What is BALANCE in pvp?

Darka · April 2014

What exactly is Balance in pvp to you?
Balance is a word that tends to get thrown around by every to make them sound like they know what they are talking about.
One thing is clear to me is that Blanaced PvP means different things to different people

So just a couple of questions in regards to Balance in PVP within TESO
-What is Balance in TESO you?
-Can it be achieved in game?
-What other games have achieved balance
- Is Balance about everyone being equal?

For me I have found Balance has been used to much to describe other issues or to help back a claim against something unrelated
* Player X can do this, therefore the game isn’t balanced
* Player Y can achieve this, therefor the game isn’t balanced
* I can do X, Y and Z, but Player A can do B, therefore game isn’t balanced
* I didn’t understand W and Player B made use of her knowledge around it therefore it is unbalanced

Sometimes in pvp the situations are not balanced and the encounters change having their ups and downs, one experience does not speak for all of one thing. As no complaints are ever met on balance when the balance is met in your favour

Please share your thoughts on what exactly is Balance to you, and how to obtain it so we can maybe move forward in understanding and hopefully achieving better pvp and community from its understanding.

beravinprb19_ESO · April 2014

To me, balance means that all builds are viable in the right situations. No build should be 100% effective at everything, and no one ability should be fool proof at what it does. Take the DK ability, Stone Fist, as an example. If it hits, it will stun the target for 3 seconds and give the DK the advantage. However, another player can outrun the projectile, kite the DK, roll to avoid, or block. If all of that fails, they can stun break out of it. The ability is strong, yes, but it can also be easily dealt with. It can be countered by another player.

Bolt, on the other hand, is far more difficult to deal with. Most of the time, you usually have to hope that you have enough people around to kill them before they can starting bolting away. I mean, I can't Stone Fist them because the projectile is slow. I cant snare them because Dark Talons is short range and I need to close the distance first. I cant close the distance because charge takes time to do so, and by the time I get there, they have already bolted away. In other words, there is nothing I can do, and everything on my bar at the time is countered by one single ability. Thus, I conclude that said ability is too strong.

But hey, this is just my opinion. Unlike some, I can accept that not everyone will agree with me. I can also accept that maybe I'm not the best player in the world. But then, most of us are in the same boat, no? Either way, balance is how one thing measures up against another. If rock were to beat scissors and paper, for example, then rock has broken the balance and needs to be brought back so that scissors and paper can be used.

awkwarrd · April 2014

There are multiple ways of looking at balance.
And with Cyradiil, there are multiple things that make people unsure of the concept.

For a level gap Example:

Low level players getting demolished by VR+ players
VR10 small groups wiping out zergs of low level players.

So a high level player using certain skills can do more damage and seem OP in some situations.
If a low level player lashes out with claims of certain things being OP, and no-one knows the level difference between the 2.. how do others know what is really happening.
At the same time, no one really evaluates the level gap, mostly because the person making the accusation is angry and doesn't go further than RAGING, which incites others to troll, so you can't see the reality.

Other definitions of PVP Balance can be:

EXP gain versus PVE.
Rewards for fighting for your Faction, being too little or none at all.
Being in a big fight sieging a tower, then everyone crashes to lose it.
Speed hacks
Teleporting hacks.

The Buff that is meant to keep low level players competitive in PVP was not balanced around people being max level and people being level 10, against vr10 players, who completely dominate over that buff.

Skills / Armors / Siege
None of these seem to be balanced or tested for end game PVP, with the low level players in mind along with the buff that scales them up slightly, and vr10 players in mind that still destroy people with that buff.

Max level PVP doesn't work when majority of the people who PVP are not getting the rewards and experience to be able to compete with people who primarily PVE'd to max level before PVPing
So a PVP person, will not get to the Level of a PVE person at all, for many months, or longer.. depending on how long he plays.. and if he continues to play after realizing the PVP is not what he thought.

The Balance gap of being able to do what you want..
There is no balance here.
You either PVP and get destroyed by PVE people.
Or PVE to max level then PVP, so you can compete, which is fundamentally wrong from an enjoyable perspective.

When PVE wins in a PVP environment, things are wrong.
And i don't mean, once off against good tactics, i mean the level gap with the stats and gear and low level scaled up buff that can't compete.
You will never be able to balance anything in this situation, whoever tries will just make it worse, unless the PVP exp/loot gains were dramatically increased to make it viable as a different way of playing the game and not forced into PVE to compete.

E-sports.
If you talk about e-sports towards Cyradiil, in an effort to argue the point about having low exp gains in PVP is good, then you don't PVP at all.
An alternative way of playing the game should be a worthwhile way of playing the game in all aspects.

Fun
Experience
Loot

Cyradiil can only boast Fun, until the PVE people who were able to level up, join into PVP, then you get stomped constantly by high level players.

WAR:
Is the Cyradiil a fun war for a player in a game? yes, until you get slaughtered, repeatedly.. with no chance of winning by learning from mistakes.
So the balance of a war would side heavily with the army who has more high level people, who once again.. PVE'd to max level.

Subscription:

A PVE person can take a week off work, and level from 10 to 50, and a few level's into Vet.
A PVP person can take a week off work, and level from 10 to 15-20 and become pretty angry and upset and post many misinformed forum threads.

Meanwhile the subscription method is the only winner.
The player is left wondering if he should try PVE or to unsub and go to a diff game that he will enjoy.
We already see many of those forum threads..

Cyradiil was awesome to begin with, everyone was equal.
The repeatable quest was a great thing, but it was removed because people thought it was too much experience.
While people in PVE were able to triple that experience gain, and fly up the levels alot faster, but the Cyradiil quest got turned into a daily.

I never saw someone in PVP get to level 50 in 17 hours.(this was the first 50)
Although that exploit was quickly nerfed, but the experience gain in PVE was still faaaaar greater than PVP, even with the PVP's repeatable quest.

Seems like regardless of balance, whoever is in charge of Cyradiil's management doesn't care, they have made no attempt to talk about the state of Cyradiil at all.

TL;DR
Sorry for the long post.

Darka · April 2014

That was a good write up @Awkwarrd

awkwarrd · April 2014

Darka wrote: »

That was a good write up @Awkwarrd

@Darka
Thanks, i hope i explained all my points enough to be understood.

Darka · April 2014

I think you did

Be good to get a few viewpoints on this topic, considering it is not really anything that is right or wrong just what people see it as, and hopefully get a better understanding from it

grabbintrionb14_ESO · April 2014

Best way to look at balance IMO is statistical analysis of large data sets. For example if a class gets significantly more kills per death than any other class it is probably OP, not counting players in non combat support roles.

awkwarrd · April 2014

grabbintrionb14_ESO wrote: »

Best way to look at balance IMO is statistical analysis of large data sets. For example if a class gets significantly more kills per death than any other class it is probably OP, not counting players in non combat support roles.

IMO that is a very poor way of looking at balance.

If you read my first comment at the top, and keep in mind this is for PVP, so all level ranges are included from 10 to vr10.

Darka · April 2014

But you would have to keep in mind class player ratio and a few other aspects when analyzing it
A popular class will have more kills, but will not be over powered
Thanks for adding your thoughts

Raice · April 2014

To be fair, I'm not saying a level 10 should be able to take on a VR10, or 1 dude should be able to take on 10 others. Let's not get too technical about this. We're all assuming that obvious fallacies in logic do not apply in these theoretical scenarios.

In a game where you can literally have a million different setups; the gist of BALANCE is this:

The objective of PvP is to win. Balance is achieved when no matter what abilities you have selected - none of them or any sequence thereof should ever hinder you from achieving the objective under any circumstance. What this means is that every ability and every sequence thereof should provide for you the player the ability to achieve the objective, regardless of what the other player has.

It should all boil down to Player Skill - which more or less is the sum of knowing when and how to use each ability on your hotbar, as well as knowing the battle field, what to do and where to go, etc. Player Skill can and never will be balanced, because it is precisely what takes the game out of a binary domain.

In other words, your abilities and the sequences thereof are nothing more than how you go about achieving the objective. If at any time your abilities become something more than simply the manner in which you conduct business... BALANCE has been broken.

Moreover, no ability or sequence thereof should ever completely lock another player out of achieving the objective. If there is ever a situation where an ability or any sequence thereof completely prevents you from achieving your goal to the extent that the other player is afforded victory over you - balance is not achieved.

In other words, if the other dude wins because you are completely locked out of all possibilities in favor of achieving the objective... whatever that other dude was doing... is broken. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between abilities or sequences thereof being broken and being outplayed. Being outplayed takes time and effort. Having a broken setup is usually an instantaneous thing where you have zero time to react.

Some of you might look at an ability like Bolt Escape as being broken as it clearly locks you out of achieving your objective. While Bolt Escape does indeed prevent you from achieving your objective in some situations (to win)... it does not grant victory for the one using it. Thus, it is a stale-mate defensive ability that is more or less balanced in light of this particular definition of BALANCE. With abilities like this, there is no victory for either party. And so... game on.

Can Balance be achieved in ESO? I don't know. Even with all the variations possible, if you look at the abilities in a vacuum without outside influences, I would say that things are for the most part on the straight and narrow. There might be a few issues here and there. But when you start throwing in armor, stat bonuses, set bonuses, potions, etc... that changes things up quite a bit.

But, those are all usually incidental things that help you as the player customize exactly what you like and don't like. In other words, they don't change how you do business... they change how well you can do the things you do when you are doing the things the way you do them...

...

... Yeah.

Darka · April 2014

Raice wrote: »

To be fair, I'm not saying a level 10 should be able to take on a VR10, or 1 dude should be able to take on 10 others. Let's not get too technical about this. We're all assuming that obvious fallacies in logic do not apply in these theoretical scenarios.

Sadly these are the types of situations that get complained about over lack of balance it seems

Cydone · April 2014

grabbintrionb14_ESO wrote: »

Best way to look at balance IMO is statistical analysis of large data sets. For example if a class gets significantly more kills per death than any other class it is probably OP, not counting players in non combat support roles.

That's what COD does for weapon balancing and it REALLY doesn't work. TOR does the same and it REALLY doesn't work.

lao · April 2014

Darka wrote: »

What exactly is Balance in pvp to you?
Balance is a word that tends to get thrown around by every to make them sound like they know what they are talking about.
One thing is clear to me is that Blanaced PvP means different things to different people

So just a couple of questions in regards to Balance in PVP within TESO
-What is Balance in TESO you?
-Can it be achieved in game?
-What other games have achieved balance
- Is Balance about everyone being equal?

For me I have found Balance has been used to much to describe other issues or to help back a claim against something unrelated
* Player X can do this, therefore the game isn’t balanced
* Player Y can achieve this, therefor the game isn’t balanced
* I can do X, Y and Z, but Player A can do B, therefore game isn’t balanced
* I didn’t understand W and Player B made use of her knowledge around it therefore it is unbalanced

Sometimes in pvp the situations are not balanced and the encounters change having their ups and downs, one experience does not speak for all of one thing. As no complaints are ever met on balance when the balance is met in your favour

Please share your thoughts on what exactly is Balance to you, and how to obtain it so we can maybe move forward in understanding and hopefully achieving better pvp and community from its understanding.

Raice wrote: »

To be fair, I'm not saying a level 10 should be able to take on a VR10, or 1 dude should be able to take on 10 others. Let's not get too technical about this. We're all assuming that obvious fallacies in logic do not apply in these theoretical scenarios.

1 dude killing 10 dudes is perfectly fine aslong as its archieved by playerskill to be fair. look at UO, darkfall etc it happened all the time there and it was balanced cos those games offer a skill ceiling high enough to make it possible. in those modern games like eso the skill ceiling is so incredibly low that it just comes down to itemz/levels. that is not balance.

however mmos havent been about skill anymore basically since blizzard decided to ruin the market by releasing "World of horrible awful lowskill game from hell" and opening the genre to a whole new audience (of braindead zombies)

therefor a new measurement has been put in place. nowadays its not about ur personal ability to play the game, now its about ur personal tolerance for *** boring gear and level grind and endless pointless pve no1 needs.
if u can hold out longer than the rest of the playerbase without losing ur sanity or killing ur very soul during boring and pointless pve encounter #34987 u win at pvp.

it sucks yes i know. blame blizzard and there horriawful noobgame for that. before that pathetic game mmos were a niche genre only the most dedicated gamers would dare to step into and ofc that showed in the quality of the games.

nowadays its a genre full of games that are nice and easy and dont require a brain or any talent so all the braindead zombies and housewives can have some "fun" in it and pay their subs so companys make more cash.

for any true mmo veteran the real genre died 10 years ago and we´re just still here cos theres nothing else to play anyways. all those new games are nothing but a shadow of the real games from back in the days tho. ive come to terms with the fact that there never will be a really good mmo ever again aslong as "Generation WoW" exists.

Darka · April 2014

Playerskill is something I found hard to specifically define
Is it how you fight? Is it knowing the right build? Is it how you use the surroundings
Skill levels vary from player to player, and you can never balance that. People are not even, and I think that is where a lot of issues start
But no one will admit to not being skilled or someone was better they would rather blame the game then themselves

lao · April 2014

Darka wrote: »

Playerskill is something I found hard to specifically define
Is it how you fight? Is it knowing the right build? Is it how you use the surroundings
Skill levels vary from player to player, and you can never balance that. People are not even, and I think that is where a lot of issues start
But no one will admit to not being skilled or someone was better they would rather blame the game then themselves

usually u would measure playerskill on aspects of the game that can be performed differently well. like aim in fps games or reaction time in mmos with a real CC system (like daoc). now in most modern games the devs made sure to take those elements out of the equation so the measurement of playerskill comes down to positioning, knowing when to go in and when to stay back, not overextending, anticipating bad situations and avoid them, stuff like that. basically having a halfway functioning brain will suffice to manage all of those. this is the reason why the skill ceiling is so low in modern games. all the aspects that actually require some dexterious skill are are pretty much non existent. thats why u cant rly tell if some1 is good in games like eso. u can just tell if some1 is really really stupid.