This games balance is cooked

[SleepyBat.9034]

Seriously cooked. Your gameplay options are run around in a group where everyone is stacked as tightly as they possibly can be with every boon in the game and more supports/healing than dps where nothing dies or get ganked and ground into a paste by the no-lifers playing the top 5 unkillable meta builds with raid boss mechanics

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Maybe they should make the capture points smaller, that will totally help.

Oh...wait

[Chaba.5410]

I'll never understand playing a game, learning what the combat mechanics are, and then complaining about players using those mechanics.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

Hot take: what I've learned over time is that the very idea of maintaining perfect balance is fundamentally flawed. Perfect balance is neither attainable nor desirable. The closer to perfect balance a game comes, the more it sacrifices the things that actually make it fun: flavour, diversity, aesthetics, creativity. I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set and nerf the stuff that's crazy overpowered and then just let it sail from there. Let certain builds just be overpowered as a matter of plain fact and allow people to use creativity to circumvent the dominant builds in whatever way they can come up with. I truly believe that this produces a superior game and superior gameplay. The most fun I've ever had playing games is those really buggy European RPGs where some things are just wildly overpowered and the devs don't care. This game sort of had that feel for the first few years. Not that there wasn't a very real effort at balancing, of course, but the fact that things were biased towards flavour and had a much higher degree of freedom and less restriction. Just my feelings these days.

[Dopamine.6324]

you could just change title to "any games balance is cooked"
cuz what you just described is any game that has more than 1 class

[Zyreva.1078]

18 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I'll never understand playing a game, learning what the combat mechanics are, and then complaining about players using those mechanics.

If only players would have to deal with various combat mechanics instead of straight up ignoring most of them ...

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Hot take: what I've learned over time is that the very idea of maintaining perfect balance is fundamentally flawed. Perfect balance is neither attainable nor desirable

If there is one constant in online gaming its players complaining about balance.

You can have a fps game, no classes. And some players will find something to complain about.

You could also say game is balanced. We all play the same game. You can adapt to win or cry.

Even if there was such a thing as perfect balance, players would complain. What game needs are just changes for some variety.

 

[Chiral.8915]

"Please nerf paper, scissor is balanced. Thanks." - Rock

[XenesisII.1540]

2 hours ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Hot take: what I've learned over time is that the very idea of maintaining perfect balance is fundamentally flawed. Perfect balance is neither attainable nor desirable. 

No one is asking for "perfect balance", that obviously isn't achievable with the amount of variables present in a mmo, what we ask for is outlying/broken problems to be brought in line/fixed.

You also don't introduce a bunch of crazy overpowered tools into an open pvp game because then you'll just have everyone using the same crazy overpowered abilities, aka meta, not exactly promoting "diversity". We can have fun and unique tools without them needing to also be "overpowered".

[SleepyBat.9034]

19 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

No one is asking for "perfect balance", that obviously isn't achievable with the amount of variables present in a mmo, what we ask for is outlying/broken problems to be brought in line/fixed.

You also don't introduce a bunch of crazy overpowered tools into an open pvp game because then you'll just have everyone using the same crazy overpowered abilities, aka meta, not exactly promoting "diversity". We can have fun and unique tools without them needing to also be "overpowered".

My exact words. There's a space between zero balance and perfect balance.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

If there is one constant in online gaming its players complaining about balance.

You can have a fps game, no classes. And some players will find something to complain about.

You could also say game is balanced. We all play the same game. You can adapt to win or cry.

Even if there was such a thing as perfect balance, players would complain. What game needs are just changes for some variety.

 

That's actually completely true. Back in the early 2000s I was a hardcore Half-Life 2 deathmatch player and the complaints about balance in that game were constant, pretty much after every death. The game was random spawns, every man for himself, anyone can use any weapons they find at any time.

[oscuro.9720]

On 6/1/2024 at 6:49 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

I'll never understand playing a game, learning what the combat mechanics are, and then complaining about players using those mechanics.

Group combat mechanics are wildly different than individual combat mechanics because numbers are more important now than they ever have been. Large scale combat balancing has degraded the level of skill it takes to form an effective group, narrowing the difference between the floor and the ceiling. This has led to small, coordinated groups having less advantage than they used to. Numbers have become even more important.

That’s not to say there isn’t still a skill scalar, but it’s continually being reduced, and criticizing that is a valid option imo. I’m also of the opinion that it’s not a fixable problem and that balance should be abandoned in favor of fun in large scale.

I fundamentally believe that group combat in this game can no longer be balanced because the number of team combinations has exceeded balance. Instead, balance should exist within inter-class matchups and group combat should be allowed to be chaoticly unbalanced with a focus on what is fun rather than what is “balanced”. Fundamentally “unfair” things cane weed themselves out of a 1v1 balance strat. But combinations of classes worked in coordinated and unique ways should be able to confer benefits, which doesn’t happen under a unified balance philosophy at large scale.

Most importantly, wvw isn’t meant to be a fair or balanced game mode. It’s meant to be fun and chaos. I don’t see a reason that the method of measuring “balance” shouldn’t be the same.

Prioritize fun and it will be fun. I don’t think that is too novel of a concept?

[One more for the road.8950]

On 6/2/2024 at 3:49 AM, Chaba.5410 said:

I'll never understand playing a game, learning what the combat mechanics are, and then complaining about players using those mechanics.

If I wanted each encounter to be the same I would play PvE.
If I wanted to do perfect skill rotations I would play PvE.
If I wanted to play PvE I would play PvE.
If I wanted to play a game where I just press any button or skill that's on cooldown, there's plenty of those around.

There's combat mechanics and there's combat mechanics.

[Chaba.5410]

52 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Group combat mechanics are wildly different than individual combat mechanics because numbers are more important now than they ever have been.

What are "group combat mechanics"?  Think long and hard about this.

Is it combination fields and finishers?  You can do that on your own skills.
Is it applying buffs to allies?  You can do that on your own summons.
Is it target caps?  That old 50 target meteor shower that helped small groups break larger ones was never a real advantage because the large group could just stack more eles than the small group.

These mechanics don't care if the group is large or small, a group or an individual.  They function the same regardless.  Is someone not supposed to use combo fields or stick to the skills with 3 targets instead of 5 or something?

The advantages came (and still do) from understanding how the combat is designed in this game and learning how to use them most effectively.  It's like complaining about one of those Maguuma clouders farming pugs in EBG.

Edited June 3 by Chaba.5410

[Chaba.5410]

38 minutes ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

If I wanted each encounter to be the same I would play PvE.
If I wanted to do perfect skill rotations I would play PvE.
If I wanted to play PvE I would play PvE.
If I wanted to play a game where I just press any button or skill that's on cooldown, there's plenty of those around.

There's combat mechanics and there's combat mechanics.

What?  Your response doesn't seem to have anything to do with my comment.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 6/2/2024 at 2:18 PM, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Hot take: what I've learned over time is that the very idea of maintaining perfect balance is fundamentally flawed. Perfect balance is neither attainable nor desirable. The closer to perfect balance a game comes, the more it sacrifices the things that actually make it fun: flavour, diversity, aesthetics, creativity. I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set and nerf the stuff that's crazy overpowered and then just let it sail from there. Let certain builds just be overpowered as a matter of plain fact and allow people to use creativity to circumvent the dominant builds in whatever way they can come up with. I truly believe that this produces a superior game and superior gameplay. The most fun I've ever had playing games is those really buggy European RPGs where some things are just wildly overpowered and the devs don't care. This game sort of had that feel for the first few years. Not that there wasn't a very real effort at balancing, of course, but the fact that things were biased towards flavour and had a much higher degree of freedom and less restriction. Just my feelings these days.

This. I've talked about this subject for years now...but basically I proved a while back mathematically that, numerical balance operations either 1) make the game homogenous and trivial and 2) are completely arbitrary because if the elements being balanced in question are non-trivial, you can't form a proof statement between them about their equivalence. You can then further prove the difficulty of forming proof statements to be equivalent to the halting problem : That such a problem (of trying to form a proof statement between two non-trivial functions, like game mechanics) is undecidable, meaning that you can't ever in principle, build a computer or an algorithm strong or fast enough to make such statements.

Since then I've completely formalized that proof into a series of induction proofs, which goes like this : Not only is perfect balance not attainable, the act of (numeric) balancing in and of itself does not work at all...to the point where it is completely and utterly useless. The first claim by induction, is that you can't balance a game with even 2 skills, and therefor not doable for a game with n skills. you can then go further and prove that you can't make proof statements for even 2 unique parameters on a skill, so you can't form equivalence statements for n unique parameters for even a single skill, thus claim 2, proves by induction, the induction for claim 1.

Ultimately it boils down into the fact that numbers themselves are arbitrary, relative constructs, so if the game is "made" with numbers, like guild wars 2 then there is no hope in ever balancing even two measly skills, let alone perfect balance of a game with n skills. The problem is far worse then most people think it is...and the beliefs people have about balance fall into the same regime that people like Kurt Gödel set out to disprove with incompleteness against folks like David Hilbert: That any system that uses numbers, can not be consistent, or complete and will fail to make proof statements, such as the ability to prove equivalences between parameters, and skills. 

And that makes sense intuitively : How does one form objective, numerical equivalence statements about abstract mechanics like radius... when we humans are the ones who derive unique meaning from what radius is supposed to mean to us. The value we derive from it changes...not only between different modes, different players and situations but even across time as more strategies develop.

Most folks believe that there exists of this "middle ground" for balance but it's an illusion. It's an illusion because people kinda know what a balanced game should feel like. But this feeling is...a misinterpretation for what this middle ground is, and what actually brings it about...which is captured by your statement here : 

"I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set"

This here, is the answer...it is the middle ground...the utopia people subconsciously want but don't know how to describe or get to it, because to understand why that is the answer rather than buffing and nerfing things, requires very deep deep knowledge about stuff people are not ready to hear which is why its a hot take. But basically numbers ultimately don't matter...they are just constructs we use to make sense of a world that is instantiating "the set of all possible rules" and that quote is the only way to describe what it is that we experience as the balance state of a game. We are experiencing this game enumerating different behaviors, different mechanics and instantiations of a set of abstract, non-trivial elements... There's no way to actually box that in, with an objective numerical representation, only a subjective one...and that is the biggest red pill most people don't want to swallow : Game balance is not real...Game Balance is more or less, a statement about us players, playing the game, and experiencing it in all of its complexity, and what behaviors arise from those experiences, and that can not be truly defined without completely liquidating those unique experiences.

There's other more mathematical reasons why creation alone (specifically creating options for players to generate solutions to problems by exploring the space of possible builds) is the right answer to how to get to this balance middle ground, but I don't wanna bog this down with too much of that...but you already expressed it in your comment : The more build options that exist, the more likely you are to find counters in the space of possible builds, to the build that your playing, thus smothering outlier builds...This comes from a mathematical quirk (but i think this is rather intentional by nature) to how creation and instantiation of things, has a much more meaningful quality to it then removing, and destroying them.

Anyway I don't want anyone to get me wrong, i think numbers do serve purposes. Just not in the way we think they should have. For instance, to make it more obvious: a skill having .0000001 second cooldown, or a 5 year cooldown, matters to us... but only in relative, subjective terms. There's a limit to what us human people can care about because that is the limit of our senses and what not so there's no need to "go overboard" with the idea; they serve a purpose but just not an objective one.

Cheers,

 

Edited June 4 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[urd.8306]

On 6/2/2024 at 11:07 PM, Chiral.8915 said:

"Please nerf paper, scissor is balanced. Thanks." - Rock

There is no scissor. There is Nuke, Mountain and Paper.

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This. I've talked about this subject for years now...but basically I proved a while back mathematically that, numerical balance operations either 1) make the game homogenous and trivial and 2) are completely arbitrary because if the elements being balanced in question are non-trivial, you can't form a proof statement between them about their equivalence. You can then further prove the difficulty of forming proof statements to be equivalent to the halting problem : That such a problem (of trying to form a proof statement between two non-trivial functions, like game mechanics) is undecidable, meaning that you can't ever in principle, build a computer or an algorithm strong or fast enough to make such statements.

Since then I've completely formalized that proof into a series of induction proofs, which goes like this : Not only is perfect balance not attainable, the act of (numeric) balancing in and of itself does not work at all...to the point where it is completely and utterly useless. The first claim by induction, is that you can't balance a game with even 2 skills, and therefor not doable for a game with n skills. you can then go further and prove that you can't make proof statements for even 2 unique parameters on a skill, so you can't form equivalence statements for n unique parameters for even a single skill, thus claim 2, proves by induction, the induction for claim 1.

Ultimately it boils down into the fact that numbers themselves are arbitrary, relative constructs, so if the game is "made" with numbers, like guild wars 2 then there is no hope in ever balancing even two measly skills, let alone perfect balance of a game with n skills. The problem is far worse then most people think it is...and the beliefs people have about balance fall into the same regime that people like Kurt Gödel set out to disprove with incompleteness against folks like David Hilbert: That any system that uses numbers, can not be consistent, or complete and will fail to make proof statements, such as the ability to prove equivalences between parameters, and skills. 

And that makes sense intuitively : How does one form objective, numerical equivalence statements about abstract mechanics like radius... when we humans are the ones who derive unique meaning from what radius is supposed to mean to us. The value we derive from it changes...not only between different modes, different players and situations but even across time as more strategies develop.

Most folks believe that there exists of this "middle ground" for balance but it's an illusion. It's an illusion because people kinda know what a balanced game should feel like. But this feeling is...a misinterpretation for what this middle ground is, and what actually brings it about...which is captured by your statement here : 

"I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set"

This here, is the answer...it is the middle ground...the utopia people subconsciously want but don't know how to describe or get to it, because to understand why that is the answer rather than buffing and nerfing things, requires very deep deep knowledge about stuff people are not ready to hear which is why its a hot take. But basically numbers ultimately don't matter...they are just constructs we use to make sense of a world that is instantiating "the set of all possible rules" and that quote is the only way to describe what it is that we experience as the balance state of a game. We are experiencing this game enumerating different behaviors, different mechanics and instantiations of a set of abstract, non-trivial elements... There's no way to actually box that in, with an objective numerical representation, only a subjective one...and that is the biggest red pill most people don't want to swallow : Game balance is not real...Game Balance is more or less, a statement about us players, playing the game, and experiencing it in all of its complexity, and what behaviors arise from those experiences, and that can not be truly defined without completely liquidating those unique experiences.

There's other more mathematical reasons why creation alone (specifically creating options for players to generate solutions to problems by exploring the space of possible builds) is the right answer to how to get to this balance middle ground, but I don't wanna bog this down with too much of that...but you already expressed it in your comment : The more build options that exist, the more likely you are to find counters in the space of possible builds, to the build that your playing, thus smothering outlier builds...This comes from a mathematical quirk (but i think this is rather intentional by nature) to how creation and instantiation of things, has a much more meaningful quality to it then removing, and destroying them.

Anyway I don't want anyone to get me wrong, i think numbers do serve purposes. Just not in the way we think they should have. For instance, to make it more obvious: a skill having .0000001 second cooldown, or a 5 year cooldown, matters to us... but only in relative, subjective terms. There's a limit to what us human people can care about because that is the limit of our senses and what not so there's no need to "go overboard" with the idea; they serve a purpose but just not an objective one.

Cheers,

 

The obsessions with numbers isn't because it's believed that balance will be achieved by it, but because large differences in player numbers remove and/or trivialize player options.  The numbers themselves become the only option.

Edited June 4 by Chaba.5410

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This. I've talked about this subject for years now...but basically I proved a while back mathematically that, numerical balance operations either 1) make the game homogenous and trivial and 2) are completely arbitrary because if the elements being balanced in question are non-trivial, you can't form a proof statement between them about their equivalence. You can then further prove the difficulty of forming proof statements to be equivalent to the halting problem : That such a problem (of trying to form a proof statement between two non-trivial functions, like game mechanics) is undecidable, meaning that you can't ever in principle, build a computer or an algorithm strong or fast enough to make such statements.

Since then I've completely formalized that proof into a series of induction proofs, which goes like this : Not only is perfect balance not attainable, the act of (numeric) balancing in and of itself does not work at all...to the point where it is completely and utterly useless. The first claim by induction, is that you can't balance a game with even 2 skills, and therefor not doable for a game with n skills. you can then go further and prove that you can't make proof statements for even 2 unique parameters on a skill, so you can't form equivalence statements for n unique parameters for even a single skill, thus claim 2, proves by induction, the induction for claim 1.

Ultimately it boils down into the fact that numbers themselves are arbitrary, relative constructs, so if the game is "made" with numbers, like guild wars 2 then there is no hope in ever balancing even two measly skills, let alone perfect balance of a game with n skills. The problem is far worse then most people think it is...and the beliefs people have about balance fall into the same regime that people like Kurt Gödel set out to disprove with incompleteness against folks like David Hilbert: That any system that uses numbers, can not be consistent, or complete and will fail to make proof statements, such as the ability to prove equivalences between parameters, and skills. 

And that makes sense intuitively : How does one form objective, numerical equivalence statements about abstract mechanics like radius... when we humans are the ones who derive unique meaning from what radius is supposed to mean to us. The value we derive from it changes...not only between different modes, different players and situations but even across time as more strategies develop.

Most folks believe that there exists of this "middle ground" for balance but it's an illusion. It's an illusion because people kinda know what a balanced game should feel like. But this feeling is...a misinterpretation for what this middle ground is, and what actually brings it about...which is captured by your statement here : 

"I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set"

This here, is the answer...it is the middle ground...the utopia people subconsciously want but don't know how to describe or get to it, because to understand why that is the answer rather than buffing and nerfing things, requires very deep deep knowledge about stuff people are not ready to hear which is why its a hot take. But basically numbers ultimately don't matter...they are just constructs we use to make sense of a world that is instantiating "the set of all possible rules" and that quote is the only way to describe what it is that we experience as the balance state of a game. We are experiencing this game enumerating different behaviors, different mechanics and instantiations of a set of abstract, non-trivial elements... There's no way to actually box that in, with an objective numerical representation, only a subjective one...and that is the biggest red pill most people don't want to swallow : Game balance is not real...Game Balance is more or less, a statement about us players, playing the game, and experiencing it in all of its complexity, and what behaviors arise from those experiences, and that can not be truly defined without completely liquidating those unique experiences.

There's other more mathematical reasons why creation alone (specifically creating options for players to generate solutions to problems by exploring the space of possible builds) is the right answer to how to get to this balance middle ground, but I don't wanna bog this down with too much of that...but you already expressed it in your comment : The more build options that exist, the more likely you are to find counters in the space of possible builds, to the build that your playing, thus smothering outlier builds...This comes from a mathematical quirk (but i think this is rather intentional by nature) to how creation and instantiation of things, has a much more meaningful quality to it then removing, and destroying them.

Anyway I don't want anyone to get me wrong, i think numbers do serve purposes. Just not in the way we think they should have. For instance, to make it more obvious: a skill having .0000001 second cooldown, or a 5 year cooldown, matters to us... but only in relative, subjective terms. There's a limit to what us human people can care about because that is the limit of our senses and what not so there's no need to "go overboard" with the idea; they serve a purpose but just not an objective one.

Cheers,

 

I really enjoyed reading this reply, thank you and well-reasoned.

[oscuro.9720]

19 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

What are "group combat mechanics"?  Think long and hard about this.

Is it combination fields and finishers?  You can do that on your own skills.
Is it applying buffs to allies?  You can do that on your own summons.
Is it target caps?  That old 50 target meteor shower that helped small groups break larger ones was never a real advantage because the large group could just stack more eles than the small group.

These mechanics don't care if the group is large or small, a group or an individual.  They function the same regardless.  Is someone not supposed to use combo fields or stick to the skills with 3 targets instead of 5 or something?

The advantages came (and still do) from understanding how the combat is designed in this game and learning how to use them most effectively.  It's like complaining about one of those Maguuma clouders farming pugs in EBG.

This is a good question. All of those would be group combat mechanics. Perhaps my argument was unclear, it is not their existence, it is the changes to the way they function and which ones have been prioritized that have narrowed the importance of skill. This is partially balance decisions and partially power creep from expansions, the latter of which isn’t worth an argument about since the bell has been rung: 

Let me give you some examples; 

1. Changes to stability have benefitted large groups more than small groups. Coordination of stability is still important, but when stability was not reduced by stacks, proper rotation of stability was a larger separator between small, coordinated groups and large, uncoordinated groups.

2. The change of retaliation to resolution directly benefitted large, less coordinated groups. Resolution uptime was a direct damage benefit for coordinated groups with effectively no target cap. By removing retaliation, larger groups benefitted from not having to deal with a mechanic that punished sloppy play and rewarded tight coordination.

3. The move towards boon standardization and a focus on utility and weapon skills generating boons reduced the amount of coordination necessary to reach effective levels of boon uptime. More coordination to get, for example, high might stacks means that it becomes advantageous to have a more coordinated group more so than a larger group.

There are more but those are some examples. The point is not that both groups cannot leverage these things, but that the steps required to access these things have been blunted to allow easier access for lower skill groups/players. By removing class or skill interactions that allowed coordinated groups to leverage force multipliers that less coordinated groups could not and killing large groups as a result, they effectively made it a numbers game.

Again, I am NOT saying that coordination doesn’t still matter, but it matters a significant amount less now than it did before, and has continued to mean less as we have moved forward. I don’t think balance is a wrong ideal, but I think that group combat should reward people finding and leveraging class interactions rather than moving more towards a button management system than it was before.

As long as inter-class matchups (read: 1v1s) are balanced, the disparity in outcome at a group level will be decided by ingenuity, coordination, and skill. If you try to balance outcome for large scale combat, you will inevitably end up balancing to equalize outcomes for even numbered groups because it is the only objective metric that exists for balancing large-scale combat. 

Zerg combat is actually arguably highly balanced right now; the team with more people wins most often. If you view it from a “what should be the outcome if 100 people fight 50”, the group of 100 winning is the logical, balanced outcome. But we don’t want that. What we want is to be special. To be a part of that group that has 5 people and kills 30. But most people are part of the 30. And they get frustrated when that happens. So the importance of skill is minimized in favor of making sure the larger group of people are satisfied. This begins a gradual slide downward in overall skill until people are looking at a highly balanced game mode and feel it’s lopsided and “cooked” because they can’t overcome a gap of 5 people even if their individual players are better.

Again, skill is still important, it’s just the least important it’s been in the game. And it feels bad. And I like to feel good. You should too.

[oscuro.9720]

5 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This. I've talked about this subject for years now...but basically I proved a while back mathematically that, numerical balance operations either 1) make the game homogenous and trivial and 2) are completely arbitrary because if the elements being balanced in question are non-trivial, you can't form a proof statement between them about their equivalence. You can then further prove the difficulty of forming proof statements to be equivalent to the halting problem : That such a problem (of trying to form a proof statement between two non-trivial functions, like game mechanics) is undecidable, meaning that you can't ever in principle, build a computer or an algorithm strong or fast enough to make such statements.

Since then I've completely formalized that proof into a series of induction proofs, which goes like this : Not only is perfect balance not attainable, the act of (numeric) balancing in and of itself does not work at all...to the point where it is completely and utterly useless. The first claim by induction, is that you can't balance a game with even 2 skills, and therefor not doable for a game with n skills. you can then go further and prove that you can't make proof statements for even 2 unique parameters on a skill, so you can't form equivalence statements for n unique parameters for even a single skill, thus claim 2, proves by induction, the induction for claim 1.

Ultimately it boils down into the fact that numbers themselves are arbitrary, relative constructs, so if the game is "made" with numbers, like guild wars 2 then there is no hope in ever balancing even two measly skills, let alone perfect balance of a game with n skills. The problem is far worse then most people think it is...and the beliefs people have about balance fall into the same regime that people like Kurt Gödel set out to disprove with incompleteness against folks like David Hilbert: That any system that uses numbers, can not be consistent, or complete and will fail to make proof statements, such as the ability to prove equivalences between parameters, and skills. 

And that makes sense intuitively : How does one form objective, numerical equivalence statements about abstract mechanics like radius... when we humans are the ones who derive unique meaning from what radius is supposed to mean to us. The value we derive from it changes...not only between different modes, different players and situations but even across time as more strategies develop.

Most folks believe that there exists of this "middle ground" for balance but it's an illusion. It's an illusion because people kinda know what a balanced game should feel like. But this feeling is...a misinterpretation for what this middle ground is, and what actually brings it about...which is captured by your statement here : 

"I've come to think that perhaps these games should just give players a really cool tool set"

This here, is the answer...it is the middle ground...the utopia people subconsciously want but don't know how to describe or get to it, because to understand why that is the answer rather than buffing and nerfing things, requires very deep deep knowledge about stuff people are not ready to hear which is why its a hot take. But basically numbers ultimately don't matter...they are just constructs we use to make sense of a world that is instantiating "the set of all possible rules" and that quote is the only way to describe what it is that we experience as the balance state of a game. We are experiencing this game enumerating different behaviors, different mechanics and instantiations of a set of abstract, non-trivial elements... There's no way to actually box that in, with an objective numerical representation, only a subjective one...and that is the biggest red pill most people don't want to swallow : Game balance is not real...Game Balance is more or less, a statement about us players, playing the game, and experiencing it in all of its complexity, and what behaviors arise from those experiences, and that can not be truly defined without completely liquidating those unique experiences.

There's other more mathematical reasons why creation alone (specifically creating options for players to generate solutions to problems by exploring the space of possible builds) is the right answer to how to get to this balance middle ground, but I don't wanna bog this down with too much of that...but you already expressed it in your comment : The more build options that exist, the more likely you are to find counters in the space of possible builds, to the build that your playing, thus smothering outlier builds...This comes from a mathematical quirk (but i think this is rather intentional by nature) to how creation and instantiation of things, has a much more meaningful quality to it then removing, and destroying them.

Anyway I don't want anyone to get me wrong, i think numbers do serve purposes. Just not in the way we think they should have. For instance, to make it more obvious: a skill having .0000001 second cooldown, or a 5 year cooldown, matters to us... but only in relative, subjective terms. There's a limit to what us human people can care about because that is the limit of our senses and what not so there's no need to "go overboard" with the idea; they serve a purpose but just not an objective one.

Cheers,

 

I still disagree with you on decent amounts of this, but I’m pretty sure our conclusions are the same, so I don’t think the disagreement matters much. I also very much respect your ability to articulate and defend your point. I always appreciate the detailed and thought out comments 🙂 

[Hotride.2187]

You can also AFK at south camp and do something else, waiting for weekly pips. Or duel, from time to time when duel spot is not dead.

I know its not much but what can you do. I'd suggest spvp but recently its been getting some builds that are nearly as bad as the infinite sustain ones from wvw roaming. So the experience is starting to feel samey.

[Vasdamas Anklast.1607]

4 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

You can also AFK at south camp and do something else, waiting for weekly pips. Or duel, from time to time when duel spot is not dead.

I know its not much but what can you do. I'd suggest spvp but recently its been getting some builds that are nearly as bad as the infinite sustain ones from wvw roaming. So the experience is starting to feel samey.

"Due" aha, yeah, until a bunch of muppets with cele specs come over and think it's fun to duel them and then just start getting on people's nerves when rejected.

 

On 6/2/2024 at 9:49 AM, Chaba.5410 said:

I'll never understand playing a game, learning what the combat mechanics are, and then complaining about players using those mechanics.

So just swinging weapons at each other for eternity is OK in your opinion? Lmao alright.

Last time I took advantage of these "MeChAnIcS" my fight was 40 mins long and the guy who was fighting me jumped off a cliff. Which is kinda weird, considering his goal was to waste people's time anyway, but I guess it only works one way.

 

[Chaba.5410]

21 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

This is a good question. All of those would be group combat mechanics. Perhaps my argument was unclear, it is not their existence, it is the changes to the way they function and which ones have been prioritized that have narrowed the importance of skill. This is partially balance decisions and partially power creep from expansions, the latter of which isn’t worth an argument about since the bell has been rung: 

Let me give you some examples; 

1. Changes to stability have benefitted large groups more than small groups. Coordination of stability is still important, but when stability was not reduced by stacks, proper rotation of stability was a larger separator between small, coordinated groups and large, uncoordinated groups.

2. The change of retaliation to resolution directly benefitted large, less coordinated groups. Resolution uptime was a direct damage benefit for coordinated groups with effectively no target cap. By removing retaliation, larger groups benefitted from not having to deal with a mechanic that punished sloppy play and rewarded tight coordination.

3. The move towards boon standardization and a focus on utility and weapon skills generating boons reduced the amount of coordination necessary to reach effective levels of boon uptime. More coordination to get, for example, high might stacks means that it becomes advantageous to have a more coordinated group more so than a larger group.

There are more but those are some examples. The point is not that both groups cannot leverage these things, but that the steps required to access these things have been blunted to allow easier access for lower skill groups/players. By removing class or skill interactions that allowed coordinated groups to leverage force multipliers that less coordinated groups could not and killing large groups as a result, they effectively made it a numbers game.

Again, I am NOT saying that coordination doesn’t still matter, but it matters a significant amount less now than it did before, and has continued to mean less as we have moved forward. I don’t think balance is a wrong ideal, but I think that group combat should reward people finding and leveraging class interactions rather than moving more towards a button management system than it was before.

As long as inter-class matchups (read: 1v1s) are balanced, the disparity in outcome at a group level will be decided by ingenuity, coordination, and skill. If you try to balance outcome for large scale combat, you will inevitably end up balancing to equalize outcomes for even numbered groups because it is the only objective metric that exists for balancing large-scale combat. 

Zerg combat is actually arguably highly balanced right now; the team with more people wins most often. If you view it from a “what should be the outcome if 100 people fight 50”, the group of 100 winning is the logical, balanced outcome. But we don’t want that. What we want is to be special. To be a part of that group that has 5 people and kills 30. But most people are part of the 30. And they get frustrated when that happens. So the importance of skill is minimized in favor of making sure the larger group of people are satisfied. This begins a gradual slide downward in overall skill until people are looking at a highly balanced game mode and feel it’s lopsided and “cooked” because they can’t overcome a gap of 5 people even if their individual players are better.

Again, skill is still important, it’s just the least important it’s been in the game. And it feels bad. And I like to feel good. You should too.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

When I refer to combat mechanics, I'm not referring to balance and meta changes.  I'm referring to the fundamental way combat is designed, or the existence of it, as you put it.  Maybe I'm not using the right terminology for it.  A combo still functions as a field and a finisher which gives an effect.  That hasn't changed and doesn't change based on individual or group.  What has changed fundamentally that perhaps affected groups vs. individuals is moving from random boon application to a prioritization system.  It ensures that your coordinated group's stability and uptime is going to your group members and not randoms standing with you.  Makes it easier for the group.

My main point is that when players are finding ways to use the combat mechanics most effectively to achieve some goal they create for themselves, others will complain about that.  It's normal I guess to any game.

[oscuro.9720]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

When I refer to combat mechanics, I'm not referring to balance and meta changes.  I'm referring to the fundamental way combat is designed, or the existence of it, as you put it.  Maybe I'm not using the right terminology for it.  A combo still functions as a field and a finisher which gives an effect.  That hasn't changed and doesn't change based on individual or group.  What has changed fundamentally that perhaps affected groups vs. individuals is moving from random boon application to a prioritization system.  It ensures that your coordinated group's stability and uptime is going to your group members and not randoms standing with you.  Makes it easier for the group.

My main point is that when players are finding ways to use the combat mechanics most effectively to achieve some goal they create for themselves, others will complain about that.  It's normal I guess to any game.

Yes, I suppose my language was imprecise. That is a better way of viewing combat mechanics. My argument would be better summarized as the direction of system changes (how boons function as an example of changing a system) and changes made to the skills to lower the skill floor have devalued the game mechanics that require some degree of coordination to pull off (such as coordinating blast finishers).

This is coming from someone who really enjoys the 1v1 aspects of the game. The fundamental combat system in this game is one of the best on the market, but I will still be critical of things that detract from the importance of player ability.

in that sense, I agree that players are finding ways to maximize the mechanics. My argument is that the mechanics have been dulled down so that a near optimal state of mechanic use is very easy to reach (heavily influenced by build, often simplified to on-button-press).

Again, I don’t think skill isn’t a factor. I just think its importance has been whittled away compared to how the group combat in this game used to be and the importance of numbers has grown as a result. I believe this is not good for the game. I also don’t know how to fix it. So I’m just complaining at this point I guess 🤷‍♂️

This is partially driven by my own belief or philosophy, so I don’t expect everyone to agree, and disagreements are certainly valid.