Office politics influencing balance?

Is it a coincidence that the strongest and safest professions in game are also the most represented during stream made by devs?This is something that has been bothering me for quite a while and I remember one comment from @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" ( can't remember where from ) where he pretty much confirmed what I always suspected.

The post goes more or less like this for general lines : " During the balance process, every person in the office gives an opinion on what should be changed, the more people play a certain profession and the more opinions must be weighted "

The way I translate all this is that the more people play a certain profession, the more easily is to sway the balance in one direction or another and we're all familiar with the idea of personal bias, whether at subconscious or conscious level..people tend to have a certain way of thinking which most times than not end up creating a favourable position for the individual...or the profession in this case.

I have been wanting to make this thread for a while now because the more I look into it and the more it doesn't make sense..I could make dozen of example, so many I could make another couple of thread just for that but nvm that, I will just use my favourite example :

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tornado VS https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dagger_Storm or https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rampage ; tornado has never been used in the game in any serious way from pvp to pve ( talking for general ways, there is always ofc the white fly around ) and it still received ridicolous buffs that never changed the main reason why the elite wasn't used in the first place...meanwhile the other two elites got changed from counterable elites..to pretty much meta status , while having 3x the dmg and utility of a freaking tornado.

The game is littered with such examples ...this maybe : https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Harmonious_Conduit VS https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crystal_Configuration:_Eclipse or https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perfectly_Weighted or https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Final_Salvo ; .in the first case a support spec supposed to be played at melee range..get a single stack of stability when you use your 20s CD main mechanic which put the entire core concept on another CD after use, in the latter case you basically have perma stab....should this still not be considered bias?

I don't even know if this thread represent a bannable offence honestly...genuinenly I'd like to get some insight into this balance process, the ideology behind it , something that could explain why some decisions are being made because from a numerical and logical point of view they make zero sense...will I be banned for this thread? Only time will say....

@Arheundel.6451 said:I don't even know if this thread represent a bannable offence

Hidden rule. If it doesn't represent a bannable offense, it does represent a bannable offense.Discussing about bannable offenses is also a bannable offense.Discussing about banners and fences is also a bannable offense.Oh.. dear me. Goodbye.

There's already a plausible explanation for why most of us won't understand various balance changes. We don't need to invest some sort of intentional conspiracy or poorly moderated internal feedback. If you think something is wrong, describe what that is and why you think it's bad for the game. Make it easy for the devs to see the issue, so they can decide if they agree or not that it's worth addressing.

You're reading too much into it. Of course there's more feedback about professions played the most by specific devs: people can only offer constructive criticism based on what they know. And it's a nice thought that the devs might spend more time explaining their decision making, but you saw what happened with @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" explained how they determined the best of the quick ways to deal with an overpowered rune: lots of people still insist they know better what the devs should have done instead. Meanwhile, as many devs have confirmed, the more time they spend posting about changes, the less time they have to actually think the changes through and make them work.

Add to that the fact that most of us are only looking at a narrow aspect of balance. SnowCrows only cares about how changes affect the greatest possible damage. Roamers don't care about Zerg builds and Zerg commanders don't care about PUG builds. Elementalists players are only satisfied if their prof has top DPS and so on. Hardly any of us play enough professions in enough parts of the game to understand all the playability influences on balance. And even fewer of us have any concept of what's practical to program or test. And finally, even fewer of us can really get a grasp of what these things look like when they are available in the game update.

And even if none of that were true, it's not very useful to use the word "bias" in discussing balance. If a change is bad, the motivation for the change hardly matters. And discussing motivation always distracts the conversation from the actual issues.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There's already a plausible explanation for why most of us won't understand various balance changes. We don't need to invest some sort of intentional conspiracy or poorly moderated internal feedback. If you think something is wrong, describe what that is and why you think it's bad for the game. Make it easy for the devs to see the issue, so they can decide if they agree or not that it's worth addressing.

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You're reading too much into it. Of course there's more feedback about professions played the most by specific devs: people can only offer constructive criticism based on what they know. And it's a nice thought that the devs might spend more time explaining their decision making, but you saw what happened with @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" explained how they determined the best of the quick ways to deal with an overpowered rune: lots of people still insist they know better what the devs should have done instead. Meanwhile, as many devs have confirmed, the more time they spend posting about changes, the less time they have to actually think the changes through and make them work.

Add to that the fact that most of us are only looking at a narrow aspect of balance. SnowCrows only cares about how changes affect the greatest possible damage. Roamers don't care about Zerg builds and Zerg commanders don't care about PUG builds. Elementalists players are only satisfied if their prof has top DPS and so on. Hardly any of us play enough professions in enough parts of the game to understand all the playability influences on balance. And even fewer of us have any concept of what's practical to program or test. And finally, even fewer of us can really get a grasp of what these things look like when they are available in the game update.

And even if none of that were true, it's not very useful to use the word "bias" in discussing balance. If a change is bad, the motivation for the change hardly matters. And discussing motivation always distracts the conversation from the actual issues.

You first say I read too much into things....then state it's normal to receive more feedback about professions played the most by specific devs. I made this specific question during the balance QA couple of months ago and this is exactly what @Ben said , the more people have an opinion about a certain class....the harder is to pass one change on the final list...for better or for bad, the more people play a specific class and the more situations can be illustrated during discussion against or in favour or a specific change. When the opposite happen, the changes go through while only looking at the best possible scenario where you have the perfect player in the perfect moment which entirely differ from the very concept of meta spec and this is the issue for me.

Right now I am questioning the validity of this balance process, it's clearly unfair and not equally distributed among all professions...

Finally you're telling me there is no bias..then how do you explain the examples I have given you, the same type of skill demanding the same strategy and application greatly differ between each other ...a difference based, for certain, not on logical reason

@Illconceived Was Na.9781

Do tell me pls where tornado can see serious gameplay compared to Rampage when they're both transform elites meant to cause disruption..the first is a certain death sentence..the latter is an IWIN elite in some case, something to avoid in others...how that exactly differ from your idea of bias?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Elementalists players are only satisfied if their prof has top DPS and so on.

That's because damage is the one and only thing Elementalists can do properly. If Arenanet gave them better sustain and more/better tools for any other role, then I'm sure Elementalist players wouldn't want to be top DPS, especially PVP Elementalists. And maybe they'd be useful in PVP, where doing high damage is near worthless if you don't have something to keep you alive, like clones, stealth or good defensive abilities, something Elementalists don't have. Finally, in order to perform those high damage numbers they either face a stationary golem, or have their pocket healer/tank nearby to aid them (in raids/fractals) luxuries you don't have in PVP (or when you are solo).

To me it feels like the systems team is balancing around the Raid benchmarks since Path of Fire with little to no regard to how the professions play in the rest of the game. This isn't only about Elementalists (that was my response to the comment about wanting top dps) but nearly all specs, with the exception of Necromancer specs which have been at the lower end of the benchmarks forever.

@Arheundel.6451 said:@Illconceived Was Na.9781

Do tell me pls where tornado can see serious gameplay compared to Rampage when they're both transform elites meant to cause disruption..the first is a certain death sentence..the latter is an IWIN elite in some case, something to avoid in others...how that exactly differ from your idea of bias?

You're making it sound like an elemental or a fiery greatsword are better elite options for elementalists.Perhaps elementalist is a combo based, versatile profession (twice the number of a warrior's weapon skills) so it doesn't need an "I win" elite as a separate skill. That said, the tornado is situationally useful as it provides a lot of area control for teamfights.

Body is 1 character too short.

while its certainly possible this thread isn't helpful in any way.if you just gotta get it out of your system then ok.

We know the devs like to play with their mesmers and thieves.Warrior is the least played class in the game and look how crap the traits and skills are. Just go to the warrior forum and you will see that the forum has the least number of posts.

Warrior skills are bugged,

• bull's charge + 100 blades misses 90% of the times
• Rush misses 70% of the times
• Endure pain eats 6000+ damage from revenants life siphon.
• Fear me has a 60 sec cooldown for 3,2, or 1 sec of fear
• 100 blades has a cooldown of 3.5 sec while our stuns are 3 sec max (this means 100 blades never hits full damage)
• etc etc etc there are so many bugs and useless traits in warrior that it will take at least 20 bullet points to list them all.

The reason why warrior has all these bugs and useless traits is because people do not play them. So the devs don't waste their time trying to fix something that people are not going to play!

Tornado used to do damage. Among other things. Squishiness and massive damage in a single strike.

Balance?

What balance??

? ?‍♂️

Is Arenanet HQ actually as grandiose as depicted in the illustration? If so, I would like a tour.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Elementalists players are only satisfied if their prof has top DPS and so on.

Nah. I think it's a flavor thing. People pick the classic wizard class because they want to rain huge levels of death on their opponents.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

And even if none of that were true, it's not very useful to use the word "bias" in discussing balance. If a change is bad, the motivation for the change hardly matters. And discussing motivation always distracts the conversation from the actual issues.

Motivation for the change totally matters. If a class consistently gets more or less attention than others, that's a problem. We can't just keep eating up what they give us, and critiquing it because it's bad. A better solution is to eliminate the source of the problem and personal bias can absolutely be the source.

Although he heavily implies it, I don't think OP claims to know which class they are biased for, just that their bias for/against one class may be an issue. I think his argument is that Anet's personal bias does affect their balancing process and it's something they should reflect on for future balance.