State of the Game: Izzy and Ensign chat

This was a great article that brought many issues to the spotlight.

First and foremost, Guild Wars has become the lab rat of the scientist Izzy (I don't mean to say that as a bad thing).

Izzy goes into discussion of how he goes about balancing skills. He takes the careful and conservative approach and balances on a controlled basis, allowing each balance to settle into the metagame to see what skills affect it in a certain way. Think back to that 5th grade science class; controlled environment, control group, mutually exclusive variables (scientific method).

This also showed the thought process that went on with skill introductions in Factions, Nightfall, and EoTN. Factions saw a great addition of weak skills that still diversified the PvP stage with the dynamic Assasin. Nightfall saw the dawn of the "Pound You into the Ground" skills crippling the split teams into coming together for the sake of healing and survival. These were both done intentionally to see how the game would change. Many agree that Nightfall doomed PvP and ArenaNet knows that. There isn't much they can do about it beside restricting gameplay to a sort of closed tournament deck build that they have occasionally used at live GW events. This forces creativity, ignores the meta game, and spawns the interest of observers. I talked with one of my friends that did a deck tournament and the builds they came up with that actually worked would have made it a very interesting match to watch.

Izzy has shown in this article that he knows that many of the skill balances are putting a band-aid over a flesh wound. The good news is, I think Izzy and the other devs know what they are doing from all their experimentation in Guild Wars. This can only make Guild Wars 2 a better game as a result.

And on a side note, the marketing team is doing the same sort of experimentation with their Special Editions, packaged deals, the Bonus Mission Pack, and now the holiday discount. They're seeing what works and what doesn't work. While they may hurt their fanbase a bit, they are improving their company. Every online gaming company will be following the Blizzard or ANet business model in the near future. The key to this is to give them feedback! Let them know how pissed you are that you can't get the BMP without a credit card.

Bad science then maybe. I don't see any control group here. The changes made effect the whole community. As far as controlled environment, the main focus seems obviously to be on PvP; Not at all representative for the GW community as a whole.

I may not always agree with skill changes and the balance that is trying to be achieved, BUT I am not playing at the level many of these people do. I truly appreciate Anet/Izzy explaining why they change things the way they do.

Too late.

At least for us.

While a year ago we were dedicated GW fans and players, no one in this household of five plays any more. And there is *no* chance *any* of us will be buying or recommending GW2, based on ANet's current attitude toward PvE.

The SotG article notes that the PvP game was most interesting BEFORE the release of Nightfall -- and the same holds true for the PvE game.

In games, "balance" is often a synonym for "boring" and "homogenized."

Maybe, if things have gotten WORSE since the Factions Championship, it would be WISE to backtrack and revert many of the changes made that have undermined the game. While we can't get rid of Nightfall and EotN, many things could be done to increase diversity and fun.

Sadly, all Izzy cares about is his precious PvP "balance." Things like PvE "fun" don't enter into his thinking.

The quite scientific approach to balancing is a good thing. It is also a very good thing that Izzy is co-working with Ensign, he is the unpaid GW expert of Anet.
But I do not think bad balance is the key why things got "stale" or whatever in the competitive game.

People need new content of all kinds, balancing skills up and and down might shake up the way things are done, the famous "Meta", but they do not really make the game more interesting for veterans or accessible for newcomers.


It is not up to the skill balancer to rejuvenate GvG, this is a task of the whole design team. Fresh new arenas and types of gameplay, new maps and so on.

Even if the "Costume Brawl Hero maps in RA and TA" experiment was largely unfavored in the feedback thread on Guru, it is definitely a step in the right direction to try more stuff like that, good things might come out of it.



EDIT: My criticism sounds so negative. But the fact that I am still playing GW with only one break since release is speaking volumes about the quality of GW and how much I like it.

I don't mean to be elitist ... but this thread is the perfect example of what anet has to deal with when balancing:

a. the vast majority of PvP-ers appreciate when a skill is overpowered and want it balanced

b. a large majority of PvE-ers NEVER want an overpowered skill balanced (I don't know if they don't appreciate the imbalance or just don't care).

I know that SOME PvE-ers want balance .. so don't yell at me .. but go read the Ursan Blessing thread ... most don't. They just scream about 'PvP nerfs effecting PvE'!

You know, if it's overpowered in PvP, it is almost certainly overpowered in PvE (see soul reaping, splinter weapon, ad nauseum). If anet screws up and makes a skill overpowered .. are they not supposed to correct it because now you feel 'entitled'?

That happens to be his job.

I don't get the PvE complaints... this is obviously a discussion about high-end PvP play...

I DO agree Anet could stop skill updates effecting PvE and I doubt anyone would care. Those that play high-end PvP would make it their business to know the differences...

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Has anyone looked at it lately? The talkpage is a total shitstorm from the lunatic fringe.

I think Izzy's scared of his own talk page now - hell, I know I am!

Having alternatives is fine and all, but having an alternative to a broken skill does not make that skill balanced. It simply means that now you have an overpowered alternative to use instead of the origional overpowered skill. Then we have to have an overpowered counter to the overpowered counter.... see the point. It is a lot easier to take a skill and tweak it either up or down, to make it more appropriate with the rest of the skilline. A skill can be overpowered for many reasons, but if we turn it into counter vs counter game, youre basically playing buildwars, which is dumb.
This is what happens when you have a game thats balanced and focused around the Player vs Player aspect of the game, and not the traditional Player vs Environment aspect. In any online game that has any form of competitive PvP, the skill balancing will always be centered on the fact of the PvP orientation of the game where the balance and skill adjustments are needed. The problem of PvP skill balance effecting PvE is due to the fact that ANET decided to make every friggin thing have packs of 10+ and all be 5-10 levels higher than you and hit for 3x as much damage than you could ever do. Creating a situation like this forces there to be imbalances in PvE that rely on taking advantage of situations or overpowered skills to give the common player a chance to expierence the full game he paid for. While this can help greatly, see Ursan Blessing for PvE, it can also hurt your game in that the skill will have to be adjusted so that it isnt a "must have" skill on your skillbar. LoD, origional Grenth dervs and searing flames for a skil lthat can be used in PvP as well as PvE, was such a skill.

Isiah Cartwright isn't paid to think of ways to find new and exciting farming builds, or to find a way for your ranger to get into a group looking for nukers and tanks. His job is to balance the game around the PvP aspect of the game. It has been this way since the games conception, and sorry to break your heart, but it isnt very likely to change.

They aren't aware the skill is overpowered. At some point, they just get bored.

Unchallenging games have appeal to some, but not to most. PvP-ers just tend to be both, more articulate and more vocal about unbalanced things. PvE-ers just dismiss the game as boring or dumbed down.

There is truly a lot of motivation to keep things balanced in both, PvE and PvP.

Consider increasing ecto drop rate by 5 times. Immediate reaction would be joy. Two weeks later, everyone would be going "well, got myself 5 sets of FoW, not the game is boring".


The main reason GW PvE went downhill since Factions was the Titles, Grind and PvE skills. Things got "dumbed down", time>skill, and made accessible.

Abandoning the skill>time concept, not to mention introducing abominable grind (many titles are just absurd) broke the PvE.

Izzy: "The metagame is quite stale at the moment and needs some shaking up. One example is changing how Light of Deliverance works in relation to other skills in the backline. The risk of this approach, though, is a chain reaction and a crumbling of the metagame."

Whoops. Even more of a risk than he realized it would appear.

QFT

gw is just an experiment for gw2 really. i dont think theres any real way they can fix this game at this point in time unless they revamped everything from the ground up.

You know... the recent balance updates were very well thought out, and well executed. The problem isn't the game balance, it is peoples' laziness in creating new, and interesting builds. Maybe if people sat down on team builder for a while and actually bothered to create a new build, things might go over better. Our guild invented Metallica Spike for TA, the build was copied, and altered slightly. Ancestors Rage was added into the spike by several teams, and as a result, ancestors rage was changed. Minor build changes are fine and dandy, but what happened to creating your OWN builds? Lazy lazy people....

Exactly.

ANet has a person who controls skill balance whose sole concern is PvP. Any negative effects on PvE don't matter.

Hence this being a corporate/management. philosophy problme, and thus my lack of interest in GW2. No matter how good it will sound on paper, I doubt ANet has the corporate culture and will necessary to produce an excellent PvE game.

Anet's current approach to PvE is to create lots of grindy make-work with vanity rewards, using ridiculous PvE skills that make the game excessively boring.

Do I have to use PvE-only skills? No.

But if I play with other humans, THEY want to use the damned cheat codes (consummables) and Ursan Blessing builds. To have fun with challenging and interesting builds, I need to go solo -- and that means working with four henchmen in my party who stink because ANet wants to force me to play with people! Since neither form of game is fun, I don;t play anymore, and have no intention of buying GW2 unless ANet can show me that they understand what folk like me want.

Why should I spend money on a game form a company like ANet that has sucked the fun out of what was a damned fun passtime?

Because this was never the intent of the skill balancing to begin with.

You make it seem like PvE is actually 10x harder than it actually is.

QFT. problem is Anet has been catering to these same people since day one.

constant "skill balancing" is what killed meta. If They had just let it BE and people had adapted instead of the skills adapting to them them GW would not be in this situation.

Of course the trial would have been to see if players would stick it though and come up with counters on their own at the time, I personally think they would have since players have to do that anyways but in reverse now but it may have been a concern at the time, or maybe its just your typical Frankenstein syndrome.

What you said and what he said are 2 different things....
Wrong again. The problem was they left imbalanced and overpowered skills alone TOO long in the meta and had nothing but fun seasons to justify the lack of skillbalance to deal with these problems. Only when it because a free for all with those overpowered skills was the issue addressed.
...what?

I don't think you fully understand the impact of skill balancing in PvP and PvE.

Firstly, PvP and PvE are *not* equal when it comes to skill balance. Izzy balances for PvP not because he "doesn't care for PvE," but because skill balances literally make or break PvP. In PvE? Not so much. You can run just about any build and get through the game fine.

For the rest of your post, I don't think it has any relevance to this thread. It's not Izzy's fault that pugs suck, or that the AI is bad, or that PvE is not fun for you.

So, how exactly has skill balancing ruined your game? Or has other factors that are not related to skill balancing ruined it for you?

I find it very hard to believe you cannot find a single other person who feels like you do...

(for the record, I don't use Ursan Blessing anymore, but then again, I'm probably not leet enough for you anyway)