Balance Patches
I understand why you’re asking for a frequency increase of balance patches. And I strongly agree on the fact that “figures patches” coming more often would help lead to an equilibrium state, while deep changes may be allowed to come in a 2-3 months delay.
Yet, if you check the answers in the Q&A session that happened last ime, it figures that the balance team doesn’t have enough time and resources to do really deep changes in useless skills, and traits, and runes etc. In a matter of months, they’re “only” able to think about, implant and test numbers tweaks.
So, I’m really pessimitic about that.
The overarching response that devs gave in the balance AMA was that they didn’t have enough time to do something. That was their response maybe 75% of the time they responded to someone unfortunately. This leads me to believe that GW2 has no dedicated balance team, and its more of a few devs are pulled from their other work to implement balance changes and test them when we do get a balance patch. This would explain why we don’t get them more often, and also unfortunately means that we aren’t likely to see an increase in frequency.
The overarching response that devs gave in the balance AMA was that they didn’t have enough time to do something. That was their response maybe 75% of the time they responded to someone unfortunately. This leads me to believe that GW2 has no dedicated balance team, and its more of a few devs are pulled from their other work to implement balance changes and test them when we do get a balance patch. This would explain why we don’t get them more often, and also unfortunately means that we aren’t likely to see an increase in frequency.
Our only hope is those devs are busy building something really big like new weapons, or crazy things for next X-Pac. Or there’s only like 3 people that are asked a overwhelming amount of things, and they therefore only shuffle numbers to pretend they’re actually trying to fix some issues. Which would be really sad.
I’ve never understood why some people are convinced it’s better for major rebalancing to happen all the time. It takes the community months to understand the impact of changes and for that understanding to start affecting gameplay all around. Yes, the best among us figure it out quickly, but most of us haven’t even caught up to last year’s rotations, never mind this year’s.
For a game with a playerbase as diverse as GW2’s, with as many distinct game modes, 6 weeks seems the minimum time the devs would need to observe, followed by at least 2-3 weeks of coding/testing.
So while I think 3+ months is on the long side, I think the OP and others are hoping for a different kind of game, in which there are major and minor changes every week and only the best players can keep up. I can imagine that such a game would be fun to play; I just don’t think that’s part of ANet’s vision for this game.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
While I can’t speak for others, I’m not looking for major balance changes every month. A major balance patch would be fine every 3-6 months, as long as we were getting smaller changes every month or so that were addressing over/under tuned skills/traits. We shouldn’t have to wait 3+ months for the devs to knock 5 seconds off the CD of a skill that isn’t used because its payoff doesn’t justify its large CD.
Unfortunately, what we currently get is these average sized balance patches that should be coming monthly every 3-6 months. And we get few to no of the major balance patches. The last balance patch that I consider a major patch was last April, but even then it wasn’t nearly large enough to be the only balance patch of that magnitude over a 12 month period.
The biggest reason I want more frequent balance changes is because the balance patches that we do get are not big enough to justify the 3-4 month wait every time.
While I can’t speak for others, I’m not looking for major balance changes every month. A major balance patch would be fine every 3-6 months, as long as we were getting smaller changes every month or so that were addressing over/under tuned skills/traits. We shouldn’t have to wait 3+ months for the devs to knock 5 seconds off the CD of a skill that isn’t used because its payoff doesn’t justify its large CD.
Unfortunately, what we currently get is these average sized balance patches that should be coming monthly every 3-6 months. And we get few to no of the major balance patches. The last balance patch that I consider a major patch was last April, but even then it wasn’t nearly large enough to be the only balance patch of that magnitude over a 12 month period.
The biggest reason I want more frequent balance changes is because the balance patches that we do get are not big enough to justify the 3-4 month wait every time.
This, in a nutshell.
It takes time to gather the data required to make these kind of changes, thousands of matches, tens of thousands of skill activations, time to determine trends and patterns. Drastically broken builds can be fixed more immediately but otherwise it takes time.
As OriOri said, mere CD fixes or adding 2% here and there don’t seem to justify a 3-4 months delay. This is more tweak than balance, to me.
There’re lots of underused skills, traits and runes that’d need a rework, ie change the effects, big changes in numbers etc. so that they’d shine like the most used ones. This kind of patch justifies a once or twice a year frequency. Not number tweaks.
Yes, calling it a tweaking patch instead of a balance patch is good. The patch on wednesday was too big to be called just tweaks, but the ones we’ve been getting between last April and last Wednesday were all tweaks, except for a single patch in July.
- May 3, 2016 only affected 4 skills. 4, and 2 of those were bug fixes
- May 17, 2016 only affected 5 classes, with the average of exactly 3 skills per class being changed
- July 26, 2016 was a decent sized patch. This one could be called an actual balance patch instead of just tweaks.
- October 18, 2016 was a small patch for being the only thing we had received in 3 months. Definitely not big enough to be considered anything more than tweaking.
- Dec 13, 2016 only touched skills from 6 classes, averaging less than 4 skills per class changed for the 6 that were involved.
- Feb 22, 2017 arrives and is generally underwhelming for how long we’ve waited for a balance patch.
Since April 2016 we have had 1 balance patch that has been large enough to almost justify the 3 month wait time between each one. But of the 6 total balance patches we’ve received since then, only 3 of them even changed skills on every class, and 2 of those 3 were small patches for the wait.
As OriOri said, mere CD fixes or adding 2% here and there don’t seem to justify a 3-4 months delay. This is more tweak than balance, to me.
You are assuming that a few percent difference isn’t enough to change balance; it practice, that can actually make a significant difference to performance over a fight.
This is equally visible over in WoW, where balance changes are of a similar order, and where the results are much better measured, studied, and aggregated.
There’re lots of underused skills, traits and runes that’d need a rework, ie change the effects, big changes in numbers etc. so that they’d shine like the most used ones. This kind of patch justifies a once or twice a year frequency. Not number tweaks.
Part of the issue there is also that you suppose that getting skill balance right is easy, so a redesigned skill, trait, or rune would slot right in to be equally strong with everything else already in balance.
I’m pretty sure the gap there is obvious, but: if it were really that easy, we wouldn’t need balance patches, we would already have balance. They would simply have designed those traits, skills, and runes, in that balance in the first place.
The need for balance changes is, itself, proof that you can’t “simply” redesign things and achieve balance.
Cause other more important things get in the way.
Balance? there’s no such word used around the anet offices.
Another derailing post. ^^
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
I agree with you guys, and since there’s a chance devs will read this I’d like to add:
Dividing PvP and WvW is a huge mistake “But oh why and people have been asking for this” – The why: The damage in pvp is a lot lower than in wvw since June 2015. The damage is way too high in wvw but no one ever cared about it. So if you continue to ignore wvw and only care for pvp balance and buff skill x – wvw explodes. Adjust the damage coefficents of both game modes so they’re the same and only balance once just like in the good old days – that’s better than no balance at all like currently in wvw. And you only need one good balance team.
I’ve never understood why some people are convinced it’s better for major rebalancing to happen all the time. It takes the community months to understand the impact of changes and for that understanding to start affecting gameplay all around. Yes, the best among us figure it out quickly, but most of us haven’t even caught up to last year’s rotations, never mind this year’s.
For a game with a playerbase as diverse as GW2’s, with as many distinct game modes, 6 weeks seems the minimum time the devs would need to observe, followed by at least 2-3 weeks of coding/testing.
So while I think 3+ months is on the long side, I think the OP and others are hoping for a different kind of game, in which there are major and minor changes every week and only the best players can keep up. I can imagine that such a game would be fun to play; I just don’t think that’s part of ANet’s vision for this game.
i’d say so we dont have the miror comp for like 2 or 3 months
I agree with you guys, and since there’s a chance devs will read this I’d like to add:
Dividing PvP and WvW is a huge mistake “But oh why and people have been asking for this” – The why: The damage in pvp is a lot lower than in wvw since June 2015. The damage is way too high in wvw but no one ever cared about it. So if you continue to ignore wvw and only care for pvp balance and buff skill x – wvw explodes. Adjust the damage coefficents of both game modes so they’re the same and only balance once just like in the good old days – that’s better than no balance at all like currently in wvw. And you only need one good balance team.
wvw and pvp play diiferently tho so its reasoable to balance it differently
As OriOri said, mere CD fixes or adding 2% here and there don’t seem to justify a 3-4 months delay. This is more tweak than balance, to me.
You are assuming that a few percent difference isn’t enough to change balance; it practice, that can actually make a significant difference to performance over a fight.
I’m not saying those tweaks are irrelevant. I’m more into the opinion that waiting 3 months for 5 seconds seems to give too much importance on “small things” compared to some “big things” that players are expecting and waiting for.
There’re lots of underused skills, traits and runes that’d need a rework, ie change the effects, big changes in numbers etc. so that they’d shine like the most used ones. This kind of patch justifies a once or twice a year frequency. Not number tweaks.
Part of the issue there is also that you suppose that getting skill balance right is easy, so a redesigned skill, trait, or rune would slot right in to be equally strong with everything else already in balance.
I’m pretty sure the gap there is obvious, but: if it were really that easy, we wouldn’t need balance patches, we would already have balance. They would simply have designed those traits, skills, and runes, in that balance in the first place.
The need for balance changes is, itself, proof that you can’t “simply” redesign things and achieve balance.
I’m not saying it’s easy ! That’s why I’m telling once or twice a year seems reasonable for such big changes. Likewise, the notion of equally strong is tedious. I’m more into equally useful, or even equally meaningful.
I’m totally positive designing a skill that’d be meaningful, effective, and that players may want to use next to another one isn’t an easy task. There may be things devs are thinking and forseeing, and that eventually happen to work totally otherwise, or that players use another way, so that they need to be worked on more. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be thought of.
If I just think of one of the most gimmickly underused skill set : guardian spirit weapons. They got one major change since release : they’re no longer destroyed when you activate their special effect. And since then ? Nothing. They were a bad design idea, and happen not to be useful, so the devs need to think more about how they should work in a given guardian/DH playstyle. I’m not against the idea of putting a new idea in game, and see 6 months later how players used it, and if it needs to be tweaked, or changed again.
Yet, after months of waiting, we only got 5 seconds cooldown tweaks… Which means devs have not been able to implement changes that’d alter things like build diversity, varied playstyles etc. Or maybe the hammering of some skills (ele air overload and meteor shower, just to name these ones) was an attempt to corner elementalists into changing their playstyle ?
wvw and pvp play diiferently tho so its reasoable to balance it differently
True that – You don’t need to kill in pvp wheras you better kill in wvw. So we’ve got runners and massive stealth and this and that in game as “that’s needed in pvp”. The problem is: Anet already messed up their game in June 2015 when they merged traits and removed the stats from the trait lines. The PvP team saw that this is a problem, the rest of anet never saw it as a problem and ignored it. To me that is the main problem this game has got: No balance and we would be fine if we’ve (wvw) had at least pvp balance which isn’t possible because the game modes have got different damage calculations anyway. Where does it say that “class a doesn’t have to beat class b because they’re runners anyway” – makes no sense, does it ?! So while you can play pvp without killing anyone you can also balance pvp so that everybody were able to kill each other but don’t have to. It also would get rid of the gimmicky builds that are bad for the game anyway.
If the separation between pvp and wvw continues we will never have any balance for wvw at all – because reasons.
(edited by Jana.6831)
Because you run the risk of other famous “companies” who every few months make radical changes and all they do is swing from one side all the way to the other, meanwhile everyone feels detached from their characters because everything is so volatile and unreliable. I’d rather wait longer and not have the whole “if this strong let’s nerf it so it’s useless” approach ruining many MMOs.
Because you run the risk of other famous “companies” who every few months make radical changes and all they do is swing from one side all the way to the other, meanwhile everyone feels detached from their characters because everything is so volatile and unreliable. I’d rather wait longer and not have the whole “if this strong let’s nerf it so it’s useless” approach ruining many MMOs.
That is true for those who started after Hot and for PvE players. The rest of us were waiting for anet balancing the stuff they did to this game with the trait merges in June 2015 and with HoT. No idea if that happened in pvp, I kind of guess game play is nicer around ther, but wvw is a mess. So, they waited too long to fix the June 23th patch and people became used to their OP builds, so now it would really feel as if something has been taken away, whereas had they done the balance sooner the gameplay in general would be way more fun.
I don’t get why you’d make a combat game and don’t pay any attention to balance at all.
Most really needed changes are known from a lot of time ago. They don’t need to stop 6 weeks with every balance patch to evaluate everythig. They can study 4 months each problem if they must, but in the meantime add solutions to other things.
If they introduce more frequent “minor patches”, they shoul be incremental, covering small or safe changes that have been already decided months ago.
Then the “major patches”, adjusting things in a broader scale, can be every 3 or 4 months.
That is the way to go, IMO.
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
Anet/ GW2 does not have a dedicated balance team. They have a skills team (the one in charge of elite specs) that also does some side balance work.
The reason why balance patches take too long and do not bring enough is because those devs are busy designing the next elite specs.
Major Balance Changes are needed only, if the game is so out of control, so outdated on many aspects of gameplay and mechanics and so out of touch with the community – like now.
When a game has reached a state, where its gameplay mechanics are mostly in balance, then you don’t need any major changes at all and you can do the rest with many constant frequently coming mini patches that go for skills and traits to finetune the game.
Right now is the game absolutely for way too long now in the situation, where it needs a real proper major balance patch, that fixes this games gameplay mechanics to brign them back in line together, so that these mechanics are again in synergy and harmony with all the latest changes on ksills, traits, especs and especially changes to boons and conditions, mainly conditions of the last 2 years.
If Anet doesn’t fix this games combat systems soon first, then it makes no sense at all to add more e-specs ect. in the future with more expansions at all.
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside