Guild Wars 2

This Post Needs To Get Dev Attention
This Complete Topic Should Be Internally Discussed By Devs
This Discussion Shoud Also Be Made Public Through A Livestream

This thread. Oh my god this thread.
+1000008566754

This is a really good thread, I hope arenanet reads this and changes things. You’re right 7 month meta is ridiculous.

I completely agree, thanks for taking the time to write all this but i think that it is spot on. Lets hope it gets some attention.

Awesome! This thread is GOLD!

Envy.8093:

This is a really good thread, I hope arenanet reads this and changes things. You’re right 7 month meta is ridiculous.

Agreed

And all that funky jazz

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

Frenk.5917:

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

It’s a shame that most of the forum is just “My class is too weak” / “That class which killed me is too strong” / “I was hit for X by Y” whining, yeah. I think the main reason this forum was created was to contain the rage, so to say. Keeps the rest a bit more sane.

So I’ve been away for a few days, and I’ve come back after having done some research to fully confirm the claims that I have made in the OP. Most of this work is still exploratory, so it is by no means exhaustive. Now, none of this is intended to derail the topic from the core issue – that Arenanet should change its balancing tempo from once every several months to a fortnightly schedule – but this is merely to show my work and demonstrate that these are things that could have been addressed in a stronger fashion – had the priority been given to give the game the polish that it deserves.

To begin, let’s look at Sigil of Paralyzation and the subsequent handling of issues relating to Control effect duration increases, including ancillary effects of Runesets like Mesmer and Melandru altering CC duration

The earliest reference I could find to Sigil of Paralyzation being bugged was in November 2012, in a post submitted to the Bugs forum, but never followed up upon. This is the seminal thread that demonstrates that Paralyzation Sigil does not work as intended – affecting Daze as well as Stun, and with numbers that indicate that the duration is rounded up to the closest second

Threads like these continue to pop up in ensuing months, with evidence mounting that something is Not Quite Right. It should be noted that these threads

Nov 2012: Sigil of Paralyzation increasing daze
Feb 2013: Sigil of Paralyzation demonstrably increasing Daze
Mar 2013: Sigil of Paralyzation increasing Stun duration by 1 second rounded up
Mar 2013: Publicising widely known exploited bugs including Sigil of Paralyzation
Apr 2013: Sigil of Paralyzation increasing Necromancer Warhorn Daze
May 2013: Sigil of Paralyzation and Rune of Mesmer interactions

Given the proliferation of this issue throughout various profession forums as well as the sPVP forum, it should have been clear from the outset that something is wrong. Fast forward to the leadup to the Dhuumfire Patch and you begin to see these threads pop up:

Jun 15, 2013: Fear is a stun and is increased by Sigil of Paralysation
Jun 15, 2013: Sigil of Paralyzation works on Fear

And of course, post-Dhuumfire, Sigil of Paralyzation exploitation really begins to pick up.
Condition duration, Terror, Sigil of Paralyzation
Generating data regarding extra Fear duration from Sigil of Paralyzation

As a further realisation of Fear being included in the tables of both a Control effect and a Condition, Melandru Runes were the next to be brought up:
Jun 4 2013: Melandru Runes reduce Fear duration twice

Thankfully, the fix for Fear was swift. It came only a week post Dhuumfire – with the attendant threads of Necromancers carried by the Sigil begging for its return:
“Please retain Fear duration increase for Sigil of Paralyzation”https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Please-Don-t-Break-Sigil-of-Paralyzation
Three weeks later, Fear was also removed from the Rune of Melandru table for condition/stun duration reduction.

The subsequent handling of Stun duration rounding up on the other hand, was not so smooth, only being addressed in October 2013 – “some 4 months of exploitation:”http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/October_2013". Due to space issues, I will not link the QQ threads regarding Sigil of Paralyzation with Mace/Hammer stun.

The lesson here is that despite longstanding community feedback, the bug-fixing team neglected to look at the deeper implications of control-effect increasing Sigils and Runes and, due to the decision to effectively freeze the meta after the PAX Tournament was announced, the problem persisted for months.

Carighan.6758:

Frenk.5917:

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

It’s a shame that most of the forum is just “My class is too weak” / “That class which killed me is too strong” / “I was hit for X by Y” whining, yeah. I think the main reason this forum was created was to contain the rage, so to say. Keeps the rest a bit more sane.

Every game is like this. The dev’s have to balance based off their numbers and not our complaints. As far as I can tell, neither really seem to happen. Buffs seem extremely random when they do come and things that people cry to get nerfed just get ignored while they nerf around the issue is causing more issues.

+1 on thread, hope the dev’s read this.

Stogzlol.4795:

Buffs seem extremely random when they do come and things that people cry to get nerfed just get ignored while they nerf around the issue is causing more issues.

Ever since release, this has been the case.

I’ve always clung to the hope that the devs had a master plan—something they were working on behind the scenes that would suddenly make sense of all the random nerfs and buffs and balancing-around-the-bush. I truly believed they were capable of it.

But as the years have worn on, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that there is no master plan. Any time some sort of new synergy or build option opens up, it’s completely accidental—it usually gets the first nerf next time ’round. And more often than not, the “balances” simply break what was good and make worse what was already bad.

I dunno. Maybe I’m unique in my perception here. But I’m beginning to think the cake is a lie.

MonMalthias.4763:

The lesson here is that despite longstanding community feedback, the bug-fixing team neglected to look at the deeper implications of control-effect increasing Sigils and Runes and, due to the decision to effectively freeze the meta after the PAX Tournament was announced, the problem persisted for months.

Now this is where I have to take issue with your comments. By your comments it is extremely clear you do not have the slightest understanding of coding or programming, yet you feel you can sit here and ridicule and lecture others on it. You are making blind and uninformed accusations and assumption about the state of mind and the intentions of the devs. You link many post of complaints and discussions on the issue, but it appears you go out of your way to avoid the threads with repeated dev post and communication.

Do you actually have any proof that bug fixing team intentionally neglected to fix this as you claim? I find that hard to believe with the dev post in which they explained the difficulty of finding the cause of the problem They are multiple post from the devs explaining this, yet you sit here and blatantly call them liars and claim this was intentional.

You are precisely the reason the devs might think to ignore poster on the forums, when you make uninformed and unfounded insults and accusation of this nature toward the devs.

coglin.1867:

MonMalthias.4763:

The lesson here is that despite longstanding community feedback, the bug-fixing team neglected to look at the deeper implications of control-effect increasing Sigils and Runes and, due to the decision to effectively freeze the meta after the PAX Tournament was announced, the problem persisted for months.

Now this is where I have to take issue with your comments. By your comments it is extremely clear you do not have the slightest understanding of coding or programming, yet you feel you can sit here and ridicule and lecture others on it. You are making blind and uninformed accusations and assumption about the state of mind and the intentions of the devs. You link many post of complaints and discussions on the issue, but it appears you go out of your way to avoid the threads with repeated dev post and communication.

Do you actually have any proof that bug fixing team intentionally neglected to fix this as you claim? I find that hard to believe with the dev post in which they explained the difficulty of finding the cause of the problem They are multiple post from the devs explaining this, yet you sit here and blatantly call them liars and claim this was intentional.

You are precisely the reason the devs might think to ignore poster on the forums, when you make uninformed and unfounded insults and accusation of this nature toward the devs.

Ad hominem much?

Your comments would be far better received if you simply offered a balancing perspective on the issue—identifying the posts wherein the devs do as you say and leaving it at that. When you start attacking the OP with such vitriol, it’s easy to lose all force and credibility.

I’m holding out hope that you too want the game to be improved—even if you don’t agree with all the criticisms. We’ll find much more benefit in constructive and collaborative (even though I hate that word) discussion.

You are quick to exclaim I am “attacking” the OP, yet your okay with him making blind accusations and attacking the devs and their actions with no facts to support his angle of attack, when in fact the facts support the opposite.

Yes of coarse I desire for game improvements, what I do not desire, is for solid improvements to be discussed, simply to have the devs ignore the discussion because it is riddled with uninformed attacks towards them, and baseless accusations.

Seems a bit hypocritical for you to feel what was said in accusation and assumption toward the dev team, which would cause them to ignore this threads feed back, as defend-able, yet feel you should attack the one pointing out how it harms the goal.

coglin.1867:

You are quick to exclaim I am “attacking” the OP, yet your okay with him making blind accusations and attacking the devs and their actions with no facts to support his angle of attack, when in fact the facts support the opposite.

Yes of coarse I desire for game improvements, what I do not desire, is for solid improvements to be discussed, simply to have the devs ignore the discussion because it is riddled with uninformed attacks towards them, and baseless accusations.

Seems a bit hypocritical for you to feel what was said in accusation and assumption toward the dev team, which would cause them to ignore this threads feed back, as defend-able, yet feel you should attack the one pointing out how it harms the goal.

He presented his facts: the time spent between bugs being discovered and when they were finally addressed in a patch. Given the utter lack of developer responses to the bug reports, we have no frame of reference as to how long the devs were actually working on resolving the problem. What we can state with certainty, though, is that it took a long time for the issues to be fixed. Longer than similar issues in any other game that received frequent updates that I have played.

That is my point as well Drarnor Kunoram, and I completely agree with you. What I was disagreeing with was his act of accusations and negative comments towards the devs for it. They did post and specifically state that they were working on it and having difficulty sorting out the issue a few times. Which is also why it is discouraging to see him imply they were ignoring it.

I totally agree it was a long time till it was fixed. I didn’t like it either, but to claim the devs “neglected to even look into it” as he stated specifically, is simply unfounded accusation. Anyone making claims to know what they devs are doing or why they are doing it, is working completely against the benefit of the community and more specifically the thread. If you like, I can quote you multiple dev post in which they specifically state that they intentionally, completely ignore post and threads in which they accuse or insult the devs.

Well written and thought out, I liked how it wasnt a pure bashing. It exposed some interesting points, but as you said yourself; it will most likely than not get ignore, again, like always. I have come to the conclusion that Anet has the forums and the CDI as palcebo effects for the community, so that they think they are actually contributing, so that they vent their frustration. As you ntoed with the ranger changes; they dont always listen to reason, in fact, I would say the few changes the community “made” were no more than changes they already thought themselves and then realized the community also did.

At this point this is conjectures on my part and Anet will neither agree nor disagree with any of this.

However, put quaggans/thiefs/warrios on the tittle and you might get attentions

/cheers

I hope for balance, specially for poor elementalist and the toxic thief’s mecahnics.

coglin.1867:

That is my point as well Drarnor Kunoram, and I completely agree with you. What I was disagreeing with was his act of accusations and negative comments towards the devs for it. They did post and specifically state that they were working on it and having difficulty sorting out the issue a few times. Which is also why it is discouraging to see him imply they were ignoring it.

I totally agree it was a long time till it was fixed. I didn’t like it either, but to claim the devs “neglected to even look into it” as he stated specifically, is simply unfounded accusation. Anyone making claims to know what they devs are doing or why they are doing it, is working completely against the benefit of the community and more specifically the thread. If you like, I can quote you multiple dev post in which they specifically state that they intentionally, completely ignore post and threads in which they accuse or insult the devs.

There’s a difference between insulting someone and holding them accountable for failed responsibilities. I personally think that this thread falls into the latter category. There’s no reason to be holding back bug fixes just because of other potential bug fixes that might need to be made later within a given period of time.

I don’t think he insulted the devs. To say they “neglected to even look into it” of course is an assumption, but i think that is by far the most likely possibility even though it is phrased harsh. The alternative would be that they looked into it and weren’t capablle enough to fix it fastar than in nearly a year and i don’t think the devs to be that bad at their jobs, it’s seems more like a resource problem.

So i think that the reson for this probably isn’t that they actively decide not to fix things.
Firstly the long time between the balancepatches delays implementation even if they maybe would be able to fix this earlier.
And secondly that Anet decided to put much of their resources into creating new content and mechanics and less in polishing existing stuff. This of course is again an assumption but i think you can deduce that from the way the game developed since release. Things are changed and fixed, but it is at a relatively slow rate compared to other games.
(Malthias already said most of this, but i agree with it and think it answers you post)

And again: i don’t think that his posts are that insulting, they of course are critical about the way Anet balances the game as that is the topic of this thread, but i must have missed the points where he is insulting the devs.

coglin.1867:

That is my point as well Drarnor Kunoram, and I completely agree with you. What I was disagreeing with was his act of accusations and negative comments towards the devs for it. They did post and specifically state that they were working on it and having difficulty sorting out the issue a few times. Which is also why it is discouraging to see him imply they were ignoring it.

I totally agree it was a long time till it was fixed. I didn’t like it either, but to claim the devs “neglected to even look into it” as he stated specifically, is simply unfounded accusation. Anyone making claims to know what they devs are doing or why they are doing it, is working completely against the benefit of the community and more specifically the thread. If you like, I can quote you multiple dev post in which they specifically state that they intentionally, completely ignore post and threads in which they accuse or insult the devs.

when, where, how, etc?

am i remembering correctly:
there was a livestream session sometime just before PAX where they said they had fixes but didnt want to shock the meta right before their biggest tourney?

but the bug was identified nov ’12, resolved what, like, 8 months later… and fixed like 2 months after being resolved?

I get where coglin is coming from. Current time frames for balance iterations and certain bug fixes are pretty clearly identified by the OP. His thesis stands pretty well on its own in that area but calling out project “management” and saying it’s not the developers (a pretty broad job term which could include some in this ill-defined “management”) fault. Balance iteration, strong argument. Who is at fault? Weak argument based around conspicuous assumptions and suspect sources. I wouldn’t pretend to know exactly how the corporate infrastructure and development pipeline at Anet works and any attempt to do so from the outside should be met with some degree of skepticism. The OP did make an attempt to identify who at Anet is the root cause of the problems with how content release and balance is handled. That and the language surrounding that is what may hinder the credibility of his arguments.

Still, I agree that one thing I would like to see is more balance iteration, but I wonder if their current schedule is in part due to their stated dislike of the frequency and volatility of balance changes in GW1.

Yeah GW1 the meta shifted constantly, but when you have a min 100 skills per a class accessible to every player to build with you have to shift the meta constantly when you notice a skill or skills are overpowered. The problem with GW2 is they dumbed down the amount of skills and traits the needed to balance around but added various health and armor pools which complicates the balancing of the game. As well as the stat combos.

Them wanting to move away from a success and now a year in with not much but failure should be enough to make them change their model for balance iteration. I am not asking for classes to be nerfed to the ground I am asking for them to work to putting all classes on equal playing field and choose a line to balance at, be it the Warrior current state or Ele current state I have not a care. I just want to see them striving towards keeping the exploits and bugs from becoming meta and classes prone to the flavour of the meta. I am okay with flavour of the month, because that won’t force good players to change to meet their expectations for the game.

Lets take a quick gander towards PvP, the top three mesmers re-rolled theifs due to them not getting what they wanted out of the class and theif performing much better. As well most good ele players quit or changed between theif and warrior. Anytime you solo que you are most likely to see between 2 and 5 warriors on a team and the rest is split between people doing daily or necro and engi.

With WvW we have the problem that conditions have no use in zerg play but are very over-tuned in solo play due to the 40% duration food which forces you to run the food to counter it with -40% duration. Then the zerg play in general being 75% warriors maybe a mesmer or few depending on the group and then eles runing glass metoer nado builds.

Then there is the wonderful openness of PvE and doing anything apart from zerker builds…

I almost never sign in or post. OP has outlined, to the bleeding edge, every single reason can’t play GW2 anymore. I love the aesthetics of the game. I love the “Just enough Action” feel of combat. But I can’t stand to watch a game with this much potential wallow in unbalanced unguided mediocrity and face rolling builds.

Please.
From a player that would love to pay money, buy Gems, or grind for hours. Please listen to OP.

Earn back your player base.
-Tiffy

Hunlerzfang.4386:

I almost never sign in or post. OP has outlined, to the bleeding edge, every single reason can’t play GW2 anymore. I love the aesthetics of the game. I love the “Just enough Action” feel of combat. But I can’t stand to watch a game with this much potential wallow in unbalanced unguided mediocrity and face rolling builds.

Please.
From a player that would love to pay money, buy Gems, or grind for hours. Please listen to OP.

Earn back your player base.
-Tiffy

This is pretty much how my guild and I now feel about the game. We love the mechanics and design of this game far too much to move on to another MMO, but we just can’t be bothered to play this one anymore because the content is severely lacking in entertainment value. We all see so much potential in this game, but it’s not being met because it’s being driven in the wrong direction.

Well, balance has hardly ever been a concern to me personally, though I agree with the OP. Content has gone up in quality massively the last 5-6 LS patches, though. Redeems most of the weaker early patches, IMO. They seem to be finally finding their rhythm.

However, the balance iterations are still meh. Basically the balance team needs to do what the LS team does, and patch bi-weekly, the weeks not used for LS patches. Just hit us with it, better than seeing no change.

(But yeah, personally I don’t care much. Mind Mastery Mentalist in DAoC, I learned to love the underdog specs/classes, and play them exclusively now.)

So beautiful and true. I wish ANet were more transparent with their stuff.

900% agreement.

So in other news, Cheese Mode , one of the top teams at the moment, has quit, citing lack of updates.

Fraelin.7409:

With no New game modes coming in January 2014 no rewards coming in December / February and No balance patch coming in March [CM] have decided enough is enough.

Anets lack of updates in pvp means that it is no longer possible to motivate a team to play with no rewards, goals and no new content to look forward to. [CM] is not the first team to stop playing Gw2 due to lack of updates in Spvp and I wonder how long will it be before the rest of the ‘higher’ tier teams will follow?

Anet have created an extremely great game with so much potential but all of it recently is ruined by keeping secrets. Why can’t you just tell us what we are getting and when so that we all aren’t just wasting our time on hoping and not receiving?

Gl Gw2.

~Fraelina

The thread on Arenanet’s Shaving Philosophy is also instructive, and it highlights an ongoing, self-defeating balance approach that combines incremental balance changes to apex predator builds with a glacial update pace. DiogoSilva sums it up best:

DiogoSilva.7089:

That’s what I’ve been saying on some other threads.

The shaving balance philosophy is very underwhelming and unsatisfying when patches can take up to 4 months to release. It’s a cool philosophy for a monthly or 2-weekly balancing pass pacing, as it allows devs to slowly but safely adjust the meta and analyze the consequences, but because shaving is a very safe process and does not always brings enough results, having to wait 4 months for something like that will feel almost always underwhelming.

The previewed changes we know of so far would be perfect to be released the next patch following their confirmation. Slow, “safe” changes that would carefully adjust the meta into a more acceptable state, and hook us deeper into pvp while we wait for the feature patch.

Instead, Anet decided that those shaving adjustments had to be bundled with the big patch and not before, leaving pvp at its current, decaying state, and taking two big risks unnecessarily: the risk of those changes not being enough after such a long wait, and the risk of those changes being meaningless after whatever’s to come that can potentially change the entire meta.

Arenanet’s policy of bundling balance “shaves” with large infrequent feature patches has ongoing impacts on a stultified point of balance. It is felt in every aspect of the game every day. Veterans of the game are feeling increasingly disenfranchised and disillusioned with the game’s direction.

There is a window here for Arenanet to seize: To decouple their Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature “shaves” and introduce them as a hotfix. Other changes can also be decoupled, but these in particular will have significant impact on 2 apex predator builds and the shift in meta caused should be evaluated independantly of the Rune and Sigil overhaul.

coglin.1867:

That is my point as well Drarnor Kunoram, and I completely agree with you. What I was disagreeing with was his act of accusations and negative comments towards the devs for it. They did post and specifically state that they were working on it and having difficulty sorting out the issue a few times. Which is also why it is discouraging to see him imply they were ignoring it.

I totally agree it was a long time till it was fixed. I didn’t like it either, but to claim the devs “neglected to even look into it” as he stated specifically, is simply unfounded accusation. Anyone making claims to know what they devs are doing or why they are doing it, is working completely against the benefit of the community and more specifically the thread. If you like, I can quote you multiple dev post in which they specifically state that they intentionally, completely ignore post and threads in which they accuse or insult the devs.

I’d just like to touch on your stance of me using negative comments towards the devs and the risk of the topic being ignored.

To me, that’s fine. If it takes pointed language to get the point across and galvanise the community to push for a change in Arenanet’s stance on balance, so be it. That being said, responding to tone, which is what I have gleaned from your arguments, sits just above Ad Hominem on the Pyramid of Refutation (see attached). So far I have not yet seen arguments against my central thesis – that Arenanet should change their priorities towards fixing and balancing their game.

I will agree that I am harsh in language. It’s true. I will not argue otherwise. My turn of phrase may be disagreeable to you. I have not set out to please everyone. I suppose I should mention at this point that my OP was originally 5000 words (!!!) pushing 25k characters. Whole swaths of research, links and so forth were cut. I suppose it is only natural then, that I come across as terse, somewhat haranguing. But I hope that I have gotten my point across to you. That is all that matters to me. If developers should tend to skip it due to it offending their delicate sensibilities, so be it. Better that frustrations are aired than kept simmering, as CmC seemed to be doing yesterday during his soloqueue. The whole community is hurting for lack of updates – Living Story Bugfixes notwithstanding (How is it that LS can get hotfixes multiple times in a week when Rune of the Ranger can be bugged for so long? Or any number of Trait, Utility, Rune, Sigil bugs).

When changes are Promised like PVP rewards in 2013 , then not followed up upon then goodwill is lost. When bugs are still extant 5 months later or in the case of Turrets, almost 7 months later, goodwill is lost.

And of course, new bugs, glitches and exploits are discovered all the time, like Shocking Aura/Halting Strike with VODS here:

• http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/c/3813299
• http://www.twitch.tv/teamriottv/c/3820424
  Not to mention the well known, well abused Lightning Flash/FGS Fiery Rush glitch:
• http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/c/3775673
• http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/c/3782451
  Time will tell how swiftly Arenanet responds to these as well.

One post I have found particularly instructive is this one, by Phaeton:

Phaeton.9582:

Snip
Action: Players want to think a game is constantly being balanced. Conversely many of us sit around thinking of ways to unbalance your game, hence the constant need for adjustment. We enjoy doing this. snip

What falls out of this is the message that the game is actively being balanced, and also shows the game is changing. Players want to know that when Joe Blogs beat them with his cheesy hambow last week, this week his sustain has taken a hit and the matchup will be different. It’s an example of a small % tweak which is much more exciting for a competitive player than say, a buff to shouts.

Of course we want other stuff. Game-modes are a big one, as you guys are well aware. But I think one of the biggest changes that needs to happen first and foremost is a change in the way pvp balance is perceived. It’s not development.. or a feature. It’s maintenance. And just about every player in the mists is looking for new ways to vandalise it.

Polish doesn’t really increase gem sales.
New content tends to.

Bombsaway.7198:

Polish doesn’t really increase gem sales.
New content tends to.

Well it certainly made me reconsider ever buying gems with realmoney. They almost had me but then I rolled a turret engi as main… :/ LS was never interesting to me. On the other hand, the one thing I really learned to appreciate playing truckloads of games and genres is a polished game. Lack of polish and no change in sight is usually the first and most important reason why I quit.

@OP one of the best posts I’ve ever seen. Take my +1, my I support this or whatever but I am going to bookmark and download this page as an example for any future threads I may create in any forum and as my new standard to compare other threads to.
I am still not sure whether forums have ever been a place to communicate with the devs of any game in a meaningful way but in case there are such forums and -I am not saying guildwars2 forum isn’t such a place- then this a type of feedback they have to respond to, one way or another.

The thing is: I don’t see how any suggested feature, balance adjustment or anything else could ever yield a result since Anet -unlike other companies- invests time and resources into some sort of communication but apparently not into actually making something out of it.
Everything they “talk about”, “have on their radar” etc is best case right behind the horizon and way behind LS, WvW season, other new content. This is just an educated guess but I think a successful suggestion made today won’t be implemented before end 2014/ early 2015. If said suggestion adressed a bug or balance issue, the person who made it will proably already be gone by then.

Carighan.6758:

Frenk.5917:

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

It’s a shame that most of the forum is just “My class is too weak” / “That class which killed me is too strong” / “I was hit for X by Y” whining, yeah. I think the main reason this forum was created was to contain the rage, so to say. Keeps the rest a bit more sane.

One of the biggest issues I have with the Profession Balance thread is just how little Balance is actually discussed, in lieu of shouts for learning to play, posts listing out of context soft counters, and posts attempting to justify a broken mechanic because “that’s all the class has to stand on”. I created this clarion call of a thread because no-one else was taking Arenanet to task for allowing extant balance affecting bugs to persist, or addressing the issue that the meta is dominated by specs that were created by the Dhuumfire “overhaul” patch – months down the line with no change on the horizon. All of this is attributable to a lack of priority being placed upon bug fixing and polishing the very professions that interact with the game, whilst temporary content gets multiple bug fixes, sometimes several times within a week.

As examples, here are bug compilations for all professions – some of which have remained extant for months, some of which are still in game today.

Elementalist:

• Elementalist bugs and glitches thread
• More recently, Zephyr’s Focus and Evasive Arcana traits
• The aforementioned Shocking Aura/Halting Strike/Mirror of Anguish bug

Engineer:

• Engineer Bugs compilation
• 27 Turret bugs and counting

Guardian:

• Guardian Bugs Compilation 2012-2013
• Guardian Bugs Compilation 2013-2014

Mesmer:

• Mesmer’s 20 bugged skills and counting
• Customary Temporal Curtain not applying extra Swiftness when Swiftness already on video and what better VOD to showcase it than an Arenanet dev on Mesmer GS/Scepter Focus. (Timestamps 12:52, 14:07, 18:26, 30:32, 37:56, 38:47). The VOD also showcases the Fall Damage bug.

Necromancer:

• Necromancer bug compilation mark 2
• Necromancer bug compilation 2014

Ranger:

• Ranger Bug list
• Ranger CDI thread reiterates extant bugs and mentions new ones.

Thief:

• Thief bugs and issues compilation

Warrior:

• Warrior Bugs thread

The game would be better for it if one day Arenanet knuckled down and tackled some of these (often long) lists of bugs. The attitude should be for Arenanet to try to break their own game in order to hunt down bugs even before the community discovers them. Security through obscurity has been proven by this community to be unworkable, because players will always have more collective man-hours to test and break the game than developers. Fixing temporary content that disappears within 2 weeks might please the occasional PVE player that stumbles upon those bugs – but fixing bugs that impact the way players interact with the game – their professions – can only improve the long term prospects for Arenanet now, and into the future.

MonMalthias.4763:

I created this clarion call of a thread because no-one else was taking Arenanet to task for allowing extant balance affecting bugs to persist, or addressing the issue that the meta is dominated by specs that were created by the Dhuumfire “overhaul” patch – months down the line with no change on the horizon.

i, 4 1, dun right so gud…
nor am i as thorough, especially when its anything besides engineer.
nor am i very willing to openly criticize anet on this forum after having received bans for doing so. flood control op.

MonMalthias, you are a hero for pointing out mistakes Arenanet has made in essay.

However the problem isn’t that nobody is trying to light a fire under their butt to get them fixing the issues that exist in this game. The problem is Arenanet’s refusal to listen to the players that have way more experience in certain parts of their game than the devs themselves have. And surprisingly there are PLENTY of those kind of players.

For example, The CDI on the thief forums was basically there so the devs could claim that they discussed with that part of the community by use of a technicality. But that became apparent only when they later returned with a set of patch notes reworded to look like the discussion had an impact when nothing actually changed.

By the end of that CDI, nothing changed and the profession as a whole got nerfed (again). Venom builds aside from venomshare still were overall worthless. Buggy skills were still buggy. Not only that, the entire CDI thread was derailed by one person who posted a whole page worth of comments, all of them basically saying:

I am glad anet is removing permastealth. As a thief, I don’t use permastealth.

So with the thief CDI completely ruined, the part of the veteran thief community that did not reroll or quit GW2 began driving for the deletion or overnerfing of the thief profession so as to make a statement to Arenanet.

It sounds stupid to alot of people, but then again there are others who feel thief is the least boring profession of them all. And it kills those players to know that arenanet simply does not care. The way that the thief has been handled by anet for the past year has increasingly left it’s playerbase wondering if the developers just plain hate the thief profession. Because if that was completely true, the thief community would be assured that the final destination for the thief profession was to be a one-trick pony (zerk backstab).

That itself felt like death to the more passionate thief players. Hense, most of the veteran thief community quit or rerolled all because the staff’s responses combined with their actions within the CDI showed the thief community that the developers never cared nor will they ever care.

The thief forums are now a complete joke and the profession is still riddled with problems of its own.

I’ll be honest with you, I see top-tPvP teams quitting as a positive long-term thing.

The sooner sPvP/tPvP is drained of players, the sooner it can be archived. Smallscale PvP should be a big no-go for MMOs as it is, due to it being inherently at odds with the balance for the rest of the game (the MM-part).

I’m willing to let a game which doesn’t do this surprise me, but after 17 (nearly 18, kitten I’m old…) years of MMO-gaming, I think it’s one of the inherent truths of the genre.

Players crave smallscale team PvP, but there are very large specialized games for that which do feature RPG elements (namely, all MOBAs). I don’t see a reason to spend dev-time and dev-creativity on elements which don’t mesh with the rest of a game. Arena in WoW had a similarly destructive effect to overall class design. And while Blizzard overcame it, it is easy to say that it never recovered from it.

Draugl.8079:

I don’t think he insulted the devs. To say they “neglected to even look into it” of course is an assumption, but i think that is by far the most likely possibility even though it is phrased harsh. The alternative would be that they looked into it and weren’t capablle enough to fix it fastar than in nearly a year and i don’t think the devs to be that bad at their jobs, it’s seems more like a resource problem.

So i think that the reson for this probably isn’t that they actively decide not to fix things.
Firstly the long time between the balancepatches delays implementation even if they maybe would be able to fix this earlier.
And secondly that Anet decided to put much of their resources into creating new content and mechanics and less in polishing existing stuff. This of course is again an assumption but i think you can deduce that from the way the game developed since release. Things are changed and fixed, but it is at a relatively slow rate compared to other games.
(Malthias already said most of this, but i agree with it and think it answers you post)

And again: i don’t think that his posts are that insulting, they of course are critical about the way Anet balances the game as that is the topic of this thread, but i must have missed the points where he is insulting the devs.

Thank you for wording a more erudite response than I could put together in fewer words.

There is a window of opportunity for Arenanet to turn the ship around, before the last of their veterans quit. WvW season has ended, as has Living Story. There is now time for Arenanet to correct the mistakes that have been a thorn in their side since launch. LS should not come at the expense of game iteration, yet, this is the pattern that has emerged over time. The pattern should – and must – stop if the veterans of the game are to be persuaded to stay.

They have exceeded their prophet expectation by a vert large margin every quarter since the games release. So I don’t know why they would want to change the ships course in the least. Much less turn it aroumd.

coglin.1867:

They have exceeded their prophet expectation by a vert large margin every quarter since the games release. So I don’t know why they would want to change the ships course in the least. Much less turn it aroumd.

True. I’ll not deny that their business model has earned Arenanet a ton of money. There is a point, however, when short-term profits are gained for a loss in long term viability. Guild Wars 2 is rapidly approaching this situation, when ESO and Wildstar hit their launch windows. It is instructive to see how earnings from GW2 have transmuted from Box sales at launch into earnings from microtransactions. Hopefully Arenanet can replicate this success when they launch in Asia also. Then again, Arenanet has much to lose if they cannot replicate the competitive circumstances that made GW1 so successful, as evidenced in this thread from May 2013.

Chun Jae Lee.2751:

Lux dude your joke was bad really… —’
We stopped gw1 3/4years ago.

2) No korean own server but game is released yeah..

3) No we quit Gw2 4 months ago and no come back for a while. Sometimes we log on. We are actually waiting for next games as Neverwinter or Black desert online.

4) wot is a mmofps so… Sc2 or gw aren’t same gameplay…

5) Some WM guys i know stopped gw2 for same reason as It’s not competitive as they wanted to. Same for iQ,iB,EW,rawr,LuM,… said to the top.

6)# of koreans Decrease

Chun Jae Lee.2751:

I can’t say. real prize is a thing but game play is another thing. I longly talked with Pyo(danjang) and he’s agreed that game is unbalanced,…we don’t like gameplay that much. Then I can’t tell u if we come back as Im not entire EvIL manager.

Of note is the time in particular – May 2013 was pre-Dhuumfire/Aetherblades and forum negativity regarding game balance has only deteriorated since then. One wonders if we could ever see the likes of War Machine in PVP or WvW again, or indeed, if even the Monthly Automated Tournament system could ever make a resurgence.

Now, thankfully, it’s not all dark clouds and scary shadows. As it turns out, Arenanet has been (probably) practicing complaint driven development all along – that is, listening to players. The CDI initiatives have resulted in changes, and patch previews have resulted in feedback that is executed upon, such as Renewing Stamina not receiving the uptime nerf or being moved up a Tier to share Master with Elemental Attunement .

My ongoing premise for this thread has been to get the community galvanised to push Arenanet to alter their schedule for releases, just as Arenanet was pushed in certain ways regarding balance and content delivery. The community has done it before, and with luck, it can do so again.

The PVP fixes in this game are actually worse than what I witnessed in Rift.

And Rift has the worst PvP in the history of MMOs.

Small pedantic correction: Mesmer Temporal Curtain not stacking is not a bug. It should (IMO) work like Guardian Symbol of Swiftness ofc, but it’s intentionally not stacking right now.

Carighan.6758:

Small pedantic correction: Mesmer Temporal Curtain not stacking is not a bug. It should (IMO) work like Guardian Symbol of Swiftness ofc, but it’s intentionally not stacking right now.

I was under the impression that it was a bug and given its wiki entry it would also seem to be anomalous when compared to other Swiftness granting Fields. Where did a developer say it was intentional?

Both Symbol of Swiftness and Temporal Curtain were changed to prevent mass-stacking of Swiftness by repeatedly walking in/out. However TC got the nerf sooner back in the days, and was changed to not stack at all. SoS got it later, and by then they were at a point where they coded it to only stack 1 extra second. Which is kinda what I’d like TC to do, too.

Yet, the change to not allow full stacking was intentional. Or the worst kind of bug ever, because it happened to mirror an intended change.

Sad really, the SoS-system is exactly as I’d want it to be. It’s at least +1 second that way.

Carighan.6758:

Both Symbol of Swiftness and Temporal Curtain were changed to prevent mass-stacking of Swiftness by repeatedly walking in/out. However TC got the nerf sooner back in the days, and was changed to not stack at all. SoS got it later, and by then they were at a point where they coded it to only stack 1 extra second. Which is kinda what I’d like TC to do, too.

Yet, the change to not allow full stacking was intentional. Or the worst kind of bug ever, because it happened to mirror an intended change.

Sad really, the SoS-system is exactly as I’d want it to be. It’s at least +1 second that way.

This is also the way Spectral Wall works with Protection and Veil works with stealth. It’s to prevent massive stacking.

So I’ve been browsing through the Extra Credits backlog and I’ve found this gem

The video echoes my sentiments far more eloquently, but the core mantra that is seemingly being ignored by Arenanet is “Failing Faster”.

The upcoming Feature patch that has so much promised to be bundled into it, along with so many fundamental changes such as lifting of the GCD of dissimilar Sigil procs and Rune overhauls – these are changes have the potential to unbalance the game as we know it. Delaying balance changes and bugfixes whilst bundling them into this overhaul means that Arenanet will not only fail slower, but also fail harder should the patch result in overpowered combos and builds due to something that the balance team failed to catch.

We know from experience that this is true, because the Dhuumfire patch demonstrated to us that players swiftly find and exploit all that is potentially broken within every single balance patch.

We know that all of a sudden, introducing massive condition variety to the condition necro in the form of Torment, Immobilise and Burning suddenly meant that it could operate freely of the Engineer’s covering conditions for its Bleed stacks. Sigil of Paralyzation didn’t help either, nor did Signet of Spite getting a significant buff to the number of bleed stacks applied.

We know from experience that a simple numerical change to Healing Signet resulted in a class that went from being kited to death into an immortal death machine with build variety centering on 20+ points in Defense.

We know from experience that merging Spirit traits suddenly made Ranger spirits – previously sidelined – into ridiculously strong passive-proc machines.

We know that introducing hard counter gameplay in the form of Automated Response – then “bug fixing” it to make it an even harder counter will result in imbalances – if not at the time of the change, then later on, once the appropriate confluence of circumstances is met.

Arenanet’s stance for balance needs to change, because their current stance is unworkable right now. As I quoted from Phaeton earlier:

Phaeton.9582:

But I think one of the biggest changes that needs to happen first and foremost is a change in the way pvp balance is perceived. It’s not development.. or a feature. It’s maintenance. And just about every player in the mists is looking for new ways to vandalise it.

Great read.

What do you make of this little, possibly isolated development.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/20-Mesmer-s-Bugged-Skills-and-Counting/page/3#post3750901

Ross Biddle.2367:

Great read.

What do you make of this little, possibly isolated development.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/20-Mesmer-s-Bugged-Skills-and-Counting/page/3#post3750901

I think it’s certainly an interesting point that Pyroatheist has brought up – and that which Carighan reminded me of also. That it is working as intended would invalidate my claims that it is a bug – then again, we see Jess Boettiger using Temporal Curtain with Swiftness already applied and getting no additional benefit from it.

Either this means that devs that supposedly frequent WvW with some regularity need to know how to learn to play around the little nuances of their profession skills, or that Temporal Curtain is working in a way that not all developers are up to speed on. Either way, Curtain is anomalous, and it remains to be seen whether it is altered further in a later patch or not.

This is certainly not an unprecedented development either. Engineer skills feature significant amounts of inaccurate tooltips across Traits, Utilities, Skills descriptions – you name it, it’s probably got some inaccuracy therein.

I think part of the problem is that buffing wall-effects are already so strong, due to not obeying the AE limitations of pulsing AE effects.

If they were to fully stack, many of them would be pretty kitten strong.

Maybe the correct solution is to first make walls – as AE-spells of sorts – obey the AE limitations.

While I don’t have anything to add for now, thank you for the read.

Back to the front page we go!

To be sure, these things at least need to be read by the Devs in charge of balance, and acknowledged by the management that pulls the strings.