Guild Wars 2

The following is meant to be a constructive feedback and suggestions thread.

TL;DR – Skills and Balance should release smaller patches every 1-2 month(s) to better deliver. This will keep the meta from changing so drastically every patch and it will make for a more fun-to-play game.

If you want PvP to succeed in the future, you need to redo your patching/updates infrastructure for Skills and Balance.
From what we can gather, your Patching & Development process takes anywhere from 3-4 months. During this time, you spend 1 month thinking/coding, 2 months of “internal testing” and 1 month of polish. This is bad! You need to rethink the way you do balance and change it from HUGE whac-a-mole changes every 3-4 months to SMALL changes every month.
You are making huge changes every patch—which are not always good—and you’re leaving your players to rot for 4 months until the next patch. This is not okay, especially when you overbuffed/overnerfed something. It makes it completely unplayable for the next 4 months.Every other competitive franchise out there is releasing balance every month and they’re being successful.

So what can you do about this? You can keep your same new content patch every 4 months, and add an additional monthly (at the most bi-monthly) patch strictly for the Skills and Balance team. This way there is no pressure for your other teams to be on an accelerated schedule—since there’s no reason for them to be—but you’re able to do balancing better and more fluidly. This will help the game establish a healthy meta that is fun to play and competition can thrive in.
A huge part of why your game has been a complete joke competitively is because you only release balance patches every 4 months and every one of those you’re making HUGE changes that completely change the dynamics of how people are playing your game.

In general, I think PvP team is finally getting on track and they’re headed the right way (Thanks Grouch). But you’re still being held back by your infrastructure.

I want to see this game succeed in 2014 and I think you can do it. Have the courage to make the right changes!