User:Dark Morphon/Balance stuff/Balance101

The purpose of this page is to form a base from which I can logically deduce statements concerning balance in Guild Wars and to think up ways to reach a better state of balance over-all. It's important to note that whatever has been said on this page can get a rewrite to enhance the readability or even to improve the completeness of this page. It's therefore a work in progress.

The definiton of Perfect Balance and the principle of Inferior Gameplay Quality
A game is in a state of perfect balance if superior teams are able to beat inferior teams regardless of their respective skill level.

Skills, builds and teambuilds can be considered functions, with an effectiveness that grows as the player's ability to properly use it grows. It is important to note that regardless of the used skill, being skilled at the game will always increase the output of the used skill in battle up to a certain level. This innate advantage for skilled players is caused by abilities including but not limited to proper positioning, knowledge of the game and field awareness. Abilities like these are not limited to Guild Wars, most of them are important in many games and are fundamental to the way a good gamer plays. There is, however, a difference between skills that do and do not take skill. Some skills give an extra reward for using it properly in battle or even add an entire new layer to the user's abilities, which can be taken advantage of by skilled players. In a perfectly balanced game, these rewards add up to a point that no matter how good the player gets, there will always remain a difference between superior and inferior players. This means that making sure that this reward is as high as possible for every skill is the way to go: this reduces the influence of small number imbalances and luck by increasing the difference between skilled and less skilled players.

The main purpose of this view of balance is to exclude specific skill functions. If two skills have the same or a very similar function but one takes less skill than the other, the one that takes less skill needs to get a rework. This is the principle of inferior gameplay quality. Primal Rage vs Frenzy is a good example of how it works. Primal Rage offers increased movement speed on top of increased attack speed, making the increased movement speed a give-away. If a Warrior with Frenzy wants to chase a target, he has to use Rush to catch up, sacrificing his Frenzy and one strike of adrenaline in the process. This is a trade-off, one that Primal Rage lacks, which reduces the amount of skill it takes to play. There is more: the permanent IMS on Primal Rage also makes positioning easier (less skill requiring) because the user can move faster between targets and can position himself for a spike more easily. This, too, reduces the amount of skill needed to use the skill. Primal Rage therefore offers inferior gameplay quality and needs to get a rework.

Classic Balance
At this point I'd like to introduce the term Classic Balance. If you mention an imbalance, most people will assume the mentioned problem is caused either by it being over- or underpowered. Clearly, the conventional view on balance has to do with equality in power and the lack thereoff. Classic Balance goes from the assumption that equal power implies balance and any deviation from that implies imbalance. Balancers need to be cautious with using the findings of this view and should certainly not apply it to everything because of a few fundamental flaws:


 * You need to factor in every possible use a skill can has and all the secondary effects to accurately calculate the power of a skill. This is a common mistake. If you don't factor in everything, you don't have a proper analogy. Trying to calculate a skill's power is therefore too complex to be realistically possible.
 * A difference in power doesn't automatically imply imbalance. Monks for example are overall more powerful than Warriors because they also have to deal with damage and pressure from the other members of the opponent's team.
 * Equality of power doesn't automatically imply relative balance. The big problem here is that calculations generally assume "perfect" play. Mind Blast takes a lot less skill than the average Warrior build. That means that if you make it so powerful that they are roughly on equal footing with "perfect" play, there will be difference in power on nearly every other level.

I would like to conclude that difference in power is (quite obviously) only relevant if it reduces balance in any way. That means that you can't call a difference in power an imbalance until you can link an obvious example of where it could reduce balance to it. Power should be used as a tool to prove that certain things are possible, at which point more direct balance strategies should take over. For example, Blinding Surge's of low energy cost, ability to Blind AoE and damage is problematic because it allows the user to spam it on recharge without having to dedicate much of his skill bar to it and without losing out much in terms of damage, unlike Blinding Flash, for which this isn't worth it. This is problematic because it requires no skill at all to spam this skill on recharge and so much the more to stop it.

Measures vs Counter-Measures
Note: this part of my article is heavily inspired on what has been said on the talk page by user:SylvXIII.

Although the principle of inferior gameplay quality can be applied to any group of skills, measures and counter measures have a deeper meaning in the game because they directly affect each other. If Condition removal on the whole would get buffed, the entirety of Condition applial would be affected. One can deduce that measures should take exactly as much skill as counter-measures in order to reach the highest state of balance. In this situation, the sum of the skill required from the applying and receiving end is maximized. In other words, applying and maintaining a certain effect on your opponent should take just as much skill as your opponent's efforts to stop it, unless it reduces balance on another level.

Implicit and Explicit Gimmickry
This part of the page will be on gimmickry and the two different forms of them. A gimmick is defined as a strategy or build that abuses specific mechanics to minimize the effort needed to achieve the user's goals. A gimmick gives inferior players the means to defeat superior players and are an example of imbalance. They should be reduced to a minimum. There are, however, two different types of gimmicks:


 * Gimmicks coming from skills that can solely be used for those gimmicks and have no specific role in the game. I call these explicit gimmicks.
 * Gimmicks featuring skills or even builds that play a significant role in a balanced metagame. I call these implicit gimmicks.

Examples of explicit gimmicks are Jagged Strike + Fox Fangs and builds such as IWAY and Sway. Since these skills do not play a role in proper gameplay, the proper way to deal with them is a rework.

An example of an implicit gimmick is a Ranger spamming his interrupts on recharge. This strategy is far inferior to a Ranger properly using his interrupts and is very easy to counter. One can simply cast in between the interrupts because of their aftercast or even count recharge on the skills. Obviously, nobody uses this in real PvP. Technically speaking though, it is a gimmick and thus an imbalance. But the scale of the effectiveness is so small and the problem so hard to fix without affecting proper Rangers that it generally isn't worth it. Most implicit gimmicks are in the same boat: they are hard to fix and the effect they have on the game is neglectable. Even worse, bad players will always find ways to simplify gameplay in a way similar to this. It's unavoidable. Trying to fix them is nothing more than a waste of time.

Implicit gimmickry is caused by the fact that some pieces of knowledge and player abilities have a bigger impact on their effectiveness than others. On higher levels of play, the individual impact of an ability will become more and more neglectable.