Guild Wars 2

Morning,

I have just seen that a load of the elite specialisations are having more changes made to them for BW3, this is great!

But… I am concerned about the ranger. I love my ranger and I am really looking forward to Druid. But Rangers have not had much love in the game and I am really worried that it’s going going to have enough time to be tested and improved upon as its being revealed last and will only have 1 BW test. I am worried it’s going to be released with HoT a bit unfinished.

Thoughts?

You can tell that the earlier elite specializations have benefited from having more development time and more BWEs to gather feedback on. Unfortunately, it’s looking like Daredevil, Forge, and Druid will get the short end of the stick in this department.

Engineer will manage, I’m sure. But it’s very problematic how the two most neglected professions in the game—Thief and Ranger—are continuing this trend by getting elite specializations that are less developed and less tested.

Guess we’ll see how it plays out, but as a Thief player I’m not feeling optimistic.

I think devs have already stated that work on the specialisations will continue after HoT has launched if necessary.

Bartender.1674:

I think devs have already stated that work on the specialisations will continue after HoT has launched if necessary.

Well i’d kittening hope so, if things are unbalanced they need to be fixed, regardless of what it is.

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

People are saying they’d rather them have just released all the elite specs together so they could get equal testing, which would be far better than giving some professions the shaft for no real reason other than marketing.

Durzlla.6295:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

People are saying they’d rather them have just released all the elite specs together so they could get equal testing, which would be far better than giving some professions the shaft for no real reason other than marketing.

Well, the problem with that is that it’s likely better for them as programmers to focus on one thing at a time. It’s not like there’s one set of devs for each different profession I would think. I mean these things are internally tested.

So some are ready before others.

In order for all of them to be shown at once, they all have to be at the same stage. Which means holding off betas or holding off revealing it just so every profession can be equal.

I don’t know about you, but I think that would delay launch as much, perhaps even more.

My guess is the ones ready to be shown were shown first. The others weren’t ready yet. Are we saying that everyone should be inconvenienced because it’s not equal?

For the record, I main a ranger.

Thanks for your opinions guys.

I am not saying that HoT should be delayed, Hell no! it feels like forever already lol.

But there have been huge gaps in the releasing of the elite spec’s so all of them could have been released before BW2 allowing for the ranger and engi to be tested in BW2, revised and retested in BW3 and then worked on further if needed. All the other classes have benefited from 2 BW.

Instead we will get ranger and engi dumped on us last minute, feedback will be given and changes made and released into HoT without any idea if the changes made are fit for purpose. (maybe they could squeeze in 1 more BW?)

I am a little sad of this

I share the same concerns as the OP.

In fact I have a second concern. Anet has sayed they only show (and implement in the beta i guess) things, who are “ready” to show. So it seems in my eyes the forge and the druid were the last professions “ready”. It seems these two professions give them the hardest times to “ready up”. I would say they originaly wanted to have all specialisations in BWE 2, but forge and druid were not ready at that time. So not only these two have lesser time for testing and adjusting. They have lesser time and! the devs seems to had problems programming/designing the two profession. Not a good match in my opinion.

there is a theorie of WP that they follow the order of this site
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/
of course Rev is outta place there, but they follow it, except the ranger
it COULD be possible that they changed a lot about druid before they originally planned to present it. What could it mean? “meh its garbage, rework it” or “aaah nice idea, we will do it on druid, lets change him a bit” or “best for last”
my theory is that they needed more time to work on it. some dev said that mes and ranger gonna shape up the pvp landslide, mes got alacrity, so it could be possible that ranger gets something cool new too that affects his allies.

and the argument that ranger elite spec was confirmed on stage and has to be last, then why was reaper the third when he was halfway announced too?

Why give all professions the same opportunities for testing, iteration and refinement when you can just shove a half-baked concept out the door? But look, we’re dealing with the same people who needed the community to point out that a profession with over-specialised, locked in utilities might actually need a weapon swap and the people who needed us to point out that a profession based around mobility from special dodges might actually benefit from those dodges not rooting you to the ground for over a second.

I am sure that in one beta weekend event, one round of feedback and less than five weeks of turn-around time we can achieve the exact same level of polish as the professions that received multiple events for testing, multiple rounds of feedback and months of time for people to iterate, be creative and problem solve. I am sure that in five weeks we will have a product that was released “When It’s Ready” as we were told it would be and not shoved out the door to meet a preset deadline.

Despair wrought sarcasm aside, why? Just why? That’s all I want to know. Why the lopsided development schedule that so heavily favours other professions? And why is it that so often it’s Rangers and Engineers that catch the short end of the stick? I didn’t even want to spec into Druid and I wasn’t excited by the concept of a staff Ranger. But I know there are people who were excited by this and did want this for their Rangers, so why do they the scraps of development crunch time, testing and iteration? Why? Just why?

Rangers have always been an afterthought, the token pet class, no reason to expect them to be anything more. Never once considered they might not be last.
Honestly surprised we’re even getting a beta.

“When its ready” doesn’t apply to rangers, or GW2 wouldn’t even be out yet.

Hey now, there’s a small chance that A-net might just slap the Dro0d together and accidentally make it OP! …And then neglect to make any changes to it for 3 years.

Daddar.5971:

Hey now, there’s a small chance that A-net might just slap the Dro0d together and accidentally make it OP! …And then neglect to make any changes to it for 3 years.

If this were ele or warrior you might be right, but this is ranger, they’ve released several batches of content (Vine wraith, Aetherblade Retreate, scarlet achievements, liadri etc) where your pet, the kittening class mechanic, is either entirerly worthless because it gets 1 shot by an easy to avoid mechanic that NPCs can’t do (EX: jumping over shockwaves).

It’s pretty fair to assume that if anything we’re going to be on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, completely worthless, and untouched for 3 years.

Emmalouise.1763:

Morning,

I have just seen that a load of the elite specialisations are having more changes made to them for BW3, this is great!

But… I am concerned about the ranger. I love my ranger and I am really looking forward to Druid. But Rangers have not had much love in the game and I am really worried that it’s going going to have enough time to be tested and improved upon as its being revealed last and will only have 1 BW test. I am worried it’s going to be released with HoT a bit unfinished.

Thoughts?

In before this gets relocated to the ranger subforum.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

What is “on time?”

Until recently (recent by ANet standards), the game didn’t have a release date other than “before December 31st 2015,” yet instead of giving themselves ample development time and testing time, it seems like they are trying to make an unnecessary rush to push out a barely finished expansion by Oct 23rd because they made a poor decision to lock in to a date before development was complete, the reveals were over, and equal public testing could be done.

So “on time” to you could be this ridiculous, over the top early date, but people looking for quality content, on time would be when all of the features were polished and ready to be shipped, which is quite clearly not the case at the moment, and won’t be the case by the 23rd.

So enjoy the early half finished, half polished content, while ANet gets another 3 years of dangling promises of fixes to everything that they never fix and will just announce another expansion and build it on top of the issues instead of fixing.

The only concern I would have is that they patch often after the hot release. As long as they continue patching and fixing balancing things will be fine. What I don’t want to see and what many games do is release something big like an expansion and take months to put out a balance/fix patch.

jcbroe.4329:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

What is “on time?”

Until recently (recent by ANet standards), the game didn’t have a release date other than “before December 31st 2015,” yet instead of giving themselves ample development time and testing time, it seems like they are trying to make an unnecessary rush to push out a barely finished expansion by Oct 23rd because they made a poor decision to lock in to a date before development was complete, the reveals were over, and equal public testing could be done.

So “on time” to you could be this ridiculous, over the top early date, but people looking for quality content, on time would be when all of the features were polished and ready to be shipped, which is quite clearly not the case at the moment, and won’t be the case by the 23rd.

So enjoy the early half finished, half polished content, while ANet gets another 3 years of dangling promises of fixes to everything that they never fix and will just announce another expansion and build it on top of the issues instead of fixing.

The last 100% bug free game I played that never had a single patch was in 2008. Those games don’t exist anymore. Whether the game releases “on time” or “before december 31st, 2015”, its going to have bugs. Its going to be unbalanced. Its going to disappoint people. Its going to have issues that may never be fully resolved because even the developers don’t fully grasp the complexity of the game they made. Giving Anet more time isn’t going to do much if things are broken now.

That said, I’m not sure what level of asinine on the scale I would pick for the preceeding comment that basically says its okay for some things to be more broken than others so the game can release “on time”

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

What is “on time?”

Until recently (recent by ANet standards), the game didn’t have a release date other than “before December 31st 2015,” yet instead of giving themselves ample development time and testing time, it seems like they are trying to make an unnecessary rush to push out a barely finished expansion by Oct 23rd because they made a poor decision to lock in to a date before development was complete, the reveals were over, and equal public testing could be done.

So “on time” to you could be this ridiculous, over the top early date, but people looking for quality content, on time would be when all of the features were polished and ready to be shipped, which is quite clearly not the case at the moment, and won’t be the case by the 23rd.

So enjoy the early half finished, half polished content, while ANet gets another 3 years of dangling promises of fixes to everything that they never fix and will just announce another expansion and build it on top of the issues instead of fixing.

The last 100% bug free game I played that never had a single patch was in 2008. Those games don’t exist anymore. Whether the game releases “on time” or “before december 31st, 2015”, its going to have bugs. Its going to be unbalanced. Its going to disappoint people. Its going to have issues that may never be fully resolved because even the developers don’t fully grasp the complexity of the game they made. Giving Anet more time isn’t going to do much if things are broken now.

That said, I’m not sure what level of asinine on the scale I would pick for the preceeding comment that basically says its okay for some things to be more broken than others so the game can release “on time”

That is by no means an argument for releasing the game early with the Druid barely polished. The Ranger is already the profession with the most issues in GW2 and I fail to see why anyone would think that one weekend of testing is enough to balance this class properly, given the extensive changes that were applied to the other professions.

Wuselknusel.4082:

That is by no means an argument for releasing the game early with the Druid barely polished. The Ranger is already the profession with the most issues in GW2 and I fail to see why anyone would think that one weekend of testing is enough to balance this class properly, given the extensive changes that were applied to the other professions.

Some more extensive than others. We could have ten weeks of testing and it wouldn’t be enough. Ranger still has issues that Anet hasn’t been able to fully fix, and has said before they can’t/won’t fix some issues because of how many potential things it could break.

People can hope that Ranger will be good on release day. People can say that Ranger just needs at least two beta weekends so it has more time to be good. People can say that its okay for Ranger and Forge to be broken on release day so the game is released “on time”

All I’m saying is….It doesn’t matter.

I probably doesn’t, but it would be a nice change if it would. Because that would mean that ANet would actually invest some time into the Ranger again, something I think didn’t happen for a long time now.

Why would they? people play it anyway. You know, the kind of people that had a special name given to them in that other mmo, or the stupid people like me that just can’t let go of a cool concept, no matter how broken it is. More convenient for anet to keep releasing stuff in the gemstore, in yearly festivals and that stupid LS thing – which hopefully is a dead and buried concept… Would it be too much to hope?

deSade.9437:

Why would they? people play it anyway. You know, the kind of people that had a special name given to them in that other mmo, or the stupid people like me that just can’t let go of a cool concept, no matter how broken it is. More convenient for anet to keep releasing stuff in the gemstore, in yearly festivals and that stupid LS thing – which hopefully is a dead and buried concept… Would it be too much to hope?

The LS is something that makes this game better to me than other games. So I hope they continue it.

Blizzard is more serious and professionnal than Anet. They provide a true beta server and all classes get their new stuff for the very beginning, so you can test whatever class you want and when you want.

Scipion.7548:

Blizzard is more serious and professionnal than Anet. They provide a true beta server and all classes get their new stuff for the very beginning, so you can test whatever class you want and when you want.

And if you play as a Hunter you get the new stuff you got last xpac taken away and completely scrapped for the next xpac, same can be said with Druid in many situations.

I’d rather take slightly unpolished content than to have some of my favorite things REMOVED because of stupid reasons like “it was too complicated for some players”.

Durzlla.6295:

And if you play as a Hunter you get the new stuff you got last xpac taken away and completely scrapped for the next xpac, same can be said with Druid in many situations.

I’d rather take slightly unpolished content than to have some of my favorite things REMOVED because of stupid reasons like “it was too complicated for some players”.

Well this is a unrelated problem. The fact is, at the beginning of a Beta, you already know what your class will look like at the next xpac. Maybe you don’t like what you discover, but at least you don’t have to wait the end of a beta to know if you like or not.

Scipion.7548:

Blizzard is more serious and professionnal than Anet. They provide a true beta server and all classes get their new stuff for the very beginning, so you can test whatever class you want and when you want.

And?

They also have crud game play, cartoon graphics, and have a mandatory monthly fee. They are not reasonably comparable.

Scipion.7548:

Durzlla.6295:

And if you play as a Hunter you get the new stuff you got last xpac taken away and completely scrapped for the next xpac, same can be said with Druid in many situations.

I’d rather take slightly unpolished content than to have some of my favorite things REMOVED because of stupid reasons like “it was too complicated for some players”.

Well this is a unrelated problem. The fact is, at the beginning of a Beta, you already know what your class will look like at the next xpac. Maybe you don’t like what you discover, but at least you don’t have to wait the end of a beta to know if you like or not.

It’s easy to be more serious when you’re not breaking any barriers. Blizzard isn’t breaking any new ground. They want for other people to break new ground and then do something similar. And they have enough money to advertise it like it’s their idea.

Blizzard is a business like Anet is a business. But Blizzard is more like Hollywood and Anet is more of an indie film. Not as big a budget, and because of that, it’s hard to function on a day to day basis, but at least they’re trying to innovate.

It’s so much easier to tow the line.

At this point we have no idea where Druid is in development, whether its ready or not. I’m looking forward to hearing more (hopefully) next week.

However I completely understand people’s concerns. Recent events haven’t helped (Mordrem Invasion), so it’s natural that Rangers are a little worried.

This is another example of ArenaNet’s communication policy leaving us players out in the cold. It would only take one dev post explaining where the Druid is at (or why the release order was chosen this way) to resolve some of the concerns.

I didnt said WoW is better than GW2. What I wanted to said is that the Blizz team is better in communication and testing.
Except the buisness model and the bigger profit for Blizz, that maybe allow better communication, all other arguments (cartoon graphic ….) are totally irrevelant.

I don’t think it is because WoW has cartoon graphic or low gameplay risk taking that Blizz can make beta testing and communication more impressive. Anet could also do that.

Come launch, we’ll probably be waiting another 3 years for them to address the problems with HoT whilst they add more trash to the gem store.

Actually, it might be longer than 3 years. Perhaps forever, as they’ve never been in a rush to fix problems that have festered since the game launched.

At this point Druid will be revealed next week & playable in the beta the week after. Anet is cutting it very close though, there can’t be more than two left for sure.

At this rate I would rather see the druid as a purely self sustaining class. Avoid buffing the party, allow them to keep themselves alive with a higher damage and cc potential

Vayne.8563:

deSade.9437:

Why would they? people play it anyway. You know, the kind of people that had a special name given to them in that other mmo, or the stupid people like me that just can’t let go of a cool concept, no matter how broken it is. More convenient for anet to keep releasing stuff in the gemstore, in yearly festivals and that stupid LS thing – which hopefully is a dead and buried concept… Would it be too much to hope?

The LS is something that makes this game better to me than other games. So I hope they continue it.

While it is for you, there is a reason why anet went the route of xpac – LS was a failure (in anets eyes as well as many of the community).

Anet has statistics, they can tell when their game is losing players at a rate they don’t like to see. A lot of it had to with LS, that is my belief because anet focused most of their development time on LS…

F2P release + Xpac is anet’s way of trying to get new players and bring back old players. LS was not achieving any of this for anet.

back on topic.

OP, look at anet’s history since GW2 release with ranger.
They don’t give a kitten about that class, point blank period. This was proven after the Ranger CDI had an encyclopedia worth of feedback that anet did nothing on because it was probably too much work for them to spend on 1 class.
Its rotten from the core and requires a serious overhaul, more so than other classes , because no other class has a broken class mechanic like pets are.
This requires serious development work, which anet/NCsoft higher ups probably aren’t going to give the green light on since it’s not exactly going to increase revenue for the amount of dev work required to rework.

If druid isn’t a gamechanger for ranger, this class will be dead to a lot of players.

it’s been below average to mediocre in every mode for 3 years. I don’t see it changing personally, but I hope I’m wrong.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

Problem is once the xpac its released its time to move onto the next thing (raids since we wont see them at release, new living story, next xpac, …) and the team working on the state of the expansion will be drastically reduced. Also there will be so many issues with the expansion and buggs (Lets be real here there are always a lot of issues, so this will especially be the case with something this big) that class balancing/tweaking, especially the less favoured classes will not in the least be a priority. So yes I prefer it to get delayed because then we can at least watch over the quality since clearly Anet does not have the manpower to do so, so at least the expansion is somewhat more polished than getting it done after release (a release with lots of issues is never good) when the focus is already going to the next thing and only a small portion of the staff works on fixing.

But I was never warm for the druid concept, here’s hopes the next xpac will get ranger a different concept, if they still do specializations by then.

Scipion.7548:

I didnt said WoW is better than GW2. What I wanted to said is that the Blizz team is better in communication and testing.
Except the buisness model and the bigger profit for Blizz, that maybe allow better communication, all other arguments (cartoon graphic ….) are totally irrevelant.

I don’t think it is because WoW has cartoon graphic or low gameplay risk taking that Blizz can make beta testing and communication more impressive. Anet could also do that.

Blizzards schedule is much longer and slower than Anet’s for a lot of things. However, we’ve already seen Blizzard take ideas from Guild Wars 2. So if Anet shares these ideas well in advance, they’re not protecting their intellectual property.

Blizzard can afford to do it, because most of their ideas are inherited from elsewhere. You’re saying Anet is less professional because they don’t have a server up for weeks on end to show what’s coming in months.

I’m saying Blizzard is very professional. They take every idea that works elsewhere and put it somehow into their game. Little risk in that, and you can keep the ideas out in the public, because you don’t have to protect them.

Can we cut it out with all the complaints about fairness. In all honestly I kinda hope ArenaNet takes note of this and dosen’t allow for any beta testing next expansion. People should be thankful that they get a chance to test the expansion contend and have an opinion. They could be more ‘fair’ and just give us no beta weekends and no specializations until release.

In all honesty I do not hope they do a beta in the next expansion because I think it is health for the game and makes the long time form announcement to release go by faster.

I am a Ranger main and I think all this whining about ‘unfairness’ is just downright silly and should stop. If you don’t have something nice/useful to say don’t say it.

Its not because you don’t agree its not useful, so dont be so full of yourself.

About the beta weekends, its only in Anets best interests to do so else they would actually have to hire a good sized QA team to not release a complete disaster.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Can we cut it out with all the complaints about fairness. In all honestly I kinda hope ArenaNet takes note of this and dosen’t allow for any beta testing next expansion. People should be thankful that they get a chance to test the expansion contend and have an opinion. They could be more ‘fair’ and just give us no beta weekends and no specializations until release.

In all honesty I do not hope they do a beta in the next expansion because I think it is health for the game and makes the long time form announcement to release go by faster.

I am a Ranger main and I think all this whining about ‘unfairness’ is just downright silly and should stop. If you don’t have something nice/useful to say don’t say it.

You’re forgetting a major point, Beta testing was a selling point of the pre-purchase. I don’t know if they would have had the pre-sales they do now if they hadn’t offered it.

You also need to realize players are always the best testers, we find things that the Devs wouldn’t and would never have thought of. We determine the metas and the combo’s that in some cases make classes OP, usually its a combination of skills or abilities that Devs may have over looked. Dev’s also need to work, they can’t play all day and not do their work, they depend on us whether it is beta or not to give feedback so they can fix the things otherwise missed by them.

Complaining is part of the industry, it’s the same in any industry that has consumers, you’re always going to have a portion of people that are unhappy for one reason or another. Sometimes those complaints are 100% valid, some are not.

TLDR;
You say we should be thankful, no, we paid for the option to beta test, they should be thankful that we do test and we do give feedback, without the players feedback every MMO out there would be a complete mess. If you’re sick of reading the complaints, don’t read them.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Can we cut it out with all the complaints about fairness. In all honestly I kinda hope ArenaNet takes note of this and dosen’t allow for any beta testing next expansion. People should be thankful that they get a chance to test the expansion contend and have an opinion. They could be more ‘fair’ and just give us no beta weekends and no specializations until release.

In all honesty I do not hope they do a beta in the next expansion because I think it is health for the game and makes the long time form announcement to release go by faster.

I am a Ranger main and I think all this whining about ‘unfairness’ is just downright silly and should stop. If you don’t have something nice/useful to say don’t say it.

Poorly argued.

Let’s try arguing from the facts.

The fact is, the players are doing ArenaNet a service by playing BWEs.

The fact is, beta testing is a standard and integral part of any MMO development. Without it the developer is lacking the combined tens of thousands of hours’ worth of gameplay feedback that players provide.

The fact is, you pay for a finished product but do the developer a favour by trialing the unfinished version without prejudice.

The fact is, the Druid will have its abilities revealed last and will have the joint least amount of test time along with the Forge. Regardless of ‘fairness’, the fact is that Druid is at a disadvantage to other professions.

The fact is that Druid is being built upon the most broken profession in the game, and therefore this exacerbates the negatives that derive from the above fact.

You baseless-ly accuse people of being “silly” for expressing their concern and opinion, but it is concern based upon the above facts, and concerns based upon facts are reasonable. So there.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Scipion.7548:

Blizzard is more serious and professionnal than Anet. They provide a true beta server and all classes get their new stuff for the very beginning, so you can test whatever class you want and when you want.

And?

They also have crud game play,

Not according to the vastly larger amount of people who play the game it doesn’t…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ranger class.

Well a month left and no ranger beta testing so…. you know it’s going to bad lol

Random.4691:

You’re forgetting a major point, Beta testing was a selling point of the pre-purchase. I don’t know if they would have had the pre-sales they do now if they hadn’t offered it.

You also need to realize players are always the best testers, we find things that the Devs wouldn’t and would never have thought of. We determine the metas and the combo’s that in some cases make classes OP, usually its a combination of skills or abilities that Devs may have over looked. Dev’s also need to work, they can’t play all day and not do their work, they depend on us whether it is beta or not to give feedback so they can fix the things otherwise missed by them.

Complaining is part of the industry, it’s the same in any industry that has consumers, you’re always going to have a portion of people that are unhappy for one reason or another. Sometimes those complaints are 100% valid, some are not.

TLDR;
You say we should be thankful, no, we paid for the option to beta test, they should be thankful that we do test and we do give feedback, without the players feedback every MMO out there would be a complete mess. If you’re sick of reading the complaints, don’t read them.

You paid to beta test, they never promised equal testing time of all classes. They are thankfull we do the test, if you have be following the feedback forum threads they thank all the time for good feedback and suggestions. ‘Complaining is part of the industry’ why? I’m glad you believe the best use of the forum is to just keep on posting complaint threads, then people complain about devs not responding and reading threads… Kinda of cause and effect, if you look at the ‘prroper’ threads they often get dev attention and responses.

Bryzy.2719:

Poorly argued.

Let’s try arguing from the facts.

The fact is, the players are doing ArenaNet a service by playing BWEs.

The fact is, beta testing is a standard and integral part of any MMO development. Without it the developer is lacking the combined tens of thousands of hours’ worth of gameplay feedback that players provide.

The fact is, you pay for a finished product but do the developer a favour by trialing the unfinished version without prejudice.

The fact is, the Druid will have its abilities revealed last and will have the joint least amount of test time along with the Forge. Regardless of ‘fairness’, the fact is that Druid is at a disadvantage to other professions.

The fact is that Druid is being built upon the most broken profession in the game, and therefore this exacerbates the negatives that derive from the above fact.

You baseless-ly accuse people of being “silly” for expressing their concern and opinion, but it is concern based upon the above facts, and concerns based upon facts are reasonable. So there.

Yes the players are doing a favor to ArenaNet, and it turn they are allowing the players to help shape the future of the game they play. I would say a favor in return.

Many mmo’s and other games have launched withough betas and done just fine. Also you act like this beta will make everthing ballanced and they game wont go under many more changes and ballancing going forward.

You make it sound like participating in a beta is work and people don’t want to do it. Most people playing the beta are enjoying themselves.

I don’t believe it is a fact that ranger is the most broken profession in the game, that is an opinion.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

I don’t believe it is a fact that ranger is the most broken profession in the game, that is an opinion.

Want to read another opinion that’s written like fact?

Stark.1350:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ranger class.

I just hope they don’t forget about the rangers and the pets.

Pets still need some better AI, and rangers need more control over their pets.

Also there should come more special and rare pets that actually have fun game-play mechanics to catch them.

With a new specialization there is the possibility the original one gets less attention and things as the above will not be implemented.

The amount of blind faith people place in ArenaNet in threads like this is absurd.
New professions and elite specializations require a lot of time and iteration to pull off properly, things that Daredevil, Scrapper, and Druid won’t be getting much of before release. This is a meaningful concern, because in the games industry, many things that are released broken stay some degree of broken forever.

Yes, ArenaNet has said that they will continue to adjust elite specializations after release if necessary, and I think they believe it when they say it… but beliefs often don’t survive contact with reality, especially a reality as harsh and unforgiving as the MMO business.

Venture capitalists invest millions of dollars in getting fledgling MMOs off the ground, and they want to see a return on that investment ASAP. As a result, MMOs are frequently rushed out early, and MMO expansions are rushed out early almost without exception. Companies like Blizzard are often half-way into developing the next expansion before even releasing the “latest” one. The constant pressure from both players and investors to keep pushing things forward with new content means that under-performing classes tend to pay the greatest price through the lack of developer attention they receive.

Looking back at the first three years of GW2 supports this. If you’re been playing a profession like Thief or Ranger for the last few years and seen countless crippling bugs and core profession issues go completely unaddressed, why should you assume things will be any different in HoT? What has changed between then and now? Where are they going to find the time to address these issues that they seemingly couldn’t before?

Ranger is broken, has been broken since the very start of this game and has not been addressed in any real way and yet people expect anything to change after 3 years of kittenbaggery by the “devs”?

also, why do people constantly refer to ArenaNet? this is an NcSoft game
[spoiler]ArenaNet or A-net (if you will) ceased to exist in 2008 as anything other than an NcSoft design/dev team they are used as a catch-bait to foist off the sequel (which is vastly inferior to the original game in every aspect except graphics and the ability to jump) to people.

A-net = dev team, NcSoft = company who own all IP in relation to GW following the purchase of A-net, hell even the original founders of A-net left the ship years ago

for people whom continually refer to A-net on these forums, here is a tip…. Take off the Rose Tinted specs, GW1 and expansions were great (until NcSoft screwed everything with Eye of the North) GW2 is a cash cow to fund other projects and to leech from the brilliance of the GW1 lore and reputation, to add insult to injury the genius’s at NcSoft decided to ditch bringing Blade and Soul to the west so they could peddle their newest IP “Wild Star” since that bellyflopped… lo and behold they bring Blade and Soul to the west 4 years too late ( and continually milk GW2 people in the meantime )[/spoiler]

yes I went off at a tangent,then lol, back on track…

if you are a Ranger you’re screwed, get used to it as they don’t really care whilst the cash keeps flooding in

OnyX.9027:

Ranger is broken, has been broken since the very start of this game and has not been addressed in any real way and yet people expect anything to change after 3 years of kittenbaggery by the “devs”?

also, why do people constantly refer to ArenaNet? this is an NcSoft game
[spoiler]ArenaNet or A-net (if you will) ceased to exist in 2008 as anything other than an NcSoft design/dev team they are used as a catch-bait to foist off the sequel (which is vastly inferior to the original game in every aspect except graphics and the ability to jump) to people.

A-net = dev team, NcSoft = company who own all IP in relation to GW following the purchase of A-net, hell even the original founders of A-net left the ship years ago

for people whom continually refer to A-net on these forums, here is a tip…. Take off the Rose Tinted specs, GW1 and expansions were great (until NcSoft screwed everything with Eye of the North) GW2 is a cash cow to fund other projects and to leech from the brilliance of the GW1 lore and reputation, to add insult to injury the genius’s at NcSoft decided to ditch bringing Blade and Soul to the west so they could peddle their newest IP “Wild Star” since that bellyflopped… lo and behold they bring Blade and Soul to the west 4 years too late ( and continually milk GW2 people in the meantime )[/spoiler]

yes I went off at a tangent,then lol, back on track…

if you are a Ranger you’re screwed, get used to it as they don’t really care whilst the cash keeps flooding in

I don’t know why you think Guild Wars 2 is a cash cow. Blade and Soul and Lineage both make more money than Guild Wars 2. Even though Guild Wars 2 is doing well, and performing to expectations, it’s hardly a cash cow.

The other thing is that this is what companies do. They use existing funds to create more funds. You say it like it’s a bad thing.

Also, as far as we know, NcSoft doesn’t have creative or balancing control over Anet. For exmaple, people have been saying this don’t talk about stuff till it’s ready policy is because NcSoft owns the company.

But NcSoft owns Wildestar too, and they talk about stuff that’s in progress.

I’m pretty sure Anet is mostly autonomous. They may not make all decisions on release dates, or cash shop, but I’m sure NcSoft doesn’t look over Anet’s shoulders for profession balance. Why would they?

They’ve got targets to hit and they’ll be kitten ed if there holding back their launch for the sake of keeping Rangers happy.

1BWE or none, look at the state of the class, it’s not as if this isn’t in keeping with the trend Anet have had for Rangers. Just look at the profession page, perfect order with just one exception, the Ranger. They quickly realised it was a cluster and a lot more work than they originally thought. Don’t worry though, because if it’s broken and overpowered on launch you’ll see that 24hr hotfix incoming, if it doesn’t work? Well, add it to the list from vanilla launch.