skill-balance
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The Soapbox: The illusion of balance
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Somewhere, on a lone computer in a lonely room, sits the archetype for a balanced MMO, one in which every set of abilities in a skill-based MMO is just as useful as every other set of abilities and every class in a class-based game is just as potent as every other class. There are no disparities in terms of power level, no massive gaps in gearing, and no issues with the specific fights. It is an entirely balanced machine. And as long as we're creating a myth with no place in reality, let's assume that it's being guarded by unicorns. That's the problem with balance -- it's an idea that doesn't actually work in a real environment. We talk a lot about wanting games to have balanced systems, and there are players devoted to declaring with great fervor that classes aren't balanced against one another, but balance is such a hazy concept that no matter how much you want a balanced game, it doesn't really exist.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The great nerfbat of '10 (or why ArenaNet didn't fail)
Last week's Guild Wars skill update sparked discussion among players that shows no sign of slowing any time soon. Player reactions ran the full spectrum, from delight to the infamous (and ineffective, since the player in question never intended to stop playing and the box didn't burn very well anyway) box burning. Whatever your feelings on it, there's no doubt that this huge skill update had a pretty big impact on the community over the past few days. Follow along after the jump for a closer look at the aftermath.
Guild Wars releases long-awaited skill update
We were told last week it was coming, but the huge Guild Wars skill balance that has been long promised finally arrived last night. The Guild Wars Live Team and Test Krewe have been working on this one for quite a while, in part because of the size and significance of the update. The unusual length of time was also partially because they were striving to address some underlying issues rather than just swinging the nerfbat at a few choice skills, only to create a new flavor of the month build to take over. While the changes to Shadow Form and the entire concept of invulnerability are creating the loudest buzz at the moment, they weren't the only things to get a look over by any means. This is one of the largest skill updates ever to come to Guild Wars, and the update notes were released at the same time as a developer update elaborating on the thought processes behind many of the changes. Watch for this Monday's Flameseeker Chronicles, when we'll take a more in depth look at the update.
Lord of the Rings Online talks about skill upgrades for Volume III
With some major combat upgrades going hand-in-hand with the last major expansion, Lord of the Rings Online drew a few raised eyebrows over the lack of major skill updates at launch. However, as the official site's most recent developer diary explains, it wasn't for lack of interest so much as wanting to see how the new combat system played out before making changes. With the upcoming Oath of the Rangers, the systems team has been hard at work adding level 64 upgrades to help each class play better and more enjoyably in all areas of the game. Outlining a simple design philosophy -- make underused skills interesting, give exciting bonuses, and leave general class balance alone -- the diary goes on to highlight the upgrades offered to each class. Champions, Guardians, and Captains get improved buffs for themselves, Burglars and Hunters see their Power concerns addressed, and other classes got underused skills happily improved to bring them better to the forefront of play. Lord of the Rings Online has always had a respectable diversity among its classes, and the coming update seems poised to improve the game as a whole by making everyone just a little stronger.
Secondary class balance is the focus of this month's Guild Wars dev blog
This month's skill balance for Guild Wars provides a refocus to a few aspects of the game: namely Guild vs Guild battles and the importance of secondary professions. For GvG, ArenaNet has decided to ditch the additional health bonus given to Guild Lords during a morale boost. They've also tweaked the Amulet of Protection to reach maximum damage at around 12 minutes instead of 22 minutes. These changes were put in place to steer GvG gameplay away from rushing the Guild Lord immediately and balance the action throughout the match.The secondary profession balance is mostly set up with skill usage in mind. Since there are literally hundreds of thousands of skill combination choices available in the game, the developers thought it necessary to take measures to enforce primary profession choice. This is certain to change the way energy pools are managed and Elite skills are used. You can view the detailed developer diary for February to get more details on this month's changes.
Guild Wars skill balance targets Elites
If you've noticed a change in your Guild Wars Elite skills since yesterday, there's a good reason. The folks at ArenaNet are in the midst of a pretty hefty overhaul to the Elite skills, and yesterday kicked off the first update in the process. As an accompaniment to this update, an extensive dev diary has been released, detailing the entire process for a skill balance of this magnitude. There are three main factors that need to be taken into consideration when looking at which Elites to change: The skill has to be generally unused across all formats, all professions should have about the same number of updates and the skill has to be weak regardless of trends in the game. A skill that's strong as a counter to certain PvP builds but not others would not generally qualify, according to the dev diary.Be sure to check out this complete dev diary for more information on the process and which skills in each class were changed exactly.
Guild Wars update adds new Zaishen reward and more
Yesterday's skill balance and update for Guild Wars brought with it some large changes for arguably overpowered skills, bug fixes and the addition of the newest Zaishen Reward tonic for September. Despite the creepy appearance of that new Macabre Tonic creature, the main topic on everyone's mind is the change to the Unyielding Aura Elite skill.This skill had previously been the cornerstone for what's known as Ghost Running, where players could take advantage of what could best be described as an exploit. This also worked for many popular farming runs as well. With this new patch, Unyielding Aura now only works "within spell casting range", eliminating the way characters could rez from across the map. Of course many players don't like this fix, but as any veteran Guild Wars player knows, it doesn't take ArenaNet long to remedy unbalanced skills.
Guild Wars skill update: The nerfing of Shadow Form
The ups and downs of the Assassin skill Shadow Form has been quite the topic of debate lately in Guild Wars. Back in May, the skill had its duration increased which made it the perfect skill for ecto farming builds in the Underworld. The inevitable progression from there evolved into ecto and shard prices dropping dramatically from the over-farming of all the big farm spots. However, in the June 2nd skill update, Shadow Form had quite a change. Now, the caster does 50% less damage while Shadow Form is active on them. Not only that, but the Mindblade Spectres in the Underworld have received Hex Breaker to help combat the hex-based farming builds that have always been so popular in this area.Now the question is, do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing? Of course, if you're one of the people who farmed ecto with your A/E Chaos Planes farmer, you might not be very excited by this update. We've found that generally, most players do welcome this change though. Not only for the projected rise in ecto prices (making them worth obtaining the old way, and selling on the market again), but also to give a bit of credibility back to the Assassins who enjoyed their class for what it was before they became easy money-makers.
The latest Guild Wars skill balance explained
In the most recent skill balance for Guild Wars, we're treated to something we don't normally get: a full explanation on the reasoning behind the changes to each skill set for the classes affected. In most skill balances (for any game) we get news of the changes to the skills, but that's about it.For example, the devs make it known that they're aware of the ongoing player concerns with Ursan Blessing, yet they still don't feel a need to make any changes to the skill. They also hope to bring a little sword-love back to PvP, as well as quite a few changes to the Mesmer's energy-draining skills. There's also a clear distinction between the PvE and the PvP skills they're changing, and the reasoning behind both. Be sure to check out the source link below for a complete run-down of all skills changed this time around.
