be dialogues to ignite critical discussion, not just beating drums to strict rules and laws without question...or maybe I'm just annoyed that you'd link a 1+hour long 14 year old lecture that's completely unrelated. And no, a vacuum can be used in corners and on things not on the floor, a duster isn't a broom and your situations you would use a broom over a vacuum would probably be: when the particles you're trying to move are too big, fragile or important to be sucked into a cleaning device; uneven or outdoor surfaces; and yes, if electricity or battery power is available. I'd say this proves your inability to grasp the concepts you're talking about because it's not even about making the broom different from the vacuum, it's about making the environmental surfaces different so you have a reason to use a broom over a vacuum.

EDIT: Or it could be that you're just not communicating your point well. That could be a possibility too. I wouldn't suggest linking to 12 different articles or 3 20min videos or something, however. That's probably where some of the communication failures are coming from.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Leo G.4501

[draxynnic.3719]

Going to skip the discussion on the technical definition of homogeneity. This is a game forum, not a mathematics convention, we're going to use the common-language usage. Or should we start breaking out how the word is academically defined in other fields? I'm pretty sure the usage in chemistry has nothing to do with set theory...

The OP's concern is definitely one I share. There are quite a few cases where it's apparent that weaponmaster is likely to take a situation where there are multiple meaningful choices that could be made, and make it so that all of the right choices are more similar to one another. If, for example, we go from having a melee dps tempest using dagger/warhorn and melee dps weaver using sword/dagger to both using sword/warhorn, then that's going to feel more, for want of a better word, homogenous because while there are still two choices, those two choices feel less distinct from one another.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

1) it's "Heterogenization"

2) Your entitled to whatever your opinion on Spore is.

3) Regardless of that opinion, Will Wright received a BAFTA fellowship for his contribution to the understanding of game design. Do you know what that is? It's the equivalent to winning the Oscars or Nobel Prize. Of the 100 or so people that have received this: Hideo Kojima, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and of course, Will Wright.

So whatever your opinion is on Will Wright, the world generally speaking, does not agree it.

4) This argument here:

 Choices are only good if they are meaningful.

Is mainly what my argument is based on...that it's not just about the number of options, but the meaningfulness of those options (If I didn't say that here, then it's probably on some other similarly named thread) Will Wright even states this in the lecture, that it's not just about the size of this possibility space (Though, the larger the better), it's also about what the options do and how meaningful they are...it's the other half of the equation : What options can you give that yield a large possibility space. Additionally, the arguments are based on the operations (adding choices, vs homogenizing choices are different operations that are not in equivalence. They yield completely different outcomes) 

Most people that are not informed on this topic, don't even realize they are agreeing with the argument in the first place.

About the Broom vs Vacuum argument : Vacuum's cant be used in corners, or on anything that isn't the floor, where as hand held brooms (dusters), are for cleaning hard to get to surfaces and things that are not the floor, like behind your television or shelves on a cabinet. Vacuum's use electricity, Brooms do not. This example is exactly the reason why differences between things matters, because optimal choices only exist when two things are closer to being the same thing (homogenous).

 

1 hour ago, Leo G.4501 said:

Firstly, it's "You're".

Secondly, it's a cop out to lean on awards as some justification on a stance. We all know who Will Wright is, his accolades and accomplishments are great and prestigious. It's quite pretentious of you to assume we don't know who he is, but that's a running style with your posts. Just because the guy made some highly popular game series doesn't mean he didn't portray some things...hyperbolically to the point he ended up being wrong in some cases...but that's neither here nor there because there's a reason appeals to authority is among a category of fallacies but in this context it's worse because the authority is completely irrelevant. He's not here to defend his statements. Don't prop up your step-dad as your defense here. Make your own points, preferably without lecturing people in an overly verbose and pretentious fashion.

Lastly, your examples need work. Lectures are meant to be dialogues to ignite critical discussion, not just beating drums to strict rules and laws without question...or maybe I'm just annoyed that you'd link a 1+hour long 14 year old lecture that's completely unrelated. And no, a vacuum can be used in corners and on things not on the floor, a duster isn't a broom and your situations you would use a broom over a vacuum would probably be: when the particles you're trying to move are too big, fragile or important to be sucked into a cleaning device; uneven or outdoor surfaces; and yes, if electricity or battery power is available. I'd say this proves your inability to grasp the concepts you're talking about because it's not even about making the broom different from the vacuum, it's about making the environmental surfaces different so you have a reason to use a broom over a vacuum.

EDIT: Or it could be that you're just not communicating your point well. That could be a possibility too. I wouldn't suggest linking to 12 different articles or 3 20min videos or something, however. That's probably where some of the communication failures are coming from.

Who the hell is Will Wright? Did he create e-specs or something?

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

About the Broom vs Vacuum argument : Vacuum's cant be used in corners, or on anything that isn't the floor, where as hand held brooms (dusters), are for cleaning hard to get to surfaces and things that are not the floor, like behind your television or shelves on a cabinet. 

What kind of third-world non-attachment having vacuum...

59 minutes ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Who the hell is Will Wright? Did he create e-specs or something?

Almost, he created Sim City and Rollercoaster Tycoon then started falling off with Sims and finally fell off with Spore.  Considering how Spore was designed and played he might as well be in-charge of e-specs 😃

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

11 hours ago, Leo G.4501 said:

Lastly, your examples need work. Lectures are meant to be dialogues to ignite critical discussion, not just beating drums to strict rules and laws without question...or maybe I'm just annoyed that you'd link a 1+hour long 14 year old lecture that's completely unrelated.

You are just annoyed. Most people who hear anything "math" related to a game are annoyed because people think it doesn't apply. If you've ever designed a game or a system, you would know that math (but more generally, computation) applies, to everything about it. Math (but more importantly computation) is not as strict as people think it is...but still, that is just how that works...sorry but 2+2 in arithmetic, doesn't equal 5. I'm not gonna cater a worldview where that will work for you.

About Will Wright...This guy is just one among many people, who correctly talks about the design of games in this way, but at a level elementary enough for a laymen to understand what would otherwise be, a complicated topic that spans years for people to actually learn...other lectures or sources on the topic are either way too deep on the science side (If you want a dose of that, here you go), or they are specifically targeted at some particular theory, feature or worldview that doesn't emphasize, have the same impact with which I'm looking to portray here as important...Stuff like people talking about Loops...it's cool stuff but this is not the kind of information we need to address the topic of homogenization. Other times, people or devs that deliver topics on game design, are not intellectuals, they are just nerds like Extra Credits so sifting through the sea of information to find out what carries applicable value, is determined by not just some dudes opinion cause he made a cool game once...it's about the formal proofs, which is what math's give you, and this is why you NEED to venture outside of game dev in order to get real solid things to work with.

The message in particular that I am conveying, is about possibility space...and how the mathematical operation of opening up existing options only adds to it. Even when all the options are redundant it still adds...because it has only a single axis with which to go on, and it's this operational difference that makes it different from homogenization, which doesn't do ANY operation to the possibility space (other than decrease the meaning from the game through the process of making everything the same, or not doing anything other than fuddling the numbers up even more since it's impossible to make equivalence statements) conflating BOTH of these things as "homogenization" when the two things are completely different operations, is the problem in this thread.

Edited July 10, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

12 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Going to skip the discussion on the technical definition of homogeneity. This is a game forum, not a mathematics convention, we're going to use the common-language usage. Or should we start breaking out how the word is academically defined in other fields? I'm pretty sure the usage in chemistry has nothing to do with set theory...

They are the same even when specialized to their fields, the math is just applied to different things (for obvious reasons). I'm pretty sure I said this earlier about the transitivity of numbers. In set theory, the homogeneity of some set is determined by identifying if the action (transformations) are all transitive, which always preserves the group structure, and thus describing a morphism (This is what I used to construct the homogenization problem since it has to deal with numbers)

In chemistry, it is the degree of sameness of a material. Part of the interesting bit about sameness is that it is scale invariant (a symmetry property) and so you can have materials that are described as being both homogenous and heterogenous at different scales (like an image of color noise is both homogenous at a large scale, and heterogenous at a small scale). If you know about groups, and morphisms, you'd know that these bodies of mathematics are about describing symmetries and how those bridge relationships between sets. So when you see  scale invariance in natural systems like in chemistry, it is also describing a morphism (some preservation of the set undergoing transformations).

But the above are lumped together in a very very difficult to understand "problem" of science...it's not worth even arguing over because it simply takes too long and there's too much... I can't do that work for you...people generically understand that there is a universality taking place in all these fields related directly to those things but there is a failure in unifying it all into a single framework (because it requires a theory of everything) and so things remain in their own subfields. There's only a few people that have truly unified this framework, and if you couldn't tell, that enters the realm of theoretical science. I'm not gonna force onto you, to listen about theoretical science (although if you want to really understand the problem and possible solutions, requires it) but for all you folks care, it's not like you even think there is a problem to begin with so what's the point of trying?

So my question to you: If you believe there is no problem, that balance could have been solved by numbers, it should have been solved a long time ago. That's a decidable, deterministic procedure is it not? Then why hasn't it happened yet. Balance should in principle be "easy peas" because its just basic arithmetic. So tell me. Why is the game not yet balanced? I mean do you even think there is a problem or not?

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Panda.1967]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:05 PM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

I'm the one who brought this word into the forums, and there has been YEARS of arguing that homogenization was a problem, which I had to defend against from the hate mob...

You are NOT the one who brought the word “homogeneous” to these forums. It has been bouncing around since the game’s first balance patch way back in 2012, and it was thrown around on the GW1 forums a lot too before then. While yes, people tend to missuse the term a lot, you are no more or less entitled to be annoyed about it than anyone else. You are not special, you didn’t bring us the word, we had that word from the start, and if you were to scan the old forum, you’d see it was used and misused a LOT back then too.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 hours ago, Panda.1967 said:

You are NOT the one who brought the word “homogeneous” to these forums. It has been bouncing around since the game’s first balance patch way back in 2012, and it was thrown around on the GW1 forums a lot too before then. While yes, people tend to missuse the term a lot, you are no more or less entitled to be annoyed about it than anyone else. You are not special, you didn’t bring us the word, we had that word from the start, and if you were to scan the old forum, you’d see it was used and misused a LOT back then too.

There was no guild wars 1 forums...

Also, I'm not claiming the word btw, not at all. The word has existed for like 200 years, and I'm sure it's been thrown around prior with the same little regard to it's history and scientific baggage. Funnily enough though, I In fact read past articles of the forum way back for my own research, and it seemed people actually understood the term and used it properly more-so than today (from what i remember at least)

I am however claiming to be the one who has formalized it as a real tangible problem that has boundaries and expressed those boundaries mathematically (The homogenization problem). At that time, most folks argued "you don't know what your talking about. Homogenization isn't a thing."  And I indeed spent years having this same argument with different people over and over again... which is why I highly doubt anyone really understood just how much of an issue the problem was.

The homogenization problem is, that the act of balancing the game, is also homogenizing the game, which also meant that perfect balance for gw2, would be impossible to achieve. The notion that balance is impossible to achieve, is not necessarily new either, but it was not well-defined, the worldview and big picture understanding simply didn't exist 10-20 years ago, because most people weren't in deep with how to model Complex Systems...which is what Guild Wars 2 would be categorized as. This is why we have simple balance models like "Rock Paper Scissors" or "power budgets" being applied to guild wars 2, which are no where near adequate to actually describe it.

Anyway, I don't really care much about this credit thing...I care about the misusage of the word, and the reason why someone like me, someone who spent time studying it and dealing with forum haters about it for so long, would be harping over using it properly, especially when it's being used to lump things that are actually good operations, like opening up weapon options and labeling it as a homogenization process, which is simply not true.

Edited July 10, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Imperial.8471]

7 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

They are the same even when specialized to their fields, the math is just applied to different things (for obvious reasons). I'm pretty sure I said this earlier about the transitivity of numbers. In set theory, the homogeneity of some set is determined by identifying if the action (transformations) are all transitive, which always preserves the group structure, and thus describing a morphism (This is what I used to construct the homogenization problem since it has to deal with numbers)

In chemistry, it is the degree of sameness of a material. Part of the interesting bit about sameness is that it is scale invariant (a symmetry property) and so you can have materials that are described as being both homogenous and heterogenous at different scales (like an image of color noise is both homogenous at a large scale, and heterogenous at a small scale). If you know about groups, and morphisms, you'd know that these bodies of mathematics are about describing symmetries and how those bridge relationships between sets. So when you see  scale invariance in natural systems like in chemistry, it is also describing a morphism (some preservation of the set undergoing transformations).

But the above are lumped together in a very very difficult to understand "problem" of science...it's not worth even arguing over because it simply takes too long and there's too much... I can't do that work for you...people generically understand that there is a universality taking place in all these fields related directly to those things but there is a failure in unifying it all into a single framework (because it requires a theory of everything) and so things remain in their own subfields. There's only a few people that have truly unified this framework, and if you couldn't tell, that enters the realm of theoretical science. I'm not gonna force onto you, to listen about theoretical science (although if you want to really understand the problem and possible solutions, requires it) but for all you folks care, it's not like you even think there is a problem to begin with so what's the point of trying?

So my question to you: If you believe there is no problem, that balance could have been solved by numbers, it should have been solved a long time ago. That's a decidable, deterministic procedure is it not? Then why hasn't it happened yet. Balance should in principle be "easy peas" because its just basic arithmetic. So tell me. Why is the game not yet balanced? I mean do you even think there is a problem or not?

 

First : Maths are a theoretical science, useless by itself. It is the core fundation of every other sciences, but without a context, a real matter to apply it to, it's irrelevant. A context that you seem to deliberately ignore here to stick to you theoretical models. Yes, in THEORY, making e-spec weapons available to all specs opens new possibilities, the opposite of homogenization. In PRACTICE, the restriction led to each e-specs having different optimal settings to adapt to the weapon restriction. A Scourge couldn't take a pistol and had to find another optimal build. I am not familiar with this area of maths, but I think you could say that each e-spec evolved in its own possibility space, with overlaps only through the core specs. Overlapping possibilities lead to optimal builds common to all e-specs that people will predominantly choose, homogenization, while possibilities restricted to e-specs lead to concrete differences between them, heterogenization. Now if you open up weapons to all e-specs, lift some restrictions, you increase the overlap between e-specs, with optimal weapons now becoming common to all e-specs (depending on power, condi, support), and leaving the separated parts of each e-spec, where the heterogenization happens in PRACTICE, smaller. Every condi Harbinger and Scourge will end up using pistol/torch. Homogenizing the two e-specs. Maths are nice, but if you apply them to a game without accounting for the players and how they play, they're worthless.

Second : Videogames are an art. It is tied to creativity and to how players feel when playing it. Balance is not just a numbers problem. Unless your maths give you a technique to entirely map out the brain, you can't number the feeling of playing a pre patch heal Scourge, or compare numbers with the feeling of getting in Celestial Avatar on Druid after a green on Vale Gardian to heal everyone.

Third : Yes, words have meaning. A meaning that, once again, depends on context. Here, homogenization refers to how classes all feel the same, do the same things, lose their unique perks (Necromancer being the reviver, Warrior the weapon master). Everyone here understands it this way, even you. So here, on this forum, it is used correctly. In science fields other than maths, it will take yet a different meaning. Like in chemistry for instance where homogenization would mean a solution well mixed, the same everywhere, with nothing in regards to combinatory spaces. The mathematical meaning has nothing to do on this forum. Keep it for your maths conventions.

Fourth : Every scientist who ever wrote or even read a paper knows the importance of communicating well. When you write a paper, it will be for people who obviously don't know your work as well as you do, maybe even won't be experts on the scientific field this paper is in. So you explain things clearly, without skimping on the details that make the science valid, but still simply enough that it can be understood by people with limited knowledge of this specific field so they can learn and apply it to their own field. Throwing big words and lenghy lectures on a videogame forum isn't communicating well. If you thought otherwise, that's on you

Fifth : Being a scientist (or so you claim) doesn't make you any better than other people here, so get off your high horses. You want to stick to your irrelevant mathematical meanings to make yourself feel smart, fine. "Your" entitled to your opinion. But stop harassing people for not agreeing that you're the supreme authority that knows everything. In case you didn't know, something essential in science is peer-review, your equals reading your work to verify it and making sure you don't just make kitten up. I have yet to see one of your peers, players on this forum, validate your theories.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

19 minutes ago, Imperial.8471 said:

So here, on this forum, it is used correctly.

No it's not. It's stated colloquially and in bro-ism which is not correct.

Imagine if I said "It's hot outside bro." This is not a valid way to meaningfully describe heat. Colloquially it makes sense to say, on a day where its 90 degrees out that it is hot, so we can avoid talking about how hot things like the sun is in comparison, to which to the sun, your temperature on earth would be "cold"...we do this overgeneralization because typically, people understand that what they are are saying is colloquial and not truly meaningful.

if that's not a good example, you might say to someone "all spiders are ugly bro." Again we know that this is a colloquial, non-meaningful statement, because "ugly" is not truly describing anything formally.

"Everything is the same bro" is colloquial...and you have to understand that because the true nature of sameness, can't be generalized to that degree...you aren't capturing the actual mechanism of "sameness" when you do that, especially when you are trying to make a meaningful statement.

33 minutes ago, Imperial.8471 said:

Fourth : Every scientist who ever wrote or even read a paper knows the importance of communicating well. When you write a paper, it will be for people who obviously don't know your work as well as you do, maybe even won't be experts on the scientific field this paper is in. So you explain things clearly, without skimping on the details that make the science valid, but still simply enough that it can be understood by people with limited knowledge of this specific field so they can learn and apply it to their own field. Throwing big words and lenghy lectures on a videogame forum isn't communicating well. If you thought otherwise, that's on you

 

I've already explained (without math), in single sentences (usually highlighted in bold) about what it is that I'm saying. Can't really get any more clear then that. But i've bumped into this kind of behaviour before. Most people refuse to listen to, or understand anything to it's actual depth because your comfortable in your bubble...and want to gaslight as if i'm the one who's bad at explaining things. 

Quote

Fifth : Being a scientist (or so you claim) doesn't make you any better than other people here, so get off your high horses. You want to stick to your irrelevant mathematical meanings to make yourself feel smart, fine. "Your" entitled to your opinion. But stop harassing people for not agreeing that you're the supreme authority that knows everything. In case you didn't know, something essential in science is peer-review, your equals reading your work to verify it and making sure you don't just make kitten up. I have yet to see one of your peers, players on this forum, validate your theories.

Lots of scientists were/are jerks btw. and me? pff, there's no rule where i have to be nice. It's irrelevant though. only thing that matters is the logic and the proof. 

Also...I actually ENCOURAGE people to challenge the assertion...the assertion I ask is always the same :

Take two different non-trivial skills from the game and perfectly balance them...and formally prove it.

Obviously, I ask this question because I already know the answer (because I in fact attempted this rigorously myself) and found that it is impossible to do without squeezing the diversity out of the two skills. Peer review on a gaming forum? Good luck people would rather continue believing whatever it is that they want to believe, then going out to do something themselves, or learn anything new.

Personally attacking me rather than the argument aside, lets get to the actual meaningful stuff that you said in your comment:

Quote

 Yes, in THEORY, making e-spec weapons available to all specs opens new possibilities, the opposite of homogenization. In PRACTICE, the restriction led to each e-specs having different optimal settings to adapt to the weapon restriction. A Scourge couldn't take a pistol and had to find another optimal build. I am not familiar with this area of maths, but I think you could say that each e-spec evolved in its own possibility space, with overlaps only through the core specs. Overlapping possibilities lead to optimal builds common to all e-specs that people will predominantly choose, homogenization, while possibilities restricted to e-specs lead to concrete differences between them, heterogenization. Now if you open up weapons to all e-specs, lift some restrictions, you increase the overlap between e-specs, with optimal weapons now becoming common to all e-specs (depending on power, condi, support), and leaving the separated parts of each e-spec, where the heterogenization happens in PRACTICE, smaller. Every condi Harbinger and Scourge will end up using pistol/torch. Homogenizing the two e-specs. Maths are nice, but if you apply them to a game without accounting for the players and how they play, they're worthless.

This is an argument I've heard many times, and thought about many times...trust me, it is REASONABLE to think this. But it is also wrong. Mostly because you don't really have a full picture.

The first thing, which I explain in this thread, and in a couple others with more detail and with slightly different context.. is that the reason optimization is possible, is because you can make equivalence statements between things. This ability to make equivalence statements, is a facet of the homogeneity of mechanics. Example:

You have two simplified skills A and B:

Skill A 

1000 damage

Skill B 

500 damage

Because skills A and B have the same mechanic (damage), you can make equivalence statements about them...and therefor it becomes decidable (optimizable) to choose which option, A or B is the best choice, and this applies for any arbitrary number of choices. In terms of balancing, you also should notice, that you can't balance Skill A and B, without homogenizing the two choices, and likewise, for any arbitrary number of choices, in order to get perfect balance in this simplified game means homogenizing all of them. 

But now you make the skills more complex

Skill A

1000 Damage

120 radius

3s immobilization

Skill B

500 damage

600 radius

1s Stability

You want to ask the same question again which is whether you can make sound equivalence statements about the skills. And the problem is that you can't. There's no "procedure" or proof you can give, that allows you to equate say...600 radius being equivalent to 500 damage. The two mechanics exist in different regimes for what those numbers even mean to us...we even recognize from experience that "120 radius" sucks big time...so at what "point" does radius become "good." it's a nonsensical question.

Immobilization and stability exist even further away in the ability to make sound equivalence statements...how can you evaluate whether immobilization or stability is "more optimal"...and the problem is you can't. There is no valid equivalence statement you can make that actually proves that one is more optimal than the other...and even further, immobilization and stability find uses in different situations which change from game mode to game mode, environment to environment, player to player, skill execution to skill execution.

The above being impossible to do is related to the fact that the only thing that can compute an output to that question, is the playing of the game itself by players, and that playing of the game itself, is formally undecidable computation taking place; that the problem of finding optimal choices between different non trivial mechanics, exists in the same problem space as the halting problem.

So when you say "Class X is going to play weapon Y and the game becomes less diversity" it ignores the fact that one can even make equivalence statements about the weapons to begin with...that if such a thing is true it means the mechanics between them are too homogenous anyway. In the same token, if the weapons are not trivial, and there are real differences between them, then there is no procedure to properly evaluate optimal choices.

If you are from PVE, where damage is the only metric you use to determine weapon usefulness, then that is a certain worldview or reference frame, to view what weapons can do or why they are useful. From this view, Skill A in the example above, would be optimal for you...Because it does the most damage, even though it has immobilization and  crappy 120 radius. 

So you see there are two perspectives, that are counter arguments to what you said :

A) The problem is embedded in mechanical design and the ability to make equivalence statements too easily between what are supposed to be different weapons, and..

B) that you are making equivalent statements on just one or two metrics, and ignoring all other information to say that your assertion would be true.

B happens regardless of what anyone does because players are making these equivalent statements, and so therefor A is the appropriate response...Anet should be responsible for making mechanics and the design of their game, not trivial enough to be so easily optimizable, and this is reflected in how mechanics are designed. If numbers are your only metric for optimality...well you are screwed because guild wars 2 is fundamentally built on numbers.

If DPS is your only metric to make equivalence statements, You will never escape the optimization hamster wheel. So why bother even making such an argument about any number of options...whether you had 2 or a thousand, you will always find the weapon that does the highest damage and then use that one in PVE. 

People don't care only about one metric...that's why we don't always see just 10 of the top damage class on snowcrows being played all of the time in every raid, even though players have the free choice in choosing any class they want to play (because ultimately all options are available to the player). This clearly doesn't happen all of the time, and so there are indeed other metrics that players care about and as more metrics become available, equivalence statements about mechanics become harder to make and optimization becomes harder to compute.

This only happens if the design mechanics are indeed different and not just carpon copies of one another...and so your issue is not with options, its with design...of skills of traits, whatever.