Guild Wars 2

…to achieve balance so we can STOP getting “balance” patches? At this point it’s getting ridiculous. Anet has continuously hurt things that were on life support and fix things that were perfectly fine. I am convinced that Anet just throws out these so called “balance patches” to generate hype to bring back players because, as we all know, GW2 is a dead game. Hell can we stop calling it balance patches?!?!?!? It’s so obvious that the goals for these balance patches are NOT to achieve balance within the 9 classes but to simply shake up the meta. Instead, let’s call them “Skills overhaul patch” or “Class changes patch” because after all, Anet, your goal is NOT to achieve balance.

I’m just waiting for the day when we finally stop getting balance patches (or atleast just get minor balance patches and not these major ones that shift the meta) because then I’ll know this game is balanced.

I don’t think you appreciate just how difficult it is to balance a game with this many skills and combinations.

I am not saying that they should stop trying, nor am I trying to insult you in any way, but every time you nerf or buff something then there are players that will find a way around it and make it more powerful than it was intended.

Shovel Face.4512:

…to achieve balance so we can STOP getting “balance” patches? At this point it’s getting ridiculous. Anet has continuously hurt things that were on life support and fix things that were perfectly fine. I am convinced that Anet just throws out these so called “balance patches” to generate hype to bring back players because, as we all know, GW2 is a dead game. Hell can we stop calling it balance patches?!?!?!? It’s so obvious that the goals for these balance patches are NOT to achieve balance within the 9 classes but to simply shake up the meta. Instead, let’s call them “Skills overhaul patch” or “Class changes patch” because after all, Anet, your goal is NOT to achieve balance.

I’m just waiting for the day when we finally stop getting balance patches (or atleast just get minor balance patches and not these major ones that shift the meta) because then I’ll know this game is balanced.

Not that I like the latest balance patch but your post does not say mutch. What is the point with this post? Is it a way for you to just tell Anet that you are displeased? Well good then you succeeded, but I doubt you waste time and text for that. Instead I ask you,
- what in this latest balance patch was so bad that you dislike it? – How could they have made it better?
- and remember, it is your opinion not a fact.

I myself as a Engineer main does not like the fact that they nerf gyros explode too much and buffed skills that didn’t make any change at all. Asked changes seems that they haven’t even looked at and that makes me kind of sad.

I would liked something for the gyros in return, something that give them a purpose to be destroyed early. More damage, blast finisher or lower CD.

Over all I think amount of CC and damage mitigation should be lowered, the ammount that was introduced with HoT is way much.

In short in answer to your question, no the purpose of balancing patches is not to make it so you don’t need balancing patches. This video explains it better than I can:

To the thread: I get the feeling that most balance patches are to change the balance and not to achieve, it’s an artificial way to change the meta preventing people from ever reaching optimal compositions and becoming stale, this keeps people satisfies because people cannot deal with balance as balance shows flaws in their own gameplay. Which leads me to the next point…

@Vayne – I hate that video because it tries to construct an argument based on statements that are half-truths to prove it’s point, but it actually works in this thread, when he mentions League of Legends changing meta of champion A causing people to play more champion B and so on, things are that way only because the game is patched a lot and the meta is forced to change, given enough time the game would become closer to Starcraft: Brood Wars in the sense that the optimal compositions and answers for every scenario would be pre-determined and everything would be left up to executions, in fact, after the Koreans started playing League the approach to the competitive became much more stake than before because they actually put work into optmizing strategies before execution.

But “balance” between characters and strategies is far from perfect at any point in time, the developers are just preventing the most optimal strategies from being created and cemented as ruling the meta.

Given enough time, if rules aren’t updated constantly and randomness isn’t a huge factor, at the highest level of competition the game boils down to executing very specific strategies that are very close in term of performance. Perfect imbalance is a lie, and isn’t actually fun, it’s just a way to appease people who cannot put effort into stepping to the next level of competition by adopting the meta strategies.

So… that’s it. Saying it again, the “balance” patches aren’t to make everything viable, but just to change things around for players to experiment for a while longer.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

I don’t think you appreciate just how difficult it is to balance a game with this many skills and combinations.

I am not saying that they should stop trying, nor am I trying to insult you in any way, but every time you nerf or buff something then there are players that will find a way around it and make it more powerful than it was intended.

There’s also the fact that players are actively working against it. I’m sure in general most people would like the game to be perfectly balanced, but that’s not the thinking they use when designing builds, which is when it counts.

Players are constantly working to make better builds. So while Anet might have balanced things for what was being done before as soon as that patch hits (or before if they tell us what the changes will be) players will be looking for new combinations that are as powerful or more powerful than what they had before. It might be harder to do because the obvious choices have been stopped but there’s always a way, even if it’s just an unusual combination no one will be familiar with or know how to counter.

And if someone does find an over-powered build they’re not going to choose not to use it because it would be unbalanced. They’re going to get as much use as they can from it before anyone else catches on. And sooner or later someone else works out what they’ve done, or they choose to share it and then it becomes the new meta and Anet have to release another balance patch to fix it.

This is probably more noticeable in games that don’t get regular updates. A lot of games, particularly on consoles don’t ever get balance patches, things only get fixed when the sequel is released. But even then the meta-game is constantly shifting as players create new builds and then other players learn to counter it and then new OP builds are created and so on.