One of the things I've disliked in MMOs
One of the things I have disliked in MMOs is the constant buffing/nerfing, and the constant having to change rotation, spec to meet the flavor of the month.
I’d much rather have NEW abilities then to have all my abilities reworked. Although my main toon is a ranger here, I have always played wizards and mages in games before. In the big MMO I specced for arcane when nobody played the spec and I enjoyed the play style. I played an arcane mage threw numerous buff/nerf cycles, but then I finally grew tired of it and quit playing MMOs for a few years.
I tried several other MMOs before trying GW2, but stuck with GW2 because I liked the elegant combat system and animations. In my book, if you don’t want a gear grind then expand the talent trees and abilities and release more permanent end game content.
Well said. +1
Anarai Aeonblade [GASM] – Guardian – DB
RIP my fair Engi and Ranger, you will be missed.
RIP my fair Engi and Ranger, you will be missed.
That’s the thing. There are too many variables for MMO companies to test to get the balance right before launch.
Their only means of determining if things are balanced are either mainly through players or studying how many people use X gear, Y traits, Z skills and studying combat logs. If too many use the same set or one skill seems to do much higher or much lower than average damage, chances are the game isn’t balanced very well.
It’s easier to nerf the one set down than it is to buff everything up to it so a lot of companies nerf instead of buff if they find something OP.
But they don’t know how much they need to nerf or buff it. So they guess.
Then player feedback comes in and they study percentages of players who have what set up and study the combat logs. And go at it again. Because their last nerf/buff probably wasn’t perfect or might have had an unintended side effect.
One of the things I have disliked in MMOs is the constant buffing/nerfing, and the constant having to change rotation, spec to meet the flavor of the month.
I’d much rather have NEW abilities then to have all my abilities reworked. Although my main toon is a ranger here, I have always played wizards and mages in games before. In the big MMO I specced for arcane when nobody played the spec and I enjoyed the play style. I played an arcane mage threw numerous buff/nerf cycles, but then I finally grew tired of it and quit playing MMOs for a few years.
I tried several other MMOs before trying GW2, but stuck with GW2 because I liked the elegant combat system and animations. In my book, if you don’t want a gear grind then expand the talent trees and abilities and release more permanent end game content.
Well said +1
Anet have had quite a few ‘balance’ patches since game release and is the game more ‘balanced’ now than 18 months ago?
No.
Honestly, I think those patches are designed not to balance but as a ‘cheap’ way of mixing the meta up, particularly in PvP, so it does not become stale.
In short its something cheap and easy to spice the game up, nothing to do with balance at all.
In pvp, I think it’s healthy to have a buffing/nerfing cycle. Simply to see what players come up with during each new cycle. Seeing new builds is a large reason why I play these games. Double edged sword for me though when I find builds I really like and then it’s no longer viable because somewhere someone said it was op.
In pve my perspective changes a little bit but not much. I hate the destruction of builds. I think quantity that has quality is best. With that said, GW is imo a perfect example of that. That game had endless amounts of possible combinations so you had countless builds per class. Sure, for every 10 crappy builds you had 3 good ones and maybe one OP build.
I agree with Seera’s post as to why these things happen. Just a part of the process. Nature of the beast. Basically in the MMO genre’s DNA.