Guild Wars 2

In any MMO or Competitive game in general balancing is clearly an issue and a tough task to take on, especially when a game is new. I like the approach Anet is taking with patching in terms of the content themselves, but I feel like the frequency of patches may be a bit too slow because they have to err on the side of caution. These changes would be excellent if they were coming every 2 weeks but every month seems a bit too long of a wait for change.

I understand you need to wait to see the effect the changes have, and that you need to make sure you’re not making too radical of a change that will disrupt the current game too much, but I pose this question:

Why not open up a PTR (Public Test Realm) ?

I know you have internal testing and balancing going on but it seems like if you open a PTR you can make more frequent and radical changes without disrupting the current game and you can get a lot stronger feedback so you can be confident in making the changes you need to every month.

I still enjoy the game quite a bit but I wont deny there are TONS of issues that I think can be improved to make the game reach its fullest potential. For example: (without even touching class balancing or bugs) builds for nearly every profession are VERY limited in PvP, many weapons/utilities/traits do not see ANY usage whatsoever and I think that’s a shame.

I wont claim to know how you guys should best do your job, but I can’t see how you can possibly increase build variety, while maintaining balance and adjusting things that are too strong or too weak, and fixing new bugs that are constantly being discovered when you’re releasing 1 balance patch a month with GREAT but small/minor adjustments to the game overall.

So why not tap into your resources and let us help you and give you more feedback so you can make changes faster and more frequently with less of a risk?

Signed, this would also help with bug issues i feel

Because this isn’t WoW.

XterrifiedX.9684:

Because this isn’t WoW.

Oh okay. SC2 and LoL both have PTR’s as well or something similar. Granted GW2 isn’t either of those games either but I think it’d be nice to be able to test things like the 20 second spawn timer before they hit live servers so they don’t have to be changed a day later.

XterrifiedX.9684:

Because this isn’t WoW.

Ptrs would be very helpful. Who cares what is most known for having them?

The devs listen to us about the same way that I listen to my daughter giving me advice on how to drive. It may be sound advice but a simple nod and “hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel is great advice baby, I’ll consider it” is what she gets in return. Meanwhile, I stay thuggin’ with 1 hand on da wheel.

XterrifiedX.9684:

Because this isn’t WoW.

WoW is the only game in the history of ever to have a PTR.

If/when they’re ready to consider some other PvP modes, I’d be in favor of some closed testing. It’s good they’re not listening to all the advice they’re getting from the community, because a lot of it is bad advice. But I don’t think they’ll be able to see whether profession X will break game mode Y with just a few alpha tests.