Guild Wars 2

Vague Memory.2817

Anet trys to balance using self-interested views from the forum rather than being more objective, that is why after a balance patch things just get worse. There are blatant changes that need to be made that focuses PvP on player skill rather than passive or op effects, but they don’t have the courage to make these changes because of the outrage from people who will lose their advantage over others. Anet’s response is to even things out by giving everyone OPness which unbalances things even more.

By far this is the best quote that I ever seen on these forum or any other MMO forum in that regard, a straight to the point explanation of what is wrong with MMO development these days:

1) MMO games these days are made with the purpose of attracting as many players as possible, as such the level of difficulty is greatly reduced to allow the largest number of people to succeed in the game. The Pro and Cons are well known to the majority and to discuss about them would go against forum policies for obvious reasons.

2) Changes are always made to please again the largest number of players, changes are never based on precise logical patterns.

Allow me to put this in perspective from a broader design standpoint.

The primary goal of game developers is to make something that is fun to play. By pursuing this goal, balance also occurs. Balanced games are more fun to play, plain and simple. Goldeneye on the N64 is considered a very fun game, until some jerk picks Oddjob, then the game becomes drastically less fun. Why? Because Oddjob was by far the best character (everyone else was equal). If Goldeneye were released today, Oddjob would probably get patched to be more in line with the rest of the characters.

For another example, League of Legends patches for fun. The recent Juggernaut update is a prime example, as Garen already saw decent use, but got updated anyway to define his particular role. Skarner, however, was the massive benefactor, jumping up to the highest winrate that LoL has ever seen on a champion (65%+). Yet despite the cries to nerf his damage and tankiness, they nerfed his passive in a way that did neither of those things in most teamfights. Instead, it slowed down his jungle clear early game and actually made him even stronger late. This weird change had the desired effect: Skarner’s winrate, while still over 50%, dropped very significantly.

So why that change? It created new openings to counterjungle Skarner or to fight him when he was invading your jungle. It toned down his greatest strength while leaving his playstyle intact. If the opponents never tried to fight Skarner, though, it meant nothing, since it barely affected his clear time and he’s basically a no-risk champion on actually clearing it all.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balanced games are more fun to play, plain and simple.

It’s not that cut-and-dry, though I guess for an MMO balance becomes a lot more important.

i wrote a long post, then my browser decided to refresh…

tldr

devs don’t have enough time to master their classes
-> they don’t know how to properly balance because they don’t know what the classes need

best examples are tempest or base ranger..

the stuff that you call passive/op traits are not implemented to make players happy, they are implemented because arenanet really thinks that those traits are good.

karl is not a great ele, nor thief nor guard, but he balances them
same for robert and co

what the game needs is cooperation between the balance devs and players that know how to play their classes. anet should start working together with players that have a lot of experience on their classes. if the devs don’t have the time to master their classes then they should at least listen to players that do.

you also can’t just ask people on the forums because, let’s be real, not everybody is a good player and many posts are just troll or grief posts.

Blue Arremer.9628:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balanced games are more fun to play, plain and simple.

It’s not that cut-and-dry, though I guess for an MMO balance becomes a lot more important.

It is a bit more complex, but that brings in the concept of “perfect imbalance.” Things will be different and thus unblanced. But to be fun, those unblances can’t be too large.

Revenant is Gw2’s Oddjob.

That is completely untrue.

The problem is ArenaNet does not listen to it’s community AT ALL. Just look at their track record.

• The immobilize buff made PvP legitimately painful to play, not only that, it introduced a bug, making it even more toxic. When they stated “we are increasing immobilize to stack 5 times from 1 without changing any of the current immobilize durations.”
  Everyone screamed, “ARE YOU FREAKING STUPID?!” and when it came out, they all screamed, “THIS IS FREAKING STUPID!!”

Even just recently, look at the new invasion event!! Someone purposely designed the mobs to drop nothing and events give no gold, karma or experience when completing them.
This event actually COSTS more for doing the event since you must WP around the map.

Imagine if they made a post saying, “New invasion event! Mobs drop nothing, give no experience and completing dynamic events also reward you with NOTHING. You are only rewarded ~5-10 tokens at the very end of the event top items cost 450 tokens so please do the same events 50+ times”

Yeah. ArenaNet just refuses to listen, I get the feeling they gave up on their community and ignore any helpful advice.

There are legit good ideas in the forums but ArenaNet does not make the effort to give them any thought. I’m not talking about tweaking numbers either.

They said they are going to nerf D/D Elementalist. A suggestion I made is to move Cleansing Water to Earth Magic, replace Diamond skin and have the Earth Magic traitline with the heavy condition removal.
Right now, Water Magic has both powerful healing and condition removal, allowing Elementalists to spec into fire and arcana without see a dip in their defenses.

How much you wanna bet they F!@# it up?

So you guys want every profession to be on par with each other and have similar CC/abilities?

WoW tried to do that and although it took a while for the active community to notice. The classes became stale, dull, grey and gay. == Fail

a) PPl asked the old gg to reduce the Bunker Meta , few months ago
(Rom : Yeah we had fun with the Bunker meta , but we should nerf it a bit)

b) They revert the +50 all stats in the Cele Amulet
(yeah that was the thing that made Ele so good….)
+ reduce the effect of vigor by -50%

c) 2-3 months ago when we had the Brst Meta , uninteligence ppl where spewing nonsense like ’’ you should avoid wearing Berseker and get a more Defensive Amulets
(and now you have problems , with other ppl thatare using defensive amulets ?
Is it my idea of this is a dejavu when the game lanched ?)

d) Without any nerfs or buffs in the Burst Meta , ppl just coppied the builds from World Tournaments Series and half of them are using a Defensive one atm.
So its not wise to do anything , when theres a chance the Burst Meta , like other cloathing trends to come back , 100% by the community .

e) If yo dont like the current model , where the Dev let the community 2-3 months to find some ways , rather than playing wack-a-mole like GW1 ….. (did you forget this coverastion between Xerph and the previous Balancer) then tell them t follow the LoL mode , when they can do whatever they will every week and bring a top player in their videos , just to promote their twitch livestreams

Guardian: “We are in a good spot”

best quote 4ever

The point is moot because when you only balance twice a year, it doesn’t matter what your motivations are… you’re going to end up with an unbalanced game.

Anybody that suggest celestial is the reason why ele are good, should not bother talking about balance.

@OP
Not entirely true. For starters, Anet are one of the more objective developers ever. It took this long to realize D/D Cele Ele needed a rework…

There’s nothing wrong with changing an aspect that everyone scorns. Another example is Turret Engi. It wasn’t OP as certain classes could beat it, everyone just hated the brain dead spec so Anet gave it a nerf bat.

If you got a big enough crowd wanting a change, Anet will likely change it to please that crowd and there’s nothing wrong with it. Like you said, they’re goal is to make the game more fun and please people.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Blue Arremer.9628:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balanced games are more fun to play, plain and simple.

It’s not that cut-and-dry, though I guess for an MMO balance becomes a lot more important.

It is a bit more complex, but that brings in the concept of “perfect imbalance.” Things will be different and thus unblanced. But to be fun, those unblances can’t be too large.

You just describe the ideal situation, but a lack of balance, even huge gaps, doesn’t always matter in terms of the quality of a game/how fun it is to play.

But again, class choice in an MMO is a much bigger deal than, say, character choice in a fighting game, or hero/champion preferences in a MOBA.

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

Saiyan.1704:

@OP
Not entirely true. For starters, Anet are one of the more objective developers ever. It took this long to realize D/D Cele Ele needed a rework…

There’s nothing wrong with changing an aspect that everyone scorns. Another example is Turret Engi. It wasn’t OP as certain classes could beat it, everyone just hated the brain dead spec so Anet gave it a nerf bat.

If you got a big enough crowd wanting a change, Anet will likely change it to please that crowd and there’s nothing wrong with it. Like you said, they’re goal is to make the game more fun and please people.

I can’t agree with you, as I have said anet has always tried to please the majority rather than follow a logical process , who can say that the crowd always right?

Check this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Please-don-t-change-Heat-Sync/first#post5492835

Despite the good changes to Tempest, there are still people who ask for more, people who are blind to the status quo where teams run up to 2 eles at time, this because anet didn’t listen to the minority who were fine with having EA as GM, while asking for something else as mechanic defining, something not as strong.

If now anet listen to the majority they will revert the nerfs on heat sync and teams will start running 2-3 tempest and then we go again with another bunch of nerfs for the whole profession in all gamemodes.

Anet must be able to read the forum and extrapolate valuable feedback only, leaving out selfish balance requests

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

Anet doesn’t love eles, they just don’t know how to balance them properly. They either get nerfed too much or become OP. Tempest is pretty bad.

They only just buffed mesmer, this is the first time(?) mesmer ever been properly viable in a long long time.

Thief has always been in the meta and even when nerfed they still see the most love.

Engis are still good and until the recent patch were stronger than eles.

Reaper is set to be amazingly strong.

Otherwise, spot on.

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

Weren’t mesmers OP from game’s release until summer 2013-ish?

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

If you’re speaking of the present, then I mostly agree. I think necros belong somewhere between hate and neutral and mesmers belong between love and neutral

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

It’s more like russian roulette.

Sagat.3285:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

It’s more like russian roulette.

Russian roulette or anything Russian like the KGB and this guy seem dangerous

abc.5790:

Sagat.3285:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

It’s more like russian roulette.

Russian roulette or anything Russian like the KGB and this guy seem dangerous

Lulz.

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

Anet must love rangers because they took a balanced weapon, Longbow, and buffed it a ton for no reason at all.

Supreme.3164:

Anet’s response is to even things out by giving everyone
OPness which unbalances things even more.

By giving them “Oh” what now?

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

I can’t even count how many of these lists i have seen. As soon as Anet nerfs someones favourite class and buff another, that “someone” says that Anet hates their class. This is how it has always been.

Anet doesn’t love or hate any class more than any other. Mesmer has been the strongest, it has also been the weakest. Ranger was strong in the past, it is now not used in teams at all. The only profession that was always used is probably thief- and it’s not because Anet loves thief.

warherox.7943:

Anet must love rangers because they took a balanced weapon, Longbow, and buffed it a ton for no reason at all.

At least they acknowledged rangers are lacking.

In the same bottom tier, there’s necro. Being bottom tier didn’t stop the nerfs to come and bite the dead meat again and again, to the point where necro was only perceived as a threat when downed (because stuns don’t work anymore! they can finally play with a wide variety of skills like 1 and 1 and also 1 and, if they’re not stomped right away, even 3!). To remedy that “issue”, downed damage had been drastically reduced as well. Fun times.

This leads me to the best quote of 2013 from Jon Peters:

Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we aren’t ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master Yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him.

Apparently, necro players were just average peasants that couldn’t find their butt with both hands for almost 3 years.

Ara.4569:

warherox.7943:

Anet must love rangers because they took a balanced weapon, Longbow, and buffed it a ton for no reason at all.

At least they acknowledged rangers are lacking.

In the same bottom tier, there’s necro. Being bottom tier didn’t stop the nerfs to come and bite the dead meat again and again, to the point where necro was only perceived as a threat when downed (because stuns don’t work anymore! they can finally play with a wide variety of skills like 1 and 1 and also 1 and, if they’re not stomped right away, even 3!). To remedy that “issue”, downed damage had been drastically reduced as well. Fun times.

This leads me to the best quote of 2013 from Jon Peters:

Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we aren’t ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master Yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him.

Apparently, necro players were just average peasants that couldn’t find their butt with both hands for almost 3 years.

To be fair it was strong in the past, even almost mandatory for teams (when helseth rerolls from mes you know something is wrong) in the previous meta pre patch it worked but was not optimal and now it is a really strong profession that just doesnt see much play anymore. Partly because we have lost some necros who were previously regarded as “top necros”. Ventari, zombify, posi, the prototype. If i recall correctly the latter two have recently started playing again (correct me If im wrong). Even so, necro is a niche that the team has to know how to play with, unlike for example ele. This is something barely any EU teams do (anymore).

Wolfey.3407:

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

What? Mesmers were always good in gw1 pvp. It was in pve where they sucked badly because they had little to no aoe damage.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Wolfey.3407:

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

What? Mesmers were always good in gw1 pvp. It was in pve where they sucked badly because they had little to no aoe damage.

Can you reference where I was talking strictly about PvP?

I believe they do listen to their test community. It just ends up being slow and convoluted with a lot of voices that are not objective.

Some problems:
1) Devs don’t have enough personal knowledge of classes to filter advice quickly themselves.
2) A clear direction has not been set for each class. Even say taking 3 specs per class and focusing on fully defining them in the spectrum.
3) Devs really need to weigh in on creating “fun”. Player advice is inadequate as it is usually based on the current framework which I think is completely crooked when it comes to ‘fun’ and transparent. Like when league of legends decided stealth, although not the strongest was just unhealthy for gameplay.

Supreme.3164:

Saiyan.1704:

@OP
Not entirely true. For starters, Anet are one of the more objective developers ever. It took this long to realize D/D Cele Ele needed a rework…

There’s nothing wrong with changing an aspect that everyone scorns. Another example is Turret Engi. It wasn’t OP as certain classes could beat it, everyone just hated the brain dead spec so Anet gave it a nerf bat.

If you got a big enough crowd wanting a change, Anet will likely change it to please that crowd and there’s nothing wrong with it. Like you said, they’re goal is to make the game more fun and please people.

I can’t agree with you, as I have said anet has always tried to please the majority rather than follow a logical process , who can say that the crowd always right?

Check this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Please-don-t-change-Heat-Sync/first#post5492835

Despite the good changes to Tempest, there are still people who ask for more, people who are blind to the status quo where teams run up to 2 eles at time, this because anet didn’t listen to the minority who were fine with having EA as GM, while asking for something else as mechanic defining, something not as strong.

If now anet listen to the majority they will revert the nerfs on heat sync and teams will start running 2-3 tempest and then we go again with another bunch of nerfs for the whole profession in all gamemodes.

Anet must be able to read the forum and extrapolate valuable feedback only, leaving out selfish balance requests

Logic is a bit subjective in this case.

It was logical to change Turret Engi because it was hurting the player pvp experiences. It was logical to rework d/d Ele because they, over mesmers, lack the “I out played him” factor. Warriors, Engi and Thieves have this factor. Guardians are kings of it.

Maybe you don’t think it’s logical to abide the page after page of community complaints but Anet thinks it is. They are not picking every single complaint made Only the ones that’s been said by different players for X amount of times, X amount of days with X amount of pages per thread. The case of d/d ele cele.

The problem with feedback in this game is that most of the community has no idea how to remove themselves from their perspective when considering opposing views. That and much of the community doesn’t actually realize that holding points wins matches, not attacking them.0 It’s the same in pve where 90% of players are always several steps behind the best players. In all gamemodes the overwhelming majority isn’t using all their defense correctly, and that skews viewpoints of balance right their.

Many players think about balance in too limited a scope. Even just in 1v1 pvp, there are so many variables it’s extremely hard to pinpoint what made you lose a given fight. For instance, many players rage about burn guardians and how much damage they do, but it is very easy to counter. I’d wager most players complaining about dieing from burn guards are the same ones blowing all their cds on the guards blocks and invulns. When so much of the population comes from an uninformed background it is hard to sift through all the information that is biased and what is not.

I can’t be that judgemental of Anet because at the end of the day appealing to the masses is important. What I do think they need to do is bring in a lot of really high level players from all gamemodes and ask what they think. In general, the people who are best at this game spend the most time on it and have the best ideas about overall balance. Looking to those players who have already played the game extensively for knowledge would pave the way for other players to enjoy this game.

Wolfey.3407:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Wolfey.3407:

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

What? Mesmers were always good in gw1 pvp. It was in pve where they sucked badly because they had little to no aoe damage.

Can you reference where I was talking strictly about PvP?

This is the pvp forum. Why would you be talking about anything else?

zapv.8051:

The problem with feedback in this game is that most of the community has no idea how to remove themselves from their perspective when considering opposing views. That and much of the community doesn’t actually realize that holding points wins matches, not attacking them.0 It’s the same in pve where 90% of players are always several steps behind the best players. In all gamemodes the overwhelming majority isn’t using all their defense correctly, and that skews viewpoints of balance right their.

Many players think about balance in too limited a scope. Even just in 1v1 pvp, there are so many variables it’s extremely hard to pinpoint what made you lose a given fight. For instance, many players rage about burn guardians and how much damage they do, but it is very easy to counter. I’d wager most players complaining about dieing from burn guards are the same ones blowing all their cds on the guards blocks and invulns. When so much of the population comes from an uninformed background it is hard to sift through all the information that is biased and what is not.

I can’t be that judgemental of Anet because at the end of the day appealing to the masses is important. What I do think they need to do is bring in a lot of really high level players from all gamemodes and ask what they think. In general, the people who are best at this game spend the most time on it and have the best ideas about overall balance. Looking to those players who have already played the game extensively for knowledge would pave the way for other players to enjoy this game.

I agree some, but i don’t like burn guard, not because it’s too strong (it isn’t) but because it has such a low skillfloor its not even funny. In this patch rank 20 players with a good build can kill top tier players depending on build and luck. I think the balance had improved from the start of the game until just before patch, then with the specialisation patch everything got reset back to the start.

Auldon.1972:

Thief has always been in the meta and even when nerfed they still see the most love.

Wow, if this is love, I think I want a divorce! :-P

Well, at least we’re the best at running away… even if we can’t do anything else without help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWTJ8iZr7ro

uhohhotdog.3598:

Wolfey.3407:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Wolfey.3407:

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

What? Mesmers were always good in gw1 pvp. It was in pve where they sucked badly because they had little to no aoe damage.

Can you reference where I was talking strictly about PvP?

This is the pvp forum. Why would you be talking about anything else?

I got this sec….

uhohhotdog.3598:

Wolfey.3407:

rchu.8945:

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

lol, Anet hated Mesmers for the first 2 years, what are you talking about?

o.O Mesmer has had the short end of the straw since GW1….

Chronomancer is not something to shrug off though.

What? Mesmers were always good in gw1 pvp. It was in pve where they sucked badly because they had little to no aoe damage.

cough do I need to say more? or can we return to our routinely scheduled program?