Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Balance Team QA


Ithilwen.1529

Recommended Posts

Over the past 5 years, I have watched the streams, observed in game and on forum and spoken to ANET devs in person. I have come to several conclusions.

One of them is that design balance and balance patches are strongly influenced by staff interaction (viz) office politics.

It is my belief that several sub-optimal balance decisions can be traced to this cause.

I propose that ANET QA should add an additional layer, a sort of referee to check balance decisions. This person or persons should have no particular ties to any of the balance team. Such a check would improve final balance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I disagree. All they need is more people on the balance and skills team. Its way understaffed, and the most common answer that they do give in their rare AMAs is always "We wanted to do X but didn't have the time". Adding yet another layer for them to go through would only ensure that the balance patches we get will be even smaller and less frequent.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ithilwen.1529 said:Over the past 5 years, I have watched the streams, observed in game and on forum and spoken to ANET devs in person. I have come to several conclusions.

One of them is that design balance and balance patches are strongly influenced by staff interaction (viz) office politics.

It is my belief that several sub-optimal balance decisions can be traced to this cause.

I propose that ANET QA should add an additional layer, a sort of referee to check balance decisions. This person or persons should have no particular ties to any of the balance team. Such a check would improve final balance.

In theory, there's an entire set of alpha player testers out there who see the proposed changes before we hear about them. So whatever is going on is almost certainly not because they are missing "referees" or "outsiders".

You might be correct that there's some self-censorship going on, where Dev A doesn't want to question Dev B's choices, because B is dating A's sister or A is about to ask for a raise. But if that's going on, then that won't be solved by throwing more people at the discussion; it will be exacerbated. Those are issues that require good managers to identify and deal with.

Regardless I don't think any of us have enough idea of what's going on inside of ANet HQ to offer a useful opinion about how they should or should not organize.

tl;dr proposed solution probably doesn't address the root cause

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I doubt that there is extensive alpha testing being done. If that were the case, some things would not have made it to the public game. I can recall a time when most PvP teams were made up of 5 hambow warriors and another time when it was petting zoo rangers...

As to having "good managers" deal with issues.. this is precisely what I am proposing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am going to stand up for all the teams that go into making a profession, class and elite. It goes even beyond the skills and balance team, there are concept and art teams, animators and sound teams all working in conjunction together to make the final product. Countless people all discussing what they think we will want and what they can actually produce. The elite specialisations should be considered as much all the development teams babies just as they are ours. They want the best outcome for them and hope we liked what they created.

Please guys and girls no pitch forks. We should be sending our love and support at this believe it or not stressful time for the devs especially the skills and balance team that put on brave faces whilst they are often criticised and receive negative feedback all taking it on the chin and never biting back. That just shows the strength of there characters to remain calm, dignified and humble, in the face of those few who approach with harsh word in a horde with pitchforks.

Lets all remain calm, positive, friendly and supportive. Trust me all will work out just fine. Give it time you will see when Path of Fire launches next week.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ithilwen.1529 said:As to having "good managers" deal with issues.. this is precisely what I am proposing.

First, you proposed adding a "referee" -- that's not the same as a manager responsible for staff, in charge of ensuring that they grow as employees, work effectively with others, and find their niche.

Second, there's no way to "suggest" that a company hire effective managers. A healthy company would already be doing it; a weak company wouldn't know how to.

In other words, even if you're correct that personal biases are interfering in ANet's profession balancing, we can't do anything about that aspect -- that's something that ANet has to recognize internally and fix internally.

So the best thing we can offer is to point out specific examples, offer our ideas for what we think the root causes of certain issues are, and propose solutions (without getting so specific that it defeats the purpose).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't suggested hiring effective managers. Rather, I have suggested that The Skills and Balance Team needs a manager. In my opinion, internecine friction in that team causes some balance decisions, ( both in the design and patching phases,) that are not optimum.

Skill and Balance must be neutral to all classes. To play favorites defeats the purpose of a Balance Team.

ANET has managers capable of enforcing this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ithilwen.1529 said:I haven't suggested hiring effective managers. Rather, I have suggested that The Skills and Balance Team needs a manager. In my opinion, internecine friction in that team causes some balance decisions, ( both in the design and patching phases,) that are not optimum.

Skill and Balance must be neutral to all classes. To play favorites defeats the purpose of a Balance Team.

ANET has managers capable of enforcing this.

We're just quibbling about the phrasing -- you're still explaining to ANet how they should manage their employees and/or teams. If their middle/senior management sees that there's an issue, they will address it. And if they don't see it, telling them to hire new staff isn't going to help them.

So instead of focusing on justifying your solution, it might be more effective if you focused on giving concrete examples of how favoritism has damaged gameplay. Or if you can't (e.g. if people spoke to you confidentially), clearly identify balance holes that need addressing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh, I'd really like for there to 1) be a forum consultant, who just consolidates profession forum opinions and conveys them to the devs in a comprehensive message (as we were promised there'd be), and 2) be a main of each profession on the balance team, at least one, and 3) be some transparency in balance decisions.

For a long time now, it has felt like there's this huge disconnect between the Devs and the Playerbase, like a whole lack of communication in which they only post once in a while to either help solve a simple question about mechanics or accept some form of appreciation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been playing over 5 years now. I have seen "favorite classes" come and go with some regularity during that time. Those favorites have been confined primarily to a subset of classes. Typically, a favored class will be allowed to go with an overly powerful situation until the feedback becomes intense. By contrast, a disfavored class has sometimes been nerfed within minutes of the release.

Long time players, I think, will have to agree that there have been clear favorite classes through most of the game's history. In my opinion, this is the root of many balance issues. It also contributes to the low population in PvP.

Favored classes reflect a lack of neutrality on the part of the balance team.

Some examples; Early trap dh, Hambow Warrior, Petting Zoo Ranger, the pvp dominant turret engineer and The nearly 2 years that Mesmer was considered "trash tier" after the big glamour nerf. Mesmer did not receive much if any effective help during that time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...