User:Qaletaqa/Skill Balance

From Guild Wars Wiki

On this page I will put my thoughts on how the creation and skill balancing process should be according to me. It now only contains key words and a bit of text so that I won't forget about what I should think, it is pointless to discuss it at this point.

What my team would look like:

• 45% would be mathematicians.
• 45% would be creative people.
• 10% would be programmers.

Creation process:

• Art.
• Feeling.
  • Well I think a skill should give the player a feeling, like a healing spell should use soft colors and a slow effect, this doesn't mean it should have a slow activation time but a slow visual effect. They do it well in GW but sometimes when I use an attack skill I don't see a obvious visual effect, yes you can see a warrior swing it's axe or weapon of choice but not a good enough effect to feel like you are really hurting the enemy. When something attacks I wanna feel and see that aggressiveness, fierceness and anger on the screen, not just a red flash and a dude/dudette swinging his/her weapon. This game needs more oomph.
• Skill type.
• Effect.
  • See feeling.
• Name.
  • Guild Wars does a good job with naming things.
• Imagination.
  • Every skill should be and feel original, I don't wanna think about another game because a skill looks like a skill or effect I have seen in another game, I wanna feel like saying "Now this is GW". Never look at or think about another game when designing one.
• World.
  • Create a skill by seeing it in a build, teambuild and in the world. It must look like it's part of the world, this is hard to explain but i'll give it a try later.
• Skill to skill.
  • When you have created a skill you should compare it with other skills to see that it doesn't look and feel like another one, I wanna be able to recognize skills just by looking at the action, effect, etc... wich isn't always the case in GW.

Balancing process:

• Skill in builds.
  • Test the skills that are changed for balancing purposes in different builds, team builds, etc...
• Skill in environment.
  • Test the skills in different areas of the game, PvE, PvP. Test it in different explorable areas and missions, etc...
    • The PvE, PvP part is optional because you can make a PvE and/or PvP version of the skill.
• Theory and practice.
  • I think this is where most people make mistakes, they think when it looks good on paper it will be good in-game. Wrong.