Guild Wars 2

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It was separated in Guild Wars. People played both without any problems. Also, a lot of the player base already in this game tend to prefer playing one game mode over others. Of course there are some folks that play all, and there are some folks that play two out of three. I’m not suggesting to separate every single skill. Only suggesting that there are always certain skills that need to have different (but similar) uses.

Edit: This is quickly becoming one of the most important disappointments of Guild Wars 2, to me personally. With the Heart of Thorns release my disappointment has been accelerated.

I think that ballance changes should be done at least monthly.
They don’t have to (and technically cannot) adress all issues,
but they need to be reactive and fix most broken parts of the game (ASAP).

I play the game since nearly beginning.
For a condtion stacking patch we waited for two years, and it still is not perfect,
but addressed the most broken part – stacking condition damage.

As for “Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.”:
I know that ballancing skills/traits toward all game modes is hard, but it has to be done that way (any single skill, trait, rune, sigil or whatever should allways work the same way) for clarity reasons. It is one single game – not three of them. Moreover, I think that addressing issues with any object is a lot easier when it has no variants.

And HoT is fun and all. But it makes the game even more inconsistant.
As for example HoT introduced expertise (and concentration),
not replacing or combining condtion (and boons) duration, why we have both of them?
It is like loudly saying that devs have an idea that is a work in progress.
On the other hand devs are affraid of frequent ballance changes?

Apart from ballancing proffesions we have serious economy problems.

It is one single game with three entirely different types of play. I played Guild Wars for years. Skill and balance patches were a regular part of the game for PvP and PvE. This is not Guild Wars, /agree, and I understand from personal experience how different the two games are. I’m just getting more and more disappointed that Anet hasn’t built upon some of the best aspects of the original game.

Edit: I would certainly argue that it is easier to address issues with skills and balancing when there are variants. e.g. You aren’t affecting as many people with one skill or balance adjustment.

I understand your argumentation, but cannot agree with it.
I know that we have three modes now (and that we pottentially have only three variations on a single skill). But lets say, that devs want to address some issue by adding new functionality to a skill, they have to do it 3 times, and have 3 times more (very similar, propably copy-pasted) code to make us some new unplanned “features”.

If we have freedom of choosing exact the same skills, they have to work same way, it is much clearer to us players. If not, well we have Snowball Mayhem now.

Fellfoot.8156:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It was separated in Guild Wars. People played both without any problems. Also, a lot of the player base already in this game tend to prefer playing one game mode over others. Of course there are some folks that play all, and there are some folks that play two out of three. I’m not suggesting to separate every single skill. Only suggesting that there are always certain skills that need to have different (but similar) uses.

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

Because of this, I wonder exactly how “fine” players were with it in GW1. If there isn’t a lot of exchange between the two camps, then you wouldn’t get much feedback with what problems players have transitioning. If everything was “fine”, then why is it the same developers are spending so much time and effort trying to do just the opposite in this game?

PVP is important, because it draws a rather large crowd, and is more entertaining than regular ole PVE. The transition between the two game modes needs to be as seamless as possible. Having different skill sets between the game modes will add friction that doesn’t need to exist.

GW2 shouldn’t 3 entirely different modes of play. The whole point of having same balancing is to make sure that doesn’t happen. GW2 has one mode of play, but 3 different primary objectives. Its all the same movements, the same skills, the same mechanics. The only change is the goal.

Gw2 would be so better off if it were to be separated, just giving pvp it’s own place would do wonders, it has such an alien fanbase compared to pve and wvw, and we wouldn’t have to suffer from those wonky class balance patches anymore since they only break gameplay.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It was separated in Guild Wars. People played both without any problems. Also, a lot of the player base already in this game tend to prefer playing one game mode over others. Of course there are some folks that play all, and there are some folks that play two out of three. I’m not suggesting to separate every single skill. Only suggesting that there are always certain skills that need to have different (but similar) uses.

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

Because of this, I wonder exactly how “fine” players were with it in GW1. If there isn’t a lot of exchange between the two camps, then you wouldn’t get much feedback with what problems players have transitioning. If everything was “fine”, then why is it the same developers are spending so much time and effort trying to do just the opposite in this game?

PVP is important, because it draws a rather large crowd, and is more entertaining than regular ole PVE. The transition between the two game modes needs to be as seamless as possible. Having different skill sets between the game modes will add friction that doesn’t need to exist.

GW2 shouldn’t 3 entirely different modes of play. The whole point of having same balancing is to make sure that doesn’t happen. GW2 has one mode of play, but 3 different primary objectives. Its all the same movements, the same skills, the same mechanics. The only change is the goal.

The way it is now, people are leaving PvP and WvW in droves. Due to inaction, it’s probably too late for WvW at this point, but PvP can possibly be saved — though definitely not with 2 balances a year.

They’ve been trying to the opposite? maybe
Something different? definitely, and with great success.

/agree …the mechanics, the core of what makes GW2 fun to play is excellent… that and the community of players is what’s really kept me around for so many years.

Perhaps it’s just the mess of things that Heart of Thorns has made that’s got me so kittened.

I’ve been an Anet fan for soooo long…
I see the direction things are going…
It’s just me not liking most of these changes.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m all for the balance patch, but I’d like to note that it has come to my attention, moreso now than ever, that much of the community doesn’t know what it wants in regards to global, widely-accepted balancing that affects one, several, or the relationships between classes and the cascading changes that those balances make to pvp, pve, and the components thereof.

I don’t know how much of our input the devs value and accept for these changes, or what format this input has to be in to be considered fair and valid (and, perhaps, that could be a topic of discussion so we can tailor our posting regarding this topic appropriately), but I’d rather:

• not rush this patch
• continue to vocalize the aspects of the game I am familiar enough with to see as strong or weak

And hope that the patch either provides a happy medium or the beginnings of one with iterations close behind to smoothen the transition.

We only get them twice a year. I can wait longer for one if it gives the game as a whole six months of relative peace between classes.

So yes, we need it. But let’s not hasten it.

They have already worked at turtle pace for 3 years with regard to professions and combat improvements… This is not a rational post.

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

There has been enough feedback on this matter… The only saving grace to professions is the ability to move and cast, but that all base combat design…

Professions are low budget design and are on extremely low budget maintenance mode…

And since “balance is important”, as Gaile says, you’d figure that that the devs would be much more proactive and reactive…

ANET when you “Balance” please make sure you don’t just victimize Mesmer or Thief. As a Mesmer I went literally years unable to challenge a Warrior. My perception is that the devs rely more on who lost and has there feelings hurt on the internal servers than on what’s happening in the game.

Get out there and play, among the peasants, don’t just play at prime time. In Pvp the difference can be extreme depending on the time. Come play PVP around 0100 PST and see how things go when the exploiters are prowling.

In short, I think the devs and the management need a broader perspective on the game and less focus on the “ESport” dream.

OH, and wear your ANET guild tag. This will do two things; It will expose you to real player feedback and it will allow people to believe that you are inworld and care about the game.

A major balance pass is long overdue at this point, and I fear by the time we do get anything it’ll be too little and too late. Not doing a significant balance pass before starting leagues is in my opinion one of the three biggest mistake since launch. It has been a terrible experience for hardcore PvPers, with many top names deciding to stop playing or leaving entirely, and even some full ESL teams are planning to leave when the pro league season ends.

Essentially every core specs build has been shut out due to the immense power creep introduced by elite specs, and of the two professions whose elite specs aren’t such major upgrades, one has been rendered completely obsolete and the other is almost completely shut out as well. Damage and CC outputs are considerably higher than before, but healing outputs are higher still, and HoT introduced significant increases in block/evade/invulnerability frames for several professions. All of this has left build diversity at an all-time low and taken a lot of fun out of the great combat system that GW2 has.

A very large amount of balancing is needed to bring elite specs down to the same level as core specs and ensure a diversity-rich meta, certainly multiple balance passes worth, and waiting so long to get started on the process is certainly doing no favors for your players.

I agree with what some people are saying here, DO NOT RUSH this patch.

Think everything through before giving us this patch, I don’t mind my main warrior sucking in pvp, I can play other characters for now.

But I’d really mind if you make him suck in pve simply because he can’t perform as well in wvw and pvp.

Like a few people have stated before, we need alternative spec lines depending on if we are doing pve / wvw / spvp.

This way it won’t infect each other with the annoyance that exists is today.

I don’t mind waiting half a year for this if needed. But it needs to be done in the end for everything to work for the best.

Hey peeps,

Listen, anet nor the devs are children… They are a company with trained professionals who get paid for work. Work is not easy for anyone, but c’mon peeps… “Take your time”, “don’t rush”, “meet for 6 more months”, “it’s ok, you’re doing a good job”…

No, sorry, it’s time for action and results. 3 years have gone by and the only thing substantial that has happened so for are elites, and many of those aren’t even that good… Core professions and certain weapon skills and trait system are still all messy… Professions leave a lot to be desired and players have been giving 3 years of feedback …

Y’all should be saying “get it done” and “get on the ball”… It’s less talk and more action time. If something breaks, fix it, but just do it… Time for professional and competent and aggressive looking patch notes and results…

Dont kill me for this but, will this balance patch bring any ups for war? I dont think you can possible do anything more to nerf war (unless you delete class) , hmmmm wait that reminds me …….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q3em9s5I4c

NEVERMIND, pls dont, pls dont “help” us more……

I’m fine with more frequent but less precise balance patches, myself. Here’s why:

#1: There’s a drastic drop off in returns after a short while. It’s something that a lot of artists will tell you. I’m going to paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone on why it is they make each episode of South Park in a week: “You can spend several months on an episode, getting the timing exactly perfect for that one or two jokes, but if you keeping working at getting it perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’re spending a lot of time to make that episode maybe 10% better. It is better to get that episode out there and not worry about it being perfect”. Balance patches are similar: you can see the problems that need fixing within a month or two. Spending 6 months between balance passes only makes it 10% better.

#2: Feedback is important. The thing with ideas is that they have inertia, and just because the devs have been sitting on a thought for 6 months doesn’t make it smarter. I’d rather the devs throw out their 90% quickly, so they can see what happens and get feedback on how things have changed. Then, when they do the next balance patch, they can take that into consideration and make adjustments again. A faster balance patch may be a bit worse, but it is worse for substantially less time.

#3: Long inaction clearly isn’t working. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.

#4: Changing up the game regularly will encourage players to come back regularly. A balance pass every 2-3 months means that when something is bad, a player can just take a break for a bit. A balance patch every 6 months creates a feeling of hopelessness, knowing that you’ll have to live with a problem for an extended period of time. Faster updates means higher retention.

I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m fine with more frequent but less precise balance patches, myself. Here’s why:

#1: There’s a drastic drop off in returns after a short while. It’s something that a lot of artists will tell you. I’m going to paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone on why it is they make each episode of South Park in a week: “You can spend several months on an episode, getting the timing exactly perfect for that one or two jokes, but if you keeping working at getting it perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’re spending a lot of time to make that episode maybe 10% better. It is better to get that episode out there and not worry about it being perfect”. Balance patches are similar: you can see the problems that need fixing within a month or two. Spending 6 months between balance passes only makes it 10% better.

#2: Feedback is important. The thing with ideas is that they have inertia, and just because the devs have been sitting on a thought for 6 months doesn’t make it smarter. I’d rather the devs throw out their 90% quickly, so they can see what happens and get feedback on how things have changed. Then, when they do the next balance patch, they can take that into consideration and make adjustments again. A faster balance patch may be a bit worse, but it is worse for substantially less time.

#3: Long inaction clearly isn’t working. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.

#4: Changing up the game regularly will encourage players to come back regularly. A balance pass every 2-3 months means that when something is bad, a player can just take a break for a bit. A balance patch every 6 months creates a feeling of hopelessness, knowing that you’ll have to live with a problem for an extended period of time. Faster updates means higher retention.

I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.

kitten , im with you on this .

“I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.”

this is pretty much it

Gaile Gray.6029:

Game balance is a really important topic, perhaps the most important of all. So watch for threads on that subject and we’ll look for your input, feedback, comments, and suggestions.

And because it´s so important if not the most important according to you statement, you do it only twice a year, yes that makes perfect sense.

/not

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m fine with more frequent but less precise balance patches, myself. Here’s why:

#1: There’s a drastic drop off in returns after a short while. It’s something that a lot of artists will tell you. I’m going to paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone on why it is they make each episode of South Park in a week: “You can spend several months on an episode, getting the timing exactly perfect for that one or two jokes, but if you keeping working at getting it perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’re spending a lot of time to make that episode maybe 10% better. It is better to get that episode out there and not worry about it being perfect”. Balance patches are similar: you can see the problems that need fixing within a month or two. Spending 6 months between balance passes only makes it 10% better.

#2: Feedback is important. The thing with ideas is that they have inertia, and just because the devs have been sitting on a thought for 6 months doesn’t make it smarter. I’d rather the devs throw out their 90% quickly, so they can see what happens and get feedback on how things have changed. Then, when they do the next balance patch, they can take that into consideration and make adjustments again. A faster balance patch may be a bit worse, but it is worse for substantially less time.

#3: Long inaction clearly isn’t working. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.

#4: Changing up the game regularly will encourage players to come back regularly. A balance pass every 2-3 months means that when something is bad, a player can just take a break for a bit. A balance patch every 6 months creates a feeling of hopelessness, knowing that you’ll have to live with a problem for an extended period of time. Faster updates means higher retention.

I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.

This is one of those rare examples where someone else articulates my argument in a better way than I did. Well said.

What kills me is that this should all be well understood by somebody who runs a game or runs balance for a game. It apparently isn’t, and that’s very disturbing.

I can honestly say that extremely infrequent and inadequate balance patches is one of the main reasons I don’t play this game more than I do. And yes, I specifically mean the frequency and quality of balance patches, and not the overall balance of the game itself.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m fine with more frequent but less precise balance patches, myself. Here’s why:

#1: There’s a drastic drop off in returns after a short while. It’s something that a lot of artists will tell you. I’m going to paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone on why it is they make each episode of South Park in a week: “You can spend several months on an episode, getting the timing exactly perfect for that one or two jokes, but if you keeping working at getting it perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’re spending a lot of time to make that episode maybe 10% better. It is better to get that episode out there and not worry about it being perfect”. Balance patches are similar: you can see the problems that need fixing within a month or two. Spending 6 months between balance passes only makes it 10% better.

#2: Feedback is important. The thing with ideas is that they have inertia, and just because the devs have been sitting on a thought for 6 months doesn’t make it smarter. I’d rather the devs throw out their 90% quickly, so they can see what happens and get feedback on how things have changed. Then, when they do the next balance patch, they can take that into consideration and make adjustments again. A faster balance patch may be a bit worse, but it is worse for substantially less time.

#3: Long inaction clearly isn’t working. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.

#4: Changing up the game regularly will encourage players to come back regularly. A balance pass every 2-3 months means that when something is bad, a player can just take a break for a bit. A balance patch every 6 months creates a feeling of hopelessness, knowing that you’ll have to live with a problem for an extended period of time. Faster updates means higher retention.

I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.

Agreed on every point. Especially #1.

Faster iteration times means more iterations. Each iteration steps away from the extreme and brings it closer to the “real” or “ideal” point, so long as the updates aren’t drastic.

Swagger.1459:

They have already worked at turtle pace for 3 years with regard to professions and combat improvements… This is not a rational post.

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

There has been enough feedback on this matter… The only saving grace to professions is the ability to move and cast, but that all base combat design…

Professions are low budget design and are on extremely low budget maintenance mode…

And since “balance is important”, as Gaile says, you’d figure that that the devs would be much more proactive and reactive…

Again, I’m not saying I disagree that the balancing should be faster. In fact, that is the polar opposite of what I’m saying.

The rationale I’m trying to draw attention to is the fact that we’re asking them to balance faster without knowing how they process or obtain the majority of their usable, consideration-worthy feedback.

If, in fact, this feedback is coming from the devs opinons on raw or processed metrics then we have a problem anyway. I think that at least we need to get confirmation or insight into how we need to format, consolidate and supply data for balance suggestions in a way that would get devs to see how the classes they are balancing work in combat situations ( with player mentalities that cannot see the numbers or the picture the devs see, and base their playstyles around practical effectiveness rather than theory) before we begin asking them to rush.

Because, judging from some implementations such as guarded initiation, it looks like devs are doing class tweaking based on theory over practicality.

This is not saying “oh they should just take reallly long so they get it perfect.” We have a patch coming up really soon, and the game has been borderline intolerable for me for half a year as far as pvp goes. Obviously what they are doing now isnt working, we can at least agree on that.

What I’m saying is, If they’re going on metrics they’re forced to take a long time by the workings of their system. If they go faster, the metrics are less reliable, and they may begin using player feedback more fully than they do now.
If they do that the way feedback is currently, the game is going to get much worse.

Yes, of course we need faster iteration. What use is it, though, if they’re iterating based on whats happening in the pvp forum right now? 6 month patches based on what I can only assume is founded on metrics and theory isnt working, why would 1 month patches founded on metrics and theory work better, if they’re ignoring the people who are actually affected by the patches because they cant agree on anything with concrete proof of why X is weak or Y is strong in the meta as it stands?

My largest concern has always been balance that is modeled around one particular type of gameplay which is why I want to stress how critical this is and as mentioned previously it can’t be rushed. I have always been of the mind that the balance between PvP and PvE be separated because it isn’t always feasible to balance in one without being very detrimental to the other.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Swagger.1459:

They have already worked at turtle pace for 3 years with regard to professions and combat improvements… This is not a rational post.

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

There has been enough feedback on this matter… The only saving grace to professions is the ability to move and cast, but that all base combat design…

Professions are low budget design and are on extremely low budget maintenance mode…

And since “balance is important”, as Gaile says, you’d figure that that the devs would be much more proactive and reactive…

Again, I’m not saying I disagree that the balancing should be faster. In fact, that is the polar opposite of what I’m saying.

The rationale I’m trying to draw attention to is the fact that we’re asking them to balance faster without knowing how they process or obtain the majority of their usable, consideration-worthy feedback.

If, in fact, this feedback is coming from the devs opinons on raw or processed metrics then we have a problem anyway. I think that at least we need to get confirmation or insight into how we need to format, consolidate and supply data for balance suggestions in a way that would get devs to see how the classes they are balancing work in combat situations ( with player mentalities that cannot see the numbers or the picture the devs see, and base their playstyles around practical effectiveness rather than theory) before we begin asking them to rush.

Because, judging from some implementations such as guarded initiation, it looks like devs are doing class tweaking based on theory over practicality.

This is not saying “oh they should just take reallly long so they get it perfect.” We have a patch coming up really soon, and the game has been borderline intolerable for me for half a year as far as pvp goes. Obviously what they are doing now isnt working, we can at least agree on that.

What I’m saying is, If they’re going on metrics they’re forced to take a long time by the workings of their system. If they go faster, the metrics are less reliable, and they may begin using player feedback more fully than they do now.
If they do that the way feedback is currently, the game is going to get much worse.

Yes, of course we need faster iteration. What use is it, though, if they’re iterating based on whats happening in the pvp forum right now? 6 month patches based on what I can only assume is founded on metrics and theory isnt working, why would 1 month patches founded on metrics and theory work better, if they’re ignoring the people who are actually affected by the patches because they cant agree on anything with concrete proof of why X is weak or Y is strong in the meta as it stands?

The devs play the game, they know what’s up. These people are not stupid at all nor blind. They know they are way behind on profession development. They have feedback. They have stats… Sooooooooko less talk and more action. No more games, they need to get the serious ball rolling and get er dun…

Vlad Morbius.1759:

My largest concern has always been balance that is modeled around one particular type of gameplay which is why I want to stress how critical this is and as mentioned previously it can’t be rushed. I have always been of the mind that the balance between PvP and PvE be separated because it isn’t always feasible to balance in one without being very detrimental to the other.

Yeah, this is a big problem too. They seem to be completely unconcerned with PvE balance. A good example of this is the extreme imbalance that exists with autoattacks across different weapons. In PvE, the autoattack carries disproportionate weight in how effective a weapon is. Weapons with a weak autoattack are going to automatically suck, or at best be highly situational, in PvE. There’s never any attention whatsoever devoted to this phenomenon.

Swagger.1459:

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

Swagger.1459:

The devs play the game, they know what’s up.

See now if they knew what was up from a player perspective, the above largely wouldnt happen.

I’m not saying they’re dumb, I’m saying developer glasses might obscure how the traits and balances they make function practically. If theyre just disregarding feedback because they cant sift what’s actually valid from whining, telling them “do it faster” isnt gonna work out so well.

The best time to play is typically around a balance patch because it’s basically anything goes. Your new build hasn’t been refuted yet and it’s a time of freedom and discovery. You decide on a build because it speaks to your values as a player and you haven’t found a refutation for it (and if there is it’ll likely be just from one build on one class specifically designed to hardcounter your style but that’s normal balance if that build has a counter, and the rock paper scissors cycle continues). You may change things around when in an organized team for better synergy. Then pro teams reveal their builds and everyone copies them. They solved the optimal comps and builds for them and a meta gets established. Sometimes you can find a happy medium, like I took the remove chill and flame upon dodge trait instead of the meta one because I hate chill and have come to terms that I will be below 90% health. Stop drop and roll cleanses these conditions from nearby allies too so it seems more useful to me than soothing ice anyway.

And this is why we need frequent balance patches, to ensure the pendulum swings towards improvisation instead of narrowing builds. You can find potential cheese before anyone else and take advantage of that before the pros reveal their even bigger cheese and everyone uses it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It worked in Guild Wars 1. If the skills itself worked the same, but only the numbers were tweaked for game mode purposes, there wouldn’t be any extra involvement required.

Even now, there’s only so few builds out there that work well in all game modes. If you want to be effective, you have to learn a lot of different play styles as is.

They need to nerf warriors and thieves in PvP, so that I stop getting them on my team.

Kam.4092:

Pleases, why is it taking so long

I read this in a Gollum voice

Swagger.1459:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Swagger.1459:

They have already worked at turtle pace for 3 years with regard to professions and combat improvements… This is not a rational post.

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

There has been enough feedback on this matter… The only saving grace to professions is the ability to move and cast, but that all base combat design…

Professions are low budget design and are on extremely low budget maintenance mode…

And since “balance is important”, as Gaile says, you’d figure that that the devs would be much more proactive and reactive…

Again, I’m not saying I disagree that the balancing should be faster. In fact, that is the polar opposite of what I’m saying.

The rationale I’m trying to draw attention to is the fact that we’re asking them to balance faster without knowing how they process or obtain the majority of their usable, consideration-worthy feedback.

If, in fact, this feedback is coming from the devs opinons on raw or processed metrics then we have a problem anyway. I think that at least we need to get confirmation or insight into how we need to format, consolidate and supply data for balance suggestions in a way that would get devs to see how the classes they are balancing work in combat situations ( with player mentalities that cannot see the numbers or the picture the devs see, and base their playstyles around practical effectiveness rather than theory) before we begin asking them to rush.

Because, judging from some implementations such as guarded initiation, it looks like devs are doing class tweaking based on theory over practicality.

This is not saying “oh they should just take reallly long so they get it perfect.” We have a patch coming up really soon, and the game has been borderline intolerable for me for half a year as far as pvp goes. Obviously what they are doing now isnt working, we can at least agree on that.

What I’m saying is, If they’re going on metrics they’re forced to take a long time by the workings of their system. If they go faster, the metrics are less reliable, and they may begin using player feedback more fully than they do now.
If they do that the way feedback is currently, the game is going to get much worse.

Yes, of course we need faster iteration. What use is it, though, if they’re iterating based on whats happening in the pvp forum right now? 6 month patches based on what I can only assume is founded on metrics and theory isnt working, why would 1 month patches founded on metrics and theory work better, if they’re ignoring the people who are actually affected by the patches because they cant agree on anything with concrete proof of why X is weak or Y is strong in the meta as it stands?

The devs play the game, they know what’s up. These people are not stupid at all nor blind. They know they are way behind on profession development. They have feedback. They have stats… Sooooooooko less talk and more action. No more games, they need to get the serious ball rolling and get er dun…

Yeah, the REAL issue is that the marketing team and corporate overlords think that they know better.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

I don’t know. I think the primary reason PvE-exclusive players never set foot into PvP is because they just do not like PvP. I know several people in my guild and on my Friends list who, despite being excellent PvE players, absolutely refuse to do PvP.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s more efficient to farm certain rewards via reward tracks (and that certain rewards can’t be obtained anywhere else), I wouldn’t be in PvP either. I actually do not like it all that much, and if ANet ever made it easier/faster to get what I wanted via PvE one day, it’s “Goodbye PvP!” that very second.

Zaxares.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

I don’t know. I think the primary reason PvE-exclusive players never set foot into PvP is because they just do not like PvP. I know several people in my guild and on my Friends list who, despite being excellent PvE players, absolutely refuse to do PvP.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s more efficient to farm certain rewards via reward tracks (and that certain rewards can’t be obtained anywhere else), I wouldn’t be in PvP either. I actually do not like it all that much, and if ANet ever made it easier/faster to get what I wanted via PvE one day, it’s “Goodbye PvP!” that very second.

I think that that’s pretty spot on; I’ve never seen any attempt to make PvP more attractive to PvE-ers end up in anything less than disaster for all parties. Worst example of this from my experience would be what The Secret World’s Issue 12 did to Fusang [cry].

This relates to Azure The Heartless’ point, and why I disagree with that: business as usual clearly isn’t working, most likely down to the methods used by Devs involving too much theorising (and likely hyper-specialisation) rather than practical involvement with the full spectrum of the game.

If longer iteration turn-around would be better, given their methods, then this indicates that their method is systemically flawed. It shouldn’t therefore be legitimised (‘longer iteration turn-around is cool if that’s how you do things’), but should be used as an indication that their system needs to change.

Rather than theorising over idealised theory and metrics for months, they’d get better and faster results if they made every Dev have at least one of every class, and play each class (using all of their different weapons and trait lines) in every game mode regularly – without their Anet banners, so they get the regular punter’s eye view of the game.

[Eg, they need to experience being told by their party members that they need to ditch their Thief/Warrior for themselves; which is unlikely to happen if they’re wearing their Anet banner… bullies being cowards an’ all….]

What’s glaringly wrong with each class/weapon set/trait is glaringly obvious, so can be quickly addressed with a faster iteration cycle; at least to get the battered classes back on their feet fairly soon. Then, after that ‘broad strokes’ point maybe a longer iteration cycle might be better as they’re dealing with the smaller and more debatable balance tweaks.

Zaxares.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

I don’t know. I think the primary reason PvE-exclusive players never set foot into PvP is because they just do not like PvP. I know several people in my guild and on my Friends list who, despite being excellent PvE players, absolutely refuse to do PvP.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s more efficient to farm certain rewards via reward tracks (and that certain rewards can’t be obtained anywhere else), I wouldn’t be in PvP either. I actually do not like it all that much, and if ANet ever made it easier/faster to get what I wanted via PvE one day, it’s “Goodbye PvP!” that very second.

I was active in CoH right up until it was shut down. And in the months prior to then, I actually made a thread on the forums, asking people what it is about PVP and why they didn’t do it. This started a chain of events that led to the devs themselves trying to encourage more PVP in the game, such as having massive events where they played giant monsters in PVP zones, and then players would run up to kill them.

In that thread, there were several responses. Now, because all of that data has been eaten by the throes of time, I can only estimate how frequent each response was. But if I were to rank them, it would be in this order:

#1: Does not like PVP community, or was turned off of PVP in other games by other PVP communities.
#2: PVP combat system was hard to get in to and wasn’t like the PVE game.
#3: Does not like PVP in general, or the nature of active competition.
#4: Because no one else was PVPing, they decided not to try and PVP.
#5: They did PVP in the past, but weren’t currently in the mood to PVP.
#6: Emotionally incapable of handling failure or defeat.

These responses are quite general, and apply to most online games, actually.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Swagger.1459:

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

Swagger.1459:

The devs play the game, they know what’s up.

See now if they knew what was up from a player perspective, the above largely wouldnt happen.

I’m not saying they’re dumb, I’m saying developer glasses might obscure how the traits and balances they make function practically. If theyre just disregarding feedback because they cant sift what’s actually valid from whining, telling them “do it faster” isnt gonna work out so well.

Here is the problem… Money. Looks like the bare minimum amount of cash is given to these particular projects… It’s not a high priority for decision makers so it looks like the devs are not on the ball, but that’s not true.

Improvements and “balance” are something the devs know is important, so Gaile is correct from the dev perspective, but it’s the suits who don’t think so… We can see this sort of stuff “lack of funding” in other areas/components/projects of the game. Hence all the “table” and “soon” jokes.

People have already said this, but im saying it again because you people still dont seem to get it. SEPARATE BALANCE FOR ALL GAME MODES! It needs to be done. I dont care how much extra work it creates for Anet. One game mode always suffers for things meant to balance another game mode and then everyone is miserable. Its past time for this to be done. You tried the whole separate balance for all game modes, and it doesnt work. you tried it in GW1, it didnt work. you eventually realized this and separated things. How many more years do we have to wait before you realize this MUST be done for the health of the game across all 3 modes. You tried your way, you were wrong, so just do it already and stop being so stubborn when you were clearly wrong.

As much as I would love the game to be balanced, it won’t ever happen. Players seem to love this dilemma of waiting for things to work out. If they actually balanced the professions, then things would become stale.

Don’t you people like hating certain classes, calling each other names for playing a cheese, passive, and/or bad build? Constantly changing your build and spending more gold into converting or making new stat gear because <reasons>?

You do. And the developers recognize this. Bless them for understanding that if things worked out, then every log-in would just be another day at the office.

Wondrouswall.7169:

As much as I would love the game to be balanced, it won’t ever happen. Players seem to love this dilemma of waiting for things to work out. If they actually balanced the professions, then things would become stale.

Don’t you people like hating certain classes, calling each other names for playing a cheese, passive, and/or bad build? Constantly changing your build and spending more gold into converting or making new stat gear because <reasons>?

You do. And the developers recognize this. Bless them for understanding that if things worked out, then every log-in would just be another day at the office.

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/s

understandable.

However, the meta should not be so unbalanced that you have to shelve classes.

I’m fine with shelving gear sets now and then.