This is a topic that I’ve been debating with myself whether to open or not for the longest time. I feel that it’s important to bring this up because it strikes at the heart of one of the flaws of GW2’s product life cycle – project management. But for those that will TL;DR, the basic argument is this:
Balance is about iteration, and Arenanet is not iterating fast enough
Fundamental profession, PvP, PvE and WvW bugs and problems remain unaddressed in lieu of fortnightly content updates
I will touch on a few key points:
- A preamble
- Some problems remain unfixed
- New content is pushed in lieu of iteration and polish
- Community perception of paralysis and disconnect
- Community frustration and responses
- What can be done to address the issue
I was finally pushed to make this topic when I saw Cameron Dunn’s GDC lecture discussing Guild Wars 2’s server infrastructure – and what is possible using Guild Wars 2’s Duo system to iterate on the game. Click the quick-link to the “Iterate” bookmark or skip to 35:47 timestamp if you don’t want to spare the 45 minutes to learn about Arenanet’s amazing infrastructure and their metrics that they like to talk about. This thread is also instructive and discusses why more frequent iteration is essential for balance
I want to bring this up because the game is now well over a year past its launch. Despite teething problems, GW2’s launch was one of the smoothest I have ever played through and it is a great game at heart. The trouble is, well over a year past its launch, some of its teething problems are still writ large. Despite fortnightly Living Story releases to support the game, fundamental profession issues and bugs remain unfixed; while community response to Feature patches that include sweeping Balance Changes has not been actioned for months – often until the next Feature patch.
This is a bad trend and it needs to stop.
Arenanet has coded this groundbreaking infrastructure and it is being squandered on providing temporary content instead of fixing and polishing and iterating on their game. This kind of project management has lead to dozens of threads of negativity and more than a few veteran players quitting the game. In some cases, whole teams. Team Paradigm (recently started playing again), Absolute Legends (disbanded), Made in Meta, to name just a few.
Preamble over. Onto persistent problems and QoL issues that remain unaddressed.
On the various forums one can find dozens of threads, often pertaining to – and addressing and re-addressing – the same issues, over and over. This is a problem, because it leads to a community perception of paralysis, which causes:
- A perception of neglect
- Accumulation of negative PR
- A perception of broken promises
As an example, here are a few outstanding issues on PvP:
Leaderboards and/or leagues. Leaderboards were released somewhat buggy, whilst promises for Ladders and Leagues stretch back a few years
- Matchmaking remains hit-and-miss for some. 4V5 and being teamed together with new players has been a source for considerable angst.
Phantasms inherit the Mesmer’s main stats, wich includes Power. Therefore all Phantasms are completly unaffected by Might!
