Guild Wars 2

You guys have ZERO clue how hard it is to balance a MMO. Every TINY change throws things off. And making huge changes all the time like everyone insists that its broken is silly, and just brakes more parts of the game.

In this new patch they had to rewrite ALL stats, and how the base game is played. AND how conditions are done at a base level. You people have zero clue how difficult that is to do.

Tell you what, instead of whining, you give new equations for all the conditions, with new stat base levels for players and gear, then modify all the damage coefficients for EVERY SKILL IN THE GAME including condition stacks and duration, and work that all out with EVERY combination of traits that are possible. Then after you have all that, work out every build setup versus every build setup and play style accordingly. Then test it against all skill levels that may exist for all players, with every play style. Do this with 50 people max.

Or, instead of that, you can test out as much as you can with a number of extreme scenarios, and do you’re best to make it balanced. Then dump it on thousands of ungrateful people so they can finish testing it, and then tweak it as they figure out what works and what doesn’t.

When they do internal testing, they don’t have thousands of players running tests. Live environments with different builds and play styles are almost impossible to balance correctly with only a handful of people to test them. Yes, sPvP is WAY more hectic, and PvE is way more easy because the incredible increase in damage. But those can be the hard to test without ALOT of people to try it all out. That’s why they release these builds and let all the people test it all out, and tweak it accordingly.

PLEASE be nice to them for once. They are trying, and they have a difficult time doing this. Plus they get to listen to A LOT of whining every time they make a change. ANY change. Be patient, and be constructive.

(I know most of the QQ’rs will keep QQ’ing, but whatever :p )

Admirable use of CapsLock!
8/10

Agreed, mr Capslock :-p

So how much are they paying you OP?

Well i am with Syviren. I have startet designing stategy games over 30 years ago and have experience with balacing browser games.(Nedless to say i am an IT guy and bord/online gamer for 30 years) He is right ;-).
And yes i can see that much can be done better but they did a good overal job with the new system. I hope the don´t panic and/or give in to emotions. Just do the math and improve it.

I’ve designed some games myself just for fun, with all the equations and it gets sooooo complicated so fast. The more features and freedom of play style you add, the more complex it gets. Its a headache. Not that my stuff was good, but its a very complicated system, and without breaking games down into the math its hard to appreciate fully. I really enjoy seeing the math behind things, and its neat to see what people did right, and did wrong. But tweaks are so much harder to make without checking everything else

Wolfric.9380:

Well i am with Syviren. I have startet designing stategy games over 30 years ago and have experience with balacing browser games.(Nedless to say i am an IT guy and bord/online gamer for 30 years) He is right ;-).
And yes i can see that much can be done better but they did a good overal job with the new system. I hope the don´t panic and/or give in to emotions. Just do the math and improve it.

with a 28%(!!!!!!!) mortar kit damage nerf they did give into emotions, but dont ask me what emotions that might be….. it does about the damage of a rifle now with the only truly damaging attack it got (its AA) WHILE taking over the elite slot

Live testing is always more fun anyways.

If you pay me money to work on a video game, then sure I’d do it.

Lets not forget these guys are getting paid to do something they likely find really rewarding and/or fun. Criticism is a part of the job and they can handle it, especially since they don’t have to work at some retail store or outdoors doing construction work.

No need to treat them with kid gloves if you disagree with changes.

That being said, they had trouble balancing GW1 for years and its no surprise that fans are still not always thrilled with how they’re balancing GW2.

QQ about QQ,

Makes sense :’)

On a serious note: Anet actually need the “QQ” (Aka feedback), to get a most vaste note of what is working, and what is not. Agreedly, some are out of sense, but it is still fedback of how players are responding to the changes.

Start to care when QQ disappear, amongst with the number of players playing.

MauricioCezar.2673:

QQ about QQ,

Makes sense :’)

On a serious note: Anet actually need the “QQ” (Aka feedback), to get a most vaste note of what is working, and what is not. Agreedly, some are out of sense, but it is still fedback of how players are responding to the changes.

Start to care when QQ disappear, amongst with the number of players playing.

Well, you can see what happened to another NCSoft published MMO. Wildstar. Only 1 year in and it is now going to be F2P. And from the youtubers who stream Wildstar videos, they are saying the game is as bare as it gets. One even say 90% of his guild did not even logged in for months! 6 to 9 months…..

13 characters, 3 years of playing and tweaking, playing and tweaking, lev 80 PvP, 5 x world completion, 1640 level WvW. In my opinion the new balances have wrecked everything I have put my time and effort into. I’m not going to rave or get emo, but over this.

Sekhmet.6153:

If you pay me money to work on a video game, then sure I’d do it.

Lets not forget these guys are getting paid to do something they likely find really rewarding and/or fun. Criticism is a part of the job and they can handle it, especially since they don’t have to work at some retail store or outdoors doing construction work.

No need to treat them with kid gloves if you disagree with changes.

You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.

Being a game developer doesn’t make you any more or less immune to criticism than in any other job.

Developers might start in the industry because they think it’s going to be rewarding and fun, but being a developer quickly stops being rewarding and fun when the work that you’ve spent days, months or years working on is heavily criticised or written off as a simple five minute change that doesn’t even count as content.

When all you seem to see is criticism, that’s when developers (just like people in any other sort of creative role) start to get get stressed and burnt out. The developer will probably first stop reading message boards, then stop listening to any source of feedback at all, and then quit and find a different game to work on.

Game development is great “pre-release”, but these days, “post-release” it’s a stressful and depressing nightmare.

Perfect balance is boring anyways. Everyone 1v1 fighting for 10 minutes is boring. I like having to adapt and that in some situations I have no chance. I have been having with the burst hero mesmers when the patch dropped but last night I figured some stuff out… brought a couple gap closers a couple blinds and blocks and all of a sudden I was turning those same mesmers into red and purple dust. A good mesmer can still get away or if I don’t see them comming im dead but that’s not the point. For what I’m trying to do in conquest (win with points) that’s all the ballance I need.

Syviren.7086:

Every TINY change throws things off.

Yes, because Anet knifing a skill’s damage by 1/3rd in a kneejerk reaction is a “tiny change.”

I have faith in Anet’s ability to filter out pointless and unconstructive posts, Syviren. I wouldn’t worry too much. There will always people who overreact and complain without thinking. This is normal on gaming forums, or any forum for that matter.

It is a pain to have to filter them out, and it would help if everyone could be constructive rather than simply ranting. But I cannot see that changing any time soon, unfortunately. So long as some of us are constructive (giving both positive and negative feedback), Anet will have a valuable source of information from us players.

Balancing things by making sweeping changes tends to only produce more imbalance.

It cripples the game for balance ;-)

Balancing is indeed hard, but some of these bugs are so obvious that I find it hard to believe it was tested at all.

Suggested reading: How to Give Good Feedback

This thread is a good example of how not to.

While thoughtful of you, Anet isn’t a baby that needs to be coddled. Criticism is very important for development, you shouldn’t try to stifle it.
Also, many people know a decent measure about balancing games, you shouldn’t baselessly assume they/we don’t.

Syviren.7086:

You guys have ZERO clue how hard it is to balance a MMO. Every TINY change throws things off. And making huge changes all the time like everyone insists that its broken is silly, and just brakes more parts of the game.

Very poor excuse, tbh.

ArenaNet had three years to balance the game. THREE YEARS. With almost no new skill or trait. This is almost unheard of – which other big MMORPG has spent that long so stagnant, without anything to make balancing the game harder?

In other words, ArenaNet had a great oportunity to balance the game. And what did they accomplish?

NOTHING.

By the end, PvP still had a very small community, due to how poorly balanced it is; PvE had only a couple great builds for each profession, with direct damage being king, and anything other than berserker being less effective in practically every situation.

Were those three years filled with small balance patches to achieve a balanced state without overshooting or overnerfing?

Nope, again. We barely got balance patches during all those years. I wish all the times ArenaNet added skill facts they would also try to make balance better, but alas, it was not so.

Now, ArenaNet has decided to butcher build diversity, in a game already with little diversity to begin with. “It will be easier to balance”, they say, but what does that mean? That it will take them THREE YEARS more to achieve something even close to balance? If it doesn’t work, are they simply going to remove all traits and just give us one build option per profession?

It’s little surprise that there are so many people asking ArenaNet to please not overnerf conditions. ANet’s pattern has always been to, when overwhelmed, overnerf so they can ignore aspects of the game for a very, VERY long time. People know that, if conditions were overnerfed now, they would only be fixed around 2020, assuming ArenaNet will still be around until then.

Majic.4801:

Suggested reading: How to Give Good Feedback

This thread is a good example of how not to.

I agree. Not being condescending to your audience would be a good place to start, but then maybe that is the OP’s purpose.

This is where a PTR (public test realm) comes in handy
But noooo Anet has plenty of internal testers.. sigh
There would be TONS of balancing feedback , especially in terms of PvP…
now instead we have to deal with builds that are 1-2 shotting people left and right..
miss one dodge or block/interrupt and your kitten will be curbstomped in the blink of an eye.

Take a hint from MOBA’s. SMITE for example does bi-weekly balance patches of 5-15% adjustments MAX, this is how they try to keep the meta healthy and don’t push away players by crushing their playstyles. If you care about competitive pvp at all, this is how you have to do it. They also try to balance based on high level play, not around glass cannons with no condi cleanse qq’ing about being squishy.

WoW kicks classes in the balls every month and then three months later gives them a piece of candy then next month kicks them in balls again. Don’t be the WoW balance team. No one believes WoW pvp is anything close to balanced or competitive after 10+ years, there is only fotm, who was the last one to get buffs and how long will it last.

P.S. Re-buff MtD please. 50% reduction of a skill unchanged for many months, killed my playstyle on day 1.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Majic.4801:

Suggested reading: How to Give Good Feedback

This thread is a good example of how not to.

I agree. Not being condescending to your audience would be a good place to start, but then maybe that is the OP’s purpose.

No, I agree that its very important to give feedback to A-Net. Just CONSTRUCTIVE feedback

Test.8734:

Syviren.7086:

You guys have ZERO clue how hard it is to balance a MMO. Every TINY change throws things off. And making huge changes all the time like everyone insists that its broken is silly, and just brakes more parts of the game.

ArenaNet had three years to balance the game. THREE YEARS. With almost no new skill or trait. This is almost unheard of – which other big MMORPG has spent that long so stagnant, without anything to make balancing the game harder?
In other words, ArenaNet had a great oportunity to balance the game. And what did they accomplish?
NOTHING.

Remind me, how much money are you paying for this a month? I forget how much our monthly is… oh, ya. We don’t pay one. Which means other “big” MMORPG makes who do get that monthly have a much larger amount of resources, IE more people to test and figure things out before release, than Anet.

I

This is where a PTR (public test realm) comes in handy
But noooo Anet has plenty of internal testers.. sigh
There would be TONS of balancing feedback , especially in terms of PvP…
now instead we have to deal with builds that are 1-2 shotting people left and right..
miss one dodge or block/interrupt and your kitten will be curbstomped in the blink of an eye.

I COMPLETELY agree with this. This is what they should do. Period. I will say that this is a more or less easy fix to this whole deal.

As an example of constructive math based suggestion, say you want to adjust burning. I see plenty of people talking about how much its OP, but I want to see some math. Say we wanted to tone down burning by 10% but only based off lowering the condition damage stat bonus

Current equation: 7.5 + (1.55 * Level) + (0.155 * Condition Damage)
—>Base stats (1000 Condi stat) = 286.5 damage of burning per second

10% bonus decrease: 7.5 + (1.55 * Level) + (0.1395 * Condition Damage)
—>Base stats (1000 Condi stat) = 271 damage of burning per second
(If I got my math right. PLEASE correct me if I did. I want to get this stuff right too)

Now increase Level stat bonus 30%, but with condition damage bonus decreased 20%
7.5 + (2.015* Level) + (0.124* Condition Damage)
—>Base stats (1000 Condi stat) = 292.7 damage of burning per second

Now for a proper demonstration of the changes you would want to know the base stat of condition and the condition stat maxed out. This would give you an idea of the range you could have a single tick of burning, and its interesting to see how it changes each skills damage and effectiveness. Then compare which skills use burning and how many ticks it makes in full, if completely effective. Past that, each skill needs to be compared to range and channel time. Then you can wander from there to specialization modifiers, changes from runes and sigils, AoE, HP/Armor vs how close you have to get, blah blah blah.

(I would finish my example but i don’t have the max numbers for the carrion PvP amulet, I’ll post it later. Probably)

There is an example of a math based suggestion, and the numbers behind it. MUCH better than “OMG BURNING SO OP” and the retort “No its not. l2p”

Constructive. Informative. That’s what i think is more important. It would be fun to write a tool for this…..

Last time I checked… and please double check my math… but… critical power based direct is HARD CAPPED at 250% according to the wiki table.

Condi damage is unregulated and now it is unlimited in stacks.

So let’s simply that:

250 < unlimited

Math is hard.

This reminds me to Jim Sterling, why we should be “thankfull” to ANY kind of company for fixing something, that was supposed to be fine, when you payed real hard earned money to buy it??https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF27cuomwp8

Syviren.7086:

…heavy whining about people whining.

1) Gamers whine. That’s what the majority of us do. It’s sad, but its true. I promise that the developers in A-Net went into this business knowing just that.

2) I think there’d be less whining if they actually made any headway. PVE has been too easy and horribly imbalanced for years. If any other product you purchased was this botched, you’d demand a refund.

Filming a movie is difficult.
Writing a book is difficult.
Designing a new vehicle is difficult.

These are still products that we purchase and have specific expectations.

3) The fact that people are on the forum whining is a compliment —in a backhanded-sort-of-way. It states that no matter how angry they are, they’re still playing. That says something.

4) That all being said, I think this latest patch (regardless of how much it broke) is a step in the right direction. Keep going A-Net.

5) And the trite little argument of “how much are you paying a month?” is just pointless. The lack of monthly cost is 80% of their marketing ability (random percentage pulled out of my bum for the sake of making a point). They yield profit from the gem-store in lieu of a monthly payment. They chose their market. Using it as an excuse to not rectify core issues in 3 years is nonsense.

Syviren.7086:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Majic.4801:

Suggested reading: How to Give Good Feedback

This thread is a good example of how not to.

I agree. Not being condescending to your audience would be a good place to start, but then maybe that is the OP’s purpose.

No, I agree that its very important to give feedback to A-Net. Just CONSTRUCTIVE feedback

So why aren’t you doing that?

Haranguing and collectively insulting your fellow players is about the most nonconstructive thing possible, and doesn’t benefit anyone — including ArenaNet. Do you honestly think starting derogatory flamebait threads like this one helps?

If you hate whining so much, then stop whining.