Guild Wars 2

Instead of responding to the dozen individual debates breaking out on this subject, I’m putting it in its own thread in an attempt to put to rest this pointless argument:

It is 2013, I thought the MMO community had figured this out a decade ago. Something can be both a bug fix and a nerf. A nerf does not denote the intent to weaken something for balance reasons, merely that something is weakened. As much as some developers think they have 100 % control of the mechanics that make up the dynamics of their game, they don’t. The majority of gameplay exists between what developers establish and what the playerbase uses.

As a result, the majority of gameplay dynamics in play at any given time aren’t “intentional” in the sense that it isn’t the developer’s jobs to create gameplay, merely to establish the mechanics with which the playerbase does so.

As time goes on, these gameplay dynamics are expanded upon by players and will eventually meet one of two fates:
A. They’re “legitimized” by new developer-created mechanics that support the existing dynamic.
B. They’re determined to be upsetting to balance and “fixed”.

Look at a more mature MMO like EverQuest and you’ll see many examples. The trail to modern EQ is littered with the corpses of unintentional dynamics (mostly combinations of spells/skills) that were declared bugs and “fixed”. These were all nerfs as well, inarguably. Conversely, fully half or more of what players “do” in modern EQ could at one time be considered bugs or exploits and legitimately nerfed into the ground at any given time. At some point in history, a developer decided “you know, this makes the game more fun” and created new mechanics (gear, spells, or abilities) to support an existing gameplay dynamic.

This method of game development is good at incorporating new ideas and letting players develop engaging gameplay on their own as opposed to developers laying it all out for them. The fatal flaw is this: Sometimes dynamics will fall into the second category (must be fixed) long after the playerbase has chosen to incorporate them into the overall game dynamic, and often after at least some developers have done so as well.

A very simple example would be if one class/profession was bugged to have worse-than-intended defense. Players develop gameplay dynamics around the reality of this mechanic, they play that class/profession more offensively, they press developers to develop it in that manner, and eventually the class/profession evolves into something that is based around the reality of that unintended mechanic (low defense). The bugfix comes along, and the class is actually thrown out of balance because the game has evolved to account for that unintended mechanic.

To understand how that happens you have to understand that balance is a two way street, as much as some people like to believe it isn’t. Classes/professions evolve based upon the preferences of the playerbase as well as the preferences of the developers. This isn’t as simple as mere feedback, although “we want this” is important. The majority of feedback is subliminal, and contained simply within the types of playstyles and dynamics players develop to be effective with a given class/profession. These dynamics are rarely intentional, and professions aren’t always played the way developers likely intended on paper (“What do you mean the thieves are just going into stealth as often as possible mid-combat for stealth strikes instead of using the awesome traps/venoms?”) Good developers, however, recognize fun player-developed playstyles and dynamics and strive to build upon them. What you get after years is an entity not wholly created by developers nor players, but a compromise that gives developer-created structure to player-created tactics and ingenuity in applying their toolset. At some point unintended dynamics, be they bugs or merely unanticipated implementations of a given toolset, become part of the profession. Further, much player feedback can be gleaned from what goes unsaid, for instance a profession whose damage is broken in a positive way will not ask for more damage since they are satisfied, and a fix can disrupt this balance after years of the game accounting for it.

To bring this back to the specific example in GW2: Infinite Shadow Return was a player application of an unintended mechanic. It is a bug, absolutely, but it was part of the profession at this point as well. The developers had two options: they could’ve nurtured the dynamic by supporting it with new mechanics (changing the description, reworking the pathing, or even something like benefits for returning over longer distances), or they could bring it back in line with the intended mechanics (the nerf they implemented). They’re both viable choices, but they have real effects that cannot be ignored. Some portion of the thief community had come to rely on this unintended mechanic as a method of mobility. As a result, the subliminal feedback (how they played, what they didn’t ask for) of those thieves changed, the desires of the thief community changed, and the thief was balanced around a bug. Now, a year is not a long time (there’ve been 5-6 year examples of ingrained mechanics being removed in older MMOs), so damage to the profession wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but the idea that it wasn’t a nerf and could not affect balance simply because it wasn’t originally intended is patently false.

tl;dr – Infinite Shadow Return (and as a result, the thief profession) was nerfed by a bug fix. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that statement.

In response to your TL;DR, I can agree that Shadow Return is buggy but the change did not address what’s wrong with it.

To change something to fix a bug — yes it’s a bug fix.
To change something with the intention of weakening — that is a nerf.

Looking at Shadow Return, the bug was never fixed instead the “fix” introduced many other bugs. The change was an obvious nerf because none of the bugs reported were ever addressed given that this is their opportunity to make the fix.

Anet call it a bug fix and everyone just start chanting “bug fix bug fix.”

But I, for one, am willing to concede. If the reason it is bugged is because the skill doesn’t function based on what the tooltip says so, then they better fix every single skills based on the tooltip.

Ooh, I can’t wait for their reasons to wiggle out of this one.

Return to your original location
It no longer does this, bugged.