Guild Wars 2

After playing MMO games for over 15 years you get to learn alot of the elite pvper’s and become friends with alot of designers in the industry. Believe it or not the gaming industry is like any big buisness the more corporate it becomes the more the artistic integrity of the game fails.

1. Why is Class Balance in games always one extreme or another?

They don’t care about pvp, most players only like pvp when there winning and many players can’t except losing. Why do you think theres always less pvp servers than pve one’s .

2. Then why do new games promise so much pvp content?

Because WoW has cornered the market on PvE with a playerbase unprecidented by any MMO in history. This has left a huge homeless community of hardcore pvpers other games know they can captialise on with false promises.

3. Why can’t they make Classes Balanced?

They don’t know how. When have you seen a game hiring top players, guild’s, contest winners etc. to come in and test pvp in mock battles. Just because a mechanic can fix a car does that also mean he drives for Nascar?? lol No. Often the best designers are the worst pvper’s and vice versa, different parts of the brain govern the skills necassary to excel in those different arena’s of knowledge. Can it happen sure but it’s about as rare as a flood in the desert. Until you see a game that hires pro pvper’s to test there game balance, expect the same results.

4. The game is balanced around team play.

Nowhere in this world does this make sense. Even in a science experiment you start with a small isolated model before making the scenario complex. If 1v1 isn’t balanced then how could 8v8 be, and how the hell do you know if 8v8 is balanced if you haven’t tested it in 1v1 then 2v2 then 3v3 etc. Balanced=skill vs game mechanics determining the victor, and if you havent brought in the most skilled mmo pvpers to test your 1v1 or 8v8 than how do you know what’s faulty class design and whats skill. Basically if Class A beat’s Class B 100% of the time you got a long way to go before balance is attained.

5. How come no PVP games have made 1v1 arena or dueling content

This is actually a brilliant concept designed by Tom Chilton, if you never add 1v1 ranked pvp then players can never tell where true class balance is. If you could run tests with skilled pvper’s in mock duels players would know without a doubt which classes are overpowered. If they never add this system it’s all theory-crafting, web video’s, screenshots, all easily discredited. Basically it’s not a flying saucer, you must be crazy, it’s a weather balloon.

Agreed with a fair number of things, but…

“If 1v1 isn’t balanced then how could 8v8 be, and how the hell do you know if 8v8 is balanced if you haven’t tested it in 1v1 then 2v2 then 3v3 etc.”

This just flat out isn’t true. Having a group makes a huge difference on the usefulness of many skills and abilities.

A shortbow thief, for instance, can work with a healing spring ranger to greatly increase the healing output of anyone in the area. Neither the ranger, or the thief can do that alone, yet you can’t ignore how powerful the combination can be.

How useful is an AoE skill in 5v5 combat compared to 1v1? Certain skills get better the more people there are around, wheras other skills (usually single target) get worse.

In group combat, someone who is downed is far from doomed. Allies can bring him back up in a variety of ways. If alone, down state is just a slight extension on the inevitable.

These are just a few ways in which the meta-game is effected by more players. Don’t even get me started on how it effects ranged weapondry, or skills/traits with positional requirements.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Agreed with a fair number of things, but…

“If 1v1 isn’t balanced then how could 8v8 be, and how the hell do you know if 8v8 is balanced if you haven’t tested it in 1v1 then 2v2 then 3v3 etc.”

This just flat out isn’t true. Having a group makes a huge difference on the usefulness of many skills and abilities.

A shortbow thief, for instance, can work with a healing spring ranger to greatly increase the healing output of anyone in the area. Neither the ranger, or the thief can do that alone, yet you can’t ignore how powerful the combination can be.

How useful is an AoE skill in 5v5 combat compared to 1v1? Certain skills get better the more people there are around, wheras other skills (usually single target) get worse.

In group combat, someone who is downed is far from doomed. Allies can bring him back up in a variety of ways. If alone, down state is just a slight extension on the inevitable.

These are just a few ways in which the meta-game is effected by more players. Don’t even get me started on how it effects ranged weapondry, or skills/traits with positional requirements.

Your right about alot of things balance needs to be adjusted around group synergy and abilities as well as 1v1 pvp. But if you don’t bring in pvp players that have proven themselves in game after game then how do you know?

Player A could miss that player B did this and that changed the entire fight. I’m not saying that balance in a group or that team abilities of different classes stacked with each other can’t change the fight entirely, it can.

But you have to test it in smaller groups with exp pvp players and then test it in larger groups to find out whats off vs 1v1 and 8v8 or otherwise your just doing guess work to know where balance is. Basically your getting a designers opinion of balance and not a factual test of game balance.

The reason people like PvP is because you can never really be certain what is going to happen next in a PvP setting. It’s always dynamic and changing.

In PvE, once you’ve done a dungeon, that’s it. The only thing that’s going to be different about it from then on is the loot.

Scribbles.7493:

The reason people like PvP is because you can never really be certain what is going to happen next in a PvP setting. It’s always dynamic and changing.

In PvE, once you’ve done a dungeon, that’s it. The only thing that’s going to be different about it from then on is the loot.

That’s why I love it, But most players seem to want to play skyrim or fable with friends, I personally don’t get it. But hey that’s what they like who am I to judge.

I can’t say there’s a single reasonable claim in that entire spiel.

Why is class balance always an extreme? Because player opinion and reality don’t generally match. Just because players claim something is imbalanced doesn’t mean it really is. But ultimately something will always be imbalanced because there are simply too many moving parts for perfect balance in a game. Players have a nearly infinite amount of time to find and exploit imbalances, developers have extremely limited time and resources to detect and adjust out those imbalances. Every time there’s an adjustment, it’s likely that something new becomes imbalanced and the cycle starts again. No amount of “experts” will prevent this as it’s simply a fact of life.

Furthermore on that “pro” point, why would real pros ever actually engage in that? Any pro involved in open manipulation of balance systems would necessarily have to be forbidden from professional play or else they’d have incentive to cheat. Therefore you could never actually have current pros offering direct aid to the developers. They could still be used to test, but where’s the incentive for them to waste their time testing things which might never be implemented when they could use that time for anything else? Ultimately, the only reasonable solution is to make small adjustments and allow the much larger testing environment show you the results, which is what developers do.

WoW has absolutely nothing to do with why there’s pvp content in games. Games offer pvp content because it’s the cheapest, easiest, and most effective way to extend the life of a game. Look at the original Half-Life, you have maybe a dozen hours worth of “PvE” content that took so many developer hours to make, yet then you have Counter-Strike “PvP” built on top of the engine. CS was produced with far less effort, time, and cost but the upper end players have sunkittenerally thousands of hours into a much easier to develop world. PvP is offered because it’s a solid business investment, and has absolutely nothing to do with WoW, otherwise EQ, UO, and even the original GW which predate WoW’s dominance wouldn’t have had reason to include it.

As for 1v1 for balance purposes, you’ve already been thoroughly schooled on that point. Balancing for 1v1 could only ever be useful if you were making the most static, simplistic game ever that effectively had no gameplay diversity. If you want something “balanced for 1v1” you’d best stick to FPS games as that’s really the only place it makes any sense.

Syeria.4812:

If you want something “balanced for 1v1” you’d best stick to FPS games as that’s really the only place it makes any sense.

Heck, even with many modern FPS games, there’s different classes that have mechanics that rely on each other to varying degrees.

You don’t need player opinion to match to balance a game. You only need common sense and experience.

Currently its just common sense that mesmers and guardians are top classes and some certain builds are much better than others, you can simply observe it by being in the game and signing for tournaments.

What OP said is true tbh, a mmo will never be balanced until they hire an actual player who’s played several mmorpgs (preferably not WoW , cuz its super bad and anyone with semi-decent brain left WoW before its first expansion) for few years.

As for 1v1 – its impossible to balance this game for 1v1 and mass pvp, it will never happen, ever. Altho such games do exist, not where classes are entirely equal but where everyone can beat everyone and they’re all useful for mass pvp, 2013 for euro servers afaik, asian mmos+

not gonna comment on any of the above but #3.

While i do agree that they should bring in professional gamers to test it wont automatically balance the game. In fact it would only balance the game for the highest level of play, which is great for E-sports or w/e but 80% of the people who play this game are not hardcore and just cause something is balanced in the highest levels of play, doesn’t mean it will be elsewhere. A good example is the backstab thief build. Pros couldnt give to craps about this build as they can dodge the C&D’s on reaction, and can call for backup and get revived before the thief does any real harm. Yet in a random game you can see the worst players in the world owning the lobby one backstab at a time. Pro Balance=/= Balance. Another example would be void rays in SC2. Void ray rush owned scrubs but pros couldnt care less as they scouted.

Syeria.4812:

I can’t say there’s a single reasonable claim in that entire spiel.

Why is class balance always an extreme? Because player opinion and reality don’t generally match. Just because players claim something is imbalanced doesn’t mean it really is. But ultimately something will always be imbalanced because there are simply too many moving parts for perfect balance in a game. Players have a nearly infinite amount of time to find and exploit imbalances, developers have extremely limited time and resources to detect and adjust out those imbalances. Every time there’s an adjustment, it’s likely that something new becomes imbalanced and the cycle starts again. No amount of “experts” will prevent this as it’s simply a fact of life.

Furthermore on that “pro” point, why would real pros ever actually engage in that? Any pro involved in open manipulation of balance systems would necessarily have to be forbidden from professional play or else they’d have incentive to cheat. Therefore you could never actually have current pros offering direct aid to the developers. They could still be used to test, but where’s the incentive for them to waste their time testing things which might never be implemented when they could use that time for anything else? Ultimately, the only reasonable solution is to make small adjustments and allow the much larger testing environment show you the results, which is what developers do.

WoW has absolutely nothing to do with why there’s pvp content in games. Games offer pvp content because it’s the cheapest, easiest, and most effective way to extend the life of a game. Look at the original Half-Life, you have maybe a dozen hours worth of “PvE” content that took so many developer hours to make, yet then you have Counter-Strike “PvP” built on top of the engine. CS was produced with far less effort, time, and cost but the upper end players have sunkittenerally thousands of hours into a much easier to develop world. PvP is offered because it’s a solid business investment, and has absolutely nothing to do with WoW, otherwise EQ, UO, and even the original GW which predate WoW’s dominance wouldn’t have had reason to include it.

As for 1v1 for balance purposes, you’ve already been thoroughly schooled on that point. Balancing for 1v1 could only ever be useful if you were making the most static, simplistic game ever that effectively had no gameplay diversity. If you want something “balanced for 1v1” you’d best stick to FPS games as that’s really the only place it makes any sense.

Your very well informed which makes me believe your actually an anet dev in disguise lol. I’ve just never met a pvper gamer since Uo(ultima online) and Everquest 1 with such faith in developers.

It is actually pro game pvper’s that point out most of the terrible abuses of class imbalances in mmo’s, atleast in my exp. In Everquest one there was no players asking for manaburn a one button killshot on players lol no! Designers added that all on there own followed by a flood of hardcore pvpers with screenshots saying nerf manaburn submitted by wizards themselves. I know I was one of them. Did the designers listen nope they were more concerned with pve content.

No hardcore pvper wants to win by class imbalance, they want to win by skill. They are the guys who can take the worst class and make it shine, there good no matter what you hand them. At blizzcon one year Blizzard dev’s kept running there mouths, so one kid challenged them 3v1 he beat 3 blizz devs just him.

So if your here to tell me we can trust dev’s opinions on pvp vs hardcore pvpers your dead wrong. Because half the dev’s your talking about I know and they are the one’s stacking the odd’s in there choice pick classes favor not the hardcore pvper’s. And don’t kid yourself by believing that Top Dev’s don’t have alt character’s in major guilds. There isn’t a single MMO I can name that a main dev wasn’t abusing his power to stack in his guild or classes favor.

There is so much in the first post that would require some sort of citation or evidence to back up the statements, or are just plain opinions.

Fellknight.4820:

Your very well informed which makes me believe your actually an Anet developer on an alternate account. Because there is no way a pvper gamer since Uo(ultima online) and Everquest 1 could spew such fanboi nonsense in the game developers favor.

It is actually pro game pvper’s that point out most of the terrible abuses of class imbalances in mmo’s. In Everquest one there was no players asking for manaburn a one button killshot on players lol no! Designers added that all on there own followed by a flood of hardcore pvpers with screenshots saying nerf manaburn submitted by wizards themselves. I know I was one of them. Did the designers listen nope they were more concerned with pve content.

No hardcore pvper wants to win by class imbalance, they want to win by skill. They are the guys who can take the worst class and make it shine, there good no matter what you hand them. At blizzcon one year Blizzard dev’s kept running there mouths, so one kid challenged them 3v1 he beat 3 blizz devs just him.

So if your here to tell me we can trust dev’s opinions on pvp vs hardcore pvpers your dead wrong. Because half the dev’s your talking about I know and they are the one’s stacking the odd’s in there choice pick classes favor not the hardcore pvper’s. And don’t kid yourself by believing that Top Dev’s don’t have alt character’s in major guilds. There isn’t a single MMO I can name that a main dev wasn’t abusing his power to stack in his guild or classes favor.

Opening your post with a claim that you’re talking to a sock puppet is a great way to make people reject every single thing you have to say afterwards, and certainly won’t win you any sway with anyone who could potentially make your wishes a reality.

Pro players want to “win with skill?” I bet that’s why no one screen peeked at that LoL tournament a few weeks ago. What’s that you say? Both teams playing during the stoppage were caught cheating, and one of them went on to take second in the tournament? The reality is that pros want to win, and for the most part, they don’t care how as long as they don’t get in trouble for it.

Do devs play the game and want to protect “their” class from balance adjustments? I’d imagine they probably do, but then again, balance teams aren’t just 2-3 people who all play as warrior, no matter how much you try to claim that’s true. There’s likely the same distribution of mesmers/warriors/thieves/guardians/engineers/necros/eles/rangers as there is amongst normal players. Balance decisions aren’t made based upon gut feelings or impassioned arguments. They’re largely based upon real life metrics. Anet should have a wealth of data from the frequency of guardians traiting into AH to the number of tPvP winners that include three bunker builds. Balance decisions should be based on spreadsheets, not whiny forum posts.

Syeria.4812:

Fellknight.4820:

Your very well informed which makes me believe your actually an Anet developer on an alternate account. Because there is no way a pvper gamer since Uo(ultima online) and Everquest 1 could spew such fanboi nonsense in the game developers favor.

It is actually pro game pvper’s that point out most of the terrible abuses of class imbalances in mmo’s. In Everquest one there was no players asking for manaburn a one button killshot on players lol no! Designers added that all on there own followed by a flood of hardcore pvpers with screenshots saying nerf manaburn submitted by wizards themselves. I know I was one of them. Did the designers listen nope they were more concerned with pve content.

No hardcore pvper wants to win by class imbalance, they want to win by skill. They are the guys who can take the worst class and make it shine, there good no matter what you hand them. At blizzcon one year Blizzard dev’s kept running there mouths, so one kid challenged them 3v1 he beat 3 blizz devs just him.

So if your here to tell me we can trust dev’s opinions on pvp vs hardcore pvpers your dead wrong. Because half the dev’s your talking about I know and they are the one’s stacking the odd’s in there choice pick classes favor not the hardcore pvper’s. And don’t kid yourself by believing that Top Dev’s don’t have alt character’s in major guilds. There isn’t a single MMO I can name that a main dev wasn’t abusing his power to stack in his guild or classes favor.

Opening your post with a claim that you’re talking to a sock puppet is a great way to make people reject every single thing you have to say afterwards, and certainly won’t win you any sway with anyone who could potentially make your wishes a reality.

Pro players want to “win with skill?” I bet that’s why no one screen peeked at that LoL tournament a few weeks ago. What’s that you say? Both teams playing during the stoppage were caught cheating, and one of them went on to take second in the tournament? The reality is that pros want to win, and for the most part, they don’t care how as long as they don’t get in trouble for it.

Do devs play the game and want to protect “their” class from balance adjustments? I’d imagine they probably do, but then again, balance teams aren’t just 2-3 people who all play as warrior, no matter how much you try to claim that’s true. There’s likely the same distribution of mesmers/warriors/thieves/guardians/engineers/necros/eles/rangers as there is amongst normal players. Balance decisions aren’t made based upon gut feelings or impassioned arguments. They’re largely based upon real life metrics. Anet should have a wealth of data from the frequency of guardians traiting into AH to the number of tPvP winners that include three bunker builds. Balance decisions should be based on spreadsheets, not whiny forum posts.

Your right in perfect world this is how it should work, and people in New Orleans should have gotten help and support from FIMA long before it got that bad, but sadly we don’t live in a perfect world.

Name me one car mechanic that also is top 10 rated nascar driver. Name me one basketball coach that also played in the NBA and was a top rated player. and then realize there is more than 20 game design companies out there and not one of them has a top rated player in pvp on it. So if you can name one player/coach from any other sport team then your way ahead of where gaming is. Designing and gaming are two totally different things, just like coaching and playing are two totally different entities.

If you really think that every player wants to win by cheating your dead wrong, will a player resort to cheating in an unbalanced game ABSOLUTLEY! But I have seen more skilled mmo players call out imbalances in classes they play more so then devs have ignored gross imbalances in classes they favor.

Anet just said the classes they are looking at for imbalance, guess what theif and mesmer weren’t even mentioned, nuff said.

But then agian isn’t my whiny forum post asking for spreadsheets from the best qualified people for the task. I wouldn’t ask your 9th grade biology teacher to advise my heart surgeon on the best way to cut me open.

Fellknight.4820:

Your right in perfect world this is how it should work, and people in New Orleans should have gotten help and support from FIMA long before it got that bad, but sadly we don’t live in a perfect world.

Name me one car mechanic that also is top 10 rated nascar driver. Name me one basketball coach that also played in the NBA and was a top rated player. and then realize there is more than 20 game design companies out there and not one of them has a top rated player in pvp on it. So if you can name one player/coach from any other sport team then your way ahead of where gaming is. Designing and gaming are two totally different things, just like coaching and playing are two totally different entities.

If you really think that every player wants to win by cheating your dead wrong, will a player resort to cheating in an unbalanced game ABSOLUTLEY! But I have seen more skilled mmo players call out imbalances in classes they play more so then devs have ignored gross imbalances in classes they favor.

Anet just said the classes they are looking at for imbalance, guess what theif and mesmer weren’t even mentioned, nuff said.

Name one NASCAR driver who does the maintenance on his race car. Name one NFL player who writes the rulebook. They don’t, and there’s plenty of reasons for them not to. In fact, there aren’t really any benefits to having active involvement from pros because they’re biased. How does the NFL come up with their rules changes? By observing how professionals play the game. Take the NHL instead, rule changes there aren’t sourced from the players (although there is opportunity for players to give their input if they choose, much like this forum here). When the league considers making a change, they test them out in practice games where non-pros (specifically 15-17 year old Canadian kids) play with those new rules so the league can evaluate how the changes might impact the game. That’s just like the test servers that Anet employs to test their balance and rule changes for this game. The NFL works in similar ways through their partnerships with the NCAA and high school football organizations.

Real world sports use the same system as game developers do to design and tweak their games because it’s the superior system.

As for cheating, the only one “dead wrong” is you. LoL, CS:S, SC2, and basically every multiplayer game ever to hit the market has cheaters amongst the pros.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what clowN, a Counter-Strike: Source professional gamer has to say about the matter:

clowN”

I would like to come clear about everything, YES, Devour and I did cheat simple as that.

People need to play dragonnest. Designed by Koreans , 1v1 ladder in your face, 2v2,3v3…all the way to 8v8 . King of the hill, tdm and some other kill point system pvp.. TBH i thought gw2 would be like that. Heck dragonnest even has a better evade system.

In a nutshell, fellknight actually speaks the truth for alot of the Western/european games , who utilize the somewhat carrot on the stick , less work , easier rewards system to get quick on demand profits. A.k.a. a dry-er game. In the olden days , when a game advertised itself as a PVP game , actually only one primary major big one as far as i know which is Dark ages of camelot , it actually guaranteed pvp as its central focus

i will give you one big evidence in your face slap about pvp not being the centric aim of gw2 development team, or the dev team who designs the pvp structure is the son of the president of the company .. and that reason is .. the rally System. No pvp focused game in the history of games or combat or fps or Moba , rewards being aggressive and failure to utilize tactics as much as gw2’s rally system .

Down state is fine, rally system is like telling players, we are a pvp game , but we arent really serious about creative pvp that focuses on balance , we just want people to zerg and be merry like happy smurfs with no worry about dying cause it really is hard to die in a zerg when u can get rallied off anything walking . My record for rally in a big fight was 18 times , how about you?

Syeria.4812:

Fellknight.4820:

Your right in perfect world this is how it should work, and people in New Orleans should have gotten help and support from FIMA long before it got that bad, but sadly we don’t live in a perfect world.

Name me one car mechanic that also is top 10 rated nascar driver. Name me one basketball coach that also played in the NBA and was a top rated player. and then realize there is more than 20 game design companies out there and not one of them has a top rated player in pvp on it. So if you can name one player/coach from any other sport team then your way ahead of where gaming is. Designing and gaming are two totally different things, just like coaching and playing are two totally different entities.

If you really think that every player wants to win by cheating your dead wrong, will a player resort to cheating in an unbalanced game ABSOLUTLEY! But I have seen more skilled mmo players call out imbalances in classes they play more so then devs have ignored gross imbalances in classes they favor.

Anet just said the classes they are looking at for imbalance, guess what theif and mesmer weren’t even mentioned, nuff said.

Name one NASCAR driver who does the maintenance on his race car. Name one NFL player who writes the rulebook. They don’t, and there’s plenty of reasons for them not to. In fact, there aren’t really any benefits to having active involvement from pros because they’re biased. How does the NFL come up with their rules changes? By observing how professionals play the game. Take the NHL instead, rule changes there aren’t sourced from the players (although there is opportunity for players to give their input if they choose, much like this forum here). When the league considers making a change, they test them out in practice games where non-pros (specifically 15-17 year old Canadian kids) play with those new rules so the league can evaluate how the changes might impact the game. That’s just like the test servers that Anet employs to test their balance and rule changes for this game. The NFL works in similar ways through their partnerships with the NCAA and high school football organizations.

Real world sports use the same system as game developers do to design and tweak their games because it’s the superior system.

As for cheating, the only one “dead wrong” is you. LoL, CS:S, SC2, and basically every multiplayer game ever to hit the market has cheaters amongst the pros.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what clowN, a Counter-Strike: Source professional gamer has to say about the matter:

clowN”

I would like to come clear about everything, YES, Devour and I did cheat simple as that.

I’m sorry did you just quote an FPS player in referance to MMO PVP game. When’s the last time you saw a GM joining fps rooms to ban players from hacking???

I’ve seen many players get banned from hacking in MMO’s but never in FPS. Plus Hacking and exploiting are two different things. Hacking is plain and simple cheating, exploiting however is using a flaw in the game designers veiw to use agianst other players.

Hack’s are what players use to cheat and must be enforced to stop. Exploits are the designers missing something that players found. One is player abuse, the other is designer negligence. Both are bound to happen but the response time till fix is what determines good designers from bad ones.

BTW I never asked for players to write the rulebook just test the game, not have the final say or evalute the testing. Just that they, not joe IDK how to play a necro guy, test the class so that 100,000 thousand players don’t jump on Suck necro guy’s idea of where class balance should rely.

According to you I should buy a car from an unknown company that had no credited source test it’s crash course. Yeah maybe the car is cheaper that way but i wouldn’t trust my kid in it. Your quoting NCAA, NBA all these leagues that enforce cheating in basketball and they still fail at it. But I should trust anet’s pvp opinion because there designers when no league or organisation is making sure there game is fair? lol really.

Yes, people cheat less in MMOs, because they’re upstanding people. Not at all because MMOs are much less reliant on player ability than an FPS. Aimbots aren’t exactly effective in MMOs, and if you’re cheating via improving your stats, you’ll be called out on it in an instant when people look at the logs, and see impossible numbers.

Fellknight.4820:

I’m sorry did you just quote an FPS player in referance to MMO PVP game. When’s the last time you saw a GM joining fps rooms to ban players from hacking???

I’ve seen many players get banned from hacking in MMO’s but never in FPS. Plus Hacking and exploiting are two different things. Hacking is plain and simple cheating, exploiting however is using a flaw in the game designers veiw to use agianst other players.

Hack’s are what players use to cheat and must be enforced to stop. Exploits are the designers missing something that players found. One is player abuse, the other is designer negligence. Both are bound to happen but the response time till fix is what determines good designers from bad ones.

FPS players are banned for cheating at a far higher rate than MMO players, but that’s beside the point. Just look back at the LoL situation. They didn’t hack, they didn’t game system, but they all knowingly cheated by screen peeking. Why did they do it? So they could have an unfair advantage over the other team because to them it’s more important to win. That’s the case with the vast majority of gamers, pro/amateur/hardcore/casual or otherwise. If they think they can get away with something that will give them an advantage, they will do it.

Fellknight.4820:

BTW I never asked for players to write the rulebook just test the game, not have the final say or evalute the testing. Just that they, not joe IDK how to play a necro guy, test the class so that 100,000 thousand players don’t jump on Suck necro guy’s idea of where class balance should rely.

But that’s what happens already. Anet observes the behavior of players and the game, then determines which changes they’d like, tests them on an R&D server, then releases them for the pros to play on where the cycle repeats.

What you’re apparently trying to advocate is the useless idea of having pros play on the test servers. Assuming for a moment they don’t (because neither of us has any idea if that’s the case, despite your ridiculous claims), what good would that do? First Anet would have to offer some incentive for those pros to waste their time on the test servers. Why would they want to do that when it would clearly detract from their time doing what they clearly enjoy doing? So let’s pretend Anet somehow convinces these pros to play on the test servers. By necessity they have a limited amount of testing that can be done as there are only so many hours in a day and there’s deadlines for getting balance changes out. Furthermore, you can only have so many testers. There’s no way to ensure that no balance issues will escape from that scenario, and already there isn’t any reason to expect better results out of this team. But then you add in the fact that these pros presumably are going to continue playing as pros. There’s clear incentive to not expose their “best build” in the test environment because that would lead to it being detected and resolved. Maybe they find a few more issues than another team might have, but inevitably if they continue to play, they will also attempt to hide some of these issues, causing more issues than you had otherwise.

Fellknight.4820:

According to you I should buy a car from an unknown company that had no credited source test it’s crash course. Yeah maybe the car is cheaper that way but i wouldn’t trust my kid in it. Your quoting NCAA, NBA all these leagues that enforce cheating in basketball and they still fail at it. But I should trust anet’s pvp opinion because there designers when no league or organisation is making sure there game is fair? lol really.

Putting aside the completely irrelevant strawman, you’re the one who brought up these pro leagues. They were your primary argument as to why Anet needs to follow the methodology you set out. Are you saying that was a bad argument now?