How to,theoretically, fix all pvp problems.

[wholol]

Hello there,

It has been quite some time since I've posted something around here, mainly it's because there's been nothing but whining and random comments flying by, the original creativity and constructive criticism that these forums once had are no longer here it seems, but that's not part of the topic, moving on.

First, I would like to share some thoughts that I've been having for quite some time now, I've been seeing this re-occurring pattern pop up every time and I just had to put it out there.

Is true pvp balance achievable ? probably not 100%, but let's say it can be pretty damn close to being the ideal pvp that everyone wishes it were, but the real question is why?

The answer is pretty simple really, it's all about money.

Now you want to tell me that a multi- billion dollar company such as blizzard does not have the budget or resources to balance this game after all the years and experience they've been through? I highly doubt it, in fact I believe it is their goal to never achieve balance in this game, why ? because they simply make more profit that way, it is in their best interest that every patch there is a new fotm and an underdog, everytime they release a patch they buff the underdog(s) and nerf the fotm, and the cycle continues , it keeps players wanting to play as they wait for the "time" or hope that their class is going to be better , with promises of getting the good old days back, which in truth will probably never come.

Second, moving onto the core of this topic, Balance.

I'm pretty sure people have come pretty close to guessing how things should be fixed, and if truth be told there is not only one way of fixing things, but I will share my idea at least and hopefully I'll receive some constructive criticism if needed.

How to fix PvP in general :

-Trinkets : yes trinkets, they only have to change pvp trinkets, remove all the stats and make pvp trinkets give special bonuses in equipped, by doing so, blizzard can control specific areas that need to be buffed in pvp only without touching pve at all, here's an example of a possible warlock trinket:

Malevolent trinket of whatever :

Equip: ( Affliction) all damage over time spells now deal 10-15% more damage. OR ( affliction) Dispelling haunt will enable your haunt to be cast instantly and not cost a soul shard, 10 secs duration, 1 charge.

( Destruction) your backlash proc also grants you 3 seconds of interrupt immunity.

Things like that, no on use stats ,the bonus on equip can grant any class what it really needs instead of random things, the % and amount given can be controlled depending on what is needed, if X class is OP , you dont nerf the class you just nerf the trinket, reduce the % in something etc, or buff the classes that need it,with this you can give the classes / specs exactly what they need, this would fix pretty much all class issues down to a fundamental level.

This would not only fix the issue with class balance, it would also fix the issue with pve trinkets being used in pvp.

Now concerning recent lock changes, there are so many things that are being changed and so many opinions about it, my personal opinion is, blood fear being changed is a good step towards the right direction, but the class as a whole is limping, blood fear was one of the few tricks that kept it up, consider it the walking stick that the man was leaning on, unless proper compensation is given, there will be nothing for the limping man to lean on, if you catch my drift.

I'd personally go with, giving mortal coil back as baseline for all spec, introduce a new talent in it's stead, and as for blood fear, the idea is good, but the overall design is flawed, if I had a hand in it, I'd say make it similar to druids nature's grasp, give it 3 charges, every hit received should not fear, but horrify the target ( as in horror CC type, so it does not DR with our fears), also remove the silly health cost, I highly doubt consuming 20% of my own health to remove a target briefly off my back is a sane choice for most people, also I'd fix the entire tier if I had a hand in it, it's too costly overall.

Sac pact, the shield value being halved is a very wrong direction in my opinion, I believe blizzard changed it to reduce the estimated " inflation" of pet health throughout the course of the expansion, but this also trashes the talent entirely for a good deal up through S14 or so, If anything, simply keep the 25% pet heal cost, but give the shield a stagnant SOLID value , lets say 300k for example,it would be good now, but towards the end of the expansion it would be decent at best, the good part about it is we wouldn't have to keep worrying about pet health when we use the shield, and since ( eventually) pet killing strategies might become effective again soon, it would be more of a reason to change it that way.

overall,I'd say pets still die too easily, and affliction needs a thorough look at it's pvp functionality, it simply brings NOTHING to the table anymore, I can pick several classes that can spread pressure better, some that have better dispel protection, most have better utility and ALL have better survivability, affliction is a liability at the moment, I'm not saying it's not playable, I've done 2.2k with it this season , as far as affliction goes it just feels like I'm just tickling people, aside from DS/trinket, which is slightly better pressure, overall it's in a sad state as a spec atm, highly lacking.

That's it for now, feel free to give your opinions and comments regarding the topic, but please be constructive, flaming and whining is silly and I never bother replying to those who do.

[pkm]

You gotta put yourself into the perspective of the devs. Something that no one does. Balancing a game of a magnitude like wow is not an easy task. Everyone complaining this not balanced or this op this needs buffs it's so easy why isn't it happening. Obviously it's not easy. If most people here have some experience or knowledge of making games they will know what it's like.

I myself don't have much but I have made some small games and it is not easy let me tell you. Now think about wow. Everything in wow. From the npcs down to the mechanics. Wow will never be balanced because it's not possible, nothing is perfect. Nothing or no one can achieve perfection.

The shit that Greg street goes through.. I feel sorry for him.

Is it all about the money? Maybe. They are a business after all and the aim of the business is to of course make money. But you can't expect wow to ever be perfect but can come close.

[Screwtape]

The answer is pretty simple really, it's all about money.

Now you want to tell me that a multi- billion dollar company such as blizzard does not have the budget or resources to balance this game after all the years and experience they've been through? I highly doubt it, in fact I believe it is their goal to never achieve balance in this game, why ? because they simply make more profit that way, it is in their best interest that every patch there is a new fotm and an underdog, everytime they release a patch they buff the underdog(s) and nerf the fotm, and the cycle continues , it keeps players wanting to play as they wait for the "time" or hope that their class is going to be better , with promises of getting the good old days back, which in truth will probably never come.

Can I get the facepalm ascii?

[kouby]

If you think perfect balance can be attained with a simple trinket change, I'm pretty sure you don't realise how complex this game really is. All your trinkets would do is give overpowered burst damage to everyone and I think everyone who played in WoTLK realise that that is not an enjoyable thing.

[Baconeggcheese]

As said balance is not as easy as people make it out to be. One thing people don't often realize is you can *balance* things many different ways. Something that might truly be balanced by one persons perspective may not seem balanced to someone else because it isn't an enjoyable design model for them.

There's a lot to be desired and a LOT of ways they can fix each individual problem every time it comes up. There is no end all.

[Nicola]

Not going to work, sorry bro.
During the mop beta, a friend has sent blizzard a 37 page long feedback.txt file that was about class balance, that included both feedback and possible solutions from me as well as other multi glads I play with. ( about 8 of us have worked on that file).
If I have to put a number on it, about 10% of the issues were fixed before MoP went live.
While I no longer have that file myself, I can ask around in my guild if someone else still has it, but I'd say roughly 75% of the balance issues going on right now and that were "fixed" already were in it.

Little changes are not going to bring back the balance, they can try to change as much as they want, it's not going help a lot.
Without a bunch of big changes including revamps of certain abilities and talents, changing numbers on pretty much every single offensive and defensive ability and adding new abilities to/ removing abilities from certain speces/classes, you simply won't see good balanced pvp anymore.
One could even say that some speces need to be completely revamped for pvp.

[Ezzyo]

The irony between the 2nd and "6th" paragraphs (random groupings of sentences?) made me unable to take anything you said in the following seriously.

[Phoenexis]

If you think perfect balance can be attained with a simple trinket change, I'm pretty sure you don't realise how complex this game really is. All your trinkets would do is give overpowered burst damage to everyone and I think everyone who played in WoTLK realise that that is not an enjoyable thing.

Did you even read his post...? Guessing not since you're talking about overpowered burst...

---------- Post added 2013-01-08 at 07:01 PM ----------

Not going to work, sorry bro.
During the mop beta, a friend has sent blizzard a 37 page long feedback.txt file that was about class balance, that included both feedback and possible solutions from me as well as other multi glads I play with. ( about 8 of us have worked on that file).
If I have to put a number on it, about 10% of the issues were fixed before MoP went live.
While I no longer have that file myself, I can ask around in my guild if someone else still has it, but I'd say roughly 75% of the balance issues going on right now and that were "fixed" already were in it.

Little changes are not going to bring back the balance, they can try to change as much as they want, it's not going help a lot.
Without a bunch of big changes including revamps of certain abilities and talents, changing numbers on pretty much every single offensive and defensive ability and adding new abilities to/ removing abilities from certain speces/classes, you simply won't see good balanced pvp anymore.
One could even say that some speces need to be completely revamped for pvp.

I agree a lot with this. MoP PvP is just a disaster with all the abilities that conflict with each other, making the game basically a CD war that barely takes into account anything else. The new talent trees, abilities, and most of what came along with the expansion should be thrown in the fire so that they can restart from scrap. You can't "fix" a game that has DPS instantly popping their health back, healers that can't/don't take the time to cast and endless gap openers/closers (double death grip, triple portals, double Hand of Freedom, etc...). Actually, Blizzard is trying to fix some of these problems, but in the end they will find themselves changing everything. Better just do it from the start rather than muster upon it for a lot of time.

[Shadowygoodness]

Little changes are not going to bring back the balance, they can try to change as much as they want, it's not going help a lot.
Without a bunch of big changes including revamps of certain abilities and talents, changing numbers on pretty much every single offensive and defensive ability and adding new abilities to/ removing abilities from certain speces/classes, you simply won't see good balanced pvp anymore.
One could even say that some speces need to be completely revamped for pvp.

This is just so true. I mean take Affliction for example; our main spell is a channel that when being trained can only really be used in conjunction with Unending Resolve. How do you fix the fact that it's a channel? Do you buff DoT damage against players at which point multidotting gets out of hand? Do you make MG periodically immune to interrupt via some mechanic at which point it goes from crap in pvp to OP? I mean some specs are just not designed with the idea of PvP in mind right now.

[Jessicka]

Now concerning recent lock changes, there are so many things that are being changed and so many opinions about it, my personal opinion is, blood fear being changed is a good step towards the right direction, but the class as a whole is limping, blood fear was one of the few tricks that kept it up, consider it the walking stick that the man was leaning on, unless proper compensation is given, there will be nothing for the limping man to lean on, if you catch my drift.

I read this, and thought if you replaced the words 'Blood Fear' in this quote with 'Drain Mana', I'd feel like I was back in Cataclysm again.

I don't think the trinket 'fix' would work, because some specs and talents are designed with 'on use' trinkets in mind for PvE; that would result in PvE trinkets becoming popular in PvP which is something they're trying desperately to avoid. Unless of course they redesign those specs all over again too...

[Gohzerlock]

Blizzard would never try balancing trinkets individually for each class, mortal coil will never be baseline. Also, did you seriously say affliction brings nothing to the table and that you went 2.2k with it in the same sentence.

[Deleted]

The answer is pretty simple really, it's all about money.

Now you want to tell me that a multi- billion dollar company such as blizzard does not have the budget or resources to balance this game after all the years and experience they've been through? I highly doubt it, in fact I believe it is their goal to never achieve balance in this game, why ? because they simply make more profit that way, it is in their best interest that every patch there is a new fotm and an underdog, everytime they release a patch they buff the underdog(s) and nerf the fotm, and the cycle continues , it keeps players wanting to play as they wait for the "time" or hope that their class is going to be better , with promises of getting the good old days back, which in truth will probably never come.

/facepalm

i always thought that blizzard maded WoW only becouse they wanted to save the world. Now im shocked when i realized that they just wanted to earn some money
Im even more shocked that they are so eveil that they are trying to make that players would play it longer just to get more money They should do that players would stop playing after 2 days like any other company :/

[wholol]

Cba quoting people , I'll just reply in general to most of the comments.

1- It is amazing how fast some people want to jump you simply for saying something a tad odd, my trinket idea was not meant to say "THIS IS IT" , it was supposed to be a subjective example , I'm guessing most of you missed that, and yes perfect balance is impossible, as I've said, but that does not mean the game cannot be improved pvp-wise by quite a large margin. Remember why everyone says "PvP will never be good/ balanced anymore", the mere mention of the word anymore states that once upon a time pvp was more enjoyable, it was closer to balance and you people tell me that achieving perfect balance is impossible, which is true, but who said anything about perfect balance, if they can bring it close enough to the " good" days I guess that would be pretty good in terms of balance don't you say ? if they did it once they cannot do it again? sounds rather odd.

2-Trinkets might not be the actual answer, but I don't know how you guys think it wouldn't work, anyways it doesn't have to be trinkets, could be glyphs or anything that could be used outside of pve that would not affect it, if they alter how mechanics work for pvp and pve they could be done with this whole hassle of pve/ pvp balance affecting the other, they would then be able to focus on what each class needs instead.

3- Also, yes 2.2k can be achievable with affliction, I don't see an issue tbh, if you are unable to do it you either haven't tried the proper comp or you aren't good enough, it's a simple enough concept.

4- facepalm does not really prove or change anything , and the sarcasm is not constructive, either way, I don't bother with trollers , on a more serious note my little text about blizzard at the start shocked some of you it seems, take it easy, I'm not here trying to reveal some conspiracy theory , to each their own I guess.

[Fenzha]

If they were to look at anything on a spec by spec basis i think it should be the amount of gain each spec gets from pvp power.

If one class' spec is doing too much damage or healing then you could just tweak the numbers and reduce the benefits that spec gets from their pvp power.

And it would guarentee no nerfs to pve to balance pvp.

[Deleted]

If they were to look at anything on a spec by spec basis i think it should be the amount of gain each spec gets from pvp power.

If one class' spec is doing too much damage or healing then you could just tweak the numbers and reduce the benefits that spec gets from their pvp power.

And it would guarentee no nerfs to pve to balance pvp.

This. I thought the whole point of adding another PvP stat was to allow them the separation needed to tune abilities separately for PvE and PvP, otherwise what is the point of PvP Power at all?

[Jessicka]

This. I thought the whole point of adding another PvP stat was to allow them the separation needed to tune abilities separately for PvE and PvP, otherwise what is the point of PvP Power at all?

Its there purely to keep pve gear out of pvp (meanwhile theyre happy with pvp gear being okay for fast track upgrades in pve).

[Phoenexis]

Its there purely to keep pve gear out of pvp (meanwhile theyre happy with pvp gear being okay for fast track upgrades in pve).

I really want to know why they couldn't have applied an Ilvl scaling mechanic in rated games similar to what they did with challenge modes. I mean seriously, how hard could it have been? If they didn't want to completely ban PvE gear completely and therefore prevent PvErs from "stepping into the arena", they could've easily put a cap on the item level of PvE gear which would make it not so overpowered...

[Jessicka]

I really want to know why they couldn't have applied an Ilvl scaling mechanic in rated games similar to what they did with challenge modes. I mean seriously, how hard could it have been? If they didn't want to completely ban PvE gear completely and therefore prevent PvErs from "stepping into the arena", they could've easily put a cap on the item level of PvE gear which would make it not so overpowered...

PvP Power and resilience effectively do that, as if they factored into the displayed item level it would be higher than PvE gear of equivalent tier.

[Pannonian]

Could you please elaborate how blizzard generates more money with an unbalanced system? I would think that more player would play a game if they were all satisfied with the balance (Important point: There isn't a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 is unbalanced and we want to reach 100. Balance has a lot to do with perception. Just one example: a guy in my guild (warrior) raging over blood dks. He couldn't kill him, but on the other hand the blood dk also didn't do much damage (was before blood nerf for pvp so we are talking about a time when nearly everyone agreed warriors were OP) - but just the fact that he had to run after him for 30 or 40 minutes infuriated him).

Getting back to topic: how do you earn more money by sabotaging your own system?

[Jessicka]

Could you please elaborate how blizzard generates more money with an unbalanced system? I would think that more player would play a game if they were all satisfied with the balance (Important point: There isn't a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 is unbalanced and we want to reach 100. Balance has a lot to do with perception. Just one example: a guy in my guild (warrior) raging over blood dks. He couldn't kill him, but on the other hand the blood dk also didn't do much damage (was before blood nerf for pvp so we are talking about a time when nearly everyone agreed warriors were OP) - but just the fact that he had to run after him for 30 or 40 minutes infuriated him).

Getting back to topic: how do you earn more money by sabotaging your own system?

The argument of the tinfoil hat brigade would suggest that an imperfect system will keep people engaged as you're able to offer continuous 'improvements', some of which can be passed off as 'new content'. That by constantly changing and tweaking things, you can feed of players' hope that things will get better for them individually, and keep them subscribed if that hope is occasionally realised. A perfectly balanced game would struggle to offer those things, and potentially stagnate, leaving people bored.

There's probably some truth in that.