Guild Wars 2

So I could be confabulating this or confusing guildwars2 with some other game, but I feel like there used to be more transparency with the balance changes. Something that we are definitely lacking at the moment.

I think if perhaps there were a few notes as to why a particular set of changes are being applied it would help mitigate the knee jerk reactions from the community. In a lot of cases these reactions are justified but in other cases its just a typical response to a seemingly arbitrary change. So the goal here is to provide the method behind the madness.

Example: “We feel the druid was performing too strongly overall compared to other healing builds and had too much access to Astral Form. As such we have reduced the ability of players to spam heals to fill the astral meter on targets that were already at full health. These changes should bring it more in line with other healing builds but we will continue to monitor the class closely and will adjust the numbers accordingly if the performance dips too low. Viability and fun factor for all healing classes is important to us!”

Note that the example above is completely fictitious but something explaining these changes could be very helpful it containing anger from the community. It might also help solicit better feedback from people actually playing the class. This applies to every class in the game and not just angry rangers.

Which brings me to my next point. Why are the patch notes hidden away on the forums? I remember at launch when we had to ask just to get the patch notes. Why does the launcher not show the patch notes or at the very least have a link to them?

What information you generally do provide in the notes still routinely fails to cover all the changes that go in. There are tons of little ninja changes each patch that go unmentioned and usually there is a negative reaction to them. Is it that you deem them insignificant? Do you not want players to know you are changing them? Are you worried about the economic implications about players who have immediate access to the patch versus people who cannot be on for several hours afterwards? Are there just too many changes to track them all? If that is the case I am genuinely curious as to what source control and build system you guys are using (seriously even if its not the case I am really interested in this).

While this probably comes across as a wall of text or a complain post it is not intended as such. Quite the opposite. I think this could go a long way to help the community and help mitigate some of the complaining and negative feels that seem to be associated with every balance pass.