How did the skill balancing work?

[lxl Ra lxl.5896]

I am just talking about PvP right now (mostly GvG)

 

I know there used to be a team of players and some dev's who would discuss skill changes. But I'd assume there would be many different idealogies about where the game had to move to and it wouldn't be always visible for the devs what the motivation of the players was to their answers. For example the rumour was that [rawr] used to convince people that Escape melee rangers wouldn't be a problem, to pick those builds in the mAT and win it.

 

How did you filter to who which person's you'd listen to?

Was there a set idealogy about where the balance was meant to move to?

Was the balancing more a flavor of the month thing?

If you could go back in time, how would you change the way you used to balance skills?

 

I'm curious because I've hosted twice a banned GvG tournament now. One recently about a month ago. Both tournaments had a different idealogy of what we wanted to achieve, thus whole different rules/bans: http://memorial.redeemer.biz/memorial/events/

 

Would it be possible to have a small (experienced) balance team of players (Maybe supervised by a dev if you guys want it) to balance PvP.

[jaguar.5283]

I was going to ask the same questions.

- Looking back, what do you think could have been done better in regards to balancing the game, particularly nerfs in PvP? If any of you could go back and do it again and be in charge, what would you do differently?

- Considering ArenaNet did massive buffs to Elementalists and Dervishes (the damage classes) before stopping supporting Guild Wars, and left the game in a state where GvG requires 3 monks always at the main team, all awkwardly using the same non-overlapping skills from just two different attribute sets (smite nerfed completely out of the game), forcing a damage position to run flags, and that this meta-wide strategy is obviously different how GvG was played during the rest of GW's history, and seems obviously unintended and imbalanced, would ArenaNet ever be willing to offer any kind of solution at all for this problem (another skill update, opensourcing of the game, allowing current players to help, considering there are able players willing to, or any other alternative solution)?

 

By the way, thank you Ra, now I can actually narrow my post down to three questions. =D

[jaguar.5283]

I'd like to try to provide some context for this question:

> @"jaguar.5283" said:

> - Looking back, what do you think could have been done better in regards to balancing the game, particularly nerfs in PvP? If any of you could go back and do it again and be in charge, what would you do differently?

 

My interpretation, from friends experiences who tried starting the game who didn't get into it, and what I saw of how the ArenaNet employees handled skill balancing throughout the years, was that they had two issues or goals. The first was that there were so many skills that new players would feel like they were rolling the dice. This was reinforced by what someone say about why hero battles was removed. And it makes sense, to an extent. There are so many skills that I can understand how new players in particular would have a hard time coming up with builds that worked with enough consistency to feel like their wins or losses weren't just luck. And even as a more experienced player who started at the beginning, I take it for granted -- there are always counters -- "build wars" -- that's just a part of the game, but I still enjoyed maximizing my win ratio through creatively, continually reviewing the skills, and having so many skills to continue to experiment with and refine a build. I'm interested to know if that was a part of the goal and philosophy of nerfing skills. How did the developers feel about this aspect of the game? Did they feel like there were so many skills that to win or lose was a dice roll, and there were too many counters?

 

The second of course was, as someone put it in another post, "broken synergies". IWAY, VIMWAY, SpiritWay, Hexway, various spikes, etc., to utilize some kind of exponential synergies in team builds.

 

I'd be interested to know if any of the developers have any particular recollections of builds or skills that they thought were too overpowered (that they just hated, or thought were too easy and cheap and broken to win with) in particular that they felt needed to be nerfed. Maybe Minion Factory? (no just kidding...) Or skills that were nerfed that you (developers) may have felt in hindsight were nerfed unnecessarily or could have provided more interest and options and fun for the players if they hadn't been nerfed so badly.

 

Cheers. =)

 

 

[Agrios.1957]

I for one have mad respect for the balance team of gw1.

 

The number of skills was insane, (and double that number by 2 because of dual classing) and on top of it all every class had its own flavor mechanic that interacted with the build. Serioulsy guys, I don't know you did it.

 

While some gimmick builds were borderline game breaking (like 55monk / perma SF in PvE) most of the time things went well enough.

 

I just hope some aberration like touchies never happen again..

 

 

[Isaiah Cartwright.8569]

 

**Story TIme!!**

So the way it worked is there was a group of people who internally talked about every balance change. This always started with James Phinney and Izzy (me) we made the final call on each change and discuss them detail. Then we had a number of people who would join us from time to time to give insight or discuss changes this group grew over time but including a bunch of people Lulu, Morello, Linsey, Robert G, Chap and I'm sure a bunch more that I'm forgetting.

 

The meeting would always include a list of proposed changes this list was generated by everyone but I had editor rights in making the list. Collecting what goes on the list was a huge group effort by the above people we would talk to fans, look at data, watch tournament games, play the game A LOT. We were always looking for different perspectives. This process made me get really close to the top teams and I found a few players I had a lot of huge design debate with (Ensign is probably the player I debated the most with.) after a while of debating one on one via private messenger or in game I went rogue and made a forum on my personal website. This started off as just an easier way for me to talk to a bunch of the people I would debate balance with and sorta became a huge thing. I started inviting people to this group that I felt could discuss balance and where good at the game (GvG, Arena, PvE, Tombs, ect) but in hind site it was more focused on the GvG crowd because that was the area of the game that hit the balance the hardest. After a while I started posting the finalized list of changes that came out of the above meeting and getting their thoughts and feedback on that list before it went live. This worked somewhat I had a bunch of rampid leaks that took a while to track down and kick people out (turns out PvPers are a bunch of punks who knew <3 you all.) Overall it helped get a lot of different perspectives and view points but the end call for what changes did what was always handled by one or two people and everyone else would provide data and insight.

 

>@"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> 1.) How did you filter to who which person's you'd listen to?

> 2.) Was there a set idealogy about where the balance was meant to move to?

> 3.) Was the balancing more a flavor of the month thing?

> 4.) If you could go back in time, how would you change the way you used to balance skills?

 

1.) Mostly they had to be good at the game and be able to have a good design debate with the above group of people.

2.) We had a number of ideology we would use, "Play" was a huge one we always tried to find ways to buff answers and counters to problems rather then nerf the problem. so when something came up the question what is the counter was normally the first question. We would also try and make sure at least 20% of the skills where being used in top level play and that which 20% was rotating based on an active meta. I've found these ratio's to be pretty much universal for any healthy meta.

3.) Yes and no sometimes we would push the meta one way or another in order to change which 20% of skills where being used, sometimes we where just focusing on making bad skills usable again.

4.) I would have never added new classes to the game, and just add new attribute lines. So instead of assassin I would added all of those skills and attribute lines to Warrior and Necro. This was a huge debate around factions and I think we went with the sexier route of new classes but it created an ever growing issue of class balance which in the end I think made keeping an active healthy meta an ever growing complexity problem. This made us overlook huge issues with defense vs offense that eventually blow up in our face in a bad way and IQ showed us that (*shakes fist*)

 

[Isaiah Cartwright.8569]

> @"jaguar.5283" said:

> I was going to ask the same questions.

> - Looking back, what do you think could have been done better in regards to balancing the game, particularly nerfs in PvP? If any of you could go back and do it again and be in charge, what would you do differently?

> - Considering ArenaNet did massive buffs to Elementalists and Dervishes (the damage classes) before stopping supporting Guild Wars, and left the game in a state where GvG requires 3 monks always at the main team, all awkwardly using the same non-overlapping skills from just two different attribute sets (smite nerfed completely out of the game), forcing a damage position to run flags, and that this meta-wide strategy is obviously different how GvG was played during the rest of GW's history, and seems obviously unintended and imbalanced, would ArenaNet ever be willing to offer any kind of solution at all for this problem (another skill update, opensourcing of the game, allowing current players to help, considering there are able players willing to, or any other alternative solution)?

>

> By the way, thank you Ra, now I can actually narrow my post down to three questions. =D

 

As for 3 monk issue this was always something we where fighting with, the hard part is the higher damage goes the less dps you need to bring so you go 3 monks, so the way we normally handled this was keeping the number of characters you needed to do deal 600 damage in less the a second to 4.5 this made it so the 3rd character wanted to be half dmg half support or a solid runner. There where plenty of times we had 3 monks or even 4 monks-8 monks *Cry*, and it was a never ending push to not do that so it doesn't' surprise me that when we put balance down that this was where stuff landed. Also we found the high skill players where the more they would find ways to get more damage from everyone including their monks. As for are we open to more changes I would never put anything off the table.

 

 

[lxl Ra lxl.5896]

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

 

> 1.) Mostly they had to be good at the game and be able to have a good design debate with the above group of people.

 

Did you ever feel betrayed by the people you trusted with the balance discussions? Except for the obvious leaking of skills ofcourse.

The group of people you'd debate with was the Test Krew right? Think I remember the name. I thought people inside the Test Krew were allowed to invite others into it aswell.

 

 

 

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

 

> 2.) We had a number of ideology we would use, "Play" was a huge one we always tried to find ways to buff answers and counters to problems rather then nerf the problem.

 

From my experience of hosting banned battles and the first [Flux]less tournament (long after GW2 came out), was that too much theory crafting could lead to things run whole different than you anticipated. Belzor and I would theorycraft so much and have discussions about countres to this and that and in the end it meant that we did not see where the meta would move to.

 

 

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

>

 

> 3.) Yes and no sometimes we would push the meta one way or another in order to change which 20% of skills where being used, sometimes we where just focusing on making bad skills usable again.

 

To me it felt like the balances, especially later in the game were too big and too much. It basically lead to the same problems I had with hosting my first tournament. I feel kind of sad that certain playstyles aren't available anymore. For example playing a good Hexway is nearly impossible now a days or playing a full Spike.

 

I felt that the balancing was often too much. One side most used/popular skills would get banned and at the same time a whole lot would get buffed. Making it blurry where the meta would be.

 

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

>

>

> 4.) I would have never added new classes to the game, and just add new attribute lines. So instead of assassin I would added all of those skills and attribute lines to Warrior and Necro. This was a huge debate around factions and I think we went with the sexier route of new classes but it created an ever growing issue of class balance which in the end I think made keeping an active healthy meta an ever growing complexity problem. This made us overlook huge issues with defense vs offense that eventually blow up in our face in a bad way and IQ showed us that (*shakes fist*)

>

 

Interesting. I don't play GW2 myself, but is this where GW2 is going to? Instead of having the extra profession as teaser for the new expansion, new attribute lines?

Do you think the new proffesions/attribute lines did really have a place in GW? Sometimes it feels like Dervish and Paragon and the Ritualist to a lesser extent either feel brokenly OP or just an average/no important class by design.

With the 20% rule, did you think it was necessary to add a whole lot of skills with every expansion? Or couldn't you just change the other 80% to those new skills?

Do you think the issue with defense vs offense has been solved since IQ?

Do you think it would be possible to have another balance update for GW PvP (maybe set-up with a group of experienced players)?

Recently the servers have been updated. I think it was a secondary skill update, because the game feels much smoother and it makes skills based on reflexes (interrupting and protting) so much easier compared what it used to be.

 

Thanks for answering the questions ;)

[lxl Ra lxl.5896]

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

>

>

> As for 3 monk issue this was always something we where fighting with, the hard part is the higher damage goes the less dps you need to bring so you go 3 monks, so the way we normally handled this was keeping the number of characters you needed to do deal 600 damage in less the a second to 4.5 this made it so the 3rd character wanted to be half dmg half support or a solid runner. There where plenty of times we had 3 monks or even 4 monks-8 monks *Cry*, and it was a never ending push to not do that so it doesn't' surprise me that when we put balance down that this was where stuff landed. Also we found the high skill players where the more they would find ways to get more damage from everyone including their monks. As for are we open to more changes I would never put anything off the table.

>

>

 

Could you explain this rule about 600 dmg in 4,5 seconds a bit more please.

[Gandarel.5091]

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> > @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

> >

> >

> > As for 3 monk issue this was always something we where fighting with, the hard part is the higher damage goes the less dps you need to bring so you go 3 monks, so the way we normally handled this was keeping the number of characters you needed to do deal 600 damage in less the a second to 4.5 this made it so the 3rd character wanted to be half dmg half support or a solid runner. There where plenty of times we had 3 monks or even 4 monks-8 monks *Cry*, and it was a never ending push to not do that so it doesn't' surprise me that when we put balance down that this was where stuff landed. Also we found the high skill players where the more they would find ways to get more damage from everyone including their monks. As for are we open to more changes I would never put anything off the table.

> >

> >

>

> Could you explain this rule about 600 dmg in 4,5 seconds a bit more please.

 

Not Izzy but I think I can clear that up.

 

1 second is the time frame, 600 is the total damage delivered (~max HP of a player with defensive set), and it should take 4.5 players to deliver that burst. Basically they want to avoid situations where half (or more) of a team consists of healers yet the group could spike a target down from max HP using the few non-healers.

 

This pushes people away from stacking more healers than desired, making one of them play a hybrid to help a bit with getting kills.

[lxl Ra lxl.5896]

> @"Gandarel.5091" said:

 

>

> Not Izzy but I think you misunderstood.

>

> 1 second is the time frame, 600 is the damage delivered (~max HP of a player with defensive set), and it should need 4.5 players to deliver that burst. Basically they don't want comps where half the team is a healer yet they can spike you down from max HP with the few non-healers. This pushes people away from stacking more healers than desired, making one of them play a hybrid to help with getting kills a bit.

 

Thanks, but once +armor got popular it looks like a near impossible calculation to make. Since if you've got casters sitting in 60 armor they'll get a lot more damage than a monk sitting in his shield set with idk, 90-110 armor?

 

[Gandarel.5091]

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> > @"Gandarel.5091" said:

>

> >

> > Not Izzy but I think you misunderstood.

> >

> > 1 second is the time frame, 600 is the damage delivered (~max HP of a player with defensive set), and it should need 4.5 players to deliver that burst. Basically they don't want comps where half the team is a healer yet they can spike you down from max HP with the few non-healers. This pushes people away from stacking more healers than desired, making one of them play a hybrid to help with getting kills a bit.

>

> Thanks, but once +armor got popular it looks like a near impossible calculation to make. Since if you've got casters sitting in 60 armor they'll get a lot more damage than a monk sitting in his shield set with idk, 90-110 armor?

>

 

Well there are a couple of armor ignoring effects in the game plus cracked armor and armor penetration. Armor rating can't be reduced below 60 through these methods so it's going to be less punishing for squishies. Also Warriors have the highest armor rating but they have lower armor against elemental damage.

 

So with a little setup anyone can be spiked.

[Boro.7359]

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

> > @"jaguar.5283" said:

> > I was going to ask the same questions.

> > - Looking back, what do you think could have been done better in regards to balancing the game, particularly nerfs in PvP? If any of you could go back and do it again and be in charge, what would you do differently?

> > - Considering ArenaNet did massive buffs to Elementalists and Dervishes (the damage classes) before stopping supporting Guild Wars, and left the game in a state where GvG requires 3 monks always at the main team, all awkwardly using the same non-overlapping skills from just two different attribute sets (smite nerfed completely out of the game), forcing a damage position to run flags, and that this meta-wide strategy is obviously different how GvG was played during the rest of GW's history, and seems obviously unintended and imbalanced, would ArenaNet ever be willing to offer any kind of solution at all for this problem (another skill update, opensourcing of the game, allowing current players to help, considering there are able players willing to, or any other alternative solution)?

> >

> > By the way, thank you Ra, now I can actually narrow my post down to three questions. =D

>

> As for 3 monk issue this was always something we where fighting with, the hard part is the higher damage goes the less dps you need to bring so you go 3 monks, so the way we normally handled this was keeping the number of characters you needed to do deal 600 damage in less the a second to 4.5 this made it so the 3rd character wanted to be half dmg half support or a solid runner. There where plenty of times we had 3 monks or even 4 monks-8 monks *Cry*, and it was a never ending push to not do that so it doesn't' surprise me that when we put balance down that this was where stuff landed. Also we found the high skill players where the more they would find ways to get more damage from everyone including their monks. As for are we open to more changes I would never put anything off the table.

>

>

 

Izzy, how did you approach the balance of gameplay / gameplay flow in PvE? I know back in the day many proposed that PvE can't be balanced, but it simply is not true anymore ;) And what drove you to introduce permament invincibility by making shadow form maintainable in the first place, then the reluctance to fix what I see as such a glaring disparity (it took until a report of an 51 minute underworld match in Heroes Ascent for ANET to do anything about it), and then to SPLIT it instead of an overall nerf?

 

I know I was one of the first players to use it for something other than Droks runs, when an SS necro asked for a tank, and I put max shadow arts and 3 skills onto my skill bar. It was SF, Glyph of Swiftness, and Deadly Paradox. I was using an enchanting weapon too. Then I deleted my assassin. That skill was actually cheating, godmode, you name it.

 

As you know, the rest is history.

[jaguar.5283]

@"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" ,

Do you have any feelings about PvX Wiki and its effect on the PvP community?

 

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

>

> As for 3 monk issue this was always something we where fighting with, the hard part is the higher damage goes the less dps you need to bring so you go 3 monks, so the way we normally handled this was keeping the number of characters you needed to do deal 600 damage in less the a second to 4.5 this made it so the 3rd character wanted to be half dmg half support or a solid runner.

 

Did you have a ratio in mind for how much healing and damage negation one monk can do in comparison to the number of damage characters. For example, in Arenas, 1 monk being able to heal and prot through three damage players would (in combination with other factors such as rates of damage, as you mentioned about the 4.5 players being able to do 600 damage in less than a second) result in a potential stalement depending on people making mistakes. The ratio there would be 1:3. In GvG, with 2 monks with an additional flag runner, the ratio would be (>1):3, with 5 damage players and 3 healers (one healer being primarily a flag runner, and less able to heal to their full potential). Essentially the ratio was 2:5 and 3:5, depending on how much the healer flag runner counts for.

 

But now, the ratio is between 3:5 and 3:4, depending on how much the damage flag runner counts for.

 

Math is a weird thing and I know it often makes communication prone to misunderstanding. I hope my way of thinking about the balance was understandable.

 

>There where plenty of times we had 3 monks or even 4 monks-8 monks *Cry*,

I know right? So lame. xD But still I thought the overall design of Guild Wars was so cool that it gave players the opportunity to try such crazy things, but I can appreciate how options such as this along with limitations of the game engine and work requirements can make balancing not just challenging but a potential nightmare for someone not passionate and with talent and who enjoys a challenge. I have to thank you and ArenaNet for the 13 years the game was alive and fun to play. Cheers.

 

> As for are we open to more changes I would never put anything off the table.

(re: "another skill update, opensourcing of the game, allowing current players to help, considering there are able players willing to, or any other alternative solution")

 

Thank you for saying that and for your generosity. =)

Well, another question I thought of when reading your response was, "Can you define more explicitly 'Healthy Meta'?"

And then, that sounds great that there are potential solutions. I'm not familiar with ArenaNet's policies about updating Guild Wars, and the potential solution would depend on those policies.

 

Can we discuss further / what's a good way to discuss with you further...?

 

I think the first think we'd need to brainstorm would be a system that the general community and ArenaNet could be happy with. I think the remaining GvG community is a somewhat tight-knit consolidated community at this point in time. And I think that the GvG could come up with (and agree on as a community, at this point in time) a system to work with ArenaNet if ArenaNet is willing. Or if there is an easier solution... Any thoughts?

 

I think the first step, no matter what the solution, would be a more open line of communication with maybe one or two people who either have connections with the GvG community or a sincere and educated interest in balance design for the game. Would you (or any other ArenaNet representatives) be up for that?

 

Thank you so much for your response, Izzy. Cheers.

[Isaiah Cartwright.8569]

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Did you ever feel betrayed by the people you trusted with the balance discussions? Except for the obvious leaking of skills ofcourse.

> The group of people you'd debate with was the Test Krew right? Think I remember the name. I thought people inside the Test Krew were allowed to invite others into it aswell.

 

This was not the Test Krew this was my own little group after I left GW1 and moved onto GW2 the group started making this balance group a bit more official and merged it with our internal "alpha" group and named them the Test Krew. The more popular we got as a company and as a game the more leaks hurt us and so the tighter we had to get on our internal groups and testing. Did I feel betrayed oh ya I don't deal with betrayal well I'm sort of a eye for a heart kind of guy : )

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> From my experience of hosting banned battles and the first [Flux]less tournament (long after GW2 came out), was that too much theory crafting could lead to things run whole different than you anticipated. Belzor and I would theorycraft so much and have discussions about countres to this and that and in the end it meant that we did not see where the meta would move to.

 

Yeah this is balance in a nut shell. Predict the future, the more possibilities the harder it is to predict the future and the biggest issue with doing it is we get in our own way adding our own perspectives on what we want rather then what will happen. The only way to combat this is by collecting as many points of view as possible and use peoples bias in your favor.

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> To me it felt like the balances, especially later in the game were too big and too much. It basically lead to the same problems I had with hosting my first tournament. I feel kind of sad that certain playstyles aren't available anymore. For example playing a good Hexway is nearly impossible now a days or playing a full Spike.

 

This was due to the geometrically growing connections between skills as we added new skills. I think this is what led us to remove secondary professions for GW2 but in hind site we didn't' fix it just moved the problem around. I think Magic came up with a good solution that everyone has sense copied where they have a set of cards that rotates over time so the size of space your working with doesn't grow insane in complexity. I've been impressed with Dota and LoL ability to hold it together but that's a debatable topic in it's own right :)

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> I felt that the balancing was often too much. One side most used/popular skills would get banned and at the same time a whole lot would get buffed. Making it blurry where the meta would be.

 

This is the goal of creating a new meta you want to blow up peoples ideas of what it could be and create a "chaotic" moment that everyone needs to figure out. If you look at games like Path of Exile they excel really well at creating this chaos to create a meta. Magic also does a great job of it by rotating sets.

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Interesting. I don't play GW2 myself, but is this where GW2 is going to? Instead of having the extra profession as teaser for the new expansion, new attribute lines?

> Do you think the new proffesions/attribute lines did really have a place in GW? Sometimes it feels like Dervish and Paragon and the Ritualist to a lesser extent either feel brokenly OP or just an average/no important class by design.

 

Kinda with GW2 but it's a different beast. The issue with making good classes is you have to make them feel different, and the more of them their are the harder it is games like EQ and DAoC did an amazing job of having a lot of cool classes but games where harsher back then and so you could give classes ways to deal with that harshness and make a whole class work. Example (Resurrection, Corpse Teleporting, Fast Travel) a lot of these things that made classes different are now default for everyone so they push you to find different mechanics to make classes work. This is what makes adding new classes so hard you have to find a hole in your game and fix it with a a new class and there isn't an endless number of equal size holes to fill in a game.

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> With the 20% rule, did you think it was necessary to add a whole lot of skills with every expansion? Or couldn't you just change the other 80% to those new skills?

 

Adding a lot of skills created chaos and fun toys to play with so it's different goal. You can just change other skills but people have all ready earned them because skills where the progression in GW1 you needed to add new ones to give people things to chase for and unlock so while you can change the other 80% to make a meta shift you can't sell an expansion of balance changes and it feel good for everyone.

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Do you think the issue with defense vs offense has been solved since IQ?

 

Nope but this is an issue that every game ever is trying to solve I think the common sports term for it is "defense wins championships" I have really enjoyed how UFC has tried to solve this by making flashy wins the thing that matters so defense still wins but no one likes you and thus you get less respect/high profile matches. It's an interesting solution to the problem of defense wins but I think this is a game theory level issue and I would gladly say we haven't solved it but we're always trying.

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Do you think it would be possible to have another balance update for GW PvP (maybe set-up with a group of experienced players)?

 

Anything is possible : )

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Thanks for answering the questions ;)

 

You're welcome, Gaile pointed me at this thread and said it had me written all over it and I think shes not wrong so thanks Gaile

 

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> Could you explain this rule about 600 dmg in 4,5 seconds a bit more please.

 

Gandarel.5091 answered this really well but here my attempt at explaining it as well.

 

The goal is in GW HPS(heal per second) is stronger then DPS. (assuming proper kitting) but healing is more mana bound. So what happens is in order to get kills you need to packet damage up in a very short window to get a kill (You know all this but anyone else reading might not) mostly people have around 600 HP so we avoided letting any packet of damage by a single player get higher then 150 without other players getting involed (used to be 140) and we would log any damage that happen over 120 but due to runes and stuff I moved the line to 150. This would insure that 4 players couldn't spike a single player down now it gets way more complicated then that but that's the basic rule if you need 4-5 players to deal enough damage to kill someone then you have no room for 3 monks because you need to get kills.

 

This theory changes a lot with spike and pressure builds which are designed to attack a build based on mana or removal cooldowns but even in pressure builds spiking was still used. So if you look at the balance numbers (at least from my old out dated memory) you should see very few things getting past those break points.

 

[Gaile Gray.6029]

Thank **you,** Izzy, for for all this cool information.

 

Sharing with the members: I have always been a bit in awe of the skill team. I am very impressed by the seriousness and the difficulty of balance. For what you do in one "simple" tweak can have reverberent impact on dozens of other skills. I admired the work that Isaiah did in Guild Wars. The fact that we ultimately ended up with 1,000+ skills still blows my mind. (And I'll admit there probably are Ranger skills I still haven't fully explored, for I sort of found my faves and ran with them... literally!)

 

Today, I'm impressed by the skill balancing being done for Guild Wars 2. Imagine the layered complexity: Pve and PvP, added gameplay modes (thinking WvW and more), new professions, elites skills, and so much more.

 

I think we were -- and are -- very fortunate to have such amazing people working on this delicate task.

[Boro.7359]

Actually, it's a lot less, since some skill lines don't interact with each other on the bar level (e.g. Axe Mastery and Marksmanship, you either take one or the other), skills that interact with spells (Aria, Aura of Restoration) don't work with attack skills and signets, and so on.

 

GW2 is even simpler since there are a lot fewer conditions, fewer "boons", and no hexes, and a fixed half of the skill bar without major variations via the trait system.

[lxl Ra lxl.5896]

> @"Isaiah Cartwright.8569" said:

>

> > @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> > Do you think the issue with defense vs offense has been solved since IQ?

>

> Nope but this is an issue that every game ever is trying to solve I think the common sports term for it is "defense wins championships" I have really enjoyed how UFC has tried to solve this by making flashy wins the thing that matters so defense still wins but no one likes you and thus you get less respect/high profile matches. It's an interesting solution to the problem of defense wins but I think this is a game theory level issue and I would gladly say we haven't solved it but we're always trying.

 

It is too bad that GW came out before the Esports started booming. But to stay in sports terms. I'm not sure if you follow football (soccer). You can win throphies by playing defensively and rational, but once teams go play exciting, adventurous and creatively (like Barcelona used to do a couple years ago), there goes a buzz around. Everyone wants to follow what they will do next. An Esports scene could've profitted with that, because there would be incentives in sponsorships, and not just winning a tournament and a Gold cape. My friends and I would call it: Playing for the fans. It'd give some extra value to the experience.

 

>

> This is the goal of creating a new meta you want to blow up peoples ideas of what it could be and create a "chaotic" moment that everyone needs to figure out. If you look at games like Path of Exile they excel really well at creating this chaos to create a meta. Magic also does a great job of it by rotating sets.

 

>

> > @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> > Do you think it would be possible to have another balance update for GW PvP (maybe set-up with a group of experienced players)?

>

> Anything is possible : )

>

 

A balance patch would be amazing. Not to have that "chaotic" moment, because that doesn't last. But to make different builds and playstyles available again.

Something to balance GW maybe for the future. That the fluxes will have a bigger impact, because more/different builds would be available, because a different flux might just buff that build/playstyle. Thinking about the 20% rule and the 150 dmg rule I could already point out a couple of problematic skills right now.

 

> > @"lxl Ra lxl.5896" said:

> > Thanks for answering the questions ;)

>

> You're welcome, Gaile pointed me at this thread and said it had me written all over it and I think shes not wrong so thanks Gaile

>

 

I really appreciate that you guys are doing the AMA.

 

 

[Isaiah Cartwright.8569]

> @"lxl Ra lxl.5896"

> I really appreciate that you guys are doing the AMA.

 

Anytime it's fun to think about the past 14 years here of fun memories and making more every day.

 

~Izzy