Guild Wars 2

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They’re probably stuck on the living story team.

Do they have a dedicated balance team? I don’t know but I would have thought it’s more likely balance updates are treated as part of wider projects and the staff are doing a whole variety of other things in between.

For example some of them are probably designers who worked creating the professions originally and now come up with new encounters, events etc. and others are programmers who work on a bit of everything, and so on.

You know that there are profession balances coming Soon™, right? Dulfy has a list of engineer, ranger, warrior, and thief balances mentioned in the livestream.

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They can skip steps 1 and 2 in some cases by playing the game and seeing what creates unhealthy play patterns ie. player can’t react because there is no way to avoid something/they don’t have enough information. This goes for most cases, they are (hopefully) professionals at this. Another thing is listening to feedback and looking graphs if they got them, sure

Step 3 only occurs if there is something detected so it’s fairly obvious
Step 4 is the reason why PvE and PvP should be balanced differently. There is absolutely no need to lift your hands up in the air and say you can’t do something because it would affect another aspect of the game if those aspects are easily separated
I doubt the existence of 6-10 even existing in most cases. A lot of the changes aren’t too well thought out and we don’t have a public beta testing going on where they could even gather the data required for revisioning the changes. Most of the changes are numerical anyway and not new mechanics so the ‘development’ doesn’t actually take time

It sure as hell doesn’t take 6 months to figure out 5% tweaks to skill damages. I do appreciate the big changes WHEN we get them but as for balance updates, they don’t really help the balance much at all. The patches are too infrequent and the balance will be skewed in some other direction in just a few weeks at best, causing the game to be pretty much dead and stagnated when it comes to innovation for more than 90% of the time

Uuni.3561:

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They can skip steps 1 and 2 in some cases by playing the game and seeing what creates unhealthy play patterns ie. player can’t react because there is no way to avoid something/they don’t have enough information. This goes for most cases, they are (hopefully) professionals at this. Another thing is listening to feedback and looking graphs if they got them, sure

Step 3 only occurs if there is something detected so it’s fairly obvious
Step 4 is the reason why PvE and PvP should be balanced differently. There is absolutely no need to lift your hands up in the air and say you can’t do something because it would affect another aspect of the game if those aspects are easily separated
I doubt the existence of 6-10 even existing in most cases. A lot of the changes aren’t too well thought out and we don’t have a public beta testing going on where they could even gather the data required for revisioning the changes. Most of the changes are numerical anyway and not new mechanics so the ‘development’ doesn’t actually take time

It sure as hell doesn’t take 6 months to figure out 5% tweaks to skill damages. I do appreciate the big changes WHEN we get them but as for balance updates, they don’t really help the balance much at all. The patches are too infrequent and the balance will be skewed in some other direction in just a few weeks at best, causing the game to be pretty much dead and stagnated when it comes to innovation for more than 90% of the time

And this is why you are not in charge of balancing any type of content for any game.

Step 1 is the single most important step in the chain. Without it you are literally just making dumb guesses. You may as well spin the “wheel-o-nerf” to make all of your decisions.

Blaeys.3102:

Uuni.3561:

Since we get balance patches every 6 months or so and they include changes that take less than a month to come up with and create, I can’t help but to wonder what are they doing in the 5 months between the patches? Are they laid off or something?

I’m not trying to be snarky or disrespective . . .

Obviously you are trying to be exactly that.

Don’t see how people start with insults and expect a thread to be the least bit productive or useful.

You may have a good point to make here – but the tone of the thread is derailed completely through hyperbole and insult. Thread should be closed – and probably just deleted at this point.

I honestly am not trying to be insulting to anyone, I just find it impossible to discuss this topic without pointing out the obvious facts ie. nothing happens in 5 months between the balance patches. Trust me I tried my best not to be snarky

Also removing discussion isn’t healthy, I know this place is worse place to discuss about health of the game than chinese internet to discuss about democracy but at least I tried

mtpelion.4562:

And this is why you are not in charge of balancing any type of content for any game.

Step 1 is the single most important step in the chain. Without it you are literally just making dumb guesses. You may as well spin the “wheel-o-nerf” to make all of your decisions.

Doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing. If you are a professional game developer it’s not a ‘wheel-o-nerf’ because you are supposed to have some idea of what the game you are balancing is about. And I didn’t tell them to disregard statistics either, you are just trying to give me flak for stuff I didn’t say

Uuni.3561:

I honestly am not trying to be insulting to anyone, I just find it impossible to discuss this topic without pointing out the obvious facts ie. nothing happens in 5 months between the balance patches. Trust me I tried my best not to be snarky

ummmmm…… you dont find anything odd with the consistent 5 month cycle.

Uuni.3561:

Doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing. If you are a professional game developer it’s not a ‘wheel-o-nerf’ because you are supposed to have some idea of what the game you are balancing is about. And I didn’t tell them to disregard statistics either, you are just trying to give me flak for stuff I didn’t say

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert-slideshow/

Check out Sunday, August 10.

loseridoit.2756:

ummmmm…… you dont find anything odd with the consistent 5 month cycle.

The odd thing is that they call them balance patches even though you can’t keep game balanced by touching the balance every 6 months. Even 2 months would be pushing it

Uuni.3561:

loseridoit.2756:

ummmmm…… you dont find anything odd with the consistent 5 month cycle.

The odd thing is that they call them balance patches even though you can’t keep game balanced by touching the balance every 6 months. Even 2 months would be pushing it

so you want anet keep messing with the numbers every 2 months……..

So where does q/a testing fit in your idea of anet content distribution

mtpelion.4562:

Uuni.3561:

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They can skip steps 1 and 2 in some cases by playing the game and seeing what creates unhealthy play patterns ie. player can’t react because there is no way to avoid something/they don’t have enough information. This goes for most cases, they are (hopefully) professionals at this. Another thing is listening to feedback and looking graphs if they got them, sure

Step 3 only occurs if there is something detected so it’s fairly obvious
Step 4 is the reason why PvE and PvP should be balanced differently. There is absolutely no need to lift your hands up in the air and say you can’t do something because it would affect another aspect of the game if those aspects are easily separated
I doubt the existence of 6-10 even existing in most cases. A lot of the changes aren’t too well thought out and we don’t have a public beta testing going on where they could even gather the data required for revisioning the changes. Most of the changes are numerical anyway and not new mechanics so the ‘development’ doesn’t actually take time

It sure as hell doesn’t take 6 months to figure out 5% tweaks to skill damages. I do appreciate the big changes WHEN we get them but as for balance updates, they don’t really help the balance much at all. The patches are too infrequent and the balance will be skewed in some other direction in just a few weeks at best, causing the game to be pretty much dead and stagnated when it comes to innovation for more than 90% of the time

And this is why you are not in charge of balancing any type of content for any game.

Step 1 is the single most important step in the chain. Without it you are literally just making dumb guesses. You may as well spin the “wheel-o-nerf” to make all of your decisions.

I thought the same as your first line actually.

Collecting data and facts find are always the most time consuming and critical step on any problem solving. Balance patch every 6 months to me sounds very reasonable. Faster than that sounds like rushing or kneel jerk to me.

mtpelion.4562:

Uuni.3561:

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They can skip steps 1 and 2 in some cases by playing the game and seeing what creates unhealthy play patterns ie. player can’t react because there is no way to avoid something/they don’t have enough information. This goes for most cases, they are (hopefully) professionals at this. Another thing is listening to feedback and looking graphs if they got them, sure

Step 3 only occurs if there is something detected so it’s fairly obvious
Step 4 is the reason why PvE and PvP should be balanced differently. There is absolutely no need to lift your hands up in the air and say you can’t do something because it would affect another aspect of the game if those aspects are easily separated
I doubt the existence of 6-10 even existing in most cases. A lot of the changes aren’t too well thought out and we don’t have a public beta testing going on where they could even gather the data required for revisioning the changes. Most of the changes are numerical anyway and not new mechanics so the ‘development’ doesn’t actually take time

It sure as hell doesn’t take 6 months to figure out 5% tweaks to skill damages. I do appreciate the big changes WHEN we get them but as for balance updates, they don’t really help the balance much at all. The patches are too infrequent and the balance will be skewed in some other direction in just a few weeks at best, causing the game to be pretty much dead and stagnated when it comes to innovation for more than 90% of the time

And this is why you are not in charge of balancing any type of content for any game.

Step 1 is the single most important step in the chain. Without it you are literally just making dumb guesses. You may as well spin the “wheel-o-nerf” to make all of your decisions.

Did you read the guys posts?

You can skip “in some cases by playing the game”.

This is not random balance. Its based on firsthand experience by devs, some who play at a very high level. Their data collection is the hundreds of games they have played in pvp and the resulting trends they experience. E.g. class x wins too much or class y is not fun to play against.

Crossaber.8934:

I thought the same as your first line actually.

Collecting data and facts find are always the most time consuming and critical step on any problem solving. Balance patch every 6 months to me sounds very reasonable. Faster than that sounds like rushing or kneel jerk to me.

well, I think changes will happen at a much faster rate. Just bug fixes will make some classes happy

They don’t need to wait and collect data.

They are being told what is wrong with their game, each and every single day of the week.

By players of all skill ranges.

If they are being told for the 1000th time that X is clearly OP by top players and people from the lower ratings, I seriously doubt they need to sit around in an office for hours collecting information on what they already know.

Besides, the games balance is so out of whack the balance team could all hop in a custom arena and figure out what’s too good and awful within the hour if they possess any common sense and logic.

Lets be honest here.

Pandaman.4758:

You know that there are profession balances coming Soon™, right? Dulfy has a list of engineer, ranger, warrior, and thief balances mentioned in the livestream.

What I want to see is a dedicated necro stream. I’m sure the 2 minutes it would take them to gloss over whatever fixes they implement would make for an entertaining laugh. Seeing as at this point I’m sure even they don’t know what to do with us.

loseridoit.2756:

so you want anet keep messing with the numbers every 2 months……..

So where does q/a testing fit in your idea of anet content distribution

Yes, because the numbers are pretty darn off in many cases
They got QA testers? They might as well give a week or two for the QA guys (if they got those) and they’d still be over 3 months faster than the current pace. And I said 2 months is pushing it, one month would be fine and two weeks would be optimal. Sure the bigger changes take a longer while but minor tweaks and changes every time they update living story isn’t too big of a push. You really don’t need a huge QA testing or massive diagrams of statistics to see why incendiary powder is ridiculously overpowered or why stuff like the new guardian trait communal aegis is awful compared to the other options in that specific tree

If you DO need all sorts of statistics and still can’t see why, you clearly aren’t the right person to do the job.

That big list mtpelion.4562 made for example at the start is just shilltalk, and it’s getting upvoted because that’s what people in official forums generally do and is to be expected. However a professional game dev doesn’t need 6 MONTHS to see what’s wrong with the game and to tweak the numbers. Sure a mechanic change would take somewhere along that long, stuff like reworking condition damage in PvE, reworking conditions as a mechanic to be something less spammy and more interesting, sure. But it’s 2 years from launch and the issues are still there. There’s no need to make excuses for Anet, they are the people who can speak with their actions yet they remain silent. All I want is this game to be good and successful, if you are against that then fine, be against that, but from my point of view healthy gameplay = healthy game and happy players. I really can’t see any harm at all if they tweaked the balance more often or at least tried to keep some sort of interesting, evolving metagame going on in the PvP and in some cases PvE as well

Wouldn’t this be better served in the Profession Balance sub-forum, where the pertinent Devs would see it?

Also, some of your questions have been answered, just recently, by the Devs. Just take a look at the Dev Tracker. =)

Good luck.

Balance team consists of Pickle the Hamster. This little hamster picks up the “lottery numbers” and balance is done by the will of the RNG balls and Pickle the Hamster!

Are people seriously defending the current pace of balance in GW2? Seriously?

Just take a look at the balance pace of the competition out there, especially from games that have been far more successful at acchieving esports, where players can expect balance patches every two weeks or a month.

Even GW2 used to be like this, in its first year.

I assume that the skill and balance team is incredibly busy with creating and balancing new weapons for existing professions, and who knows what else, and maybe even, hopefully, reshaping some of the core concepts of GW2’s combat in order to make esports and pvp more appealing (and possible), but because this is Anet we are talking about, we’ll never know until things are announced… in one year or two.

I agree that balance patches are extremely slow.

It’s not about gathering info, the community is basically a big QA team: CDI, organised bugs per profession on the forum…

Plus I think new content requires more testing than balance patches and they managed to have new releases every two weeks.

It’s probably a decision from the higher ups: new content is more important than non-bug problems.

A part of me wants to believe that we’re getting new weapons/skills and maybe a new profession on the 2nd year bday. Maybe it’s been slow for this reason.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Pandaman.4758:

You know that there are profession balances coming Soon™, right? Dulfy has a list of engineer, ranger, warrior, and thief balances mentioned in the livestream.

What I want to see is a dedicated necro stream. I’m sure the 2 minutes it would take them to gloss over whatever fixes they implement would make for an entertaining laugh. Seeing as at this point I’m sure even they don’t know what to do with us.

Pats your back
Mesmers are with ya… let’s see how they screw us over this time. Although with you guys, they’ll just propose something stupid, with us they’ll say something useful and great, and then never deliver… or say something stupid and then make it even worse along with nerfing us some more.

As for whoever said that you can skip data collection by playing the game, that’s how you get balance pidgeonholed into kitten fests of whichever profession has the most balance team users on it (or the person at the top, cough Karl cough). Last time I checked Karl plays Warrior for the most part. That doesn’t reflect at all in-game, not one bit. Look at how well that’s gone for us.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Are people serously defending the current pace of balance in GW2? Seriously?

Just take a look at the balance pace of the competition out there, especially from games that have been far more successful at acchieving esports, where players can expect balance patches every two weeks or a month.

Even GW2 used to be like this, in its first year.

I assume that the skill and balance team is incredibly busy with creating and balancing new weapons for existing professions, and who knows what else, and maybe even, hopefully, reshaping some of the core concepts of GW2’s combat in order to make esports and pvp more appealing (and possible), but because this is Anet we are talking about, we’ll never know until things are announced… in one year or two.

didnt you hear. anet actually introducing a new game mode. They are being cautious.

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

actually step 10 would be more like “repeat from beginning as needed”. things change during a development process, and a previously good idea can cease to be good on a later iteration of the same process. that said, i wish they’d try doing balance patches with less changes every 3 months, rather than the current plan. it gives the meta time to settle down, and it gives them time to develop some changes.

also love how OP “knows” it took them less than a month to do all the work they’re showing now.

BrunoBRS.5178:

also love how OP “knows” it took them less than a month to do all the work they’re showing now.

I and pretty much anyone who plays this game actively could do the same amount of changes in two weeks even alone. Maybe not implement stuff like adrenaline changes but that’s the highlight of this patch, all the numerical changes that they did and didn’t do take a few minutes to implement and a few hours to create and test

Uuni.3561:

BrunoBRS.5178:

also love how OP “knows” it took them less than a month to do all the work they’re showing now.

I and pretty much anyone who plays this game actively could do the same amount of changes in two weeks even alone. Maybe not implement stuff like adrenaline changes but that’s the highlight of this patch, all the numerical changes that they did and didn’t do take a few minutes to implement and a few hours to create and test

there’s a lot of pre-analysis. sure, once you come up with what you want to do to balance, it’s relatively fast, but players really underestimate the “pre-production” work in iterative game design.

Honestly, the large span of time between balance updates just gives me the impression that balance is a secondary priority to Anet, which is bad, bad, bad, BAD. Balancing needs to be done in small, frequent, incremental changes and tuning. Putting aside the (numerous) glaring issues that have been in the game since launch, every one of the small handful of balance updates has fixed a few problems, left a lot unsolved, and opened up a good amount of other ones that weren’t there before.

It’s been 2 years and they haven’t even properly balanced the current skillset, let alone added anything new to mix it up. At this point in an MMO’s cycle usually there’s an expansion released that introduces a host of new skills and even new classes. We still have none of that. It just baffles me how much it feels like they don’t TRULY care to make their game fulfill its true potential.

anyone defending their balance iteration schedule is…..
they do shaves/changes that are every 2-months worthy, but are done every 6-8 months (last real one was in Dec 2013) instead….
they do skill/trait bug fixes even less than balance passes….give it one try, and if it doesnt work, you wait another 8-16 months once they get around to bug fixing again.

i would dare a Dev to defend their balance/bug iteration schedule…but i know its not their fault. if i could talk directly to their bosses on the other hand…

I think two people hardly constitutes as a team.

Terrahero.9358:

I think two people hardly constitutes as a team.

Maybe we just need to get a sticky-ed thread of terminology or plainly put we need a Glossary.

Crossaber.8934:

mtpelion.4562:

Uuni.3561:

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

They can skip steps 1 and 2 in some cases by playing the game and seeing what creates unhealthy play patterns ie. player can’t react because there is no way to avoid something/they don’t have enough information. This goes for most cases, they are (hopefully) professionals at this. Another thing is listening to feedback and looking graphs if they got them, sure

Step 3 only occurs if there is something detected so it’s fairly obvious
Step 4 is the reason why PvE and PvP should be balanced differently. There is absolutely no need to lift your hands up in the air and say you can’t do something because it would affect another aspect of the game if those aspects are easily separated
I doubt the existence of 6-10 even existing in most cases. A lot of the changes aren’t too well thought out and we don’t have a public beta testing going on where they could even gather the data required for revisioning the changes. Most of the changes are numerical anyway and not new mechanics so the ‘development’ doesn’t actually take time

It sure as hell doesn’t take 6 months to figure out 5% tweaks to skill damages. I do appreciate the big changes WHEN we get them but as for balance updates, they don’t really help the balance much at all. The patches are too infrequent and the balance will be skewed in some other direction in just a few weeks at best, causing the game to be pretty much dead and stagnated when it comes to innovation for more than 90% of the time

And this is why you are not in charge of balancing any type of content for any game.

Step 1 is the single most important step in the chain. Without it you are literally just making dumb guesses. You may as well spin the “wheel-o-nerf” to make all of your decisions.

I thought the same as your first line actually.

Collecting data and facts find are always the most time consuming and critical step on any problem solving. Balance patch every 6 months to me sounds very reasonable. Faster than that sounds like rushing or kneel jerk to me.

With the current balance cadence we won’t get anything balanced until 2020.
To give you an idea. GW1 had 24 patches with skill balancing in 2008.

Just a 3 massive ones like the balance patches GW2 gets but inbetween those that occured roughly every 4 months instead of every six, they got small patches with 10-20 changes.

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

I don’t think anet is following those steps. None of the thief changes are things thief players are asking for. Dagger cleaving 1 extra player now is just odd, but nerfing choking gas to “hit” and nerfing s/d and bps(although really wasn’t that bad of a nerf) that were constantly complained about from non-thief players.

I feel like for some classes they don’t look at their respective forums for balance decisions as much as the Q.Q against them. I say some because warrior would of been nerfed to the ground by this logic had it applied to them.

We the thieves want more build diversity, and like all professions to work on the list of meaningless traits, utilities and runes that have potential to make something viable and unique

mtpelion.4562:

Uuni.3561:

Doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing. If you are a professional game developer it’s not a ‘wheel-o-nerf’ because you are supposed to have some idea of what the game you are balancing is about. And I didn’t tell them to disregard statistics either, you are just trying to give me flak for stuff I didn’t say

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert-slideshow/

Check out Sunday, August 10.

Maybe stop insulting him and read what he typed instead?

Uuni.3561:

I honestly am not trying to be insulting to anyone, I just find it impossible to discuss this topic without pointing out the obvious facts ie. nothing happens in 5 months between the balance patches. Trust me I tried my best not to be snarky

What facts? Your basing your entire claim and accusation set, on an uninformed assumption that you know more then the rest of us or a dev team on how to balance a game towards their goals.

How long have you been programming? How many years experience do you have in game design? What data do you have that gives your opinion precedence over the games developers?

Uuni.3561:

Doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing.

And you have evidence that they do nothing? Or is this simply another uninformed accusatory claim?

Mjgander.1905:

They don’t need to wait and collect data.

They are being told what is wrong with their game, each and every single day of the week.

By players of all skill ranges.

Who all argue in every thread and are split on what is OP and UP. FYI, reading the entirety of the forums for posters perspective on balance is “collecting data”. Yet your claim is that they do not need to collect data. That seems a bit of a counter intuitive suggestion on your part.

If they are being told for the 1000th time that X is clearly OP by top players and people from the lower ratings, I seriously doubt they need to sit around in an office for hours collecting information on what they already know.

Besides, the games balance is so out of whack the balance team could all hop in a custom arena and figure out what’s too good and awful within the hour if they possess any common sense and logic.

Lets be honest here.

This seems a bit odd when you take into account that a few weeks ago, a dev pointed out that only 1.8% of all game accounts have ever signed in to the forums. How informed is it to balance the game based on the demands of less then 2% of a player base?

Finally a thread that makes sense..

Collecting data and following that “video game design school” steps they made the last guardian “buff”. Buff that nobody understand and month later are still useless.

if they play the game, at least few hour a week, they can see what is broken in minutes. I remember when i start to play this game and didn’t know anything about it yet and commented about hammer warrior damage, more than 6 months before the nerf… cmon, no data collect was needed to see what is wrong with a CC combo of 15k+ damage in a tanky invul build. That happen with a lot of thing nowadays

They do play the game. I see them occasionally in PvP and we have 3 I regularly see on my server in WvW. Claiming they do not play is a very uninformed statement. These are the kind of uninformed claims that will cause them to over look a thread entirely, regardless of how good or bad the feedback in a thread is.

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

4 weeks tops

Volrath.1473:

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

4 weeks tops

a software developer just died from reading this.

coglin.1867:

They do play the game. I see them occasionally in PvP and we have 3 I regularly see on my server in WvW. Claiming they do not play is a very uninformed statement. These are the kind of uninformed claims that will cause them to over look a thread entirely, regardless of how good or bad the feedback in a thread is.

They might play the game, but they’ve shown time and time again that they don’t know it as well as some of their players, which is pretty embarrassing. Scepter condi mesmer in TA aetherpath, anyone?

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

HA!
A history of Necro patches disagrees with the existence of steps 7 to 10, hell even 6 is kind of suspect…

Any change the involves a simple number fix can be done in an afternoon, you change a property and that’s it, you can build the solution and just run it.

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Sevans.4619:

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Maybe the current schedule would be ok if the game was “well balanced”. But it isn’t and that’s why a shorter balance period is required.

Also, too many balance changes make no sense from a player’s perspective. Remember Dhuumfire? Necros said that was a bad idea since the preview.

@OP:

1. Create tool tips
2. Understand the meta
3. Change items that aren’t really a problem.

Repeat.

mtpelion.4562:

Balancing consists of the following steps:

1. Collect Data.
2. Review Data to see if Balancing is required.
3. If required, propose solutions.
4. Determine if solutions meet your goals, are realistic, and do not significantly impact other areas of the game.
5. Select a solution.
6. Develop the solution.
7. Test the solution.
8. Revise the solution if anything comes up during testing.
9. Test again if revisions are made.
10. Repeat 8-9 as needed.
11. Release Balancing changes.

Start over at step 1.

1. They’ve had 2 years to collect data on lots of skills/traits
2. Doesn’t take long
3. Players have done this in spades. Most of these will be simple value changes.
4. Since most are value changes…they are realistic and don’t impact anything else.
5. Takes very little time
6. Most changes won’t require tons of development or any at all. It’s a simple value change.
7. The only thing here that takes time and ArenaNet has proven their internal testing is near worthless.
8. Again simple value changes are very easy to revise.
9. Takes time
10. Most won’t take anymore than 1-2 revisions
11. Apparently it’s wait 3 months start announcing the changes and at 6 months release the changes.

1-6 do not take months for 90% of the changes that need made. Even on bigger skill changes they can copy code from other skills. They aren’t developing a complicated AI system, they are modifying what’s already there. Unless they had horrible coders working skills/traits it should be incredibly simple to modify pretty much anything about a skill or trait. Testing does take time, but not 6 months. Even then their testing team seems to miss a lot of huge design flaws and allows them to go through.

Face it, ArenaNet’s class balance team is just incredibly slow and always have been. They miss a lot of huge balance issues and buff/nerf things that were fine. Every once in a while they get something right, but it’s usually followed by a bunch of changes that didn’t need made. Did I mention they are slow? 6 months for a class balance patch is glacial. IIRC WoW was revamping 2 classes every 3 months in vanilla and most of those changes were more than a class here have seen since launch. League of Legends is tweaking balance things bi-weekly. The question remains, what are they doing that it takes 6 months? My guess is they are getting poached by the LS team during crunches because some executive decided 2 week content updates was a good thing.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Sevans.4619:

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Maybe the current schedule would be ok if the game was “well balanced”. But it isn’t and that’s why a shorter balance period is required.

Also, too many balance changes make no sense from a player’s perspective. Remember Dhuumfire? Necros said that was a bad idea since the preview.

This game is more well balanced than most people would like to admit. There are some problems, of course. No game is perfectly balanced, but Anet has done pretty well considering all the factors that need balancing.

I feel like a lot of people that post here have never played a really imbalanced competitive game and have a hard time gauging what is truly imbalanced and what isn’t. But I’m no game designer… what do I know?

Sevans.4619:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Sevans.4619:

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Maybe the current schedule would be ok if the game was “well balanced”. But it isn’t and that’s why a shorter balance period is required.

Also, too many balance changes make no sense from a player’s perspective. Remember Dhuumfire? Necros said that was a bad idea since the preview.

This game is more well balanced than most people would like to admit. There are some problems, of course. No game is perfectly balanced, but Anet has done pretty well considering all the factors that need balancing.

I feel like a lot of people that post here have never played a really imbalanced competitive game and have a hard time gauging what is truly imbalanced and what isn’t. But I’m no game designer… what do I know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBuYhqz1CzA

If something is worse it doesn’t justify this being bad.

Don’t pretend like you didn’t read the first part of my post. I am not justifying GW2 balance with anything, only including an entertaining video of what real imbalance looks like. I said there were problems and there are. The point of that post was to say that GW2 balance is far from ‘bad.’

There are very few circumstances in GW2 where individual skill can’t make up for small gaps in class balance. That means that something is being done right. Also, every class has a role in which they excel at. Unfortunately, due to its nature as both a PvE and PvP game, there are many factors that have to be balanced so you get these awkward situations where, yes, a class is over-(or under)-performing in a certain area of the game. The proper way to fix that isn’t to make these massive changes that alters the dynamic of a class, it’s to make small, gradual changes.

Good balance takes time. Other well balanced games have proven this.

Sevans.4619:

There are very few circumstances in GW2 where individual skill can’t make up for small gaps in class balance.

Dire p/d condi thief.