Do we/players have ANY say.

This is not a complain thread, but rather a genuine question thread!

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.

There are two reasons that I'm asking.

1) There have been blatantly obvious balancing issues in competitive game modes for a VERY long time, particularly since the expansions have come out. HoT was managable, but PoF has become just out of control balance wise, and power spike wise. Classes like Holosmith make the core spec engineer look like a different class from a totally different game. And the amount of conditions a mirage can put out, and the amount of dodges it has, and the amount of gap closers it has, and the clones, is literally a joke (see "lord hizen vs cellofrag, the real definition of broken" on youtube for a pvp example). Same with deadeye one shot perma invis that took months and months to fix but still is a very cheese one shot spec that has resulted in getting gutted in wvw through revealed.

Now in other MMO's, these things would have been balanced, actually, HOTFIXED. Things like firebrand totally outclassing any other support with regards to condition cleanse and healing. Things like being near a scourge meaning instant death to conditions just applying like they are nothing, with no effort, where as before conditions were required to be landed on the enemy, and were somewhat manageable with condi cleanse incorporated into builds (now its firebrand, or immunity/resistance, or die). And how power based damage has crept wayyyy past what should be possible, with 30-50k crits in wvw from stealth.

I've seen countless forums begging Arenanet to fix "X" spec or "Y profession", but nothing has changed. Such "obvious" tweaks and changes/fixes that would make the game tenfold more enjoyable has not been done in years!

2) There are multiple, MULTIPLE well thought out suggestions and solutions that people have listed. I mean if the Devs dont play the game, and at times it really seems like they dont, don't they at least read the forums? What is the point of forums? is it ONLY for players talking to other players, with zero player input/feedback to the game developers? Do we have ANY means of communicating and outlining things that just drastically need to change with the people that can change them?

Because I struggle to comprehend how long we go for something to be fixed, if at all. Every thread I look at is full of salty players who KNOW what the right fix/direction is, but know deep down that it isn't going to happen, or if it does, will take months to change/fix.

Don't get me wrong, I love gw2. I have all but came here from WoW full time, and spent about $1000usd on the game just from gem store in my couple of years playing it (possibly more actually. maybe there is a way to check). The game is the most beautiful out there, and the combat the most satisfying and fluid out there.

I feel like the one Achilles heel is the BALANCING aspect; it either takes far too long, or is non existant. Everything else is 10/10 amazingness.

So moving forward, if I'm to be a non complaining person, who wants gw2 to thrive (it could actually have double the player base currently balancing alone was fixed imo), how do we as players communicate with the devs directly? Or do we just have to keep posting complaining threads in the hopes a dev will see it and maybe remember to mention it to his coworker next monday at work, or maybe a dev logs one one day and reeeeally gets frustrated about something we get frustrated about, so works up the courage to go talk to the boss about it?

Feel free to list your ideas and input as well. Maybe im overreacting? I feel like some of these balances could be done overnight, with just a 10% damage mitigation in so and so mode, or even just a % nerf to a single trait or something.

Say, as in input, yes. ANet has repeatedly said that devs read the forums, particularly sub-forums that pertain to their area of responsibility.

Say, as in decision-making power, no. Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum is not going to happen.

The problem with player perceptions of balance is that there is rarely, if ever, a consensus on what needs to happen -- even if given players believe this is the case. Player suggestions may or may not be really needed, and may or may not be practical. Devs need to consider all sides of balance issues, plus look at the numbers and results being produced. This takes time, and as always, any balance changes are going to displease as many as they please.

You are a consumer enjoying a product. You have no "say". Its not your property (for better or worse).

You give your feedback as a consumer (which is ultimately an opinion) and through your activity and wallet you express your likes and dislikes.

Then Anet decides what they think is the best for their business and what to take into account and what not.

Especially for the balance part. I cannot think of any game that the community is satisfied about the balance (especially on PvP as you seem to refer to) or one that has a clear consensus of what is the most important problem. It would be suicidal to see the feedback given by any community as anything more than suggestions.

They have access to far more data than we do. So a change that seems entirely disconnected from what the community is talking about seems to imply they have no idea what they are doing, while being very far from it.

Balancing isn't just playing around with numbers every now and then. It also offers room to keep things fresh and shake it up a little bit, as people adapt and find new strong synergies and builds that will then require their own tuning etc.

Feedback is surely an aspect in their decisions, but never should it be the sole driver of what gets done.

@"LaFurion.3167" said:There are multiple, MULTIPLE well thought out suggestions and solutions that people have listed.

How many of this forum's balance "suggestions" do you think are actually worth the developers even reading, let alone giving any serious thought? The vast majority of the suggestions made by the player base are self serving diatribes by players who refuse to improve at the game.Should we give a serious listen to that guy who thinks the answer to scrapper's woes is to give the function gyro a bonus to harvesting mats? (it happened)Or all the people who jump into WvW on full glass zerk builds and get wrecked, then rather than retooling, just jump on the forums and say "Stealth should be deleted"? (it happens weekly)The players that don't even understand the difference between "viable" and "optimal"... should they be listened to during balance discussions?

This forum's idea of balance discussion is largely shaped by players who believe that a forum thread is more effective than playing better. They get beat in competitive by another player or in PvE by a scripted encounter and the problem to them is the game, not their performance. It's an ego-driven reaction to the shattering of a power fantasy, not a well considered suggestion or solution to any problem.

I read a LOT of balance suggestions on this forum, I might look at 3-4 on any given day.I think i've seen maybe two good ones in the last six months.

This issue of signal to noise renders the forums absolutely ineffective as a decent method of analyzing actual balance in the first place.You know what's more effective?Spreadsheets.I guarantee Anet has spreadsheets....and we do not.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"LaFurion.3167" said:There are multiple, MULTIPLE well thought out suggestions and solutions that people have listed.

Don't forget about ego. Most people seem to forget that humans are not machines and in jobs of creativity ego's can be the largest. I am not sure how arrogant these devs are but I think people conveniently ignore that ego is also a faster in this.

Forums are a horrible place to make decisions.

Spreadsheets are a far better tool I agree. The problem is who collected the data and how much of their bias is skewing it?

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.Yes. There are any number of changes to the game that were made as a direct or indirect of player input, sometimes a single player making an off-hand comment, sometimes a huge movement.

What we will never have is a vote about which changes are important, which are urgent, where ANet should prioritize their resources. Just because 99% of people surveyed agree that X is bad and Y is better doesn't mean that it is. Just because 72% of people think that Z is a problem doesn't mean that it is. (There are any number of examples of that, too.)

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.Yes. There are any number of changes to the game that were made as a direct or indirect of player input, sometimes a single player making an off-hand comment, sometimes a huge movement.

It would depend on if it is 99% of people responding or 99% of your total customers. Regardless of what your business does if you ignore 99% of your customers that is probably leading to failure.

99% of people responding could be 10 people responding and then no that would not be all that valid.

In the end this is a for profit company that has to think about its bottom line or people lose jobs and pay their bills, rent and feed families. I would expect them to do what is best to stay solvent and not be forced to lay a bunch of people off. After one is on that side of the coin a time or two it gets easier to accept even if you don't like the decisions of the companies you pay for entertainment.

I think a lot of people forget that this is while fun for many of the workers at ANET I am sure it is their job not a hobby. Personally I don't need any valid say in this game. It either remains what I want to do with some of my free time or I just don't play. Thankfully and a really nice reason I like to play is they are not asking much money for playing. Far less than I have spent on any other game like this. I spend less on gems and get everything I feel like getting than many people I know in one weekend at the bar for them. Like a far cry less than that by a long shot.

@jbrother.1340 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.Yes. There are any number of changes to the game that were made as a direct or indirect of player input, sometimes a single player making an off-hand comment, sometimes a huge movement.

Actually, even that depends. Just because we all say we want something doesn't mean it's good for the long-term health of the game. There are any number of economic changes that vast majorities of players would embrace (or have asked for) that would be terrible and ANet wisely ignores it. (And no doubt plenty of exceptions when ANet should probably pay more attention to the mood, regardless of the details.)

This is pretty much true in most industries: a lot of times, customers don't even know what they want or need because they are looking at the short term rather than the long term (and likewise, it's true that companies sometimes are too short-term oriented, at the expense of customer interests).

The point is: just because a lot players want something doesn't mean that it's going to happen. We can influence ANet's choices, as the OP asked about. Some times, however, people say, "ANet doesn't listen" when what they mean is "ANet didn't do what I thought the community agreed about," which isn't the same. We get to offer our opinions; our recommendations and preferences matter. What we don't get is a vote.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@jbrother.1340 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.Yes. There are any number of changes to the game that were made as a direct or indirect of player input, sometimes a single player making an off-hand comment, sometimes a huge movement.

I guess you just did not read that closely what I wrote.

This is not a democracy it is a for profit company.

Even the non-profit I work for doesn't give out votes to our clients. But they strongly listen to what they say on mass and constantly seek out openly their opinions on what they want. Often they are forced to ignore those ideas though because we are dealing with life and death not entertainment.

We have had many system changes in the last five years because of patient feedback that led to a 300 million dollar change in the last two years. It was not only that the employees got a bit of say as well. It would not have happened without the support of all of us either way. Some of that change was a massive pile of hardware that we had no choice in changing and the investment was well worth it from both a customer satisfaction (through the means of employees helping them more easily with that new hardware) and a change in attitude by some of our leaders and the change in direction that was taken. It was totally worth the money.

I think ANET is doing a fine job with their product and has far more happy customers than unhappy and these forums are not a true reflection of customer satisfaction.I have fun playing this game and don't have many complaints. The story is better than it was to start and frankly I play little enough personally I will never run out of stuff to do.

Of course they could improve but for the most part the painter is better left to decide what colors to use on the work you commissioned him to do.

Again the very reasonable prices in this game are a huge drawing factor and the fun is worth a lot more than I pay them. I am getting a good deal.

I actually am in agreement with you even if you need to have the last word so go to it :)

I am a firm believer that as far as ideas from players go, one is good maybe out of eveey fifty suggestions. I trust anet more than I trust players. Many MMOs have fell to ruin due to the devs basing updates on player requests rather than actual game design. It seems if the devs listened to OP then we would have rampant homogenization... It's corrupt a wish and I can't handle that. This is anets game. They make it for us but it's their vision. I want to keep it that way.

Fix one balance issue, two new ones pop up. Every competitive game has balance issues. And every game uses player feedback to combat this. Since it's mostly the player feedback that brings balance issues to light.

no we have 0 say just look at necro balance ever since HoT, nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf, 1000 nerfs later and we are at current necro is who literally a boon corruption bot and not good at anything else that another class cant do better. and boon corrupt is only good in PVP/WVW but where 90% of the content of GW2 is which is PVE it is useless 99.9% of the time which is why I have stopped playing GW2 all together till they fix Condi necro for PVP (that does include reaper/scourge specializations NOT JUST core necro)

@"LaFurion.3167" said:This is not a complain thread, but rather a genuine question thread!

Do we as players, or anybody aside from the devs actually have ANY input at all with regards to the state of the game balance wise? This goes for all game modes.

There are two reasons that I'm asking.

1) There have been blatantly obvious balancing issues in competitive game modes for a VERY long time, particularly since the expansions have come out. HoT was managable, but PoF has become just out of control balance wise, and power spike wise. Classes like Holosmith make the core spec engineer look like a different class from a totally different game. And the amount of conditions a mirage can put out, and the amount of dodges it has, and the amount of gap closers it has, and the clones, is literally a joke (see "lord hizen vs cellofrag, the real definition of broken" on youtube for a pvp example). Same with deadeye one shot perma invis that took months and months to fix but still is a very cheese one shot spec that has resulted in getting gutted in wvw through revealed.

Now in other MMO's, these things would have been balanced, actually, HOTFIXED. Things like firebrand totally outclassing any other support with regards to condition cleanse and healing. Things like being near a scourge meaning instant death to conditions just applying like they are nothing, with no effort, where as before conditions were required to be landed on the enemy, and were somewhat manageable with condi cleanse incorporated into builds (now its firebrand, or immunity/resistance, or die). And how power based damage has crept wayyyy past what should be possible, with 30-50k crits in wvw from stealth.

I've seen countless forums begging Arenanet to fix "X" spec or "Y profession", but nothing has changed. Such "obvious" tweaks and changes/fixes that would make the game tenfold more enjoyable has not been done in years!

2) There are multiple, MULTIPLE well thought out suggestions and solutions that people have listed. I mean if the Devs dont play the game, and at times it really seems like they dont, don't they at least read the forums? What is the point of forums? is it ONLY for players talking to other players, with zero player input/feedback to the game developers? Do we have ANY means of communicating and outlining things that just drastically need to change with the people that can change them?

Because I struggle to comprehend how long we go for something to be fixed, if at all. Every thread I look at is full of salty players who KNOW what the right fix/direction is, but know deep down that it isn't going to happen, or if it does, will take months to change/fix.

Don't get me wrong, I love gw2. I have all but came here from WoW full time, and spent about $1000usd on the game just from gem store in my couple of years playing it (possibly more actually. maybe there is a way to check). The game is the most beautiful out there, and the combat the most satisfying and fluid out there.

I feel like the one Achilles heel is the BALANCING aspect; it either takes far too long, or is non existant. Everything else is 10/10 amazingness.

So moving forward, if I'm to be a non complaining person, who wants gw2 to thrive (it could actually have double the player base currently balancing alone was fixed imo), how do we as players communicate with the devs directly? Or do we just have to keep posting complaining threads in the hopes a dev will see it and maybe remember to mention it to his coworker next monday at work, or maybe a dev logs one one day and reeeeally gets frustrated about something we get frustrated about, so works up the courage to go talk to the boss about it?

Feel free to list your ideas and input as well. Maybe im overreacting? I feel like some of these balances could be done overnight, with just a 10% damage mitigation in so and so mode, or even just a % nerf to a single trait or something.

NOPE.

there are any number of ideas that the devs have taken from forums or redit that have made it into the game.Balance is not anything that should be decided by mob rule. Reading the posts about this the only thing I take away is that people are absolutely sure they have the answer and from 10 people you will have at least 11 ideas for the perfect balance and most of those will be contradictory and impossible to implement.

In general there are a few ways how we can contribute personally to the game and improve it. As the others already pointed out, what we suggest on the forums/reddit or other platforms can be seen as entertainment or inspiration at best.

The greatest impact you have when you play the game actively and share your experience. Report bugs & exploits, but also take part in the everyday life of the game. The developers can test and simulate a lot of different things before releasing a new build, but no test will ever be as useful as participation of the community. We can also influence balancing, depending on how we focus on certain classes/playstyles or even abuse certain traits or skills. If there is an overpowered skill, a great imbalance in the game, the developers notice that pretty quickly and act right on time.

The biggest problem for the players comes from the different points of view. What we see as a major flaw, a world wrecking crisis that can deal a lethal blow to GW2, they barely notice as a potential threat at all. On the other hand, what we notice as a funny bug, might be just the tip of the ice-berg with an actual potential to cause a lot of harm to the game and the community. That is why it is so important to share your experience with other people an report bugs & exploits when you find them. When you have personal issues with your client, also give a signal. But do not keep something as a secret, just because you benefit from it right now. In the worst case you risk a global rollback, which is everyones greatest nightmare so far. Participate as a part of our great community, enjoy the game and share your experience. That has (imho) the greatest impact on the game development.

-

About balancing. We had an issue, not so long ago. A certain individual made a video, suggesting a couple of vital changes for a certain class in order to improve a certain build and synergistic effects of different traits and skills. He uploaded it and people liked it a lot. It was also linked on the forums, where parts of the community asked the developers to just copy/paste everything. The class would be so much better after changing all those suggested things in the suggested way. The next larger balance patch arrived and it contained a lot of those suggestions.

Surprisingly, the patch was not liked. Several people claimed the class was ruined by it and became literally unplayable. The usual "The world ends now!" panic, as with every other balance patch.

We as the community of players know literally nothing about balancing. What looks good in our eyes, sounds good in our ears might be a true mess in the actual game. What we crave now, we might hate tomorrow.

it's called "concurrence". sometimes, you don't have to say anything and you'll just see an update working well on your current equipment setup or something like that.

;)

The forums are such a small sub-set of the entire player community. It would be folly to grant it too much voice as it simply cannot adequately represent everyone.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum is not going to happen.This is what's wrong with asylums. :(

@Edelweiss.4261 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum is not going to happen.This is what's wrong with asylums. :(

Nothing is wrong with the asylumIt's the inmates that are the problem.

and if you can't solve the problem, what does it tell you about yourselves?

or maybe if you think you solved the problem, did you really solve it?

I am sure they collect a lot of data which they hopefully use smartly. But designing according to individual player wishes is unwise. Game design is a complex thing and has a lot of "you don´t know what you wish for" pitfalls. You will ultimately end up with the mmorpg version of THE HOMER - the car built for Homer!

@Yargesh.4965 said:

@Edelweiss.4261 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum is not going to happen.This is what's wrong with asylums. :(

Nothing is wrong with the inmates.It's the doctors and nurses that are/were the problem.There is a reason that many horror movies take place in asylums.

@"Blocki.4931" said:They have access to far more data than we do. So a change that seems entirely disconnected from what the community is talking about seems to imply they have no idea what they are doing, while being very far from it.

Balancing isn't just playing around with numbers every now and then. It also offers room to keep things fresh and shake it up a little bit, as people adapt and find new strong synergies and builds that will then require their own tuning etc.

Feedback is surely an aspect in their decisions, but never should it be the sole driver of what gets done.

But this is a double edged sword. Metrics only tell one part of the story, the players tell the other part. Its only by trying to reconcile between the 2 that you can truly find the root cause of an issue, and adjust so that "player perception" is brought in-line with what the mechanics intend. That sounds like a contradiction, but its not.

Metrics indicate what the players are doing..... but it doesn't tell you why they're doing it. For instance..... If the WvW community is is complaining about DeadEyes dominating, but the metrics show DE's only having a roughly 5% success rate at take downs, why the disparity? The metrics tell you that the Deadeye is probably under performing..... but what it doesn't tell you is why thats happening. But if you observe the players, you realize that the reason for this is due to skill gap between players. Good Deadeyes stand out, and this magnifies their perceptual impact on game mode. Bad Deadeyes are so ineffective, enemy players very rarely realize they're there, unless its 1v1. The metrics say Deadeyes should be stronger, but the Players say the Deadeye should be nerfed...... what course of action should you take? How do lift the lower 95%'s performance, while also nerfing the top 5% to bring them closer to the median (and reintroducing counter play)?

Back when Planetside 2 launched, the weapons on the Terrain Republic faction where substantially more effective then either of the other 2 competing factions in 1v1 fights. So effective, that could start taking fire, turn around, and kill the attacker with shocking consistency. Their TR weapons are model on low damage, high ROF. While the other factions favored High damage, low ROF (NC), and moderate damage, high accuracy (VS). But all the math, the metrics, and anecdotes from TR players suggest the weapons are about even, or sub-par in performance. For months, the Devs stated the problem didn't exist, yet anecdotes and video footage showing TR winning fights where the other player clearly had first strike advantage, and should not have won. Players even ran experiments to figure out what the TTK metrics were like; and most confirm what the devs were insinuating. So obviously this is player perception problem, and all their observing is a gap in skill. This was the logical conclusion. ........ until it wasn't.

Some time after the game's launch, a player discovered an undocumented behavior in the damage mechanics..... "flinching". Whenever a player takes damage, it adds to their accuracy penalty the same way recoil does. This is compounded by the fact that the game has 2 layers of accuracy for each shot..... General Cone of Fire (dictating the area in which a shot will spawn with the reticle), and Spread (a deviation from spawn point). Between the 2, its entirely possible to have a shot land well outside of CoF in hip, and away from the dot in ADS. And this is on top of recoil causing muzzle climb and horizontal jerk with each shot. Flinching went completely unnoticed by players through over 8 months of feature building and beta testing, well into the first year of its post-launch life span.

Once this was made public, a new round of testing was done by the community with this in mind, and the results were staggering. 5 hits is enough to double the base accuracy penalty of most weapons. Since flinch applies at a flat value, high damage and low damage weapons cause the same amount of flinch. Since low damage weapons tend to have higher rates of fire (about 10% over the median), while high damage weapons lower rate of fire (10% under), as a way to balance their overall DPS, this gave high ROF weapons a HUGE edge in 1v1 exchanges. Within the time span of 0.5 -0.75 seconds, flinch plus the target's recoil from firing back is enough to reach nearly half of the max accuracy penalty for low ROF weapons (due to greater recoil per shot). This is around the point were most weapons will miss at least 30% of their shots at Med range. High ROF weapons having lower recoil, also means they have more time on target before the penalty is too high for the weapon to be effective. When your average TTK is 1.2 seconds...... that is a BIG deal in the combat dynamics.

Now you might be asking "If thats the case, why did the metrics not show this?". Well..... you can attribute that to Player adaptation. Players will avoid situations or strategies that they know they at a disadvantage, and try to manipulate the play field to gain an advantage. And thats exactly what the NC was doing. Through a lot of trail and observation, it was found that their weapons were most effective within a small range band at Medium range. Since that was where they worked best, NC players made a conscious effort to try and get their target within that range before opening fire. Incidentally, this is always the band where TR lose their hip fire advantage; since their weapons were most effective up close and short range. The reason the metrics couldn't show this, is because the metrics were mostly focused "kill by" and "kill with" and damage contribution by %...... IE the equivalent of Golem DPS metrics for GW2. Simply put, it didn't have a way of reliably determining the tactics the players were employing, despite having distance included in the metric data.

When its all said and done, with this extra layer of information about flinch factored into the metrics data, it paints an entirely different story. Before the metrics showed them to be more or less even in kill stats. But now, it draws the conclusion that the NC were actually holding up despite being at a mechanical disadvantage. The metrics were in fact correct (for the data being gathered)..... but the conclusion the Devs drew from it was not. They since changed Flinch to scale based on damage inflicted.... lowering the flinch of TR weapons, while increasing the flinch of NC weapons. In the first month that followed, there was a notable increase in KDR (around 12% avg) for weapon pairing between NC and TR, in favor of the NC weapons. A few select weapons also saw immediate jump in avg % of head shots.

Long story short..... I've seen what happens when Devs rely too much on raw metrics, at the exclusion of observation and/or player psychology/behavior. Even to this day, I see a couple of the balance devs whose decisions seems to reflect this type of mind set.

Actually I can think of two examples where ANET listened to players.

1. The player base in WvW complained for a long time about the lack of variety in the maps used there (there were 3 maps the same and one different for those who never venture in). ANET spent ages creating a third map called Desert Borderlands, and had to face a lot of player criticism when it was introduced. I know this simplifies what actually happened but it does summarise it. I felt rather sorry for the devs who spent time on this project in good faith only to see it flamed in the forums, and even though this happened years ago there are STILL players who refuse to play on the one instance of this map that was left in the game.

2. The WvW community complained for ages about lack of proper rewards, with WvW-only players crying "why do you make us do PvE to get stuff?". Now the rewards system is much improved, and most things can be obtained while remaining in WvW alone.

I know these two examples are WvW based but there are PvE examples too - mounts is a recent one.

In short, I think ANET listens. They can't please every one, and most stuff takes longer than we think to create, but I do think they respond to some of the ideas we put forward. Whether you think this means we have any say in the game, I don't know.