Guild Wars 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk2yny

I do want to reinforce – we absolutely plan to do a major quarterly balance updates every 3 months (with a short period after each update to make small tweaks before the next PvP league season begins). The next one is due to arrive after this current PvP season ends.

There are loads of reasons why HoT was considered for us the first big balance update (and the month that followed it) for this PvP League and we couldn’t do any more balance updates before this one, but the reality is none of them really matter since they are just words. What you all care about is action.

As we’ve said before: in 2016 we’ll do one major balance update every 3 months; shortly the balance team will start discussing with you the next big balance update for early 2016 with everyone to gather feedback; and hopefully in the future action will reinforce expectations.

I realize it’s not the immediate answer everyone wants to hear this second, but it’s the realistic one of where we are today – and where we will be when 2016 starts. I’m not entirely sure why this wasn’t clear before now, and I’ll try and get to the bottom of why that messaging wasn’t provided, but that’s exactly where we stand today.
Balance is super important in a world where WvW, Raids, Fractals, PvP, etc. are key components to Gw2’s success. And ensuring we have a new major balance update you can count on every 3 months is one of our keys to accomplishing that goal.

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95

Yeah I agree that really should have been more clear, I think we felt it was and clear that HoT was setting up the first season and obviously it was not.

In regards to balance – balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team. Drawing parallels between the two is at best disingenuous.
As for viewers when it comes to the marketing side since you commented on it…pro league week one had over 400,000 unique viewers (non view bots) watch for a reasonable amount of time. That’s beyond awesome and a huge return on the investment. Are we LoL? Hell no we’re not. But PvP has been steadily growing for the last 2 years and it keeps growing faster and faster. Rather than knock it- let’s all get behind it and root for it. PvP was DoA when Gw2 first shipped, it’s amazing to watch what it has grown and turned into, how freaking cool is that?

And while we’re at it, get behind rooting for WvW and PvE to grow as well; we’re all in this together, it’s silly to knock things that are working. We have plenty of other stuff that we can make better to focus our energy on trying to improve

It’s amazing he couldn’t write that here and instead does it on a 3rd party forum……

Read his words a few times though. It’s strongly implied.

“There are loads of reasons why HoT was considered for us the first big balance update (and the month that followed it) for this PvP League and we couldn’t do any more balance updates before this one, but the reality is none of them really matter since they are just words. What you all care about is action.”

That’s almost an apology for how bad the balance is.

The subtext of his comments are “we know there are things that need further balance… can’t do it before end of this season… sorry you’ll have to buy HoT and pay attention to the meta builds if you want to win matches” (drops microphone and runs away)

Humm

What would’ve been better would be at least a small attempt of a balance patch before this season came out. You know what’s out here now? Perma cc chronomancers, no skill condi spam revenants with more passives to save their life than the number of good traits on a thief, Dragonhunters 1 shotting squishies with a skill on a 4 sec cd, condi spam reapers that somehow manage to be dishing out as much condi damage as a burn engi and being so tanky you need 2 people to kill them in a time that isn’t completely detrimental to the team, and perma prot tempests that lierally get carried by passive bs and invulns. There is 0 skill required to play anything in this meta right now and to add the poor matchmaking on top of that, you have destroyed any respect people could’ve had for this game’s pvp. This is nothing but spam wars 2.

Then to make things even better, rather than looking at all this broken crap you stealth nerf steal? Really? The 1 functioning source of long swiftness outside of dd and you go and nerf it when rev pulses the exact same thing? If this is what your decisions are gonna be like I’m not sure a balance patch will EVER be a good idea.

Normally I try to be optimistic about these things but enough is enough. These major balance patches better be MAJOR. If noobs continue to get rewarded for playing an op spam build then you can kiss your esports dream goodbye. Nobody enjoys watching the esl’s anymore because aside from a few great teams it’s the same scrubs getting carried by stupid mechanics and broken specs.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Read his words a few times though. It’s strongly implied.

“There are loads of reasons why HoT was considered for us the first big balance update (and the month that followed it) for this PvP League and we couldn’t do any more balance updates before this one, but the reality is none of them really matter since they are just words. What you all care about is action.”

That’s almost an apology for how bad the balance is.

The subtext of his comments are “we know there are things that need further balance… can’t do it before end of this season… sorry you’ll have to buy HoT and pay attention to the meta builds if you want to win matches” (drops microphone and runs away)

Humm

Remember the Ice Bow nerf? They basically removed it from the game with an overdone extreme nerf and were happy about it. When is the last time you’ve seen an Ice Bow in pvp?

Would Ice Bow be overpowered in PvP today when Revenant hit you for 14k at 1200 range? But hey, IceBow balance was done, Bravo! “claps”

So the issue is that players didn’t understand there wasn’t going to be a balance patch?

It doesn’t matter whether a patch was planned or not! Something this broken needs to be a priority for fixing. If you let it persist, players will quickly become fed up with it and leave. That’s why players expected a balance pass.

And given that this is a recurring theme (remember lack of d/d ele balance?) why would anyone trust that the next iteration will improve or that the next season won’t be equally as bad?

so basically what they’re saying is

there going to Push a balancing patch out hope it works and if it doesnt leave it til the next time?… like how many proffessions could get nullified before they’re forced to actually stop everything and fix it..

Shouldnt the Proffessions be a PRIORITY in a esports game?.. Litterally, what fun is it seeing nothing but OPness across the screen lol, proffession balance has to weigh in at some point here…

Ario.8964:

What would’ve been better would be at least a small attempt of a balance patch before this season came out. You know what’s out here now? Perma cc chronomancers, no skill condi spam revenants with more passives to save their life than the number of good traits on a thief, Dragonhunters 1 shotting squishies with a skill on a 4 sec cd, condi spam reapers that somehow manage to be dishing out as much condi damage as a burn engi and being so tanky you need 2 people to kill them in a time that isn’t completely detrimental to the team, and perma prot tempests that lierally get carried by passive bs and invulns. There is 0 skill required to play anything in this meta right now and to add the poor matchmaking on top of that, you have destroyed any respect people could’ve had for this game’s pvp. This is nothing but spam wars 2.

Then to make things even better, rather than looking at all this broken crap you stealth nerf steal? Really? The 1 functioning source of long swiftness outside of dd and you go and nerf it when rev pulses the exact same thing? If this is what your decisions are gonna be like I’m not sure a balance patch will EVER be a good idea.

Normally I try to be optimistic about these things but enough is enough. These major balance patches better be MAJOR. If noobs continue to get rewarded for playing an op spam build then you can kiss your esports dream goodbye. Nobody enjoys watching the esl’s anymore because aside from a few great teams it’s the same scrubs getting carried by stupid mechanics and broken specs.

Certain newbs with strong builds can be defeated with wits if you manage (but only 1v1 from my expierience)
The true and most terrifying thing is OP builds run by veterans that have all champ X titles and know almost every weakness and know how to exploit it (this is skill).
But with the “lel passives carry me” and a grand cluster-fest of AoE and blind spam, it gets kind of tiresome to play pvp on regular basis.
At certain point during playing pvp I got 200% MAD that I just stopped caring and focused on guardian’s hammer thread to help improve that weapon along with other feedback threads (I know devs are busy but I wish they could just respond “Ok, mate” and note it down that certain classes need cruicial revamps to be more viable in the era of Passive Wars 2).

I play as a pure medi hambow guardian (hammer is weak by itself but longbow makes up for it and the build I play is indeed very profitable).
One last thing that is worth to mention. Yesterday during playing ranked I met good ol’ celestial tempest (of course he was skilled, but the very potential that lies in the concept of 4 attunements and celestial stats along with strong passives is terrific).
Once I managed to sustain myself through his immunities and finally got to damage him, I was already drained out of all my defensive cooldowns but I was still holding somehow. Then you know what happened… fight got extended as he switched to water attunement and saw how his health pool gets full in mere seconds due to passive switch and 1 or 2 skills that are on low cooldown (+ guess what ? Constant AA heals with signet boosted by water attun and celestial stats). As I couldn’t fight such a wide variety of capabilities, I was bested. When I came back to fight him, he just ran around the point while I tried to damage him or throw CC, He was just in his water attunement and doing /laugh at me.
This discouraged me to even attempt to seriously fight classes that rely on being carried by hard passives and that have a wide selection of viable abilities.

P.S.
It’s just my opinion but I think that sheer concept of elementalist being able to use 4 attunements at will is a kitteneesy (even without weapon swap they still have 20 skills to pick from).
I wouldn’t say anything if this game wasn’t flooded with “carry passives” and I don’t think there is much skill hidden behind one trait that pops without your knowledge and saves you while in other case you would be dead just because you find it less convenient with playing classes that have to execute active skills to sustain themselves.
If Anet really likes passives, then they should make sure that every class has such traits put in convenient trait lines.
Though I still think GW2 is the most balanced MMORPG and if you say it isn’t, then you clearly didn’t play enough of other MMORPG’s or just played face-roll classes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95

Yeah I agree that really should have been more clear, I think we felt it was and clear that HoT was setting up the first season and obviously it was not.

=> They do not make a clear statement on GW2 forum
=> They say HoT is seeting up the first season ==> So why ranked was blocked until now???

They always post on reddit instead of their official forum for kitten know what reason.

Burtnik.5218:

They always post on reddit instead of their official forum for kitten know what reason.

Oh yeah, read your own comments and others above you, feel the rage and madness. I wonder why.

Didn’t even read the Colin’s post …. in fact i assume i should be able to read those in the kitten PATCH NOTE!

Am i the only one around here
chocked by the fact that league are now a thing but that game balance isn’t ?

They certainly got a huge return of the investment, when most of those “400k” viewers just opened the stream and left a few minutes later.
Colin is exaggerating the numbers, there were ~281k unique viewers during the PvP Pro League week, not 400k.
Source: http://socialblade.com/twitch/user/guildwars2
Youtube is charging a few $ per 1000 impressions and i guess twitch is not very much different from it, so instead of “donating” the money to The Abjured and company, they could create one good marketing campaign.

These are the stats from the banners in the GW2 channel(http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2) during the PvP Pro League week:

F2P banner (https://goo.gl/NqwkK7 ):
https://goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/NqwkK7/month
366 clicks from 11/23 to 12/01

B2P banner ( https://goo.gl/t8Z7Oo ):
https://goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/t8Z7Oo/month
283 clicks from 11/23 to 12/01

wow wow wow, this gw2 dev team is a whole bunch of joke.
it’s unacceptable that 2 classes are 100% unviable in competitive pvp (no i’m not a warrior or thief player).
they just have to take a look on those 2 classes and tweak them before season started. but this task was too difficult for them. bunch of incapable devs.
cmon i feel real sorry for warrior and thief players, that they have to change classes to climb ranked division. this is absolutely not fair. they gonna wait another 3 months till they can play their favourite classes again.

Cmon guys you know they need to sell this product, how to sell it? Make Revenant 2 tiers above everything else and make other elite specs better than core ones = profit. Until whole arena net ends up playing gw2 alone.

While I generally agree that this subforum shouldn’t be taken all seriously, I think, as an official thing, it should have priority when it comes to such explanations and news over some reddit.

Balance patch is a thing while hotfix is another. I can accept the fact that they’re planning to do 1 balance patch every 3 months but if something is broken, an hotfix is required soon. Let the broken things go on for 3 months will let this game losing on popularity.

They released a new product with new elite specs, and then said we’ll fix things in 3 months time. From reddit it sounds like they think everything is fine which means they have no idea how to balance what they have created. DH traps are still OP, and still are invisible after being triggered (which they said was fixed, but it wasn’t), among a host of other things.

Let’s just drop this everywhere :

“We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

HoT was the balance patch guys! That is why the only (well, almost only) competitive specs now are the elite specs released in HoT! Balance achieved.

warbignime.4610:

Burtnik.5218:

They always post on reddit instead of their official forum for kitten know what reason.

Oh yeah, read your own comments and others above you, feel the rage and madness. I wonder why.

Yep, cause this place is full of cancer. Just keep reading all the other comments, full of toxicity.

I actually would have rather had a delay on the release of PvP leagues than a league pushed out without a balance patch.

Anyone else in this camp?

XxsdgxX.8109:

warbignime.4610:

Burtnik.5218:

They always post on reddit instead of their official forum for kitten know what reason.

Oh yeah, read your own comments and others above you, feel the rage and madness. I wonder why.

Yep, cause this place is full of cancer. Just keep reading all the other comments, full of toxicity.

Well people passionate about the game tend to be the first ones to get upset and vocal.

“YOU RUINED SOMETHING I LIKE AND NOW I FEEL BAD… HOW DOES IT FEEL?”

People that don’t care just shrug it off and quit.

yeah i loath guard traps too but you guys really need to get a grip and stop exaggerating so much.

Daharahj.1325:

XxsdgxX.8109:

warbignime.4610:

Burtnik.5218:

They always post on reddit instead of their official forum for kitten know what reason.

Oh yeah, read your own comments and others above you, feel the rage and madness. I wonder why.

Yep, cause this place is full of cancer. Just keep reading all the other comments, full of toxicity.

Well people passionate about the game tend to be the first ones to get upset and vocal.

“YOU RUINED SOMETHING I LIKE AND NOW I FEEL BAD… HOW DOES IT FEEL?”

People that don’t care just shrug it off and quit.

Yes and no…

People that care do tend to rage instead of quitting. However, if this goes on for long enough, those raging players eventually stop caring and quit. That’s pretty much how I left WoW. For a long time, I really spoke up about a lot of the things I was unhappy with because I loved my earlier experience with the game.

However, eventually, the inevitability of the bad decisions sank in and I stopped posting…then I stopped logging in…then I unsubbed.

Just more lies from anet about the future.

Celtus.8456:

HoT was the balance patch guys! That is why the only (well, almost only) competitive specs now are the elite specs released in HoT! Balance achieved.

Meh, I remember reading the HoT patch notes regarding each core specification and considered the impact of that patch on (pre-HoT) sPvP meta builds. There was very little they changed. Why? Because the core game specifications had achieved pretty good balance leading up to HoT. That’s why sPvP in GW2 had grown so much from 2014 to 2015, because players were giving it a try again and realizing that skill actually played a part in winning.

With the HoT Elite Specs were back to ground zero. All skill invested in non-elite sPvP builds has been made void and if you want to sPvP and be competitive you have to run one of eight Elite Spec meta builds. If you want to actually win a lot you need to run a team build with a few codi/interrupt heavy players and make the game all about codi/immob/interrupt.

The bottom line is they took the best sPvP experience available in gaming and turned it into one of the absolute worst. Welcome to “Build Wars” 2.0

“I realize it’s not the immediate answer everyone wants to hear this second, but it’s the realistic one of where we are today – and where we will be when 2016 starts. I’m not entirely sure why this wasn’t clear before now, and I’ll try and get to the bottom of why that messaging wasn’t provided, but that’s exactly where we stand today.”

Well lets start here. WTF is Reddit? Maybe start by posting communications in the official GW2 website instead of a 3rd party?

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Read his words a few times though. It’s strongly implied.

“There are loads of reasons why HoT was considered for us the first big balance update (and the month that followed it) for this PvP League and we couldn’t do any more balance updates before this one, but the reality is none of them really matter since they are just words. What you all care about is action.”

That’s almost an apology for how bad the balance is.

The subtext of his comments are “we know there are things that need further balance… can’t do it before end of this season… sorry you’ll have to buy HoT and pay attention to the meta builds if you want to win matches” (drops microphone and runs away)

Humm

More like..

A big balance patch every 3 months just doesn’t work changing too many things at once will result in a differently imbalanced meta. You should do many small balance patches.

Kicker.8203:

A big balance patch every 3 months just doesn’t work changing too many things at once will result in a differently imbalanced meta. You should do many small balance patches.

That’s how they do it. They work several months (or years…ask WvW) on something only to realize that players completely disagree with it.

What I found most funny personally is that he actually said they thought an expansion release with an entirely new class and 9 elite specs comes with a “balance” patch, and that this was very clear in their eyes…

“We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

At least things were acknowledged.

And reasons for certain decisions are fine by me, as long as there is some game plan for when we can expect to see things change and know that our opinions are being heard (and at least lightly considered) in the meanwhile.

It’s a crazy sensation to level a character to 80, sink gold into it, sink gems into it, and then learn you cant function in a combat setting for an undefined amount of time, and on top of that have no inkling as to whether or not the balance team thinks something is wrong.

“We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

Dahkeus.8243:

People that care do tend to rage instead of quitting. However, if this goes on for long enough, those raging players eventually stop caring and quit.

Truth here.

I’m mad that I essentially have to wait a quarter of a year for a die throw on “will my class be enjoyable to compete with”, but I’m not going to keep doing that forever.

I care about the game now. I want to have a nontoxic interchange with the devs. I want to spend my money here. I want to come home after work and relax here. I’d like to compete here, and when there’s something I see as relatively minor and not requiring three-six months to at least -attempt- to fix, and on top of that no ‘we know, we’re working on it’ from devs occasionally, then that gets under my skin. It feels like, indirectly, they’re telling us “this is what we’re doing, and if you don’t like it, tough.”

That may very well be the case, I suppose. The possibility is there, but I’m willing to hope that it isn’t so that I can continue seeing this as a source of entertainment.

Again though, that will not last forever. I’ll be angry, I’ll be sassy until I come to the conclusion that there’s no point in (concisely, mind you) voicing my complaints, and then I will go elsewhere. That may happen today, it may happen a year from now, couple months, who knows.

All I’m attempting to do personally is reach out to the devs to assist me in stopping my departure for as long as possible, because this would benefit both of us.

RE: “You guys just care about action.”

No. I’d like to talk to someone. I sure as hell respect the devs when I am directly addressing them, and if you have a reason for doing x or y when the community is averse to it, then For goodness’ sake, let us know. At least then the people that follow the forums can pass that information on and have a time frame they can use to expect fixes, and hold off on complaints until that time. Gaile, for instance, does a fantastic job with explaining why a negatively-received change is implemented.

Instead of assuming we’re all charr animals that cant be appeased with some kind of transparency (if that is indeed the assumption), how about instead you give us the same benefit of the doubt that many of us are giving the balance team by:

1.) Not deleting [Thief]
2.) Not quitting

I am sure several players here have a solid grasp about what the players want and can probably assist in helping balance to a reasonably happy medium.

To be fair, at least for thief it was clear that the class would be destroyed (except D/P) when they released the upcoming 3 traitlines – that was 9 months ago. Nothing has changed since, only that now D/P isn’t viable anymore either.
I honestly don’t think that thief will ever be viable again as the changes were that bad that too much would have to be changed which will likely never happen.

“In regards to balance – balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team.”

WUUTTTT ??
I hope it is a joke.
U kidding Colin aren’t you ?
Please tell me it’s a joke.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

At least things were acknowledged.

And reasons for certain decisions are fine by me, as long as there is some game plan for when we can expect to see things change and know that our opinions are being heard (and at least lightly considered) in the meanwhile.

It’s a crazy sensation to level a character to 80, sink gold into it, sink gems into it, and then learn you cant function in a combat setting for an undefined amount of time, and on top of that have no inkling as to whether or not the balance team thinks something is wrong.

^ This sums up how I feel about it. We get zero feedback. They were doing tests for this stuff over a year ago and yet in my second match I was placed against a premade guild team with 4 random people. I have rallied for solo queue for literal years. You can’t mix the two groups. It’s fair to no one and promotes mismatches. It feels like ArenaNet hears us but doesn’t listen, but I wouldn’t know because they don’t acknowledge or communicate it one way or another. Telling us “You hear us” doesn’t cut it. Period.

“We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game." – Colin Johanson

I’m a believer too. I dream so big it hurts. Unfortunately, believing achieves nothing. So yeah, we don’t care about BS words, all we care about is action. You’re kitten right.

I’m really sorry, but the biggest joke Colin does is, that he typed it on reddit, not the official!! forum, just reddit some 3rd party forum crap.

Sorry but where is the communication, when you don’t use the official channels,
that sucks hard.
And for a warrior or thief you need to be kidding right? The mesmer is the most powerful block, evade what so ever class now and those two can’t stand a chance against any class..

Your lets call it “balance patch” did well for getting two classes totally out of pvp and make nearly all teams win with the most revs.. unbelievable, you call it ‘balanced’

chrisnx.1674:

I’m really sorry, but the biggest joke Colin does is, that he typed it on reddit, not the official!! forum, just reddit some 3rd party forum crap.

Sorry but where is the communication, when you don’t use the official channels,
that sucks hard.
And for a warrior or thief you need to be kidding right? The mesmer is the most powerful block, evade what so ever class now and those two can’t stand a chance against any class..

Your lets call it “balance patch” did well for getting two classes totally out of pvp and make nearly all teams win with the most revs.. unbelievable, you call it ‘balanced’

Point prove, what a toxic and offensive mosh pit. Anet should never reply here. Just read your comments and others in this forum, how can devs communicate with these people

warbignime.4610:

chrisnx.1674:

I’m really sorry, but the biggest joke Colin does is, that he typed it on reddit, not the official!! forum, just reddit some 3rd party forum crap.

Sorry but where is the communication, when you don’t use the official channels,
that sucks hard.
And for a warrior or thief you need to be kidding right? The mesmer is the most powerful block, evade what so ever class now and those two can’t stand a chance against any class..

Your lets call it “balance patch” did well for getting two classes totally out of pvp and make nearly all teams win with the most revs.. unbelievable, you call it ‘balanced’

Point prove, what a toxic and offensive mosh pit. Anet should never reply here. Just read your comments and others in this forum, how can devs communicate with these people

you can discuss with me, but i feel it a bit strange, that a dev posts such an important message not on the official forum, why do we have it?
And that the balace is totally broken is undoubable.
I played yesterday in the guild hall with my mates and kitten the mesmer is sick as hell.
btw. the F2 shot from the warr in berserker modus is nearly always instant kill xD haha

warbignime.4610:

Point prove, what a toxic and offensive mosh pit. Anet should never reply here. Just read your comments and others in this forum, how can devs communicate with these people

The less they communicate, the worse it will become.

I dont know if what I’m gonna throw out here is stupid or not but I think its worth a shot.

They completely ignore us here, and the Reddit threads are being edited/deleted since they moderate them to their convenience… Arenanet is so focused on their ESL campaign, why are we not making our voice heard at the ESL forums?

http://forum.eslgaming.com/categories/guildwars

The equivalent of “I’m gonna go tell mom” might be the only resort that might actually get our voices heard?

I find it funny that Ranger got nerfed 8 times on the last 10 updates since HoT release and all other are getting free passes until the end of the PVP season.

Anet needs to learn that you balance BEFORE a pvp season, not after.