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I really dislike the counter-whining that happens when bad patches go down. This is probably the most hated patch that ArenaNet had created. We have the introduction of Ascended armor and vertical progression, we have now found out that only two people are working on profession skills and balancing and the previously promised patch that was supposed to give some serious fixes for Rangers contained barely anything.
People are angry and they have a right to be angry. It’s this anger that drives home the point that clearly something is being done wrong at ArenaNet and that they should re-evaluate their priorities.
You think constructive criticism is of help, and it is, but raw emotion is of as much help. It’s that raw emotion that drives home the point. It’s that raw emotion that actually gets developers to be a little less complacent and actually listen to what the community is saying. The anger and hate is the only effective form of protest that the community can use. Your not seeing a bunch of people whining about their class getting nerfed (though this does exist); your seeing a lot of people that are clearly very unhappy with the state of the game. The patch notes clearly demonstrated how wrong the priorities of ArenaNet were. Professions at the moment are filled with bugs and some professions such as the Ranger and Necromancer are so bugged that you would think that they were still in beta.
The whining and rage is good for the community. Let the dust settle and the constructive posts will start coming and hopefully the developers will pay more attention to the community.
Consider it a volcanic eruption and from the destruction the soil is enriched for life to grow.
(edited by Xinceidi.7962)
Wow there’s a lot of anger in here. Let me just say this – 2 people working on traits/skills may seem like little but it’s not that unusual. I do think there should be more, given the massive number of skills/traits, but it’s not unusual for small teams to deal with specific aspects of a massive game. If you put all the small teams together you’ll have lots of people. Indie developers definitely don’t get 2 people to work on skills – they usually have what, 2-10 people, at most, working on the whole game? Big difference.
That said I doubt Jon calls all of the shots regarding what gets pushed and what doesn’t. There is a possibility the 2 designers screwed up and there is a possibility the balance/bug fixes were too complex to test properly.
Which doesn’t mean I’m happy, myself – I do have a ranger. Also I’m not sure how the longbow is good beyond its AoE attack (which is the only reason I keep one) – its regular attack is so slow that I do more damage to things while downed…
As for the trap cooldown, don’t worry; it’s a bug and it’s been stated it’s slated for fixing later tonight.
Nobody would really care if only two people were working on skills and balancing but, it’s the fact that those two people don’t understand the problems of professions such as Ranger and they are spending their clearly valuable time making changed on classes that are clearly of a lesser priority.
- Many trait tooltip fonts have been changed to wingdings to reflect their relevance to actual effects.
- Pets are now passive creatures that simply follow enemy targets.
- Pets have gained a new passive called ‘Wander’ where they will randomly walk around the map. All aggro is now directed to the Ranger instead of the pet.
- Traps have been buffed from a 30s to 20s cooldown.
- Longbows and Shortbows have been replaced with Nerf weaponry. Nerf weapons shoot foam missiles at the target and travel at an appropriate speed.
Hi Anders, I’m totally not here so skip this post and read on…
We made the improvements we had time to test. There are still more ranger improvements but when our time is limited we have to focus on things we know we can fix. Signets and shouts are still on the docket, and I suspect some of each of these will get some love in the next time around. As you can see a lot changed in this build for every profession and we have to test these changes as well.
I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.
I see a lot of talk about ranger weapons, but I don’t think that is the real problem. I think sword and longbow are both good weapons, which is why the changes take longer. The problems are deeper, in pets ability to hit moving targets, trait lines with not enough viable choices and skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds. These aren’t things we can change overnight. The change to Greatsword block was in fact a very difficult change, but we made it because we knew it was the right thing to do.
There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this. Even then often we are bottle necked by other issues. I’m not going to say we are not working on these things, nor can I say there are things we could have changed but just ran out of time on, but this was a patch that contained ranger improvements and it will not be the last one that does so. Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.
Jon
If your critically understaffed then why don’t you go and get some community representatives to balance the game for you. I would much rather have community representatives for each class come together and create the balance changes, then to have two people who clearly have no concept of class priorities balance the game.
It is utterly abysmal that warriors received a longbow damage buff when there is next to no reason for it. Ranger bows are a joke at the moment and currently AUTOATTACKING is the optimal for DPS.
Understand that the community must be able to trust the developers and I cannot trust a developer who thinks underwater weapon buffs were more important than the glaring issues of ranger design.