What should Anet focus on?

Obviously devs spend time and money in order to create new content like living world seasons. If you could shift their focus towards balancing and reworking broken or useless specs and professions, but be left without new living world maps for awhile...would you prefer that?

Perhaps, the different teams are working on both. Pretty sure content creators aren't the ones responsible for balance.

As I understand it there will be very little cross-over between the people doing these things. The people who design and build maps, write story lines, even the people who design the rewards won't be the people who make balance changes or even people who could.

It's like asking why my work don't put me on to updating the website. There's a lot of work which needs doing, and I work on databases and guidance documents so it's basically the same thing right? Except I know nothing about updating the website and my limited experience making websites has shown me I'm no good at it. They'd spend more time walking me through it and fixing my mistakes than doing work.

But also I've never seen a game which players think is well balanced, there's always something which people complain about, or several things because different people want different changes. It's worth doing some balancing of course but dropping everything else to focus on it isn't going to make the perception of the game being balanced better, it just gives us less to do with our constantly updated skills.

@Danikat.8537 said:

But also I've never seen a game which players think is well balanced, there's always something which people complain about, or several things because different people want different changes. It's worth doing some balancing of course but dropping everything else to focus on it isn't going to make the perception of the game being balanced better, it just gives us less to do with our constantly updated skills.

In half the game modes there is one profession which dominates certain roles. Then there are the other professions/specs which exist, but are never wanted/used for anything.

Let's take elementalist, for example. You have core ele, but what is it good for? When and where is it ever needed?Then there is tempest. It can support...but worse than everyone else because it doesn't offer anything unique compared to other professions/specs.Finally, we have weaver, which is used for both pve and pvp. However, it still is somewhat lacking while other professions can do more for less work and button mashing.

So, you have one profession which supposedly has three different ways to be played, but in truth only a single one is good for something. What's the point of the other two then? Now this is poor balancing if I have ever seen one.

People who balance profession don't make maps -.-"

@"segman.3560" said:People who balance profession don't make maps -.-"No, but the development of maps consumes resources which could possibly be spend on the balance team.

How so? Are you suggesting the content creators be let go, and hire different devs to be trained in the ways of GW2? I'm not sure another content drought and a long period of time before a balance patch would go over well.

@EpicName.4523 said:

@"segman.3560" said:People who balance profession don't make maps -.-"No, but the development of maps consumes resources which could possibly be spend on the balance team.

So you suggesting firing content creators and hiring more people into balance team? MMO, especially gw2, without new content will die. Fast.

Weird choices and weird assumptions always warrant your trusty memes.

Proper balance does not exist and I don't even play meta builds (don't care about balance much) sooo content! :)

Different teams work on different parts of the game, it's unresonable to think those working on balance could be used to make more maps (or the opposite)

Now In a fantasy world that every member of the team could work on any type of content, then I'd probably reduce the man power working on gem store items and put more resources on both new living world releases AND balance.

Expansion actually...

To be honest I feel like they have stepped up their balance game lately. Sure there are still many issues, but it seems like they have made balance a bigger priority overall in 2018. We have gotten 3 class/spec reviews and as far as I can remember, more frequent balance patches.

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:To be honest I feel like they have stepped up their balance game lately. Sure there are still many issues, but it seems like they have made balance a bigger priority overall in 2018. We have gotten 3 class/spec reviews and as far as I can remember, more frequent balance patches.

Yes, balance patches are much more frequent now.

I also think they are working actively on doing better balance, with that said I also think there are still outliers/blunders.

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:To be honest I feel like they have stepped up their balance game lately. Sure there are still many issues, but it seems like they have made balance a bigger priority overall in 2018. We have gotten 3 class/spec reviews and as far as I can remember, more frequent balance patches.

Pretty much this.

Voted for more maps cause i mainly PVE: However even there itd be nice to have.

I sincerely hope that ANet is looking at more than just those two ideas when planning for the next few years. Besides which, it's pretty clear that they can work on both new maps/content and profession balance. Plus, the sort of people that work on new maps, stories, achievements aren't the ones that balance the profs.

And finally, who cares what I want? The game's health depends on ANet looking at what's best for everyone in the long run, not just what seems to be important to the loudest voices today.

So instead of asking, "what do you want," I prefer to ask: to keep the going strong in two years, what will matter the most to the most people? Should there be a focus on a single type of player? Or should ANet work on a number of things that are important?

Or maybe the OP is simply trying to point out that they think the professions aren't balanced and would like more time devoted in that direction. If that's the case, it would make a bigger impact just to say, "I'd like more attention on profession balance." The balance team seems small relative to the size of other teams and it's a complicated job, so it might be worth a 6 or 12 month initiative that adds a few more (talented) people into the mix, with specific goals in mind (e.g. ensuring every class has a top tier DPS benchmark from the top 40% of players or adding ongoing transparency to the process etc).

I think you'd get the same votes if the poll options were reworded as:

I mainly play PvEI mainly play WvW or PvP

Well, with this poll I wanted to promote the idea that this game needs more balancing./reworks. Core professions are, with few exceptions, useless after you get your elite specs.Out of those elite specs often only one is actually good for something - again, with few exceptions like Mesmer. This leaves very little gameplay variation. Very little.

For me, the LWS maps are a boring grind where occasionally you can get a few good stuff like the beetle mount. Once I have gotten what I wanted from the map I leave it and never come back to it again. Ever. (Except HoT LW maps for the trinkets)

I want to have options when I play. I want to try out different stuff and have a good time without feeling underpowered or undesired. My wish was that instead of pumping out more content like maps I will never visit again, Anet tries harder to make sure that every gameplay option of a class is viable for at least one thing. They have already started reworking some professions, but with the current pace the devs will just release a new expansion, bring more power creep and we will again end up in the same situation.

I would like both, as long as we don't get rushed LW episodes like the last one. It seems like they just need to take more time as opposed to rushing content and making back and forth balance patches as they seem to be doing currently. I would be perfectly fine with longer waiting times between patches and LW episodes in exchange for better content and balances.

Well there are only two choices so I picked the first one. I do not believe in class balance in MMOs because there are too many variables and I think that developers have a completely different view on what class balance means than a lot of players. But class balance is something that is done regularly anyway and never really the main focus, nor should it be. More content is king for me in that.

Besides, the way classes, skills and trait system are something I'd much rather see redone in a big way. But even that is secondary to new content. In the end I'd rather have more content and new things to do, albeit with a less than perfect combat system and class balance than have relatively good class balance (which I think is the max possible) but having to do the same stuff over and over again. That might be a thing for PvP but for PvE it doesn't keep people playing. People need stuff to do. I never got how PvP'ers can play the same 10 (randomly picked number) PvP maps for years and not be bored out of their minds, but hey, to each their own.

Class balance as a main focus though is a waste of time really cause it's never really going to happen and needs to be done regularly in any case to keep it at least reasonable.

Balance Doesnt exist! Waiting to some kind of "Balance" patch is like a racial minority waiting for a law that makes races equal. doesnt exist, but sounds good on paper. There will always be a imbalance unless everybody was the same.

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:To be honest I feel like they have stepped up their balance game lately. Sure there are still many issues, but it seems like they have made balance a bigger priority overall in 2018. We have gotten 3 class/spec reviews and as far as I can remember, more frequent balance patches.

Still voting for more content...there will always be outliers, it's just a fact of life that outliers will always exist in every thing.

I choose more content.

Apart from the fact that these two are handled by different dev teams, balance is a constantly evolving thing. It doesn't matter how much resources Anet pours into balance, their small test team will always miss something, versus several hundred thousand players who play one profession and eventually dig out every single unbalanced possibility of situationally broken skills, bugs and trait combinations. Keep in mind there are 27 possible profession choices (cores and elites), and a near-infinite number of skill/trait/weapon/gear stat combinations out there; it would be impossible for Anet to identify every possible opportunity of imbalanced gameplay no matter how big their resources were. In order to fix things faster, they would have to introduce a test server where they gather data on a new balance patch to see what works and what doesn't, and then release the polished version into the final game.

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I feel like the balance is in a pretty good state right now. Sure, some professions and elites could always use tweaking, but I'm sure they will be tweaked in time. Usually if there's a completely, absolutely broken mechanic somewhere Anet is pretty quick to fix it.

Where is the both option?

Devs who work on developing story are different than the ones who develop maps. And a different devs team performs class balance. They are not mutually exclusive by any stretch.