People who have played GW1 will know why "balance" is bad.True, a PvP system based on skill only and nothing else is fair. However, such a system has three fatal flaws.
Firstly, it is uninteresting, because the skill gap between players in an online mmo is never going to be large enough. People switching from gear-based MMOs like Forsaken World to skill based and super balanced games like GW2 tend to see themselves as the under-appreciated "pros" that could easily beat the "noob" CSers, if only there was no gear difference.
Lol.
These same people will probably get their asses whopped roundly and soundly by real "pros" in GW2, and feel more worthless and have less fun than they did in Forsaken World.
Anyone who made it past rank3 hero and r1 gladiator in GW1 will know that only a select handful of r11/g7 players in GW knew how to play the game at a level truly above the masses. To attain their level of skill, one must practice interrupting/KD locking/synchronized damage spiking with their teams constantly. Getting to this level of skill in GW is much more difficult than getting level 3 wings in Forsaken World. GW PvP is much more selective than Forsaken World PvP.
The second problem with these "skill based" games where gear does not matter is the lack of connection between the player and his character. If all your achievements and efforts in PvE will never contribute to your combat effectiveness in PvP, then what is the point of accumulating wealth/power, which is what an mmo is all about? Characters are created and deleted every month to catch up with the new meta-game. A player can be any class and any spec. Nothing is permanent. Long-term investments mean absolutely nothing. You might as well play a FPS or RTS game.
The last problem is best demonstrated by a quick example:
An extremely skilled and experienced warrior who has played GW since its release for 4 years faces a necromancer who just recently bought the game and knows nothing about it. The necromancer click on two hex skill, and the warrior is now removed from the game. Thats right, removed from the game. He is effectively deleted from the server for the duration of the hexes. Oh and one more thing: these hexes can be chained. No amount of "skill" could save the warrior from his natural counter class. That is how bad it is. In Forsaken World, an assassin could still kill a warrior through BoR if he has the situational advantage with superior gear/red hand. A priest with barely any damage can still solo a vampire with lvl 2 wings if the vampire has 0 mana. In GW, there is not even the remotest theoretical possibility for a player to defy the iron rules of "balance" imposed by the developers. You WILL get countered by your natural counters, and thats that.
Whoa. It's always interesting to read something that is right on the opposite end of the pole when it comes to what you believe.
This guy isn't trolling. And where he's coming from... I can understand due to the kind of point of view that he is espousing.
Which I can sum up in one sentence:
Balance is bad because making skill the cornerstone is too elitist.
His original post detailed why FW is superior to GW and will be superior to GW2 in every way.
(What I'm getting), FW is better because:
Cash-bought power is easier to acquire than skill, and therefore not elitist.
And no, nugget is not any kind of GW PvP god. Poster says he has R4 Gladiator, which is certainly a mark of GW PvP skill.
To be honest, I'm not even sure quite why I posted this other than, 'Wow, that's a lifeform so totally different from me that I'm surprised we share superficially similar skins.'
XD
P.S. The last scenario he's describing isn't balance, it's IMbalance. It's precisely what ANet mucks around with PvP and PvP skills SO often to try to put right.
Moar thoughts:
Maybe his view stems from a frame of mind which says, 'If I'm not proving that I'm better than someone else, then I'm not interested. GW takes too much time and effort to be better than someone else. FW just takes money. Therefore, I like FW better.'
Could be why his viewpoint seem to be the antithesis of a nugget's. Nugget is all about proving to nugget that she got better than nugget. =P That nugget beat nugget! *beat self* Beating others is just icing. From this, we can see that nugget has a much larger ego than quoted-fellow, for to nugget, nugget is the only important milestone. XD