Guild Wars 2

So when you released druid you aknowledged the fact that it gets only one BWE and thus much less balancing than other classes and that you will consider that fact post release.

Where is this balancing? What we got so far were some back and forth changes concerning smokescale and astral form. Do you think Druid is in a good state otherwise?

There are many people that noticed flaws with staff skills and glyphes like staff skill 2 and 4 or the fact that you cannot really justify casting any astral glyphes because you want to get as many skills 1-5 in as possible. The way AF is generated through skills is extremely inconsistent with certain skills like Troll Unguent generating more than 15x the amount of others. You nerfed smokescale but wyvern are the best example for a horrible “pve mob to pet port” and no improvements there.

Quo vadis Irenio?

Transparency would be nice, not so much the Devs looking to the community for permission to make changes, but informing us of things that you’re looking at changing. Both nerfs and buffs, so that the community can provide feedback.

Maybe that would prevent some of the knee jerk “fixes” that had to be put into place. And it could prevent some pretty bad nerfs like lingering light and the smokescale change.

edit: it would be nice as well if there where a community group of pvp, pve and wvw players from each profession to beta test or comment on changes. It wouldn’t even have to be open to the whole community but if the “elite” players from each game mode where brought in those decisions it would make a huge difference. People who consider that class their main.

It sucks being left in the dark, but we all have to remember that they are busy doing their jobs. Getting involved in debates with online communities will not help development. Yes, they could drop by with the occasional statement (which we do actually get) so that we know they are listening, but the time and energy that would be sunk into internet circlejurks would take away from actual changes making it into the game. Devs are human beings too, and the amount of disrespect and general turdiness would eat away at even the strongest soul. Some input would be nice from prominent members of the community, but you’re assuming that these people do not also have an agenda (and the selection process would likely be full of QQ). It’s a verrrrry tricky situation to put yourself in as a developer.

Right now, we can see that the devs are listening to feedback and things are getting fixed (they fixed staff ability queuing last patch – woooo), we just have to be patient.

In short, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it is significantly more complicated than it seems.

aB EXT.1287:

It sucks being left in the dark, but we all have to remember that they are busy doing their jobs. Getting involved in debates with online communities will not help development. Yes, they could drop by with the occasional statement (which we do actually get) so that we know they are listening, but the time and energy that would be sunk into internet circlejurks would take away from actual changes making it into the game. Devs are human beings too, and the amount of disrespect and general turdiness would eat away at even the strongest soul. Some input would be nice from prominent members of the community, but you’re assuming that these people do not also have an agenda (and the selection process would likely be full of QQ). It’s a verrrrry tricky situation to put yourself in as a developer.

Right now, we can see that the devs are listening to feedback and things are getting fixed (they fixed staff ability queuing last patch – woooo), we just have to be patient.

In short, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it is significantly more complicated than it seems.

There’s absolutely no excuse, no matter how much load they’ve got on their shoulders, they let so many things get out of control before saying something, WHaO, smokescale’s active, LL, etc. They NEED to start giving us context for these changes, and for future changes as well. All their answers have been the same reactionary bs “oops, here, have this, we’re also nerfing that because we’re so random lool”.

I don’t know, maybe I was spoiled by companies that can actually manage their communication in a professional manner.

Get used to it.

Our class will forever suck and be the crappiest class in the whole game.
Every other profession laughs at us now.
Irenio just ignores us and does nothing good at all.

Oh wait, he does, he nerfs the hell out of us and ignores ALL the good ideas rangers have mentioned!

Druid is a mess, smokescale was the best pet and opened a lot more possibilities for us and perhaps showed a light at the end of the tunnel regarding our horrible pets.

But no, we got an unbalanced mess they call druid and got 3 completely useless new pets (2 wyverns and bristleback) and got our beloved meganerf for the best one. What is more hilarious, is that the devs are so clueless about rangers and druids, it’s actually hilarious. Really guys, you randomly switched the smokescale F2, and now you revert it and nerf it even more. Who do you take us? For fools? Druid is the ONLY elite in the game that has 0 synergy with its core. Congratulations for pulling that off, Anet.

And keep us in the dark! It feels great to be ignored!

Daharahj.1325:

aB EXT.1287:

It sucks being left in the dark, but we all have to remember that they are busy doing their jobs. Getting involved in debates with online communities will not help development. Yes, they could drop by with the occasional statement (which we do actually get) so that we know they are listening, but the time and energy that would be sunk into internet circlejurks would take away from actual changes making it into the game. Devs are human beings too, and the amount of disrespect and general turdiness would eat away at even the strongest soul. Some input would be nice from prominent members of the community, but you’re assuming that these people do not also have an agenda (and the selection process would likely be full of QQ). It’s a verrrrry tricky situation to put yourself in as a developer.

Right now, we can see that the devs are listening to feedback and things are getting fixed (they fixed staff ability queuing last patch – woooo), we just have to be patient.

In short, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it is significantly more complicated than it seems.

There’s absolutely no excuse, no matter how much load they’ve got on their shoulders, they let so many things get out of control before saying something, WHaO, smokescale’s active, LL, etc. They NEED to start giving us context for these changes, and for future changes as well. All their answers have been the same reactionary bs “oops, here, have this, we’re also nerfing that because we’re so random lool”.

I don’t know, maybe I was spoiled by companies that can actually manage their communication in a professional manner.

I’m just playing devils advocate here.

This was actually similar to my opinion before I talked to a guildy about it, and he raised some very good points. We all act like we’d be better off as a community if the devs had more open communication with us, but it probably wouldn’t actually change anything. It might ease the minds of a few people who genuinely value the dialogue, but we’d all still be here whining like always about proposed changes and telling each other that the other person is wrong. The fact is that the devs have ideas of what they want to do, so they do it. We try it out and give our feedback, which they choose to listen to or ignore. Yeah, it can feel like we’re in perpetual beta sometimes, but this is a reality with most games.

I never actually felt Druid was that bad, it has some uses, Makes pretty good bunkerish builds for PvP atleast, i mean i cant see a use for it in a DPS Specc but at the end of the day every elite shouldnt be a DPS Specc, they’re ment to add a Option not be a DPS Increase at the end of the day.

I mean yeah, information would be nice, but they dont provide anymore info anywhere else, sure rev got attention at the start, but thats cause its brand new, they dont get AS MUCH dev talk anymore,

at the end of the day, they introduced a Healer into it, it was never going to be the BEST of Combinations with what we had, cause it changes us from a DPS Role completely, the only thing we really have to combine it with is Nature Magic and Wilderness Survival turning us into Complete healers, it was never going to synergise with things like Marksmanship and things Because the Elite was NEVER for that purpose its there to heal.

“every proffession laughs at us” im pretty sure Warriors arnt currently, they got Bandaids to make them viable short term sure, but tbh they’re only going to punch the floor again as soon as any meta changes as they ripped Condi from the Berserker giving it more power xD.

Would i like to see a capability to see Druids become more DPSy, yes i would, maybe replace a GM Trait with a Trait that turns CF into a Full DPS working simular to lich, for us so we werent so blocked into going bunker with the thing, but at the end of the day they Dont want Druids doing DPS..

buffing Astral Glyphs would be nice and Changing some stuff around would be nice, but at the end of it druid really isnt that bad, its seeing alot of play in Tournaments currently for a good reason…

what i would like is for every profession to have some degree of transparency not just us. And like I said the devs don’t need to ask us for permission to fix the game they created but being the people who are out there putting these professions through their paces every day it would be nice if some of our feedback where taken into account before making huge changes.

Druid will see uses in pvp and wvw i’m sure, the place where i think some people are feeling it is lacking is in pve. if you don’t designate yourself as a healer then taking druid hurts your dps in both condi and power builds.

and aB i agree with you, as a programmer myself i know how slammed days can become just scanning lines of code to fix simple bugs let alone big ones that can span multiple systems. It would be nice though if the top rangers on the leaderboard from wvw,pve and pvp could check out changes prior to go live. then OP stuff wouldn’t hit live so that people wouldn’t freak out because “rangers can’t have nice things.” It could hopefully also prevent huge nerfs like WHaO that made little sense because to get the benefit fully you had to trait poorly.

also, these forums have gotten pretty venomous. any change is met with an outpouring of hate until some people actually use it and see that it might be decent or not. if I where the ranger dev i wouldn’t want to come in here and talk to most of the people in here either…

Forums are always going to have a good share of venom. It is unavoidable without heavy moderation. However, the Ranger forum is no more venomous than any of the other class forums, and using players’ vocal unhappiness—over, among other things, lack of communication—as a reason to be incommunicative is backwards and unhelpful for everyone involved.

Honestly, I don’t care about the nerfs or buffs as long as we get an explanation. I see every other class get a reasoning behind nerfs (if they get any)

“we changed ABC by 20% because we found that it would be way to strong with XYZ combo and would break the healthy competitive aspect of the game”

rangers get
Devs – “skill ABC was nerfed 400%”
community – “why”
Devs – “(sound of the chirping crickets)”
Devs – “Other skill changed to something unusable”
community – “What the hell?”
Devs – “(sound of the chirping crickets)”
community – devs? explanation? what is going on?
Devs – “1 decision reverted but 4 other things will get nerfed tomorrow”

this reminds me of this clip from robot chicken

Druid was not ready for HoT launch; very far from it imo and is the reason why Anet is remaining silent on it.

Considering Anet’s priority is on HoT (fixing bugs, implementing unfinished content, balancing, etc), I’d estimate Druid is about 6 months to a year off from being polished and ready for prime time.

There is a laundry list of problems/issues with the elite but my main issue has to do with the very basics of it; its gameplay (particularly with AF/CAF mechanics) and the lack of an infrastructure to support a healing class. (These are fundamental and deal breaking issues for me.)

As I dig deeper into this expansion, I’m finding more and more things that were half-done (scribing, druid elite, revenant water skills, raiding support, etc). It seems Anet is biting off more than they can chew and is releasing content before its finished. Reputation means a lot and when you can’t deliver on things that were marketed, then you risk losing the confidence of your customer base on future expansion purchases.

I would have bought the expansion regardless if Druid was ready or not, but it was something I was hyped for and played a part in my decision to buy HoT. I’m disappointed in Anet for promising something (“healing class that would break the mold”) that they couldn’t deliver on by launch date, and then remaining silent on the issue.

I’ve come to accept that Ranger/Druid is far off from being in a state that I would enjoy playing so have decided to move onto my Rev alt instead which has been a blessing in disguise since I’m really digging it at the moment.

Edit: I’m enjoying the expansion, with all of its unfinished/buggy content, but I am concerned on the future of the company/game when so much stuff is left unfinished by expansion launch. It’s an indication that the company is unstable in some way (e.g., hurting on money so need to rush things out and/or more interested in the bottom line than a quality expansion, don’t have the people/strategy in place to set realistic and obtainable goals, stretching themselves too thin, etc.) Since this is the first expansion, some of this was expected and I’m hoping Anet will do a better job on future expansions.

Every time there’s a nerf and people come on here to complain, dozens of fake “Rangers” Post here saying the nerf was totally justified and give various reasons for why (normally with a phrase similar to “Praise Anet” somewhere in the post, Kind of the Devil’s advocate earlier in the thread).

Anet doesn’t have to do that job because the broken community is doing it for them, and by that, I mean Anet is staying totally silent, and letting other people deal with all the bullkitten for them while they stay silent and laugh at our anguish.

Leodon.1564:

… It’s an indication that the company is unstable in some way (e.g., hurting on money so need to rush things out and/or more interested in the bottom line than a quality expansion…

Well, we know it is not that, you can look at the earnings yourself, they are available online. It’s making millions each week.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Leodon.1564:

… It’s an indication that the company is unstable in some way (e.g., hurting on money so need to rush things out and/or more interested in the bottom line than a quality expansion…

Well, we know it is not that, you can look at the earnings yourself, they are available online. It’s making millions each week.

Anet’s motto used to be, “it will be ready when its ready”. (ie., don’t ask us when things will be released because we will release it when we feel it meets our standards.)

I feel they have somehow gone away from that motto and is releasing content half-finished with the intention of finishing/fixing it after release. I was just speculating on why things feel different now.

Just because they are profitable now does not mean they still don’t get pressure from NCSoft to release the game before its ready or that they feel they have the luxury to stretch out development time. Except for WoW, gaming companies generally face the pressure of going under at any given time and sacrifices to quality have to be made at times so that you can stay afloat/profitable.