(edited by Gaile Gray.6029)
(edited by Josh Davis.6015)
Thanks everyone, we’re looking into it from here.
I love how absolutely pointed Rubi’s response is. Let’s keep in mind that she has nothing to do with most of the things we actually care about. She’s just in charge of marketing stuff so she’ll be doing this kind of fluff to try to distract us from our disappointments with the game.
The power (I’m in charge of marketing! A promotion!) and ulterior motives ascribed here give me too much credit. The real reason behind the question is much less exciting: It’s the topic of Friday’s show.
That’s pretty much it. We have a planning meeting for each episode of Guild Chat with the developer guests. During this one, Ben and Brian asked me if we could have this forum post because they wanted to hear from GW2 players and answer some of their questions on the show. I said yes. They went through the thread today, picked questions, and gave them to me at rehearsal.
The reason for topic of this week’s Guild Chat isn’t too sinister either: When we did the last show with the creature team, it was on very short notice due to a last minute scheduling change. The developer guests really enjoyed themselves, and at the end of the show said they’d love to come back when there was more time to plan and they could give people a better look. I said I’d bring them back as soon as there was a spot in the schedule. February 5th is that spot.
So there’s a peek behind the scenes of Guild Chat show planning. It’s… not very thrilling.
Love it. Another great theme, DusK. Thanks for posting.
It’s no problem. Thanks for contacting us! Let us know if you have any other issues.
Ok, this thread started out with one person’s opinion of what he would like to be given. For free. In a game that, today, has no cost to entry. I understand it’s (properly used 
) human nature to ask for more. But what you need to play the game on a equal playing field is not influenced by what you want to have. And the sales of items that are fully optional is an entirely reasonable business model.
The thread then devolved into insults about language, spelling, grammar, and syntax.
Opinion expressed. Comments received. Derailed. Conversation closed.
There’s a lot of feedback to read, so please don’t mind if I ask this: Do you have specific areas of concern? Also, did you post in the major feedback thread? I don’t mind asking about this, if I’m able to do so. But a general “it’s broken” isn’t as good as solid evidence.
I am not Oeps, but the general consensus on the mesmer side was that the “bunker” build was the only viable way to play pre patch. That was rightfully toned down, but mesmers were essentially given nothing in return. With the release of HoT the previously viable builds have fallen far behind the Elite Specialisations and what remains of the Chronomancer post-26th simply can’t keep up.
There is no real “specific area” of concern, it’s just that each individual change adds up to a horrifying total, essentially like you’re trying to kill the disease, the patient and the next of kin all in one go: You halve the effectiveness of Alacrity (which one must reasonably assume all Chronomancer cooldowns were balanced around, ignoring the group buff aspect), you remove Quickness affecting stomps/rezzing, you effectively remove Well of Precognition, you buff classes/builds which were previously known for hard-countering mesmers and you fail to provide any reasonable compensation to more offense-oriented mesmer builds which happened to rely on any of these aspects all at the same time!
Not even debating the validity of any of these changes individually it is clear most of them were focused on eliminating the chrono-bunker, so one has to question why they were not implemented one after another and only after the previous change had clearly failed to achieve its intended goal.
Then there is also the emotional aspect of being told there were many more changes than those outlined in the “preview”, then getting nothing any of the experienced players would consider a substantial improvement (this one explicitly is about emotions and personal opinions and actual hard data might state the opposite, but the players don’t have access to those)
For a more on-topic example relevant to WvW, look at the changes made to Confusion application via Glamours: this achieved much the same effect as CoR (killing huge numbers of players at long range with little to no warning), but it a) could still be counteracted to some extent, b) cost the mesmer almost their entire build to pull off and c) was more or less REMOVED FROM THE GAME as soon as it was “noted to be problematic”. Again mesmers were given nothing to play a similar role (albeit weaker) in WvW even until now. Revenants meanwhile can still use their ONE skill much like before, and less than a week after the patch some aspects of the change are being looked into as “unintended”. How long did it take for Temporal Curtain to get looked at again?
Thank you, this is very helpful.