Guild Wars 2

Great post. Thumbs Up if I could.

The biggest issue is ArenaNet developers not listening to the community.

The efforts on large threads requesting feedback on balances is an absolute failure. I recall over a thousand Elementalist balance changes and what did we get? Diamond skin. What did a large part of the community did not want? Diamond skin.

I main an Elementalist, I spent thousands on hours on him, we don’t need buffs, we really don’t. ArenaNet isn’t even listening to the community for the ‘buffs’, why not buff back Ride the Lightning? Heck, the problem with Water Trident is it’s slow speed, I do not care for the extra Regeneration, make the spell faster and you might see it have other use than spamming on yourself.

We have Engineers running around with good ranged, melee damage, pull, stun, block, snares, invincibility and invisibility all in just in 3 utilities. Nerf that, and you’ll might see some more Elementalist play.

We have Necromancers going full power glass but thanks to speedy life force building and 100% critical chance from Deathly Perception they’ll burst anything while shrugging off damage. Isn’t that an issue ArenaNet? I’m seeing less and less Dhuumfire mainly because everyone HAS to bring heavy condition removal or get their faces wrecked.

ArenaNet thinks we are poison, afraid to touch us with a 10 foot pole. They make a mistake and it’s like they are afraid to fix it. They take hold of their precious mechanics like a child and shoo away anyone that dares change it.

If ArenaNet wants to become good at combat design and mechanics, their behavior has to change to take critical and even poisonous feedback.
I’m sure there are plenty of people in the community that can tear the combat design apart and put it back together in a beautiful and fun way. But ignoring everyone is just going to hurt in the end.

Guild Wars 2 combat will never improve as long as ArenaNet developers continues to only listen to themselves.

This is honestly one of the best posts I’ve seen in all my time spent pursuing the forums.

I sincerely hope that Anet prints your post out and has a meeting on it. Because you put forth in eloquent words EXACTLY what the community feels right now. Your post should be snatched up by the community coordinators and taken straight to those in charge, because this is how their customers feel.

Beautifully written, thank you for taking the time to put these feelings down “on paper” so to speak.

Thank you, Allie, for responding. I agree with MonMalthias that the worst part about the balance in this game is actually the frequency that changes happen, not the changes themselves.

Hopefully this gets real discussion and the balance pacing picks up a fair amount.

Stop nerfing things (unless they are stupidly OP like healing signet) and start buffing things that aren’t a viable option.

There should be a myriad of build options in such a massive MMO like this

Right now, theres 1-2 builds for each class in each gameplay mode (sPvP/PvE/WvW)

This is what happens when all skills aren’t in line in terms of viability…

Look at ranger, its got the word “RANGE” in its own name yet it has one of the worst if not the worst range DPS in the game.

I don’t even bother carrying a bow in majority of this game

too few good skills and too many terrible/unusable skills/traits.
Its been 1.5 years and the situation is still the same… it HAS to be addressed…

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Allie champion of the masses!!!

#allieforpresident2016

I fully agree with the OP. Fully. Did I mention fully? I hope the devs realize precisely how important what the OP says is, and how it has been affecting perceptions of the game.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

I feel like the team is already spending too much time thinking. This is why patches take so long; they need to be reviewed and analyzed by every area — you can’t tweak anything without getting sign-offs from PvE, PvP, WvW, server systems, client engineering, infrastructure, game architecture and QA. and all those people on all those teams don’t have time to review a thousand proposals for small tweaks, so everything needs to be bundled up into mammoth patch sets so that it can be reviewed efficiently.

meanwhile we wait for basic fixes, or we get tired of waiting and move on to other games.

-ken

This thread is excellent, probably the best I have read since gw2 released.

It’s sad that Anet is getting such a good feedback and keeps repeating their mistakes

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

The opening post and its message should be added directly to Anet’s company policy.

Good post, I fully agree.
But I also fear that “passing this to the devs” will do nothing at all.

Best post EVER. That’s it.

Many thanks to the OP.

I fully agree with him.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

check this out for an idea of what it means to pass things on to the devs

meh.. its kinda allies job to liaise between the devs and the community

insanemaniac.2456:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

check this out for an idea of what it means to pass things on to the devs

meh.. its kinda allies job to liaise between the devs and the community

In a 21 day old thread it’s still fishy or really Allie is the only employe at Arena net who reads the Profession balance sub forum.
However they really can’t say much more to don’t get themselves in more trouble with promises-

insanemaniac.2456:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

check this out for an idea of what it means to pass things on to the devs

meh.. its kinda allies job to liaise between the devs and the community

Wow, thats… scarry. So Allie is the only one in the company who is responsible for the thread? I don’t demand Allie to read all the posts alone, much less understanding all those. I actually expected a team to handle the thread, so no suggestion gests lost or misinterpreted. But if it’s just Allie, I have just little hopes to see good changes.
I mean, ArenaNet has the data but we, the players, have the experience. So I think, if you want to fix something broken, ask those guys who deal with it every day…

Dalanor.5387:

insanemaniac.2456:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

check this out for an idea of what it means to pass things on to the devs

meh.. its kinda allies job to liaise between the devs and the community

In a 21 day old thread it’s still fishy or really Allie is the only employe at Arena net who reads the Profession balance sub forum.
However they really can’t say much more to don’t get themselves in more trouble with promises-

Maybe they should start keeping promises so they don’t have to worry that much about spoilers…

great Posts, thanks Mon. I have deep respect for u

I would really like too see biweekly or maybe every four weeks a Balance update.
But for that anet Needs one or two more balancer!
There are only two men working on hundreds of traits and skills. and with the tempo on balancing stuff we can see they are very busy.
And my personal opinion is that we Need more balancer because i have the Feeling that the two guys love their Warrior too much. I am refering to every stream we can see them and how they Party when they hear “warrior”. And we can see where the warrior stands now. Both main Warrior, i think for balancing thats not good, intended or unintended as mon said Wars became gods of the Arena.
More Balancer are able to have more different views on Balance without the Little Intention to stay strong on their main.

And i really want to know how active the Alpha Forum is. Some People may dont know it but there is another Forum just for devs and Special Players who were invited.
I dont know much about them, but i can imagine that ist not really active anymore because a lot of Player since headstart lost the interest in gw2, no matter for which reasons. The Point is that anet Needs more intelligent Players who have a big knowledge of the game, the Balance and the classes. The Intention that the whole playerbase can talk about the Balance is great. Even science uses now the intelligence of big Groups, but not all Players who write here in Forum are good enough to have a loud voice on Balance.
Anet is great in having contact to their Players. Look at the latest stream where Players are fighting against devs. I think these Players, all in all high ranked Team/Solo Q Player, known and famous WvW commanders and active Forum writers with excellent arguments on balancing, all who have great knowledge of the classes and the Impacts of ideas should be able to have louder voices on Balance.

And i think the next Balance patch will be a second “dhuumfire/Aetherblades Patch”
When i read something like “great stuff is coming for thiefs” for a already strong class that -driving away damage dealers- and “ranger too” after a lot of big QQ in Forum about l2p issues and “Little suggestions” that would make the class too strong AND “#elepocalypse” for an also good class (best glascannon dmg, outsustaining megabunker) i just can predict a new state of imbalance.
And yes i have the fear like Mon that the rune and sigil rework will kill the Balance. Anet can test hours and weeks, no MONTHS (i predicted last summer that a rework will happen after one post of a dev), we will see an exploit of a runeset, or trait/skill/rune combination that will be incredible strong.
Alone for that anet should Need a new balancer just for the runes and sigils.
Without that the two guys dont know where to begin to “rebalance”

I really hope the next balancing will Balance the game but i think ist just a lesson for anet. But after that they will think about ur post and try to fix Balance issues faster.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

insanemaniac.2456:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

This post shows me once more how much faith I’ve lost in ArenaNet. Your post should make me happy and convince me that ArenaNet can learn from their mistakes. However, I just heard this sentence “Great post, I will pass this on to the devs” way too often to be convinced. Please Allie, prove me wrong!

check this out for an idea of what it means to pass things on to the devs

meh.. its kinda allies job to liaise between the devs and the community

Wow, thats… scarry. So Allie is the only one in the company who is responsible for the thread? I don’t demand Allie to read all the posts alone, much less understanding all those. I actually expected a team to handle the thread, so no suggestion gests lost or misinterpreted. But if it’s just Allie, I have just little hopes to see good changes.
I mean, ArenaNet has the data but we, the players, have the experience. So I think, if you want to fix something broken, ask those guys who deal with it every day…

for the ranger cdi? yeah shes the host but its not like that means others wont read it… but, as the host, we as a community have demanded she read it all. its anets prerogative to call it a 1 man, 2 man, or team job. roy has read at least parts of it, and commented, if thats any reassurance. did you see allies high level summary of notes she passed to the balance team? its buried in there somewhere. it was pretty accurate, and obviously not written in stone.

anyways, allie isnt exactly alone in her job description, seems like grouch and powerr have/had similar roles… but arent as visible on the forums. plus, you dont need an army to listen to the community… just a few good listeners. and a few spots designated for listening.

This was an excellent post. I agree with it completely.

I don’t play right now and I don’t post very often, but you took so many words out of my head and then added more amazing ones that I can’t not bump this thread up.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Thanks for passing this on! I’ve been feeling frustration as well from the lack of balance updates. Balance is the thing in any competitive game, and is no less important in PvE.

I don’t play competitively (I don’t even know what on earth people are talking about when they reference the meta builds), but I can’t help but notice certain traits and skills for each class that you simply cannot go without, and other skills that are either under-powered or situational to the point of being completely useless.

Frequent balance updates as outlined in OP would, I hope, start bringing some diversity to both PvP and PvE builds. It’s quite depressing when you’re presented with so many options and yet so few choices.

edit: formatting

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Thank you for your response. I would just like to reiterate my main point which is that balance changes need to happen more frequently. The Extra Credits video on Failing Faster expands on my point perfectly, I feel. Changes do not have to be sweeping, nor meta-shifting overnight. Steady bug fixing of skills, tooltips accompanied with tweaks fortnightly – good or bad – will achieve a balanced result faster than the current Arenanet balance stance.

There is one post, however, that does concern me

Absinth.6917:

I posted the essence of this on another thread but I’ll get right to the point.

When will ,you, the Anet pvp dev’s grow some dang balls? (yourself excluded Allie)

By this I mean when will you shake up the current “meta”?

I’m not talking about slight changes to observable metrics. I speak of a complete overhaul. Give us something fresh! Obviously new game modes are out the window or at the very least on the distant horizon. IE. Mars….

So my true question would be this:

Can you effectively disrupt any current “meta” on a monthly basis?

If you dared to do such a thing you would cure GW2 of the current stagnation that we are all experiencing barring new game modes.

For better or worse if you could shake up the “meta” on a monthly basis; encouraging me to play unfamiliar classes or unused trait lines (builds) to be optimally effective then you have my attention. Perhaps you might come close to that gamer utopia that we call “balance”.

Or do we as pvp’rs not garner such consideration from Anet?

edit – oh wait this is a meet and greet BS session. I apologize. So my question would be this Allie….

Boxers or briefs?

Allie Murdock.8152:

We expect the feature build to sufficiently shake up the current meta. There will be lots… of fresh… stuff…

Monthly basis is not 100% feasible right now like it was before. We tried to bring you guys consistent updates, but as you noticed not all of them really shook up the meta. The upcoming build will do a better job at that for you. Hopefully in a good way.

One of the secondary points I had made throughout this thread was Arenanet’s stoic stance on refusing to revert certain changes despite causing a demonstrable balance issue like Warrior’s Healing Signet. My earlier examples included nerfs to Necromancer condition application outside of Dhuumfire that have no indication of being reverted once the feature patch comes to pass, or the possibility of Fresh Air/Diamond Skin burst Ele becoming yet another obnoxious build once Signet of Restoration is unsplit.

Given that the followup patches to Dhuumfire – August, September, October, November, December 2013 did not change the meta created in June-July 2013, this is one of the other stances that Arenanet needs to acknowledge and change if 50/50 matchups determinant by skill are ever to become a reality.

To reiterate my healthcare example once again:
When a medication is causing problems, the doctor does not then prescribe multiple other medications to deal with the side effects. Instead the problem medication is withdrawn.

This emergent pattern with Arenanet’s balance changes is worrisome, and the upcoming Feature patch has the potential to be a repeat of June 2013 if Arenanet does not heed the lessons of its own history.

MonMalthias.4763:

Thank you for your response. I would just like to reiterate my main point which is that balance changes need to happen more frequently. The Extra Credits video on Failing Faster expands on my point perfectly, I feel. Changes do not have to be sweeping, nor meta-shifting overnight. Steady bug fixing of skills, tooltips accompanied with tweaks fortnightly – good or bad – will achieve a balanced result faster than the current Arenanet balance stance.

There is one post, however, that does concern me

Absinth.6917:

Snip for length

Allie Murdock.8152:

Snip for length

One of the secondary points I had made throughout this thread was Arenanet’s stoic stance on refusing to revert certain changes despite causing a demonstrable balance issue like Warrior’s Healing Signet. My earlier examples included nerfs to Necromancer condition application outside of Dhuumfire that have no indication of being reverted once the feature patch comes to pass, or the possibility of Fresh Air/Diamond Skin burst Ele becoming yet another obnoxious build once Signet of Restoration is unsplit.

Given that the followup patches to Dhuumfire – August, September, October, November, December 2013 did not change the meta created in June-July 2013, this is one of the other stances that Arenanet needs to acknowledge and change if 50/50 matchups determinant by skill are ever to become a reality.

To reiterate my healthcare example once again:
When a medication is causing problems, the doctor does not then prescribe multiple other medications to deal with the side effects. Instead the problem medication is withdrawn.

This emergent pattern with Arenanet’s balance changes is worrisome, and the upcoming Feature patch has the potential to be a repeat of June 2013 if Arenanet does not heed the lessons of its own history.

First off, you’re OP post was absolutely a wonderful read and a breath of fresh air from all the rage posts. I’ve tried telling people to hold back the rage and post more constructive posts in the past but it gets to the best of us when we get angry, especially update after update after update. I’ve also wanted to make a post like yours and have tried to do it in replies but I really do not excel in writing and grammar and organization so I could not even close come to pulling off something like you just did.

Anyways, on to what I quoted I completely agree. I am not saying I am completely correct in what I have been saying for awhile now but I have expressed what you said in that quote on the thief class. Imo, the thief class just needs a complete rework because atm the class consists of using one attack to do damage on each of it’s meta builds and the reason for this is the initiative system, and the fact that it is so extremely dependent on stealth for offense and defense imo breaks it. I have gone much deeper into this subject and there are plenty of other examples besides that class such as HS like you mentioned, BUT I’m not trying to derail the thread so I really appreciate the work you put into researching this and coming up with a very constructive and concise post. Thank you and I hope when Allie passes this onto the devs that they really look into what they might need to change or what their bosses need to change regarding how balance updates work in this game not only in frequency but in actually changing concepts of skills that they have already created. I love this game and I hope Anet will take this constructive feedback and run with it.

OP, this is a fantastic post. I salute you.
And I wish for the Anet-team to really listen up.

It is not what you change that matters, as long as you’re on the ball every change is easily revertable. We just want to see that you’re actually trying.

This is a great post, and I’m glad that Arenanet have responded.

I sometimes joke about the odd consistency of the various balance/content updates that we get for GW2, I made a somewhat unartistic comic about it to share with him last week which may be relevant:

http://i.imgur.com/tnbEY6k.jpg

Don’t get me wrong, I love this game and Arenanet but some of the updates are just bizarre in terms of priority, especially how long it takes to fix glaring acknowledged issues!

Interesting stuff, OP. Personally, I’ve never been part of an MMO with a heavy PVP focus, so the length of time between updates hasn’t bothered me that much.

Then again, I have to ask myself why I quit playing PVP a long time ago. Two reasons come up: #1 is that my favorite spec was hit with a bunch of bugs that were never fixed/declared features now. #2 is that I just got bored of how samey all of it was.

Anet’s idea of balance so far has been “tap it with a 40 foot pole, then stay real quiet and hope the beast didn’t wake up”, with the exception of when they release a gigantic patch and decide to smash the beast with a hammer then run for the hills. Originally I feared the chaotic and unsure nature of everything when balance updates are every 2 weeks, but at least the chaos would be interesting. Small but rapid changes would be quicker to settle, so meaningful feedback can be acquired relatively quickly. Gigantic balance patches, however, take forever to truly acclimate. Overall, I think a smaller but more involved hand is better than a big, negligent one.

So +1s all around.

Carighan.6758:

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.

I fully agree. After realising that balance in SPvP isn’t going anywhere soon™ I looked around for other games. And I found a new home with Smite from Hi-Rez. Sure, this game has issues, too. But the open communication (twitter, reddit, twitch.tv) and the rate of balance changes makes up for it.

I guess Hi-Rez’s team is probably much smaller than ANet’s team. Yet they perform better. Why? Because of focus. (Which is also applies to LoL and Dota).

I feel ANet has created a beast which they fail to keep under control. WvW, SPvP, dungeons, PvE, living world … this all needs man-power. Maybe it really would help the overall quality of the game if they got rid of SPvP and focused on their strengths – even though it hurts, yes.

Great post Mon! Just a perfectly written piece laying out what, how, and why. I really hope this is read by people who have the power to make the suggested changes.

While I agree with everything you said, I do want to highlight a couple points just for my own satisfaction. That is…

- making broad changes simply to adjust a single aspect of a single skill. For instance, changing Engineer Net Turret because of abuse issues from Supply Crate. That seems like lazy coding rather than efficient change.

- smart PvE content is needed. As mentioned, “support” and “control” types are unnecessary due to Defiance and slow, hard-hitting attacks. Berserker gear will reign supreme as long as attacks are so hard that you’ll die no matter the gear/stats. PvE combat needs to mirror PvP/WvW combat in the sense that attacks need to come more quickly, hit lighter, and be smarter. I would love to see a return from GW of enemies that use player skills. As such, balance across the various game types might become easier too.

- updating bugs more frequently needs to be a primary concern. We don’t need to wait for a giant patch after months of waiting for a long list of bug fixes. I think we’d all prefer fortnightly fixes to what can be tackled in that time. I have read so many threads asking devs for a pause of the LS while they fix bugs and balance the existing content before resuming the temporary content. And while I really enjoy the LS content, I’d have to agree that the permanent stuff, the foundation of each class, the essence of our builds really need to be paramount.

I want to reiterate the importance of seperating gamebalance for each respective gamemode.

All to often are changes based on events in one gamemode strongly, negatively, effecting other gamemodes.

It is absurd to compare fighting giant bosses with their gimmicks and immunities to, large-groups clashing with the aid of siege to, small teams fighting over small capture points without foodbuffs and less gear variety.

Trying to balance all these with the same rules and changes will never get you balance in any of these.

SkiTz.4590:

Stop nerfing things (unless they are stupidly OP like healing signet) and start buffing things that aren’t a viable option.

Please be aware that the commonly toted tactic of “buff all the things” is usually a terrible idea.

Why?

• Doesn’t really change anything. If you are 25% stronger than the other person that’s the same as them being 20% weaker.
• The highest the absolute power, the stronger the runaway-factor of actually overpowered things. The less absolute power, the easier it is to cushion overpowered elements by player-skill.
• Gameplay gets slightly more twitchy. Many MMORPGers don’t play for twitch-combat, and they’re an existent userbase you risk alienating.
• You threaten PvE balance. There is one – very very very large – game mode which relies on absolute power instead of relative balance, and you’re fiddling with that.

MonMalthias.4763:

~snipfu~

To reiterate my healthcare example once again:
When a medication is causing problems, the doctor does not then prescribe multiple other medications to deal with the side effects. Instead the problem medication is withdrawn.

This emergent pattern with Arenanet’s balance changes is worrisome, and the upcoming Feature patch has the potential to be a repeat of June 2013 if Arenanet does not heed the lessons of its own history.

Actually, I’ve seen doctors prescribe medicines to compensate for the side-effects of other medicines. It all depends on how important they truly believe that original medication is.

The correlation to GW2 balance still stands, however, as that is exactly what the Devs have done. The Devs (or the management) have demonstrated a rather foolish insistence on almost never reverting any change or plan, simply because they cling foolishly to their “balance” changes.

Dhuumfire is the classic example. A vast majority of the Necro community consistently shouted that they did not want Necro burning. In fact, the running joke was that, if Necros got burning, the rest of their ConD would get nerfed to the ground.

Yet the Devs believed so strongly in their first “medication” (Dhuumfire), that they indeed did nerf other ConD application (and continue to do so). Far-later nerfs to Dhuumfire were too little too late. And by then the whole thing was a mess.

The Ranger CDI once again demonstrates the problem from a different angle. Rather than admit up-front that the pre-beta “vision” for the class was near-completely untenable in the actual game, the Devs have refused to budge. Any and all changes with the Ranger that don’t address the core “vision” problem will be medicine treating the side effects.

For once I’d love to see the Devs say, “We were wrong. It doesn’t work. We’re going to try again.”

No one would hold it against them. I’d cheer for them. And if they really wanted to save face, a public test environment would help immensely.

Carighan.6758:

SkiTz.4590:

Stop nerfing things (unless they are stupidly OP like healing signet) and start buffing things that aren’t a viable option.

Please be aware that the commonly toted tactic of “buff all the things” is usually a terrible idea.

Why?

• Doesn’t really change anything. If you are 25% stronger than the other person that’s the same as them being 20% weaker.
• The highest the absolute power, the stronger the runaway-factor of actually overpowered things. The less absolute power, the easier it is to cushion overpowered elements by player-skill.
• Gameplay gets slightly more twitchy. Many MMORPGers don’t play for twitch-combat, and they’re an existent userbase you risk alienating.
• You threaten PvE balance. There is one – very very very large – game mode which relies on absolute power instead of relative balance, and you’re fiddling with that.

Buffing doesn’t exclusively apply to DPS. You forget there is skill utility to account for as well as the effectiveness of heals, boons, conditions, condition removal, stuns and stunbreaks.

Most of those don’t necessarily make them stronger but it does make traits and skills more desirable which opens up viable builds in the process. That’s what people want.

However if Arenanet kept nerfing everything, eventually those skills and traits would become so useless that you might as well call them fillers.

So no “nerf ALL the things” isn’t any better of a choice.

How dare someone make longer posts than I do….

MonMalthias.4763:

In terms of balance, builds relying upon a confluence of traits and procs that emphasise great reward with little risk dominate the field – Healing Signet/Cleansing Ire Hambow Warrior, Decap (CC bunker) engineer, Spirit Ranger, Minion Master Necromancer – these are all builds that put the burden of skill upon the defender – overwhelmingly so – that “off-meta” or inferior builds with higher risk-reward ratios have to struggle to survive and yet contribute less to the outcome. The state of the game has teetered upon the brink since the introduction of the Dhuumfire/Aetherblade feature patch and despite a multitude of changes since, the same builds are still dominating and team compositions are looking increasingly similar – Bunker Guardian, Soldier’s Hambow Warrior +/- another Warrior, Thief, Spirit Ranger, (option of) Decap or Condition Bomb/Nade Engineer or Necromancer.

This is not to say that such builds should not exist, but balance should be in such a way that more builds than those listed above can have a place in a team composition without those builds shutting out others to the point of exclusion.

For PVE, the so-called “Damage, Support, Control” alternative trinity so trumpeted as the innovation over the “Tank, Healer, DPS” trinity has dissipated in favour of “DPS, DPS, DPS”.

Defiance has stripped the Control archetype of its teeth, whilst providing no reward for controlling Boss mobs.

Slow, extremely hard hitting attacks have negated the need for Support – there is little need to support allies with healing if taking a hit means almost certain death. DPS with just enough Support through Boons has become the one true god and PvE encounters have devolved into a “stack mobs, cleave to death” DPS race over thoughtful, deliberate challenges that tax a group’s ability to co-ordinate and problem solve.

100% true!
i just can’t disagree he is completly right on the point

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

cool, they going to think about it for the next 4 to 5 months. btw this a good post +1
Edit: just wanted to say this post is really, really good once more.

This kind of post gives me hope so they start fixing instead of breaking.

In typical Anet fashion, this thread will be read and discarded by anyone that matters in the development and balancing of professions.

Sorry, but any faith/hope that I had regarding balancing died long ago. If GW2 had a monthly fee, I’d be playing something else.

Fade.7658:

In typical Anet fashion, this thread will be read and discarded by anyone that matters in the development and balancing of professions.

Sorry, but any faith/hope that I had regarding balancing died long ago. If GW2 had a monthly fee, I’d be playing something else.

Blasphemy, they will read it and think it over, and then… Soon, things will happen.

I think this thread is excellent, and I think the OP is extremely well-written and brings up great ideas that I personally agree with regarding balance iteration tactics. Kudos to writing it all up.

I don’t really like the idea of a Public Test World, because that seems like a better idea for a large-scale balance patch methodology. I’d love to see more small-scale iterations on the game. Tweak some numbers, fix some bugs, push those changes out. If your numbers were tweaked too much? It’ll probably become apparent, and if it doesn’t, maybe it’s just right. If Healing Signet loses 10% of its healing on period and everyone switches off of it, maybe that was too much. Odds are people are going to see ramifications and attempt to adjust even on a small timeframe.

The kicker is that a meta isn’t very fast in developing, and a constant slew of small changes will probably keep things in a state of flux. But is that really a bad thing? As long as all of the classes have some sort of role they can fill, I really don’t think so.

The second kicker is that a system like this also kind of requires a patient community willing to deal with a shifting environment. It’s a very delicate/precarious situation when taking the entire game into account, so as simple of an idea as consistent iteration is, the devil is in the details.

A few things about the general community responses, though:

1. Forums consist of a vocal minority. There should be no “the vast majority of X players complained about ________” statements. The vast majority of people are out playing the game without even thinking about coming to the forums to do anything. People also typically go looking for a place to provide feedback when they’re in a negative state of mind, so if someone doesn’t like Dhuumfire, they’re going to go post about it. If someone likes Dhuumfire, they’re going to just play the game. And no, I’m not saying I think Dhuumfire is a good idea. That’s just an example.

2. Communities never forget. Anything ANet officially says will be kept in some Master Book of Developer Quotes that trolls and naysayers alike will reference and hang over all posts where it even kind of relates. Saying otherwise is an attempt at dressing a snarling wolf up in sheep’s clothing and saying “Look how nice my sheep is”.

3. Players have the experience, but I’m not convinced it’s always good experience. To be frank, 95% of the time I don’t think people who provide balance feedback actually think it through. They just like an idea, or are frustrated by something, and roll with it. When discussing potentially changes, how many times have you seen someone say “Well I would really like to see X, but I think it might actually overbalance the class”? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, and without that self-awareness, I have a difficult time trusting player experience any more than dev experience.

Magnificent post, expresses everything I wanted to say and does so eloquently.

Persons who insult dungeon/boss designs forget a few key facts:

1. Humans ALWAYS look for the easiest possible way to do things. Maybe not every single individual, but as a whole they do. The result of this is…they figure out the path of least resistance.

As long as dungeons/bosses/etc. remain consistent and static in their function, people will always figure out a singular method of either doing it as easily as possible…or avoiding the dungeon/boss altogether if the risk/reward ratio is subjectively not worth it. HOTW recently got a huge troll buff…and instantly nobody is playing that path anymore (at least far less people are). That’s the avoidance side. It’s because it’s NOT WORTH IT anymore.

As for making bosses more interesting…Anet would have to reduce the damage or figure out some way to force people to get protection/regen/etc. on in order to survive certain parts if anet wants a support person to be part of the “new trinity.” Then, you would need to make CC/stuns/etc. more effective AND make the threat/danger of not using them greater if a CC person was supposed to be necessary. Then, you would need to increase the reward for the increased risk. Don’t increase the number of people necessary to do it, just increase the reward and challenge.

2. Humans ALWAYS try to find ways to bypass certain things that we consider uninteresting, unrewarding, etc. In fact, any game that lacks any way to “cheat” or “bypass” becomes less fun because you are stuck never being able to figure out some way to “outsmart the system” (a very satisfying feeling for many people).

3. I continue to say, increase the risk AND the reward, not just one or the other. So many big meta events don’t get completed on many servers even once a day – despite being active 10-12 times a day or possibly more – because they are not worth it or require more people than want to bother/are available at the time.

I continue to advocate making major events doable with fewer people. I believe it would make the game feel more “playable” to those people who either can’t play on prime times, don’t have a lot of friends to play with, etc.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Thanks Allie for taking the time to draw attention to this.
While I don’t agree with MonMalthias accusatory tone or sweeping generalizations about the community, he does have a point.

There is this perceptions that Anet have prioritized the Living Story and QQL changes over substantive balance changes and additions to professions, as well as ignoring long standing issues with bugs and bad traits/utilities for exceedingly long periods of time.
Many of the problems certain professions have, have had these problems from launch.
And to many this is unacceptable.

For my monies worth, I have more of a problem that the professions really haven’t developed…. at all, since launch. We got one new heal skill, and a couple of universal heal skills, trait tweaks and that’s the lot. Really kind of pathetic no matter how you look at it.
And I have a lvl 80 of every profession, and there is only so much you can do with that until you get bored.

There isn’t enough there there to keep me interested much longer. It’s one thing to try and avoid power creep, and it’s entirely another to just not develop your game, and your falling in the latter more and more.
The living story, as good as it is, isn’t enough if I am just sick to death of my characters, and i am getting very close to that point of no return. And I’ve been a veteran of the Guild Wars franchise for years.

I don’t want to quit Guild Wars, but your making it bloody hard for me to side with you on this. If Dark Souls 2 turns out as good as it looks like it will, and the feature patch be as I expect just another round of meaningless balance changes, I might end up leaving for good. Or at least a considerable amount of time.

What’s the point in continuing to throw time and money at a MMO that won’t develop?

Since this topic is one of importance, I do have a personal little story to tell the ties right into this.

I’m a veteran of Guild Wars, played it basically from launch till about a year before the launch of Guild Wars 2, after I had played just about everything into the ground.
Early in GW I played as an Elementalist, specifically an Earth Elementalist.
I just loved the idea as playing as a magical tank.

Sadly, I couldn’t do this. The earth skills you got were extremely few and far between, and even with all of them, I couldn’t hope to play the way that I wanted to, and I really wanted to. Not a good feeling.
But, due the awesomeness of the Necromancer, I was able to enjoy my time as a MM summoner, and get my way through Prophecies. I dabbled in other professions, but I always gravitated towards the casters in the end.

Factions came and went, nothing much changed. But it wasn’t until Nightfall that the game really opened up for me. Finally, after over a year of waiting I had my Earth Elementalist, and I could play her the way that I wanted.
And it rocked. It was the best feeling in the world, and I just chewed through content.
I was hooked.

Thou I would later gravitate towards the Ritualist as my tastes changed, I could never forget how much the Ele meant to me because of that, and GW as a result.
Basically my favorite character in any MMO or western RPG for that matter.

-
And now, in GW2, I get the exact same feeling with my Mesmer as I do with my pre-Nightfall Ele. I know what I want to do, how I want to play, but the skills to do it just don’t exist, or at least not in the quantities where I can build entirely around it.
In this case it happens to be deception and trickery.

It also doesn’t help that the game is currently balanced entirely around DPS, DPS, DPS.
But that’s beside the point.

-

Sure Guild Wars had it’s problems with way way too many skills, and the balance was all over the map as a result, but at least it allowed you to play the way you wanted to within reason.
It was flawed, but it was good.

Guild Wars 2 on the other hand has shifted entirely to the other side of the spectrum.
Instead of doing too much, they do nothing, they add nothing.
And the volume of new builds or strategies, of things to do have not increased really at all since launch. And it doesn’t show any signs of doing so, which is the truly tragic part.

kitten far and balance and additions to professions is concerned, Arenanet talk a good game and show a lot of interest, but have done very little. And I have to judge you on your actions, or lack there of.

I don’t mind not being able to not play the way that I want to right now. But the promise of at least being able to sometime in the reasonable future needs to be there, even if it turns out to be something new I didn’t expect.
But I don’t see that anywhere.

How many years do you expect me to wait for you add new profession content to the game?

@ March 18th update.

Too little, too late.

What do you mean there is nothing?

I have been on a break since the swift retribution to the Eagle Eye bug. Waiting around until this patch because Ranger balance was announced to be worked on and to be released in March. Poor me for getting my hopes up (not really, I am not falling for that again after the infamous Aquaman patch.)

I do wonder why this same routine has been happening over and over since the second year of Guild Wars: Factions’ release. Before that, monthly updates were feasible. Arenanet decided to keep doing that, while postponing and breaking their promise to the community time after time again.
Why do they still stand by their intention to release monthly balance updates while being nowhere near capable of doing so? I could understand the desire to try and stick with your intentions. But trying to stick with impossible demands, even though the intentions are noble, is no compensation for the damage and disappointment caused in the process.

Zacchary.6183:

So no “nerf ALL the things” isn’t any better of a choice.

Never said that. The world isn’t binary. At least not always. :P

JorneMormel.9850:

@ March 18th update.

Too little, too late.

What do you mean there is nothing?

I have been on a break since the swift retribution to the Eagle Eye bug. Waiting around until this patch because Ranger balance was announced to be worked on and to be released in March.

Correction:
Changes were announced for the balance patch following the LS, but no devs stated it would be on march 18th – that patch, they called a maintenance patch.

Players assumed it would be the balance patch, but Anet never stated it would be so, and even posted it wouldn’t be the one…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Feature-Patch-is-NOT-March-18th/first

Jocksy.3415:

JorneMormel.9850:

@ March 18th update.

Too little, too late.

What do you mean there is nothing?

I have been on a break since the swift retribution to the Eagle Eye bug. Waiting around until this patch because Ranger balance was announced to be worked on and to be released in March.

Correction:
Changes were announced for the balance patch following the LS, but no devs stated it would be on march 18th – that patch, they called a maintenance patch.

Players assumed it would be the balance patch, but Anet never stated it would be so, and even posted it wouldn’t be the one…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Feature-Patch-is-NOT-March-18th/first

True. It is of note that I wrote the OP in February when the general community impression at the time was that the “feature” patch would come on March 18th, until the clarification in the first week of March by various Arenanet staff including Allie Murdock (for which she copped no small amount of flak). It is a disagreeable state of affairs, to be true, but all we as a community can do is to push for better release practices in the future, as it looks like Arenanet is staying the course for keeping the release date of their feature patch under wraps.

@Yoh: The fact that GW2’s design philosophy fundamentally differs from GW1 has been beaten to absolute death. However, I’m going to entertain it for a second and ask a question:

What kept you interested in GW1 that had you playing for years?

Was it the more frequent release of new abilities? Was it new content in the form of new lands to explore? New classes? A certain PvP mode? Lore-based quests? Hero configuration/flexibility?

Also, you say GW1 allowed you to play the way you wanted, but what exactly did you do in GW1? Did you just party around with Heroes basically playing solo? Did you do PvP? Did you do anything that could be considered the equivalent of GW2 dungeons/bosses? I think back to my Necro and I made a spike-damage Blood necro that I loved to play, but what I did mostly in Prophecies was just the story. To me, that’s like questing as whatever build you like in GW2, which would probably work for the most part, but even then you aren’t with 7 other people.

Also, how would a Deception/Trickery Mesmer work in the type of gameplay that you want? How do you exactly want to deceive people? Are you talking about a stealth build? Some build where you make a lot of clones? Or do you want something else entirely, where the enemy has a really difficult time pinpointing the “real” you? Does what you want even make sense for the game, and when did you decide you wanted to play that way (before/after you started playing)?

I’m just not sure any game will have enough to keep you interested/playing in the long term these days. Or if not you, I think that applies to many gamers who complain about stagnation in a game, especially a game that is legitimately concerned about trying to be competitive (whether they’ve failed or not), instead of just throwing hundreds of abilities out there and hoping they all block each other at the OP door.