Guild Wars 2

A.net,

HOT balancing is obviously still in its infant stages. The proleagues are your greatest opportunity to make weekly balance patches and get immediate feedback. Since money is on the line, you can be confident that the proleague teams are all trying to discover the most optimal builds/comps to run in high-level play, and that they test these builds/comps extensively in scrims. Part of being a pro player is understanding the game well enough to quickly adapt to new balance patches.

There’s no need to wait for 80% of the proleague to finish before making substantive changes. For example, after nerfing shieldblock and precog, it was pretty clear by next game that bunker mesmers were still crazy effective. So the next step could have been getting rid of quickness/slow stomps/resses, or even getting rid of the bunker amulets.

Waiting until the proleagues are 80% over just resulted in a bunch of incredibly boring games that the viewers didn’t enjoy watching, and a lot of missed opportunities to playtest more incremental balance changes. Even the proleague players didn’t seem to be enjoying the experience (as evidenced by one team’s ragequit).

It’s too early to tell what the next meta will look like at this stage, which is part of the problem. The current balancing strategy is like throwing a bunch of paint at a wall, which the playerbase is then stuck with for the next 6 months.

You’re already paying over $200k in prize winnings to make the proleagues happen. You might as well get the most bang for your buck by using each week’s proleague game to make frequent targeted balancing patches. If one tweak doesn’t work out, you can just reverse it for next week’s game.

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

Lordrosicky.5813:

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

6 is a bit much. 3-4 month cycles. Anything less that 3 means the meta may not have fully settled.

So effectively for this meta it was alright to leave warrior / thief / guardian obsolete.
It was alright to leave the cancerous bunker meta in place for so long the fact that they didn’t step in i just outrageous. And this cycle will continue unless they start balancing more frequently. Fixes can’t all be implemented at once you need to do it in several sprints.
@Lordrosicky you’re a troll you need to iterate more often it’s what they teach you at project management 101 ….

Skullkger.2804:

So effectively for this meta it was alright to leave warrior / thief / guardian obsolete.
It was alright to leave the cancerous bunker meta in place for so long the fact that they didn’t step in i just outrageous. And this cycle will continue unless they start balancing more frequently. Fixes can’t all be implemented at once you need to do it in several sprints.
@Lordrosicky you’re a troll you need to iterate more often it’s what they teach you at project management 101 ….

so with the upcoming patch, it’s ok to let Mesmer/X/X class be obsolete? As long as the few classes that you play are part of the meta?

rchu.8945:

Skullkger.2804:

So effectively for this meta it was alright to leave warrior / thief / guardian obsolete.
It was alright to leave the cancerous bunker meta in place for so long the fact that they didn’t step in i just outrageous. And this cycle will continue unless they start balancing more frequently. Fixes can’t all be implemented at once you need to do it in several sprints.
@Lordrosicky you’re a troll you need to iterate more often it’s what they teach you at project management 101 ….

so with the upcoming patch, it’s ok to let Mesmer/X/X class be obsolete? As long as the few classes that you play are part of the meta?

I was trying to qoue lordriosicky but that bugged out apparently. My entire point is that i don’t want classes to be obsolete in a meta.

I want biweekly balance changes. There is no reason to wait for meta settle.

Malediktus.9250:

I want biweekly balance changes. There is no reason to wait for meta settle.

If the meta hasn’t settled then they have no idea what actually needs to be nerfed. Remember that it took over a month after HoT launch for the bunker meta to even begin to appear.

Besides rapid class changes is hard on us the players. I’m willing to bet most players would be extremely annoyed at having their class kittened with every week.

Crinn.7864:

Malediktus.9250:

I want biweekly balance changes. There is no reason to wait for meta settle.

If the meta hasn’t settled then they have no idea what actually needs to be nerfed. Remember that it took over a month after HoT launch for the bunker meta to even begin to appear.

Besides rapid class changes is hard on us the players. I’m willing to bet most players would be extremely annoyed at having their class kittened with every week.

It doesnt matter, just do some random changes every 2 weeks to keep things changing and interesting.

Crinn.7864:

Malediktus.9250:

I want biweekly balance changes. There is no reason to wait for meta settle.

If the meta hasn’t settled then they have no idea what actually needs to be nerfed. Remember that it took over a month after HoT launch for the bunker meta to even begin to appear.

It won’t take more than a week for the meta to settle if you’re only making a few targeted changes every week. The teams that compete in proleague scrim regularly, and most of the proleague players play more games in a single day than many of us play in an entire week. If one week is too much, then you can even go with two weeks, or even a month. Any of these options is better than what is currently happening.

On the other hand, if you make a bunch of large changes at once, then obviously it will take longer for the meta to settle. For example, when HOT first hit, it took a month for the meta to settle because there was a ton of information that players needed to absorb. And it may take awhile with this patch, as well. This is another reason why infrequent-but-large balance patches are bad. It takes too long to get useful feedback, people complain on the forums nonstop about the meta being unfun, and then A.net overreacts in the other direction.

A.net is effectively paying proleague players to balance-test the game, because the people who are playing for money are willing to put in the time and effort to explore all the strategies, test them against each other, and figure out the best comps. So A.net might as well take advantage of this process to make frequent, incremental balance adjustments, rather than drastic overhauls.

Crinn.7864:

Besides rapid class changes is hard on us the players. I’m willing to bet most players would be extremely annoyed at having their class kittened with every week.

Let’s be real here. People complain when their class gets nerfed — the timing doesn’t matter. What matters is when an overhaul shoves your class out of the meta (or pushed into a braindead role like bunker mesmer) and you’re stuck with it for the next 6 months.

Crinn.7864:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

6 is a bit much. 3-4 month cycles. Anything less that 3 means the meta may not have fully settled.

1 month is enough time to let the meta settle, look at what happened this season. People played DH up the kitten , they realized they get kitten on by everything else and in the first week of pro leagues bunk mes was played, then second week there were 2 bunks mes’s on each team.

People know well enough the state of the meta after a month passes by, and even to an extent Anet should still be throwing out monthly hotfixes for different things. Look at major popular games that have a HUGE competitive ESports scene, LoL and DoTA both do bi monthly patches DURING their tournament seasons.

While they may not be doing anything drastic during the larger tournies its still small tweaks, and thats what Anet lacks. Is a dedicated pvp balance team.

Anets balance team consists of people from WvW, PvE and PvP… Nothing should be balanced like that, you should have separate teams working on separate things that aren’t as tightly integrated as they currently are.

/grammar sucks balls, idc you understand my point.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

I agree…even if the entirety of pvp has devolved into only a couple classes after 2-3 weeks, it is clearly that players aren’t being creative enough. When you have such extensive QA and balance testing, it is better to just make wild swings in changes.

Any company that would try to make changes “slow and steady” are clearly fools.

weekly is way often but 6 months is too long. maybe every 3-4 months is ok

The problem is that ANET has a history of waiting months or years to address things. So a big “balance” patch means long term problems for whatever class is unpopular with the devs at the time.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

weekly is way often but 6 months is too long. maybe every 3-4 months is ok

Would you like to play the bunker meta for 3-4 months? I don’t think so, balancing and fixing on a regular basis gives ANET more insight of what has to be tweaked and what is fine as it is( Thief/Necro AA??).

Ithilwen.1529:

The problem is that ANET has a history of waiting months or years to address things. So a big “balance” patch means long term problems for whatever class is unpopular with the devs at the time.

Hell they still haven’t addressed obviously design flaws and some bugged skills/traits that Eles have had SINCE THE BETA BEFORE THE MAIN GAME LAUNCH.

Except that ANET has never actually done fixes or balancing on a regular and frequent basis. I see no reason to believe that they will start now.

Actually yes.. I like bunker a kitten of a lot better than zerker. That’s where we are going. With no bunker and the level of damage and cc, look for 2 second fights.

Henceforth, “skilled gameplay” will consist of pushing buttons really really fast.

So I have been a pvper since 2013 and loved it, but right now, this league thing has been extremely horrible. It’s no fun at all with this bunker nonsense, but at least I could win with mesmer and ele, my main professions since 2013. After achieving my wings, the amount of grind it took, I never want to come back. After seeing this balance patch nerfing my favourite class to the ground, and my second one being poorly fixed, it confirms I won’t be coming back until its fixed up. I guess I’ll be PvE’ing for the next 6-12 months until they make major changes, I can tell, the PvP population is going to continue dropping if they don’t balance things up more often, and more efficiently.

Balance should occur every month+hotfixes to really broken stuff

Henrik.7560:

So I have been a pvper since 2013 and loved it, but right now, this league thing has been extremely horrible. It’s no fun at all with this bunker nonsense, but at least I could win with mesmer and ele, my main professions since 2013. After achieving my wings, the amount of grind it took, I never want to come back. After seeing this balance patch nerfing my favourite class to the ground, and my second one being poorly fixed, it confirms I won’t be coming back until its fixed up. I guess I’ll be PvE’ing for the next 6-12 months until they make major changes, I can tell, the PvP population is going to continue dropping if they don’t balance things up more often, and more efficiently.

Good riddance

Small balance update every 2 weeks sounds optimal. Big balance update every 3 months.

And of course if something is brokenly overpowered there should be immediate hot fix – no matter what is the game mode! Sadly this isn’t happening e.g. revenant hammer #2 (CoR) + Cruel Repercussion is brokenly overpowered in WvWvW and continues to do so, even after some minor shaving. That single skill alone is the main culprit of the pirate ship meta (there was pirate ship already before HoT, but the new specializations + revenant just made matters worse).

Yeah it would be nice. Too bad it won’t happen if history is any guide.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

You are completely wrong. Maybe you don’t play the game anymore. The current meta is horrible. Doesn’t take most people 6 months to realize that.

Burtnik.5218:

Balance should occur every month+hotfixes to really broken stuff

Yeah, monthly would be great if possible.

If you want an esports game go play an esports game not an mmo

Also, get some esports designers as well, instead of whatever they have now balancing the game in turn

Forget about possible game breaking skills, bugs and exploits. Forget about QA testing to get the proper balance right, which takes months not days. These kitteners want their gratification because of changes they don’t like. If that kittenes you off so much go play another game.

3-4 month balance patches are already pushing it, monthly patches are just not possible.