Guild Wars 2

Has ANet learned enough from their experience updating the Eng class to do a better job when they ‘improve’ other classes?

Over the last two patches ANet spent a chunk of its development resources updating the Eng class. Unfortunately, rather that delighting the Eng community the response is closer to general disappointment (except for players of the one surviving core build: Elixir/Might stacking/conditions). Specific problems have been:

• Deleting the Eng’s popular and only burst build
• Balancing that nerfed a lot of popular but only marginally powerful builds out of existence
• Buffing neglected abilities, but not enough to make them useful

Overall, few of the buffs that were delivered were good enough to be useful, many popular builds have been nerfed to insignificance, and most Eng players now play or are moving to variations of the only significant build that wasn’t nerfed. The result: Engineers are now more homogenous and the class is arguably worse off than it was before the changes.

The Dev team will no, no doubt, have moved its resources onto one of the other classes. Will they make the same mistakes? Or have they learnt from what happened with Eng class? Hopefully ANet consider their performance updating the Eng class to be poor (disappointing results for the effort applied) and have taken time to see what can be learnt from the experience.

There seem to be three key deficiencies in the way changes to the Eng class were developed:

• The class forum contained the detail information required to make the changes work, but this information was not used
• Too much importance was placed on abstract design philosophies (e.g “that’s too powerful for a 10pt trait, and we don’t move traits”; “Eng’s aren’t a burst class”)
• Changes were not trialled with the community before being finalised and committed to the game

Here’s some suggestions that may help when developing future changes to ‘unfinished’ classes:

1. Accept that you don’t know how to finish the class (if you did know you would have done that already) and you’ll need help to get it right.
2. The player community are your best guide for how to improve the class – listen to them they know what they’re doing. (This applies not just to selecting which aspects need attention, but also to determining what has to be achieved to make each aspect work in play.)
3. If the player community says it’s important, its important – ignore this at your peril.
4. Adapt your design philosophy to work with how players use the class (not the other way round)
5. Test changes with the player community while you still have time to modify or abandon them
6. If you don’t have a public test environment, then allocate resources to rebalancing changes after release and build this into your development process
7. Err towards over-delivering on buffs and have resources available to wind them back if you’ve overdone it. (In this environment there is a psychological tendency to be over cautious when delivering buffs. An inadequate buff is a waste of effort, whereas an overly generous buff is easy to wind back or reverse if required.)

Very well written and I can say I agree with you. Hopefully the developers read this and take some advice.

The problem with the Engineer class, is, as the OP says, in the philosophy behind the class. ANet bought into a damage-must-be-low-because-of-versatility philosophy in a game where damage trumps everything else. In other words, they brought a spanner to a gunfight.

Op is exactly correct, and the engineers are having exactly this problem.

I don’t know how the other underpowered classes are faring since I don’t play any of them, but the engineer is a versatility class that is ill-equipped to be effectively versatile. All the toys and gadgets and tricks suck compared to being able to kill things.

Well that doesn’t bode well.

I originally posted this in the general Guild Wars 2 Discussion thread, but it was moved here with the following explanation.

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Engineer’ with the reason:

Thread titled [Finishing unfinished classes] has been moved to Engineer subforum

I guess they think this was just an Engineer issue and not a problem with their development process. Only hope they are right, because it would be really dumb to repeat the same mistakes with the next class they work on.

Zenguy.6421:

Well that doesn’t bode well.

I originally posted this in the general Guild Wars 2 Discussion thread, but it was moved here with the following explanation.

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Engineer’ with the reason:

Thread titled [Finishing unfinished classes] has been moved to Engineer subforum

I guess they think this was just an Engineer issue and not a problem with their development process. Only hope they are right, because it would be really dumb to repeat the same mistakes with the next class they work on.

Because this post is a bit embarrassing, it was moved to a place where no one would read it

I don’t agree.

Forestnator.6298:

I don’t agree.

I agree with your disagreement

Zenguy.6421:

Well that doesn’t bode well.

I originally posted this in the general Guild Wars 2 Discussion thread, but it was moved here with the following explanation.

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Engineer’ with the reason:

Thread titled [Finishing unfinished classes] has been moved to Engineer subforum

I guess they think this was just an Engineer issue and not a problem with their development process. Only hope they are right, because it would be really dumb to repeat the same mistakes with the next class they work on.

They are hoping no one read it. Whoever is next up on the “get fixed” train is doomed.

danbuter.2314:

Zenguy.6421:

Well that doesn’t bode well.

I originally posted this in the general Guild Wars 2 Discussion thread, but it was moved here with the following explanation.

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Engineer’ with the reason:

Thread titled [Finishing unfinished classes] has been moved to Engineer subforum

I guess they think this was just an Engineer issue and not a problem with their development process. Only hope they are right, because it would be really dumb to repeat the same mistakes with the next class they work on.

They are hoping no one read it. Whoever is next up on the “get fixed” train is doomed.

Not true.

Look at Elementalist. They definatly got improved, look at just their downed state. Which went from arguebly the WORST downed state (worst then Engineer. can you imagine?) to being one of the BEST.

Its just Engineer they just cant seem to get, and there are strong indications their own design ideas (or, perhaps lack thereof) are getting in the way. Ever since release, through nerfs and what minute feedback we got, we’ve only been told all the things we cannot do.
All we get when asked what our purpose is, are some meager, vague, words tossed around that dont have any real meaning. And certainly no imagineable role or function within GW2.

I’m really tired of seeing threads like this.

Please, if you’re that frustrated with the class, just quietly re-roll and play something else for a while. Don’t delete your Engineer. Just leave it alone. It won’t disappear. It’ll stay there when you return. If you do.

But please stop with these doom and gloom threads; they promote nothing, and it’s really obnoxious to people like myself that have to keep answering the same questions to new players who write new threads because legitimately good threads keep getting pushed off the top page.

I don’t believe the devs are following their philosophies. The engi was supposed to have less damage in favor of versatility even thought it is not the king of it. But the changes they are making plainly reduce that versatility and force us to especialize. The only problem with that is that we can’t be that good even if we especialize because we are supposed to be versatile. So they cut our versatility without making us stronger when specialized.

My tips for the devs is to look at traits and utilities becaus all our builds are around them because we only have 3 weapons. Gadgets are bad because they only have one trait for them, turrets are still weak because their traits don’t add anything in playstyle.

The best utilities in the game are good because their traits make them do different things instead of simply making them stronger. Elixirs, shouts, clones, cantrips, glamours all those can be traited to remove conditions, or heal, or give boons. They are used so much because their traits do much more than reduce CD or give more range.

Instead of making the thumper turret cripple, make it so that our turrets give specific boons when traited, make a trait that gives gadgets a passive effect, make traits that benefit 2 or 3 kits. You’ll be giving back the versatility we are supposed to have, while getting rid of our unused traits and buffing our weak stuff all with a single strike.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I’m really tired of seeing threads like this.

Please, if you’re that frustrated with the class, just quietly re-roll and play something else for a while. Don’t delete your Engineer. Just leave it alone. It won’t disappear. It’ll stay there when you return. If you do.

But please stop with these doom and gloom threads; they promote nothing, and it’s really obnoxious to people like myself that have to keep answering the same questions to new players who write new threads because legitimately good threads keep getting pushed off the top page.

please stop the arguments about ‘legitemately good threads being pushed back’.
If those threads are that good, and that many… they’ll get responses and stay on top.
This thread is as valid than the next.
You’re just using an argument to express you don’t like these kind of posts. But that doesn’t mean your argument is actually relevant.
It’s an opinion, your opinion.

You tell people to stop playing their engineer if they find it is lacking.
I could tell you to stop replying to posts you find are lacking… you’re pushing back all those legitemately good threads by the way

Not that I want you to stop replying, but I would like to show you your argument is rather biased and flawed.
You are NOT a forum moderator, it is NOT up to you to decide what posts are valid or not. (caps for coolness and some emphasis).
Express your disagreement, sure… but as soon as you tell people to stop writing and worse: stop playing, you are severaly stepping out of line.

Personally I like reading your opinion, but not your directives to others.

You’re a player with an opinion, just like us. And you have things you deem important and others you don’t… just like us.

On topic: I think you hit a sensitive string here.
For what I can gather the engineer design lacks a clear vision, mostly because it wasn’t finished in time I think.

I could be wrong, but I agree the dev’s could use a hand from player feedback here.
Just don’t underestimate them either.

They are of course professional and smart enough.
They have more things to consider than what we see.
Still, in general I think they lack a rounded vision for the profession.

I just like tossing “Kitten Refinement” into the mix and running. Kitten Refinement. Lol.

@Phineas Poe, please reread my original post. This is about the process the ANet Devs followed to improve the class and what could be done to improve that process, not about the class itself. (On reflection I probably included too much detail to illustrate how broken the process was, and as a result some people see this got seen as an class discussion, rather not a process discussion which will explain why it got moved here.)

The question is:
What could Anet change about the process they follow when updating a class that will lead to a better return on their effort?
- Your suggestions, please.

You’re not going to please everyone. They are following their vision for what they have outlined for the classes and if something seems wrong, it is still in their power to change it.
What can they do better? Nothing. If they are not constantly iterating and JUDGING FOR THEMSELVES whether they are right or wrong, then that is what they need to start doing.

I don’t agree with the original poster.

Dimes.7281:

I don’t agree with the original poster.

Which part?

I read almost nothing in this thread because they’re all the same. And also: Meh.

On the off chance that it says ‘Engineer is one of the coolest MMO pvp classes ever designed. HGH needs a nerf.’, I agree wholeheartedly.

edit: I actually started reading, but gave up upon hitting the notion that these forums should be used as any sort of design/implementation/testing tool.

Punkins.2087:

edit: I actually started reading, but gave up upon hitting the notion that these forums should be used as any sort of design/implementation/testing tool.

Have you got a better suggestion?

I disagree that the Engi is in a bad place and that the latest update was bad. People were upset about the KR change but the other changes were actually good. KR will probably be tweaked in the near future because Anet doesn’t have a public test realm. So instead we get patches, try em out, people complain or cheer, Anet gathers data, more changes (potentially) come. Because there isn’t a PTR we get this style of patching.

It’s a tricky notion: do developers listen to the community and change their game to appease them, or do developers (who made the game in the 1st place) continue with their vision and let the players adapt and experiment with what they get? Neither is inherently right/wrong imo. It can be said that both occur. Developers have a vision, they watch how the comunity plays the class, they’re impressed/let down/influenced, they adapt.

I think Anet is cautious with their buffing for the exact reason the OP says they shouldn’t be. They don’t do a lot of hotfixes, so if they overbuff a skill the entire community is going to be screaming OP!OP!OP!! for a month until they can scale is back or otherwise adjust it. Would you rather see a gradual improvement over 3 months or a massive boost, change your build based on it, only to have it nerfed 50% away. Again…neither approach is inherently right/wrong.

Kimbald.2697:

You tell people to stop playing their engineer if they find it is lacking.

Yes. I do.

Because I think the perfectly normal thing to do when you’re not satisfied with one thing/idea/action is to turn around and do something else.

This is not our game. We do not decide how this game is balanced. ArenaNet does. And the assertion that they need to include us into the process is, quite frankly, selfish and instigating.

For one thing, I despise the accusation that the Engineer is “unfinished” or “needs finishing.” I’m sure developers do similarly. To be able to interpret, explain, and apply your own understanding to a conversation is just half the basis of knowledge. To be able to empathize and see the bigger picture is a whole part of the other half—one of which I notice many people fail to acknowledge/understand.

I tell people to re-roll and play another class because that bigger picture is precisely what they need. People complaining that we have no stunbreakers in our kits is Exhibit A of why I feel the necessity to say that.

I tell people that the sky is not falling and that things aren’t as bad as you think they are because emotion is no good basis for any decision-making.

Seras.5702:

I think Anet is cautious with their buffing for the exact reason the OP says they shouldn’t be.

Not correct: I didn’t say they shouldn’t be cautious when buffing. I suggested they a) " err towards over-delivering on buffs", and b) “have resources available” to wind them back if they’ve overdone it (i.e. allow for a proportion of hotfixes).

Why? Because GW2 doesn’t have a large scale test environment and ANet are having to use the live system for iterative development. They’ll potentially get better results faster, if a) more buffs are effective when first released and b) hotfixes are used to quickly tune down the ones that prove OP.

Seras.5702:

Would you rather see a gradual improvement over 3 months or a massive boost, change your build based on it, only to have it nerfed 50% away. Again…neither approach is inherently right/wrong.

This is where hotfixes can be very efficient (remember, they’ve just changed the code for the buff so they know exactly what and how to rescale it). Plus, a 2-3 day glitch is not going to drive people to break their builds. (c.f. the current system where all except the most extreme problems with a patch affects builds for months).

I’m sorry but I cannot get behind this. They are working in the correct direction.

Also I do note the thinly veiled social engineering. You echo the sentiment of the loud forum goers and then follow it with vague points which identify with the reader regardless of their precise opinions.

Also point 7 is flat out wrong. People, in general, are always happy to get more buffs and always unhappy to get more nerfs. This is why you err on the side of under-buffing and over-nerfing. Psychologically people react far better to this overall and this is proven by over a decade of MMORPG history. You are just attempting to appeal to people’s desire for a buff, nothing more.

This is not a helpful thread.

Zenguy.6421:

Not correct: I didn’t say they shouldn’t be cautious when buffing. I suggested they a) " err towards over-delivering on buffs", and b) “have resources available” to wind them back if they’ve overdone it (i.e. allow for a proportion of hotfixes).

Err toward over-delivering on buffs? What does that even mean?

ArenaNet is generally a developer that tweaks and does not overhaul. It’s how they handled Guild Wars 1, and I’m sure it’s how they’ll handle Guild Wars 2. Kit Refinement was a fumble. I’ll agree to that. But the overwhelming majority of work ArenaNet has done with the Engineer on the whole has been in an overwhelmingly positive direction and needs no overhaul in approach.

The problem is that you seem to think that the Engineer needs that overhaul. Do you?

Zenguy.6421:

Why? Because GW2 doesn’t have a large scale test environment and ANet are having to use the live system for iterative development. They’ll potentially get better results faster, if a) more buffs are effective when first released and b) hotfixes are used to quickly tune down the ones that prove OP.

Seras.5702:

Would you rather see a gradual improvement over 3 months or a massive boost, change your build based on it, only to have it nerfed 50% away. Again…neither approach is inherently right/wrong.

This is where hotfixes can be very efficient (remember, they’ve just changed the code for the buff so they know exactly what and how to rescale it). Plus, a 2-3 day glitch is not going to drive people to break their builds. (c.f. the current system where all except the most extreme problems with a patch affects builds for months).

From everything I’ve seen, Anet has no idea how to do a hotfix. If something is broken, it won’t be fixed until the end of the next month (even stuff like world bosses not appearing).

ArenaNet applies hotfixes all the time. I definitely have to download new files more than once a month when I boot up the client.

danbuter.2314:

Zenguy.6421:

Why? Because GW2 doesn’t have a large scale test environment and ANet are having to use the live system for iterative development. They’ll potentially get better results faster, if a) more buffs are effective when first released and b) hotfixes are used to quickly tune down the ones that prove OP.

Seras.5702:

Would you rather see a gradual improvement over 3 months or a massive boost, change your build based on it, only to have it nerfed 50% away. Again…neither approach is inherently right/wrong.

This is where hotfixes can be very efficient (remember, they’ve just changed the code for the buff so they know exactly what and how to rescale it). Plus, a 2-3 day glitch is not going to drive people to break their builds. (c.f. the current system where all except the most extreme problems with a patch affects builds for months).

From everything I’ve seen, Anet has no idea how to do a hotfix. If something is broken, it won’t be fixed until the end of the next month (even stuff like world bosses not appearing).

This was my point. Hotfixes don’t occur often. Yes, I download some files occasionally when I open GW2, but those are maintenence files and system issues, not hotfixes. Fixes are documented (or at least should be) on the forum. Most often, no major fix happens until the monthly patch.

If hotfixes were more liberally used, I could see an ability for Anet to then make more dramatic changes in-game. Hotfixes would allow subtle tweaks. For example, continuous hotfixes to KR could be reverting grenade to its original design but scaling down the damage opne day, and adjusting the length of time the EG’s effect take place the next. A week later they realize nobody is using the new KR with anything other than grenades, they can make functionality changes to ToolKit’s effect.

This is what happens when there is no PTR. And with infrequent hotfixes as well, we get major monthly patches with potentially sweeping changes (Quickness anyone?) and a month at least to play it out before any effects are seen.

Generally speaking, I’m for the direction Anet is going with this game and its development. My only caveats are that new content seems to take precedence over fixing existing problems (bugs, Rangers, pet AI, etc) and that often times skill changes occur as a nerf to over-used builds/skills rather than as a buff to under-used builds/skills.