Guild Wars 2

When parts of your character doesn’t work well it affects every single part of content in the game. No amount of new content can ever make class implementation flaws not exist. Bugs in class skills and traits, and parts of classes that don’t play smoothly and fluidly fundamentally affect the gameplay and satisfaction of every player.

All classes would be pleased to hear that for the new year, being able to enjoy your class is now an equal priority as new pve grinds, so A net will add 8 new staff one for each class bringing the balance team from two people upto ten the bare minimum such an integral area deserves. Every single class deserves a fulltime dev who is committed to making that class great to play, and can fully devote themselves to understanding the requirements of the class they represent.

If you could find some of the Wolfpack people responsible for Shadowbane that would be a major plus, they were as talented at balancing classes in multiple pvp & pve roles as your graphic art department for example.

Are you going to pay them?

Apart from that, it’s a bad idea. Every profession dev will automatically favor his own profession, even if he doesn’t want to. It’s up to a profession TEAM to systematically balance and repair ALL professions. Whether that team is made of 5 or 15 people is irrelevant as long as the work is done.

marnick.4305:

Are you going to pay them?

Apart from that, it’s a bad idea. Every profession dev will automatically favor his own profession, even if he doesn’t want to. It’s up to a profession TEAM to systematically balance and repair ALL professions. Whether that team is made of 5 or 15 people is irrelevant as long as the work is done.

This is exactly why it would be a good idea. They would still have to collaborate, this merely brings issues with the less popular classes to the fore far faster.

I can speak from the Necro board that the majority of people playing the necro aren’t even sure if any of the devs play necro at all, which is why they have some rather large issues (namely Death Shroud UI and minion AI) that still haven’t been fixed (although ANet has posted that they are being worked on, just with no timeline).

This idea would assure that each class gets attention.

Many of the classes could use quality of life fixes. Not buff or nerfs but general playability things. Also… incorrect tool tips bother the heck out of me… I don’t know anything about code or programming but are fixing typo’s and incorrect numbers really that difficult? I believe having at least one person dedicated solely to picking out bugs and making the classes smooth as they can be would add to the fun of the game. I have 8 characters one of each profession and I consider them each my main. Bugs have never driven me to judge a class, but I find it odd that some class content for lack of a better word is broken. There are traits in the Engineer class tree that simply do not function as in if you take them nothing will happen to your stats whatsoever. The Mesmer and Necro’s “Pet” Issues getting frozen in place seem to be due to target switching quickly. I know that the Flesh Golem Elite Necro Skill is set to Rambo mode, it can and will attack anything in it’s line of sight. I find it endearing but I acknowledge it is a problem. I think what it all boils down to is filing bug reports religiously and encouraging others to do so.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

marnick.4305:

Are you going to pay them?

Apart from that, it’s a bad idea. Every profession dev will automatically favor his own profession, even if he doesn’t want to. It’s up to a profession TEAM to systematically balance and repair ALL professions. Whether that team is made of 5 or 15 people is irrelevant as long as the work is done.

This is exactly why it would be a good idea. They would still have to collaborate, this merely brings issues with the less popular classes to the fore far faster.

I can speak from the Necro board that the majority of people playing the necro aren’t even sure if any of the devs play necro at all, which is why they have some rather large issues (namely Death Shroud UI and minion AI) that still haven’t been fixed (although ANet has posted that they are being worked on, just with no timeline).

This idea would assure that each class gets attention.

You only speak from the necro board, yet every profession has whines that they aren’t represented. Warriors whine about their burst. Eles whine about switching attunements. Thiefs whine about p/p. Engineers whine about bugs. Rangers whine about required pets. Guardians whine about useless traits.

Your post is exactly why it’d be a BAD idea. You have no idea of the troubles of other professions. Matter of fact, the game is still young and there’s plenty to fix. Let the team do their job. Bugs and balance are actually completely distinct teams (see blog). The “being worked on with no timeline” is true for every profession and that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately being a programmer is not an easy job. So please let a.net do their job. All classes are currently playable and enjoyable. That’s more than any other MMO ever managed so soon after launch.

Class playability affects everyone and all content, A-net has much fewer people working on the classes than they should.

2 people cannot do the class job by themselves, that its abundantly clear, those 2 people need 8 more, 1 for each class, to help them.

marnick.4305:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

marnick.4305:

Are you going to pay them?

Apart from that, it’s a bad idea. Every profession dev will automatically favor his own profession, even if he doesn’t want to. It’s up to a profession TEAM to systematically balance and repair ALL professions. Whether that team is made of 5 or 15 people is irrelevant as long as the work is done.

This is exactly why it would be a good idea. They would still have to collaborate, this merely brings issues with the less popular classes to the fore far faster.

I can speak from the Necro board that the majority of people playing the necro aren’t even sure if any of the devs play necro at all, which is why they have some rather large issues (namely Death Shroud UI and minion AI) that still haven’t been fixed (although ANet has posted that they are being worked on, just with no timeline).

This idea would assure that each class gets attention.

You only speak from the necro board, yet every profession has whines that they aren’t represented. Warriors whine about their burst. Eles whine about switching attunements. Thiefs whine about p/p. Engineers whine about bugs. Rangers whine about required pets. Guardians whine about useless traits.

Your post is exactly why it’d be a BAD idea. You have no idea of the troubles of other professions. Matter of fact, the game is still young and there’s plenty to fix. Let the team do their job. Bugs and balance are actually completely distinct teams (see blog). The “being worked on with no timeline” is true for every profession and that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately being a programmer is not an easy job. So please let a.net do their job. All classes are currently playable and enjoyable. That’s more than any other MMO ever managed so soon after launch.

I don’t follow your logic. You assume I only know about necros when in reality the only profession I don’t play is Ele (and that because I only have 7 characters right now). Having one person dedicated to identifying bugs and quality of life improvements for each profession is a very good idea. We know that some devs play warriors, eles, mesmers, and theives (screenshots are all over these boards showing that). Necros, engineers, and rangers…not so much.

Besides, there is a difference in what you describe and what I describe: Everyone playing an ele knew about attunements as a part of their class. Rangers all knew that they would have a pet. Necros had no idea that their class mechanic would not allow them to see boons or conditions on themselves.

The “worked on” with no timeline is fine. We at least got confirmation that they are, indeed, working on it. I’ve done programming and I know how long it takes. What frustrates players is when there are very well known issues and they hear nothing back at all, which makes us question if the devs even looked into it. If there is at least one person charged with finding bugs and other quality of life issues per class, then we are assured that they will be found and dealt with. If this isn’t the case, then without communication, we have no idea that the devs even know about the issue.

Note I said “quality of life” and not “balance.” There is a massive difference between the two. Changing the Death Shroud UI would not affect balance at all, but it would allow necros to make decisions based on information that their opponents have about them, but they do not. Hint: if anyone should have information on you, it should be you.

What we should have is not a dedicated development team member, but a dedicated development team liaison. This person just needs to bloody communicate with the player base about what’s going on in each class, why they’re considering it, and enact conversations with the community. They don’t have to promise anything, or even confirm anything. They could pose theoretical questions weekly or whatever and ask for the players’ opinions on assorted topics, then assess the threads at the end of the week. Heck, they could even start inane topics about what we like most about a given profession, and even that would substantially improve how we feel about the class/the development team/the game.

I don’t want more developers, I want more communication.

Rising Dusk.2408:

What we should have is not a dedicated development team member, but a dedicated development team liaison. This person just needs to bloody communicate with the player base about what’s going on in each class, why they’re considering it, and enact conversations with the community. They don’t have to promise anything, or even confirm anything. They could pose theoretical questions weekly or whatever and ask for the players’ opinions on assorted topics, then assess the threads at the end of the week. Heck, they could even start inane topics about what we like most about a given profession, and even that would substantially improve how we feel about the class/the development team/the game.

I don’t want more developers, I want more communication.

A dedicated community communicator for each and every class would be great as well. But what the game really needs is enough dev people tasked specifically to classes function, bugs & balance, to start actually getting the workload there is for classes done.

Rising Dusk.2408:

What we should have is not a dedicated development team member, but a dedicated development team liaison. This person just needs to bloody communicate with the player base about what’s going on in each class, why they’re considering it, and enact conversations with the community. They don’t have to promise anything, or even confirm anything. They could pose theoretical questions weekly or whatever and ask for the players’ opinions on assorted topics, then assess the threads at the end of the week. Heck, they could even start inane topics about what we like most about a given profession, and even that would substantially improve how we feel about the class/the development team/the game.

Except that majority of the playerbase do not go to the forums.

Heck, I’ve even seen topics from players complaining that they felt that they needed to go to the forums if they wanted detailed information on patches.

And obviously that system would not work. Even if they made a topic regarding every single profession, you would still get people posting in other profession’s threads telling the devs to pay more attention to <insertracethatposterplays> instead. And then that would derail the topics into debates about which profession needs more attention. And keeping that out would put an extra load on the moderators, which we don’t want.

Not to mention that asking the playerbase is biased anyway. Try asking for boosting any part of Thief, you’ll incur a hilarious kitten storm.

And one thing that needs to be said: The professions span several departments. There’s cross-class balance, which is further split to PvP and PvE. Naturally there’s intra-class balance as well, which spans the same bits, but with a bit more detail. There’s bug fixing, which relates to playtesters. There’s quality assurance, which is mostly fixing tooltips and oversights that affect specific tidbits of the game, such as the Death Shroud not showing your conditions/boons. Just to name a few.

It’s literally impossible to have a single person dedicated to a specific profession and be done with it. What you ideally want is a team. That and a crapton of good playtesters. And just for good measure, the CCs should regularly update the teams on the glitches and imbalances that the playerbase has observed on the forums.

Throw more money at it. More money fixes everything.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t follow your logic. You assume I only know about necros when in reality the only profession I don’t play is Ele (and that because I only have 7 characters right now). Having one person dedicated to identifying bugs and quality of life improvements for each profession is a very good idea. We know that some devs play warriors, eles, mesmers, and theives (screenshots are all over these boards showing that). Necros, engineers, and rangers…not so much.

I know the extent of that problem. It was shown in highly blatant Kalganism in WoW. However WoW is a gear grind game while GW2 is very much an alt game. I’m pretty sure most devs have a few alts on the side. I bet you dimes to dollars these alts are anonymous to guarantuee a bit of well-deserved privacy.

If this isn’t the case, then without communication, we have no idea that the devs even know about the issue.

Devs read the forums. However devs have better things to do than start answering forum threads. Such things don’t end and takes away time from the important stuff such as fixing bugs and improving features.

Note I said “quality of life” and not “balance.” There is a massive difference between the two. Changing the Death Shroud UI would not affect balance at all, but it would allow necros to make decisions based on information that their opponents have about them, but they do not. Hint: if anyone should have information on you, it should be you.

Well… quality of life is on par all things considered. Do you remember paladins on launch day in WoW? They didn’t even have talents. IF AH unreachable due to a chasm in front of it while 5fps was the norm? 5000 people queues on most realms? That’s how other games had quality of life months to years after release. All things considered, necro can be improved, but not like it’s bad. Just moderately good which is fine so soon after release.

Anet don’t have enough people working on classes. From a dev’s interview statement people infer that they basically have just 2 people working on all 8 classes. Those 2 people or 10 people or however many it is, simply need more help. Adding at least 8 more class focused devs, in addition to whatever they have now. Each class focused dev dedicated to a singleclass would go a long way to getting some of the backlog of issues cleared, and better depth into some of the classes trickier issues.

Great art, new content, that stuff is fine but it only works fully when the actual classes play nicely and 2 people cannot do it alone.

Just 2 lone devs can’t balance 8 classes for 3 game modes. It’s just not possible.

Actual devs for each class? No. They need more devs working on balance in general, but they should all be working on overall balance, not balance of specific professions only.

However, profession “representatives” to help keep track of major issues for each profession, put forth ideas (whether those ideas are from the community or the reps own mind), ect would be a good idea I think.

I still do not agree. It would be far better to just delete the official forums. For devs it is a very, very bad idea to even view the forums.

Please read: http://www.eldergame.com/2008/06/taming-the-forum-tiger

Electro.4173:

Actual devs for each class? No. They need more devs working on balance in general, but they should all be working on overall balance, not balance of specific professions only.

However, profession “representatives” to help keep track of major issues for each profession, put forth ideas (whether those ideas are from the community or the reps own mind), ect would be a good idea I think.

Can anyone really disagree with the balance team needing to be bigger? Smooth class-play improves every area of the game.

Keep the 2 guys they have currently doing class wide balance, and have 8 new guys bringing those two specific analysis and problem solving for each class. Would go a long way to improving each of the classes problem areas.