I think the devs really need to have some good discussions with the community regarding class / skill / trait balance.
All of the blogs, AMA’s, state of the game’s and so forth, touch on balance either not at all (just talking about features and pve content) or very lightly (“we’re looking at bunker eles….”)
The one detailed balance announcement they made, the one which outlines their vision for each class (“we want the warrior to have a sturdy body…” etc), was so out of alignment with how the classes currently play that it made the devs look very out of touch with their own game.
Of course, I know that can’t be true. They play the game, and they have stats showing what people use and how they use it. So ANet has the information to know what’s going on, if they look.
ANet really needs to let us peek into the balance discussions they have amongst themselves:
- What did they talk about?
- What kinds of changes did they try, and what was the outcome?
- What changes were rejected after testing, and for what reasons?
- Are they aware of (community concern XXXXX. Eg. Ele having 30 water and 30 arcane as almost mandatory.) What do they think about it? Working as intended? Or do they have some ideas for changes, and what are they?
- Are the devs playing the game differently from players atm? Maybe they know something we dont, and are waiting for the meta to catch up? What is “working as intended for them?”
- What are some things they consider underused and overused? Give us some stats? Are they going to make any changes to address this?
These are the sorts of things I’d love to hear about. I think it’s important to have some of this type of discussion from the devs, as it’s an area of concern for most players on the forum and yet it’s almost completely ignored in ANet’s official communications.
Rather than reminding us for the nth time that matchmaking, custom servers, and culling improvements are coming Real Soon Now™, I’d rather some of ANet’s precious communication time to be devoted to this type of topic.
The community is increasingly becoming suspicious that balance isn’t being worked on at all, and these sorts of communications can go a long way to alleviating those fears.
