Why is there never balance?

Just wondering, with every single skill 'balance' out there, all they either do is:
1) Buff a underpowered profession so it is now overpowered
2) Nerf a overpowered proffession so it is now unwanted

Why are these so called balances always just a move from one extreme to the other?
I know A-net are kind of incompetent, but surely they can do better than this.

Because life isn't fair.

Real problem is too many skills in the game. Mix in a secondary and balance is really impossible. Try stacking ten eggs on end.

GW2 will have a more sparse set of skills and no secondary.

As for incompetence, I would suggest WoW as the leader in balance incompetence. WoW does have the money to do completely rework character talent trees which proves necessary from time to time.

Even so, best forum post I have seen on WoW PvP was "I love WoW PvP; I also love sex with porcupines."

Yap, too many possible combinations between skills and classes (and PvE skills, consumables and exploiting heroes/monsters AI if you are talking about PvE) make balance nearly impossible.

They do it just to annoy people like you and give you a reason to boost your post count

Yeah, because a post count is so important in regards to in-game.

Are you trying to say that mesmer is now overpowered?

As in, are you trying to say that average mission will be finished faster and more efficient with a mesmer with this skill balance build, than with best build Necro or Assassin could provide?

Really?


Stop whining.

As should be obvious by reading my OP, this is in regards to every skill update, not just this one.

But from what I've heard (Not yet tested in PvE) with the changes it is possible to perma-KD with Psychic Instability, Quickening Zephyr and the newly buffed fast casting. If said is true, then yes, it will be much more efficient with a mesmer.

That said, my main point for this particular update is PvP. Right now mesmers are just owning just about everything in AB/FA.

I seen that on "The Real Hustle" tv program, it can be done using salt, but thats kinda cheating

To be honest though I think they are trying to make all professions playable/desireable, atm there are so very few Mesmers in the game, is it wrong that they got a buff that would make more people want to play as them? I might regret these words when I start coming up against them in JQ though

But is a balanced game that much more fun?

Balance an egg? Go youtube and choose your egg

What do you prefer, a fight where you just go in, kill the enemy in a second without taking damage, or a epic fight where every move mattered, the fight was fair and close.

I'm pretty sure you will choose the second one. So this answers your question, as the second one is the image of a balanced game, and the first is unbalanced.


TL;DR: yes, a balanced game is more fun

The game was never balanced, why should they try to do that now?? I'd prefer the 1st actually, I like blowing guys up, not sitting around for 10 mins why we hack and slash each other.

Your quote above is your opinion. So don't say we will choose either. People don't like words being put in their mouth.

Balance is more difficult with a large pool of skills classes and sub classes but not impossible.
The problem imo would seem to be partly caused by 2 things.

The addition of new skills and classes was the main problem as these were coming out far too quickly.
There was a year between Prophesies and Factions, that's pretty short considering the time they took play testing Prophesies.

To add 2 New classes and a load of skills to an established game in a year is very quick almost rushed.
Repeating that effort with 2 new classes and skills plus the addition of the Hero system in six months is just asking for problems.

Of course I am judging all this with hindsight I saw no problems at the time and welcomed both games, and since I am a devoted pve player I haven't had anywhere near as frustrating experience as some report.

Secondly and the real problem with skill balancing is pvp, it would seem that however much care you take preparing the game for players to take on other players you will always lose.

Players are clever devious and have far more time than any game company is prepared to spend on the game.
They will take your perfectly balanced system and bend it totally out of shape very quickly.
In short there really isn't much point in attempting to correct this or to seek the perfect system as it doesn't exist.
Another way must be found to allow variety in pvp and pve play without having to micromanage the basic skills every few months.

The fact that they call it skill BALANCING shows that they are trying to 'balance' the game. The reason being that the majority of gamers prefer a fair, balanced fight, instead of a easy pushover game. (Hence popularity of higher dificultys etc). As such, thats the reason that every MMO that I've ever played aims for balance between all choices, as it sells the game.

Instead of taking many months to do a skill update and test pointlessly, because it never finds the problems, they should be much quicker to adjust things. If ever week there was a little tweak tos the skills then things would never get to being a problem. Not talking about wholesale changes, just tweaks to bring useless skills up and solve op skills. Let the players do the testing for real.

You can't balance a game that is already imbalanced. If they were to take away 2nd professions, and heros, then maybe yes you could achieve balance. But by them just changing some skills, it will never happen. My mesmer can now out damage just about any class out there with E-Surge+E-Burn+Mind Wrack...You still wanna call that a balanced update? Cmon dude get serious here.

At least Arenanet does a better job of balancing it's game that a lot of other companies do with theirs....and that's quite something considering the number of skills and the way the classes work.

Go play some of GW's competition and see how imbalanced you think it is after a month or so.

I've played the competition, and it just proves my point that you can't really balance a game, thanks for helping me prove it.

THIS IS A PVP POINT OF VIEW ABOUT THE PVP ASPECT OF THE GAME.


The main policy behind Anet's skill updates are to shake up the meta(it was said by izzy a few years ago). What this means is that they nerf favor of the month builds to death and buff unused skills to god tier status. He said the reason they do that is because they believe it will make the game more fun and increase longevity as the game is constantly changing instead of becoming stale.

I dont know how true that is, but I prefer balanced over overpowered builds.


When people complain about poor balancing they used this bs: Their philosophy was that balancing the game was impossible with the addition of new classes, skills so frequently a few years ago. When compared to a game like starcraft, they said that the number of units and abilities were fixed from released so it was easily to balance that game. Of course this is BS because there has not been a new skill in this game for a very long time.

Someone didn't read a word I said. My point was this exactly..its completely unbalanced.


diabiosx

Finally, a constructive answer. This is interesting, would anyone happen to have a link to this quote?