Guild Wars 2

There is no transparency in regards to balance patches (neither date nor content).

The testing team does not include any significant amount of community input or involvement.

The is no play test server that is readily available to facilitate the solution to the above problem.

GW2 is being treated like a cash cow with the emphasis being on more people logging on (ie: Quantity) over the experience (Quality).

For balance changes, I admit that changing mechanics are rather difficult. On the other hand, many things literally just need numerical tweaks. Tweaking the numerical power of something like say: Healing Signet passive heal… or Heartseeker Strike damage to characters above 50% hp. That should be many times more simple and easy to fix. And if the devs are ever so worried about the impact of said change? Implement a public test server for people to try it out. At least on a PTS, it would be more fun with an always changing environment.

In regards to the current outcry against the ANET team. I don’t understand why the moderators or the devs are so surprised about it. Hyping up the feature patch, hyping up balances, hyping up change to the stagnation that is PvP. It’s only natural for the community to grab their torch and pitchforks when the most recent update…. added nothing. Rather, the patch took away rewards. All that happened is that people won’t PvP until the next patch when rewards or balances have been implemented.

For the community, it’s always better to give a date and then have to say “Oh darn, something big came up. It was -insert problem here-. The patch might have to be delayed another week.” As of now, it just feels like everyone’s faffing about. I don’t personally like Riot Games or Blizzard, but kitten do they know the amount of transparency a proper game company should have. Funny right? But Anet doesn’t even hit that benchmark.

tl:dr? For goodness sake. Be more transparent with us. Give us expected changes, give us a PTS/PTR (For sPvP at least!), don’t keep fluffing us with vague hype, give us a date for release.

Fluffers are important. Besides, soon they soon already have given us a concrete soon date.

ANet’s strategy when it comes to giving out information has been to set general expectations without a timeline. What this does, quite simply, is allow people to speculate, which helps fuel interest. They don’t give a timeline, because there will be less speculation and because there will be people who hearthe timeline and just not play until it happens, they’ll likely fade eventually anyways after a while until timelines are announced.

The no timeline isnt a problem. Its their way of setting the pace which is their fundamental right as the creators of the game.

Where they lack is
admitting mistakes,
reverting them,
solving easy problems quicky,
being transparent on what they are working,
and in general treating pvp as kitten with too slow changes and not acknowledging its issues for months.
The talk about features but no actual pvp balance, which should be monthly.

The only revert i know of is ele heal signet (yet to happen), and only good hotfix was dhuumfire, took less than month, to not wreck PAX.
then 3 months for tooltips
3 motnhs for 15 to 30s per win+ tomes + small warr nerf + burn spirit nerf
3 months of sigil/runes + reward system

So its 3x months / 1x most broken thing getting slightly less strong. The changes should be much faster, especialy for easy-to-play stuff cz it spreads like a plague

As stated before, when its not about combat mechanics, but something just simply broken by math , why does it take forever to tweak a number? Or why try to solve it with a new problem aka power creep?

Not going to happen.

ANet burned all their political capital they had with their pvp players. No one in the community trusts them anymore, nor does anyone believe what they say.

I’d rather see the Balance Team completely disbanded and have the PvP team put knobs in custom arenas to let the user community balance the game.

I’m not putting anyone down – just stating the reality of the situation.

Flumek.9043:

The no timeline isnt a problem. Its their way of setting the pace which is their fundamental right as the creators of the game.

Where they lack is
admitting mistakes,
reverting them,
solving easy problems quicky,
being transparent on what they are working,
and in general treating pvp as kitten with too slow changes and not acknowledging its issues for months.
The talk about features but no actual pvp balance, which should be monthly.

The only revert i know of is ele heal signet (yet to happen), and only good hotfix was dhuumfire, took less than month, to not wreck PAX.
then 3 months for tooltips
3 motnhs for 15 to 30s per win+ tomes + small warr nerf + burn spirit nerf
3 months of sigil/runes + reward system

So its 3x months / 1x most broken thing getting slightly less strong. The changes should be much faster, especialy for easy-to-play stuff cz it spreads like a plague

As stated before, when its not about combat mechanics, but something just simply broken by math , why does it take forever to tweak a number? Or why try to solve it with a new problem aka power creep?

Great post. They don’t admit their mistakes. Everyone hates AR or whatever? They don’t admit their mistake.

I diff agree with the disbanding of the balance team if one exists. A whole new crew for that one. And a PTS would be nice

Maverick Holix.1382:

I diff agree with the disbanding of the balance team if one exists. A whole new crew for that one. And a PTS would be nice

Balancing a game like this is impossible. There will always be lame things which creep in. They need a PTS. That really is the thing. The balance team need a PTS. Otherwise their job is impossible. The meta will always descend into easy to use lame specs

…because it’s from ANet?

ESL games are not balanced. They just have updates that are so frequent that OP is only OP for a week or 2 before something new comes. This can be achieved by simple number changes every week…