I’ve been playing this game nearly since launch, and in all those years, I’ve found profession balance to be one of the least consistent parts of the game. The track record of insane nerfs and buffs creates more drama than the actual story of the game.
It is clear that the devs listen to what people ask for on the forums; however, the vocal minorities on the forums tend to be the people who have the strongest opinions in either direction. I’m wondering if polls sent out to all active players would be able to improve the devs understanding of what kinds of profession balance will make the most people happy. Of course, they wouldn’t have to listen to everything the community tells them to do. Ideally, this will reduce the frequency with which the devs completely gut fun builds and bring greater awareness to the vast number of skills and traits that are weak in various game modes. Thoughts?
Balance by polls is the worst way to go about balance.
They just need someone in charge of the profession design team who’s active in all modes and somewhat good of a PvPer. That’s enough to be able to weed out genuine concerns from forum overreaction, think deeper about source of imbalance, and adjust appropriately.
Obviously their current profession design team has none of that.
One thing Anet does have a HELL of a lot of is metrics.
So by the end of the season they have a very clear indication of who’s generating the most success and who’s not.
One thing Anet does have a HELL of a lot of is metrics.
So by the end of the season they have a very clear indication of who’s generating the most success and who’s not.
The thing is, that’s a terrible way to judge. Metrics like that are more influenced by what people play and how much support they have in playing it, than anything else.
Oh hell no.
>Seeing how people even to recently still complain about kittening Dragonhunters.
>Want kittening warriors nerfed into the ground. As they are immortal anti condi monsters who can also 1 v 4 kitteners on point.
>Or how they are perma evade thiefs.
>Have people complain that condi bomb=no skill at all. And think that condi elementalist>Power elementalist, think dagger/dagger thief>D/P(you guys know who you are). Or how they appearantly need to be enough cleanses to cover conditions killing the entire concept of condi damage.
I’d rather have A-net pick a proffesion representative of each proffesion forums. Heck maby even have a pro leaguer take part in said discussion regarding class balance, if they have time ofcourse regardling class balance. Then have A-net fall in this terrible trap of polls. Because we all kittening know that the moment A-net doesn’t listen to said polls, The forums, reddit will be filled with tons of QQ of how A-net didn’t do exactly what u wanted even if they might have explained that the Polls are just for advice.
Please A-net do not kittening do this. And kitten up this kitten. Since a long time every class can be played atleast in leagues.
I think it could, but only in ways not related to power – for example, you could run a poll for mesmer with the options:
Or…
What role would you prefer meta guardian to be in PvP?
Obviously this style would work best if limited to people who actually play the class
They wouldnt even know what to ask in the polls first of all.
One thing Anet does have a HELL of a lot of is metrics.
So by the end of the season they have a very clear indication of who’s generating the most success and who’s not.
Well.. Lies, kitten ed lies, and statistics.
There needs to be AT LEAST two dedicated devs, that ONLY do player proffession balance.
They dont get moved to system balance, NPC skill design, New content etc etc.
Day in. Day out. They will read prof forums. They will play ranked PVP matches. They will play in raids. They will talk to players. They will work on profession balance. They will focus on one profession a week. They will eat / sleep and breath professions.
That’s what I’d like to see.
Would be nice to see an ANet youtube video where they follow Karl/Roy/Josh around for a day to see just exactly what it is the average balance dev is doing from 9 to 5. Given how minimal the work is that we see each patch directed at substantial profession changes/fixes, I guess they just arent focussed enough solely on proffessions. And they really really need to be. Its something Anet needs to make allowances for.
(edited by Sandzibar.5134)
Balance by polls is the worst way to go about balance.
This.
its nearly impossible to properly balance all the innumerous abilities in this game, plenty of stuff such as mesmer bullkitten portals/clones, thief’s useless steal, ton of engineer’s useless bundles, ranger’s HoT pets which are still complete bullkitten, half of utility abilities of every profession being completely useless all of these are in a dire need of entire redesign and/or scrapping if this game’s pvp is ever to be taken seriously
good luck hoping that we’ll have a proper pvp game one day, but at least this season is probably one of the least disgusting ones tbh
It is clear that the devs listen to what people ask for on the forums
That is precisely why we are at an all time low.
One thing Anet does have a HELL of a lot of is metrics.
So by the end of the season they have a very clear indication of who’s generating the most success and who’s not.
Well.. Lies, kitten ed lies, and statistics.
There needs to be AT LEAST two dedicated devs, that ONLY do player proffession balance.
They dont get moved to system balance, NPC skill design, New content etc etc.
Day in. Day out. They will read prof forums. They will play ranked PVP matches. They will play in raids. They will talk to players. They will work on profession balance. They will focus on one profession a week. They will eat / sleep and breath professions.
That’s what I’d like to see.
Would be nice to see an Anet YouTube video where they follow Karl/Roy/Josh around for a day to see just exactly what it is the average balance dev is doing from 9 to 5. Given how minimal the work is that we see each patch directed at substantial profession changes/fixes, I guess they just aren’t focused enough solely on professions. And they really really need to be. Its something Anet needs to make allowances for.
If they aren’t going to separate balancing between PvP and PvE then the next best thing is purely balancing for PvP and then balance PvE around that. Don’t make a raid boss then rebalance professions with him in mind but rather look at the classes and modify the PvE content accordingly.
Why balance in this game is so bad?
Clueless people in charge of it.
They don’t have enough competence to understand what is broken and what is not, simple as that.
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