Guild Wars 2

Atherakhia.4086:

Nike.2631:

I have to admit, prior to this round of threads I was against a player council.

Now I’m considering it if it would give someone — anyone — real access to the people who actually make the decisions instead of a red named secretary passing notes and tossing out “insights” that are so simplistic and divorced from real gameplay as to be offensive. Busted Pet AI is “a broken 2×4.” Yeah, that one is going down in the Hall of Shame.

My only concern with a player council approach is the same problem I had with all those SotG podcasts that Grouch lead. They never looked at the class as a whole, they only ever focused on one little niche and so long as the Ranger offered something in that niche, they were under the impression the class was perfect.

It will be the same with the player council imo. Those who like the condi builds or prefer playing non-ranged rangers may not be able/willing to discuss these topics for the betterment of the class as a whole. They’ll simply accept that the way they play is safe and secure and ignore the issues that don’t directly affect them.

A council or rep system is only as good as the 4+ people that the community feels has a good+ grasp of the class….an open and reasonable mind. I think we know a few people that would qualify.

Is the US electorate system perfect? No, it could be a lot better. Still, it is better than anything else.

A council or rep system is the same idea. Yes it is possible to end up a failure. It is also possible to be a great success. In previous games I have seen both ends of the spectrum. To dismiss it because it might not work is foolish.

How it is set up now with the CDI? Zero chance of success.

I choose a chance for success rather than zero chance

Atherakhia.4086:

Nike.2631:

I have to admit, prior to this round of threads I was against a player council.

Now I’m considering it if it would give someone — anyone — real access to the people who actually make the decisions instead of a red named secretary passing notes and tossing out “insights” that are so simplistic and divorced from real gameplay as to be offensive. Busted Pet AI is “a broken 2×4.” Yeah, that one is going down in the Hall of Shame.

My only concern with a player council approach is the same problem I had with all those SotG podcasts that Grouch lead. They never looked at the class as a whole, they only ever focused on one little niche and so long as the Ranger offered something in that niche, they were under the impression the class was perfect.

It will be the same with the player council imo. Those who like the condi builds or prefer playing non-ranged rangers may not be able/willing to discuss these topics for the betterment of the class as a whole. They’ll simply accept that the way they play is safe and secure and ignore the issues that don’t directly affect them.

There are two things I clearly remember about that show
1) BM rangers OP!
2) Buff warriors, make ‘em even OP, I just wanna see warriors!
See where we are now. i don’t think it’s a good idea.

Nike.2631:

I’d suggest serious sub-division of the topic:

Ranger Weapon Skills
Ranger Healing/Utility/Elite Skills
Pet Skills/Behavior
Ranger Traits

A separate thread for each, one-at-a-time, in that order. With clear ground rules to build on what exists – no complete do overs no matter how much you may object to what is in the game now. Getting approval for change always hinges on minimizing the chaos.

Splitting the topics would have been better, they did the same for the PvE CDIs and I don’t know why they decided to go this way this time. The topic degenerated really quickly and there was lack of guidance, it was more like a brainstorming session than a real discussion and I don’t think the moderators are to blame.

Krugan.7901:

Atherakhia.4086:

Nike.2631:

I have to admit, prior to this round of threads I was against a player council.

Now I’m considering it if it would give someone — anyone — real access to the people who actually make the decisions instead of a red named secretary passing notes and tossing out “insights” that are so simplistic and divorced from real gameplay as to be offensive. Busted Pet AI is “a broken 2×4.” Yeah, that one is going down in the Hall of Shame.

My only concern with a player council approach is the same problem I had with all those SotG podcasts that Grouch lead. They never looked at the class as a whole, they only ever focused on one little niche and so long as the Ranger offered something in that niche, they were under the impression the class was perfect.

It will be the same with the player council imo. Those who like the condi builds or prefer playing non-ranged rangers may not be able/willing to discuss these topics for the betterment of the class as a whole. They’ll simply accept that the way they play is safe and secure and ignore the issues that don’t directly affect them.

There are two things I clearly remember about that show
1) BM rangers OP!
2) Buff warriors, make ‘em even OP, I just wanna see warriors!
See where we are now. i don’t think it’s a good idea.

There was nothing more painfully 1-sided than those things were. Which is why I think a council approach is not a good idea. Unless everyone had such different ideas about the class, that the only thing they agree on is that the Ranger needs help, its going to eventually become a 1-sided point of view anyways.

That’s why I would like to just make 1 thread at a time, 1 week at a time, 1 topic at a time, and gather everyone’s opinions in one place for each different aspect of the Ranger, no matter who is giving the opinion. An outsider/inexperienced perspective isn’t going to be as good as an insider/experienced perspective, but, the way other professions see the Ranger is still valuable.

The need to summarize the threads is important though, and its something that none of us were willing to do with the Ranger CDI…If we can summarize all the posts into an easy to read format like what people did early on to some of the other CDI threads, I think it just might work.

Another problem is that along with lack of direction for discussion. There was the whole discuss other aspects of the profession that need improvement, when the pet is so intrinsic to the profession and it’s balance that all discussion will eventual (even if it is the small ‘while still accounting for the pet..’ or similar) come back to that.

Forzani.2584:

They are not going to reinvent the class like so many think.

I think that this was at least part of the problem from the start. People seemed to have been under the impression that any and every proposal, regardless of how unrealistic, difficult to implement, or contrary to ANet’s conception for the class, would be considered by the balance team anyway. While ANet did state that there was no promises or guarantees that anything at all from the CDI’s would actually be implemented, it probably would have been at least mildly helpful for them to make it clear that wild redesigns that would completely alter the fundamental concept or mechanics would be highly unlikely to be implemented, or flat out off the table, and that the more difficult an idea would be to implement from a programming perspective, the less likely that it would be given serious consideration. And their position on that point is not wholly unexpected due to the sheer time and manpower such changes would require.

Also, as has been addressed by some, the community didn’t help much. How many times did people post proposals to remove the pet completely, even after Allie told us that wasn’t going to happen? How many proposals for the longbow would have resulted in significant increase to ranger burst damage even after Allie told us that the devs feel there is too much burst in the game and want to tone it back, and that burst doesn’t fit in with their concept of the class? It would have been much more useful to make proposals that took those statements into account, and/or to discuss reasons why ANet’s position on those subjects might be wrong (in the hopes of convincing them that they are in error and need to change their perspective).

Obviously it didn’t help that the CDI was not well structured, and that it was barely moderated due to Allie being out sick for half it’s duration without someone else form ANet staff coming in to fill the gap. But we could have shown more discipline ourselves, and tried to re-focus the discussion from time to time when it seemed to be getting out of hand. And I agree that posters who hadn’t read all of the pages (myself included, I’m guilty of this) probably should have asked if their idea had been discussed yet, and if so where, before posting their idea. Then the community gently and generously pointing them to the exact location of such prior discussions so they can read up on it.

It also would have been helpful for the first post to layout the guidelines for valuable discussion (and suggestions of what not to do as it would not be helpful to the discussion), and a second post immediately following that summarizes the major proposals that have been made, and any ANet positions that take certain proposals or concepts off the table for consideration. Allie did post a summary, but it was partial only, was in the middle of the thread, instead of at the beginning where it could be easily seen by late-comers, and it wasn’t maintained and updated. Similarly, she did post statements regarding the mind-set of the balance team regarding certain issues (like their desire to keep pets), but again it was in the middle of the thread, and not easy to find for a late-comer.

I would say that the ranger CDI is a lesson for both forum staff who moderate future CDI threads and for the player community at large on how not to handle these sorts of threads. We players need to be more disciplined, and self-police better, and try to be more constructive and less negative, especially to each other. We players, and ANet staff both need to make it easier to avoid rehashing the same old ideas that have already been discussed into the ground. ANet needs to make arrangements to fill the gap when a CDI thread moderator is unavailable to participate in the thread. And general moderation, from both ANet and from players self-moderating/self-policing, needs to try and re-focus the attention of discussions right away when it becomes clear that discussions have become unhelpful or unconstructive.

Forzani.2584:

Chokolata.1870:

@Tobias: How dare you blame it on the posters?? The topic was poorly moderated from the get go and we had zero feedback on the developer side of things. Never did we get a “we are considering this and that” and the closest thing to a proper interaction was a gathered list that will be shown to the developers.

Im calling it now. Next patch will be a net nerf to the ranger

You are both correct. Horrible format without any guidance + posters spamming unrealistic “ideas” and redesigning the class with zero chance of having it implemented = clusterkitten

You didn’t really read what I wrote, did you? Everyone had a fault in the CDI turning into a wild, untamed mess. Everyone should shoulder that responsibility before we begin to think about moving forward.

It literally was the worst of the CDI concept coming out to be visible, as much as it was a good idea when it has someone (or more than one person) actively participating. Honestly, Chris has kinda spoiled us in that regard – he posts way too often about things in his topics and offers more insight than others did.

bri.2359:

Am I the only one here that thought the CDI was deliberately structured by Anet to fail??

Forzani.2584:

Agree 100%. I have said the same thing from the beginning….and I have been called a conspiracy theorist. I believe the CDI was created to let the Ranger population vent and hopefully placate them for awhile.

Welcome to the internet. I sort of share this but at the same time, if all they wanted was to do that, they could have gotten away with doing a lot less. The CDIs are created for people to drop in and put up what they think about a topic. And as long as you’re not screaming incoherently “you suck because you suck” at people, they’re not going to filter/moderate the topic more than to try to steer the conversation.

From my perspective? The CDI exists as a place for posts to get gathered together from one topic instead of doens/hundreds for them to look at. And to have a designated place to respond to the commentary if there’s something they see they want to address.

To be fair, the only time I’ve seen remotely better interaction over improving a game has to be between developers/coders of Minecraft mods and those who use it. And in that case we’re talking people who do it as a hobby instead of people who have it as a real job.

(I have seen better interaction overall, but it’s been for games released which can’t be tweaked after release, and only been to comment why some decisions were made.)

Chrispy.5641:

• Everyone is allowed 1 post to tell everyone their view on the current state of what the topic is about, and their suggestions for fixing it if they want to offer a suggestion.

I don’t like that guideline. It doesn’t leave room for constructive counter-discussion. While avoiding protracted arguments would certainly be quite helpful, I think that limiting to a single post is too restrictive. It might be better to go with something like this…

*The poster of an idea/proposal is allowed to make 1 (and only 1) additional post regarding their idea in rebuttal/response to another poster’s response to the idea.
*Any given player is allowed to post 1 (and only 1) response to an initial idea, but may also post a single response to any rebuttal to their response posted by the original poster.
*No response/rebuttal to an ideal or response is allowed if it is merely to repeat something you’ve already stated (even if you stated it in response to someone else), nor if it is merely to repeat something that someone else has already stated.
*If a poster wishes to modify their idea based on new thoughts that have arisen from the discussion, then they must edit their original idea post, and ideally include the original idea, the modifications to the idea, and the reasons for the modifications (insofar as character count restrictions on forum posts would allow for this).

That sort of a setup would act more like a structured debate. I think this would promote some intelligent discussion (rather than just a list of ideas), would limit useless tug-of-war arguments, and would force posters to consider what they say more carefully, to maximize their points within the limited number of posts that they’re allowed.

Chrispy.5641:

• No Chrispy calling out someone like a broken record for posting the 150th kill shot suggestion (….as much as I would like to…)(yes, I am admitting fault for my contribution to the mess).

I appreciate you taking ownership of your part in that argument. But you aren’t the only one who made that mistake throughout the thread. There were several protracted arguments where people should have just realized that they weren’t going to convince one another and let it go. So personally I would rephrase that one to be more general and applying to anyone/everyone, and using yourself as an example (to still take ownership).

I would also suggest another rule…
Do not post an idea that has already been posted by someone else, unless your idea is *substantially different.

That one would require us to carefully be aware of other people’s previously posted ideas before we chime in, thus avoiding rehashing something that has already been discussed to death.

The biggest problem I see with this whole idea, though, is that it would require a level of discipline and self-moderating that I’m not convinced the ranger forum community is capable of right now. It’s all well and good to post rules for how such a discussion thread should be managed, but it is something else entirely to get people to actually follow those rules. Would we be allowed to report a poster as “off-topic” if they violate the rules? Even if they are actually “on-topic”, but just not following the guidelines set out? In short, how could we possibly enforce the rules?

Eh… The problem is, making a worthy, interesting suggestion for a profession as a whole is… endlessly time-consuming. Before I had a chance to post my work, the thread closed. It’s so time consuming, trying to work on all fronts, considering every pet, every trait, every weapon, all aspects and issues and bound it within one as short as possible series of post/graphics. Considering and explaining every move, every tweak…

It’s seriously just way too much for one topic. Profession aspects should be split in couple weekly threads like: Weapons and Utilities, then Traits, then Mechanics and Prequel thread when you could state main issues for every game mode/overall and your personal view of profession as it is, and as it should be.

Putting everything in one thread was a huge mistake tbh…
If I were on ANet’s place, I’d make a separated site for these CDIs only and vote polls

Bran.7425:

Another problem is that along with lack of direction for discussion. There was the whole discuss other aspects of the profession that need improvement, when the pet is so intrinsic to the profession and it’s balance that all discussion will eventual (even if it is the small ‘while still accounting for the pet..’ or similar) come back to that.

It may have been helpful to have multiple, more-focused CDI threads that focused on a specific aspect of the Ranger, but only as long as it was taken with the consideration that the class is a whole set of aspects that interact and interplay with each other. In the end the entire class still needs to have balance considerations taken based on the class as a whole. So going with more focused multiple threads could take longer, because not only would they need to compile summaries of the ideas for a given aspect, but they would then need to work all of those complied summaries together to come up with a broader picture. It still may have been better to do it this way, but would have required more time and effort on ANet’s part purely for opinion gathering than they have historically shown themselves willing to put forth.

One of the biggest issues is that with the pet system being so intrinsic (to use your term) to the class, I don’t think that balancing other issues can be very meaningful without balancing the pet system (the foundation if you will) first. So it may have been better for them to run a CDI specific to that issue first, and then another (or multiple others) for non-pet issues. It is precisely the fact that the pet is so core to the class right now that so many of the proposals, arguments, and rehashed ideas centered around it.

But while it is probably more important/critical to deal with the broken pet before anything else, the pet is not the only problem faced by the class. There are other major issues that need to be addressed, and rightly deserve to be discussed. And I don’t think that having them discussed at the same time as discussions of the pet issue is inherently going to take away from the discussions of pets. As the CDI showed, it doesn’t matter how many times people bring up subjects other than the pets, discussion of the pets will continue on anyway until they are fixed. And those other discussions and issues are also valid.

Drake I used intrinsic as I wrongly recalled Allie using it. I checked and it was ‘integral’ to the ranger. Similar not the same, but the context does matter.

I think that it would have also helped to get some more insight into the Ranger Design Philosophy and how profession will fit into all the game modes within that same philosophy.

After the intended ‘sustained damage’ reveal and term clarification the thread got really nonconstructive as many players and all of PvE favors burst and to a lesser extent multi-targeting.

Following that the impression I received was one of that the ranger is nearer to the teams design goal and needs more fixes while everything else is needing reigned in. Or cynically the other 7 professions are why ranger can’t have nice things anything.

Chrispy.5641:

(…)
That’s why I would like to just make 1 thread at a time, 1 week at a time, 1 topic at a time, and gather everyone’s opinions in one place for each different aspect of the Ranger, no matter who is giving the opinion. An outsider/inexperienced perspective isn’t going to be as good as an insider/experienced perspective, but, the way other professions see the Ranger is still valuable.

The need to summarize the threads is important though, and its something that none of us were willing to do with the Ranger CDI…If we can summarize all the posts into an easy to read format like what people did early on to some of the other CDI threads, I think it just might work.

THIS! For the love of god, this! I am of the firm belief that one reason for the derailment of the conversation was the (as the SOTC guys called it) “wannabe game devs” posting their entire redo of the class. Every weapon skill. Every trait. In back to back posts. (I’m looking at you Orpheal.8263 and friends.)

The CDI concept is new so I hope they’ve learned from it, but it should have been more directed just like how you’ve suggested. I am most worried that Allie will be so discouraged as to not give this a second, better shot.

blud.8174:

Chrispy.5641:

(…)
That’s why I would like to just make 1 thread at a time, 1 week at a time, 1 topic at a time, and gather everyone’s opinions in one place for each different aspect of the Ranger, no matter who is giving the opinion. An outsider/inexperienced perspective isn’t going to be as good as an insider/experienced perspective, but, the way other professions see the Ranger is still valuable.

The need to summarize the threads is important though, and its something that none of us were willing to do with the Ranger CDI…If we can summarize all the posts into an easy to read format like what people did early on to some of the other CDI threads, I think it just might work.

THIS! For the love of god, this! I am of the firm belief that one reason for the derailment of the conversation was the (as the SOTC guys called it) “wannabe game devs” posting their entire redo of the class. Every weapon skill. Every trait. In back to back posts. (I’m looking at you Orpheal.8263 and friends.)

The CDI concept is new so I hope they’ve learned from it, but it should have been more directed just like how you’ve suggested. I am most worried that Allie will be so discouraged as to not give this a second, better shot.

Good, she’s not a dev and shouldn’t have been running our CDI. Look at the one that ran at the same time for Fractals. You had an actual dev posting regularly. That’s the kind of thing that gives people feedback so they know their ideas are heard and lets them explain things to us in a way only a person who actually works on the game can.

I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t have spammed the crap out of the thing if we didn’t go 10+ pages at time between “I’ll show this to the staff” and “rangers can’t have burst because your special”

Telling us we can;t have burst because there is too much and that they would rather nerf every other class so we aren’t disadvantaged? lolwut? At the glacial pace they update, the sun will explode before that plan comes to fruition. Pretty obvious why we would harp on that as being a bad idea than just accept it.

They should have also put at the very beginning what was currently being worked on, what is not a possible change, and detailed explanations of what they think the ranger’s role in every major game mode should be. We got none of that and spent the whole time throwing paper airplanes down a dark hallway, with a few flying back with the words “looks interesting” written on them.

Without active feedback, the whole thing was just them crowd sourcing ideas, 99.9% of which they new, from the get go, they would ignore completely.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

bri.2359:

Am I the only one here that thought the CDI was deliberately structured by Anet to fail??

Forzani.2584:

Agree 100%. I have said the same thing from the beginning….and I have been called a conspiracy theorist. I believe the CDI was created to let the Ranger population vent and hopefully placate them for awhile.

Welcome to the internet. I sort of share this but at the same time, if all they wanted was to do that, they could have gotten away with doing a lot less.

Please, go back to the CDI thread and count the number of ‘red’ posts.
I cannot imagine any less Anet involvement in a 60+ page CDI thread that Anet created/owned, and I am convinced this was by design.

This was the staff meeting I envisaged at Anet before the ranger CDI went live:

Staffer 1: Ok, peeps, ranger CDI coming up …
All staff: <groans>
Staffer 1: Come on guys, we at least have to appear to be interested ..
All staff: <more groans>
Staffer 2: So, any volunteers to lead this??
Staffer 3: <drops pen, ducks down to find it>
Staffer 4: Gotta use the toilet <leaves room>
Staffer 5: <spills drink on laptop>
Staffer 6: We need a way to decide this …
Allie: <arrives late> Hi guys, what did I miss??
All staff: <grins>
Staffer 1: We decided you will lead the ranger CDI!
Allie: Not fair!
Staffer 2: Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything.
Staffer 3: Yeah, call in sick or something ..
Staffer 5: Look, this way you won’t have to do the ele CDI ..
Allie: But I like eles!
Staffer 6: We will bring you coffee and donuts for a week .
Allie: <ponders free coffee and donuts for a week> Oh, alright then …

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

I’ll just post it again.

Thanks for the feedback on the idea everyone. I was going to start the Thread last night, but I wanted to change the thread rules around a little bit based on some of the suggestions you gave (also, night classes got in the way. Making an access panel in aluminum sheet metal was alot more work that I thought it was going to be!)

Heres what the 1st post will look like :::

Hunter’s Gathering : WvW
Hello everyone! With the recent ending of the Ranger CDI, and with the muddled message many people thought it sent, I thought it would be a good idea to start a series of threads that only focus on 1 major aspect of the Ranger, 1 week at a time. I think it is a good idea to get everyone’s opinions on any single aspect of the Ranger in one place at a time. This is not Dev sponsored or Dev run, it is a round table discussion that involves the players first.

Goal
To get as many Opinions and Ideas in one place as possible for the Ranger, Keep a single focus throughout the thread, and keep everything clean and equal for Anet and the Community to read.

This week’s topic
Where do you see Rangers in the current state of WvW, and what role do you want to see them performing in the future?

Rules / Guidelines

• (1) – Stay on Topic! Talk only about the State of the Ranger in WvW, and give a suggestion to improve it if you like. Please Try to keep your post count to a minimum so the thread stays as simple and clean as possible.

• (2) – There is no Format Standard. Its your opinion! Format it however you want! Just follow Anet’s Forum rules when you do it. I don’t want there to be a format standard because no matter the reason for a standard (organization, etc), at the end of the day it always means that people will be looking for specific keywords instead of actually reading the thread. I don’t agree with that.

• (3) – The purpose of this thread is to get as many player opinions as possible in one place on a specific subject. No Arguments, No Attacks, (personal, at Anet, or otherwise)

• (4) – Everyone is equal and entitled to their opinion, even if it is as one sided as (“Ranger Sux, delete please”). This thread is focused on Rangers, but non-Rangers are welcome to post their thoughts on where the Ranger stands. It is a good thing to get both insider and outsider perspectives on the class.

• (5) – This Thread will be the main focus for 1 week. Every Week, I, or someone else will post a summary of every post in the thread, since, and we will also start the next Hunter’s Gathering with a new topic.

Any changes you would like to suggest before I post it? Trying to keep the rule count low so it stays simple. I also want to get all the suggested changes out of the way so its not discussed in the thread itself. I would also like the first topic to be about WvW, since it does start next week.

The only thing left is how we are going to decide the topic every week. We could put it to a vote in the thread itself, but, I suggest that we come up with a list now, Giving individual weapons and skill types their own topic, and also giving pets several topics of their own.

I say this has about a 50% chance of working, and yeah….creating and maintaining these threads might not be worth all the work. People are going to go off topic. There are going to be attacks against everyone. And who knows what else could happen? I’m going to try anyways, because if it does work, I think that we’re going to be alot better off than if we never bothered to try.

Hard to tell as I’d rather wait and see how the one topic works before coming up with follow-up topics. For example, if the WvW thread leads into a lot of discussion on specific weapons, it would be nice to segway into the weapon specific threads. But if it moves to a lack of group utility, maybe we should discuss our utility skills and how they don’t provide enough group support.

One thing I would like to avoid at all costs though is ever having a topic devoted entirely to the pet. While it’s fine for the pet to come up in the various discussions (as I imagine the fact that the pet doesn’t work at all in WvW to be one of the first responses), I think a topic devoted entirely to the pet is just going to be a repeat of the CDI thread.

Instead, try to be far more specific if we decide have a thread devoted to the pet. Instead of just talking about pets, perhaps we only talk about the F2 skills, or their controls, or their lack of scaling etc. If you do decide to break it down like this, I would suggest we wait for that big balance patch that’s coming ‘soon’ as we know they’re looking at pet responsiveness and how we use the F2 skills.

And we’re sure we want to discuss WvW first? I know I suggested it simply because the new seasons is starting, but I am just concerned it’s too broad a subject for what you’re trying to accomplish? Just worried it will end up being a general complaint on the Ranger overall as the WvW issues relate to a lack of burst/ae, poor group support, poor pets, poor traits, lack of build diversity, poor utility skills, etc.

A wide open topic might be a good starting point, just because it gives people alot to talk about. That was the only other reason to start with WvW.

If I should start with a very specific weapon or skill type, then, I’ll start with the Longbow, also because it gives people alot to talk about, plus everyone hates how weak it is. We also know there is alot of different ideas on just how to fix it (killshot, speeding up rapidfire, removing barrage, plain dps boost, knockdown or launch on point blank shot instead of knockback, giving more reward for maximum range, etc.)

As far as pets go….Even on the Longbow, the pet discussion is going to come up, because of the fact that Ranger skills don’t scale with power….because of the pet. Either everyone acknowledges that or we just ignore it for the purpose of keeping the topic only on the Longbow.

Chrispy, in your proposed rules, I would replace “fix it” with "improve it’. Game design is generally not about binary states – there’s a lot of iteration and progressive adjustments rather than leaping directly from ‘broken’ to ‘perfect’ .

Nike.2631:

Chrispy, in your proposed rules, I would replace “fix it” with "improve it’. Game design is generally not about binary states – there’s a lot of iteration and progressive adjustments rather than leaping directly from ‘broken’ to ‘perfect’ .

Done.

Edit – I’ll be starting the thread on Friday. The weekend gives everyone more chances to read and post in the thread.

also, the last thing I need to decide is :::

should the topic be more focused on a single aspect of the Ranger, like the Longbow, are be a little more open ended like asking about WvW?

bri.2359:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

bri.2359:

Am I the only one here that thought the CDI was deliberately structured by Anet to fail??

Forzani.2584:

Agree 100%. I have said the same thing from the beginning….and I have been called a conspiracy theorist. I believe the CDI was created to let the Ranger population vent and hopefully placate them for awhile.

Welcome to the internet. I sort of share this but at the same time, if all they wanted was to do that, they could have gotten away with doing a lot less.

Please, go back to the CDI thread and count the number of ‘red’ posts.
I cannot imagine any less Anet involvement in a 60+ page CDI thread that Anet created/owned, and I am convinced this was by design.

This was the staff meeting I envisaged at Anet before the ranger CDI went live:

Staffer 1: Ok, peeps, ranger CDI coming up …
All staff: <groans>
Staffer 1: Come on guys, we at least have to appear to be interested ..
All staff: <more groans>
Staffer 2: So, any volunteers to lead this??
Staffer 3: <drops pen, ducks down to find it>
Staffer 4: Gotta use the toilet <leaves room>
Staffer 5: <spills drink on laptop>
Staffer 6: We need a way to decide this …
Allie: <arrives late> Hi guys, what did I miss??
All staff: <grins>
Staffer 1: We decided you will lead the ranger CDI!
Allie: Not fair!
Staffer 2: Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything.
Staffer 3: Yeah, call in sick or something ..
Staffer 5: Look, this way you won’t have to do the ele CDI ..
Allie: But I like eles!
Staffer 6: We will bring you coffee and donuts for a week .
Allie: <ponders free coffee and donuts for a week> Oh, alright then …

You beat me to it Bri.

Other than creating the CDI post, they truely couldn’t have done anything less….except maybe have one of the janitor staff monitor the thread.

They put zero effort into it. Nada. They grabbed a hunk of meat and threw it into a pit of dogs, stood back and laughed.

Bran.7425:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yeah. The CDI sparked some hope for me when it was announced. But whatever, I hope they can at least change the description on the profession selection menu so new players won’t be steered to some misconception of the class.

So much win!!!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bran.7425:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

More like they want the Ranger to be like the Pyro from TF2 and burst classes to work like the Spy. High risk, but high lethality as well. Burst is powerful but countered by steady, flowing sustained damage.

Problem is that the current dynamic is so utterly different from TF2’s balance it’s like night and day. And, as I’ve said before, the sun will explode before their glacial balance pace ever makes this system a reality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s hopes dwindled dramatically when she posted that.

I would think the over/under for any potential changes for the Ranger would be May.

Substance E.4852:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

More like they want the Ranger to be like the Pyro from TF2 and burst classes to work like the Spy. High risk, but high lethality as well. Burst is powerful but countered by steady, flowing sustained damage.

Pyro is probably a good analogy actually – situationally, they’re really useful but they’re only “meh” outside those situations. They can do some really neat tricks, but lack a lot of options. And a good team might actually be able to get by without a Pyro anywhere.

Kind of like rangers currently – they can do stuff, they have some neat tricks, and they do actually work. But for almost anything specific they’re not required.

Substance E.4852:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bran.7425:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

More like they want the Ranger to be like the Pyro from TF2 and burst classes to work like the Spy. High risk, but high lethality as well. Burst is powerful but countered by steady, flowing sustained damage.

Problem is that the current dynamic is so utterly different from TF2’s balance it’s like night and day. And, as I’ve said before, the sun will explode before their glacial balance pace ever makes this system a reality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s hopes dwindled dramatically when she posted that.

They’d need to realign their resource investment away from festival content and more towards features and balancing updates like they should have been the first 6 months to a year instead of faffing about with keeping the player base distracted before the stated vision would even begin to get close to the reality.

Since release the entire combat system has been heavily skewed towards maximum burst for the least risk and very little has actually been done to change that; which means the classes that lack the features that enable that optimal strategy get the short end of the stick until either they are changed to match the emergent game-play or the content is changed to better enable the short stick classes to be valid.

I’d pity the Devs more on this if they were not the ones making the decisions that led to this. Granted, they most likely had NCSoft breathing down their necks to maximize short term profits at the expense of the long term health of the game.

After seeing how the games under this publisher have been handled in the last 5 or so years I’m pretty much filing them along with EA in the future when it comes to my purchasing decisions….which pretty much falls under “nope”.

Chrispy.5641:

also, the last thing I need to decide is :::

should the topic be more focused on a single aspect of the Ranger, like the Longbow, are be a little more open ended like asking about WvW?

I personally vote for a discussion of the longbow. But keep in mind that I’m highly biased in this regard. I don’t play very much WvW, but I really, really want to love the longbow and use it regularly (and instead I nearly, but not quite, hate it). That’s my vote anyway.

Substance E.4852:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bran.7425:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

More like they want the Ranger to be like the Pyro from TF2 and burst classes to work like the Spy. High risk, but high lethality as well. Burst is powerful but countered by steady, flowing sustained damage.

Problem is that the current dynamic is so utterly different from TF2’s balance it’s like night and day. And, as I’ve said before, the sun will explode before their glacial balance pace ever makes this system a reality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s hopes dwindled dramatically when she posted that.

The Pyro’s sustained damage is quite a bit higher than what other classes are capable of in TF2. The sustained model may work if your DPS was 50% higher than the sustained of every other class and only their burst was able to close the gap. Here, our sustained is below that of every other class and their burst just widens the gap even further.

Loubbo.9852:

I’m just waiting for Wildstar and/or Elder Scrolls Online, right now I’ve lost all faith.

I spend last weekend playing the ESO beta, learning to like it. Looking for ANet to give me a reason not to switch because there are a lot of things I really do still like about GW2. Silence isn’t a reason.

Drake Phoenix.6158:

Chrispy.5641:

also, the last thing I need to decide is :::

should the topic be more focused on a single aspect of the Ranger, like the Longbow, are be a little more open ended like asking about WvW?

I personally vote for a discussion of the longbow. But keep in mind that I’m highly biased in this regard. I don’t play very much WvW, but I really, really want to love the longbow and use it regularly (and instead I nearly, but not quite, hate it). That’s my vote anyway.

Unless anyone else wants to give their say,…..Longbow!

Not just longbow design itself, but the traits for it too. (read Anet’s blogpost about new traits if you haven’t already) I’m sure there are a number of opinions on this already that Anet needs to read.

I’m ok with any thread tbh And with over 20 possible subtopics for ranger, this could potentially take 20 weeks (aprox 6 months?) to even roll out So the faster the better.

I’m a bit worried about flamers/Chrispy’s rulebreakers though. I mean, if ppl want to flame (but do it subtle enough so they can hide behind a fence of a fake ‘defence’ argument), or just don’t follow Chripsy’s rule, how are we gonna enforce it? I mean this is the internet, we can’t enforce anything at all (we don’t even own this forums, Anet does). Fact remains, this initiative is very good, and very productive imo (even the attempt to do it). So I see no reason for Anet to say no against it. The rules are pretty much ok, not to strict, but neither to soft (preventing a cdi flood scenario). Basically it’s my hope that the forum mods, actually just mod it instead of ignoring it.

I suspect that they fired a lot of forum mods (they hired those from different company i remember I read somewhere). Why? Wvw forums got shut down, and I remember very often a mod coming in there closing thread. And the reason often wasnt copy past, but a new post. Meaning the mod actually did his job, instead of doing shortcuts to get it done (press one button to close thread). However after this, mod posts/interventions, are very rare, and mostly reserved for general discussion. Secondly Allie and Mark karbatzch (forgive me if i write name wrong), close a lot more threads, then in the past (mods did it then). I suspect this is part of the cdi problem. If the attention the flooded matchup threads, gotten by mods, is given to cdi threads, it would already be amazing. But somehow that active modding vanished. I suspect Ncsoft fired them… With chinese release on the verge (more money inc no matter what, Anet barely hired new members for chinese release, meaning all money china give is purely more revenue – at least in my view) of release (and the extra money for Anet), firing forum mods seems like a bad management decision.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I’m ok with any thread tbh And with over 20 possible subtopics for ranger, this could potentially take 20 weeks (aprox 6 months?) to even roll out So the faster the better.

I’m a bit worried about flamers/Chrispy’s rulebreakers though. I mean, if ppl want to flame (but do it subtle enough so they can hide behind a fence of a fake ‘defence’ argument), or just don’t follow Chripsy’s rule, how are we gonna enforce it? I mean this is the internet, we can’t enforce anything at all (we don’t even own this forums, Anet does). Fact remains, this initiative is very good, and very productive imo (even the attempt to do it). So I see no reason for Anet to say no against it. The rules are pretty much ok, not to strict, but neither to soft (preventing a cdi flood scenario). Basically it’s my hope that the forum mods, actually just mod it instead of ignoring it.

I got around it (to an extent) by this :::

• (4) – Everyone is equal and entitled to their opinion, even if it is as one sided as (“Ranger Sux, delete please”). This thread is focused on Rangers, but non-Rangers are welcome to post their thoughts on where the Ranger stands. It is a good thing to get both insider and outsider perspectives on the class.

The flamers that normally say those stupid short posts, only intended to tick people off, are totally welcome in this thread, and anyone reading this guideline would understand that (if they do, then there is no need to get ticked off). If I remove the incentive for Flamers to post (which is normally for the laughs that they hurt someone’s feeling), then they don’t really have an incentive to post.

It may backfire horribly, as you should never underestimate humanity’s endless source of moronic tendencies. Also, I have this ::

• (3) – The purpose of this thread is to get as many player opinions as possible in one place on a specific subject. No Arguments, No Attacks, (personal, at Anet, or otherwise)

Arguments are going to happen no matter what, and that will probably just be ignored. But for everything else (stuff that is against the forum rules), if people are spamming, and making personal attacks, or attacking Anet directly, then I will be exercising and making full use of that ‘report’ button at the bottom right of every post you see. I may have not cared much in the past, but for a thread as important as this, I’m not going to let anything fly.

Ranger is good against single, not moving enemys without oneshot aoe skills. Well… There is no enemy like this in gw2. Players kite pets, mobs come in groups or have a mechanism what kills pets. WvW is a nightmare! Moving blob of enemys with one shot!

If you’re still going to post the thread, I’d say wait until Friday after the ready up. I am hoping beyond hope they’ll take questions and maybe we’ll get some answers about this new marks trait. Otherwise a longbow thread now will be troll bait in seconds given this new trait.

Atherakhia.4086:

If you’re still going to post the thread, I’d say wait until Friday after the ready up. I am hoping beyond hope they’ll take questions and maybe we’ll get some answers about this new marks trait. Otherwise a longbow thread now will be troll bait in seconds given this new trait.

Given the number of threads and posts that have been created in just the last few hours over the longbow change, I will go on ahead and wait until after the ready up livestream.

Atherakhia.4086:

Substance E.4852:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bran.7425:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And already there’s the conspiracy theories about Allie’s “sickness” again. Sigh. I shouldn’t be surprised or disheartened, but I still am.

I’ll note, approaching a CDI with the attitude of “well they won’t listen anyway” or “it doesn’t matter, just a publicity stunt” isn’t going to be of any use if they’re a legitimate attempt. All it’s going to do is be not-helpful, and if enough people do it I’m relatively sure ANet will just give up for real.

TL:DR? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

From the CDI page 17
“Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.”

TLDR: “The other professions are why we can’t have anything.”

Is that what you read? What I read is “we need to figure out how to get their damage figures down without everyone quitting”, and “burst damage is generally broken anyway”.

Not that the second one is a surprise to me, there’s few games where throwing bursts around has much of a downside short of allowing friendly fire damage.

More like they want the Ranger to be like the Pyro from TF2 and burst classes to work like the Spy. High risk, but high lethality as well. Burst is powerful but countered by steady, flowing sustained damage.

Problem is that the current dynamic is so utterly different from TF2’s balance it’s like night and day. And, as I’ve said before, the sun will explode before their glacial balance pace ever makes this system a reality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s hopes dwindled dramatically when she posted that.

The Pyro’s sustained damage is quite a bit higher than what other classes are capable of in TF2. The sustained model may work if your DPS was 50% higher than the sustained of every other class and only their burst was able to close the gap. Here, our sustained is below that of every other class and their burst just widens the gap even further.

True, I mean that’s what they want us to be, or think the game should be working.

It’s a nice idea, but they didn’t design the game to be that way and god knows how long it will take for them to change things to match their vision.

Personally, I just don’t see them nerfing the auto attack damage (source of sustained dps) of thieves, warriors, mesmers, and guardians to be less than that of rangers, I just don’t. They said they don’t want to buff us instead so I have no idea what will come of this new vision of theirs.

It sounded more like “here’s our grand 5-year plan so stop asking for burst already” than anything else.

so after we get told that we can not burst because it would be escalating the power creep in the game warriors get a boost to their dmg and bursting capability with one hand weapons…. How does this mentality make any sense in the game at all? it is almost like a huge middle finger to us and the CDI we had…

Criminal.5627:

so after we get told that we can not burst because it would be escalating the power creep in the game warriors get a boost to their dmg and bursting capability with one hand weapons…. How does this mentality make any sense in the game at all? it is almost like a huge middle finger to us and the CDI we had…

Sad thing is that it would be a big boon to our “sustained damage” model with our lack of burst one the axe and sword.

Substance E.4852:

Criminal.5627:

so after we get told that we can not burst because it would be escalating the power creep in the game warriors get a boost to their dmg and bursting capability with one hand weapons…. How does this mentality make any sense in the game at all? it is almost like a huge middle finger to us and the CDI we had…

Sad thing is that it would be a big boon to our “sustained damage” model and they gave it to the one class that doesn’t need more physical damage nor do they need to be able to stack more bleeds in a S/S build.

exactly! what ticks me off is how they are allowing warriors to be the exception in this “power creep” while using the term to keep rangers down and do anything but buff our dmg output in the game and keep us from being in the burst meta that is very much what the game is about with the community.

Status-qou, Criminal.5627, as it is well known the Devs love their warriors. Glad I have one so I get to enjoy it too.