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So....Anet's professions balance patches in a nutshell?


Ultramex.1506

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I'm not a competitive type so i'm not sure if Anet's changes to professions skills/mechanic are good or bad but some changes i really like such as banner and gyro. But i wanted to know the typical behavior of Anet when it come to balance and these are how i see it, correct me if i'm wrong

  • Any skill that work as intended but too effective will get nerfed and became useless?
  • Skills that people have asked to nerf are instead either buffed or ignored? Or Vice versa
  • Changing profession mechanic with 50/50 chances of upsetting people (Daredevil's steal changed to Swipe with shorter range)?
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This is my first and only mmorpg that I have played more than 30 hours. I have come to conclusion that developers, probably goes for all mmos, don't even want to balance the game. It's probably intentionally that they put in bunch of random changes in order to keep things cough interesting and forcing people to keep adapting, grinding new gear, changing builds, switching classes and so on, in order to give them something to do and not quit the game 2 days after new episode release.I can't find any other explanation on how it would otherwise be possible to not be able to balance bunch of skills in 6 years, changing same skills 50x in over the years and still have unbalanced game.It doesn't even feel like my character is progressing and getting better, because same skill changes so much and so many times, it doesn't even feel like my character can control his abilities.

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@serialkicker.5274 said:This is my first and only mmorpg that I have played more than 30 hours. I have come to conclusion that developers, probably goes for all mmos, don't even want to balance the game. It's probably intentionally that they put in bunch of random changes in order to keep things cough interesting and forcing people to keep adapting, grinding new gear, changing builds, switching classes and so on, in order to give them something to do and not quit the game 2 days after new episode release.I can't find any other explanation on how it would otherwise be possible to not be able to balance bunch of skills in 6 years, changing same skills 50x in over the years and still have unbalanced game.It doesn't even feel like my character is progressing and getting better, because same skill changes so much and so many times, it doesn't even feel like my character can control his abilities.

That's sound logical

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I mean, if you change Fire Shield to Fire Aura and have an e-spec completely shut down for 21 days because traits weren't set to proc with the new name, I guess you already know my answer for the rest.

Killing fire with fire, that's what I am seeing, but as far as I remember, fire wasn't in the extinguishing triangle. While adding few water drops to the sea to make it less salty, but does it? And when things get out of hand, you let chaos consume itself before you drop the hammer and now 'order' rules for a few more centuries, forgetting there once was a source of chaos.

Middle ground? What's that?

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In a nutshell?

  • Always worded so that it look like a buffs while in fact a lot of these "buffs" are nerfs.
  • There are still tooltips to fix even after 6 years and a half.
  • Never fix the issues, always fix the consequences.
  • And like Obtena said, it's called balance but in reality it's not "balance".

AT this point I find it awesome that the whole thing don't crumble by itself... There are so many bandaid fix put on top of other bandaid fixes that on most of the professions the rotting wounds that still fester below the bandaid fixes are almost forgotten by the playerbase.

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@serialkicker.5274 said:This is my first and only mmorpg that I have played more than 30 hours. I have come to conclusion that developers, probably goes for all mmos, don't even want to balance the game. It's probably intentionally that they put in bunch of random changes in order to keep things cough interesting and forcing people to keep adapting, grinding new gear, changing builds, switching classes and so on, in order to give them something to do and not quit the game 2 days after new episode release.

Fortunately (fortunately?) some classes never change their viable build. You can back in time to any moment in the last 3.5 years and you will find the same Rev build (power Herald with Shiro/Glint and staff/sword) used in PvP, and essentially the same hammer build for WvW team fights.

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All condi builds, except scourge, are not PvP viable.Most support builds except FB are not PvP viable.Overall, instead of having elites being a sidegrade, they are a complete upgrade. Core was supposed to fulfill all three roles. Most classes can only play 1-2 roles max, even with 2 elites.

Game is balanced in open world PvE. Group PvE, limited builds. PvP, where balance is most important, vast majority of builds do not work at all.

Anet devs constantly make explanations for changes that are completely out of sync with the changes results. There are changes that clearly indicate whoever made them never played that class before or have an idea how it the class works.

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There is no real balance, it is a seasonal tide of adaptation treadmills. It's like "look what washed up on the beach" to see what either got buffed/nerfed. I'm way past complaining about it - for now I just try to see it in a different light, never ending challenges that I have to overcome. I have become the decrepid, old, cynical adventurer. Actually, nah, I'm more like the look in my avatar right now XD

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

  • There are still tooltips to fix even after 6 years and a half.

LOL, you made my day! I am thinking that same thing each time I read a patch notes. Some of them even have more tooltip changes than real changes. Seriously, there would be plenty of skills/traits to balance but it seems tooltips have a greater priority :anguished:I suppose they are more focus on new stuff than balance. Without any communication with players, I can't see any positive outcome.

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@otto.5684 said:All condi builds, except scourge, are not PvP viable.Most support builds except FB are not PvP viable.Overall, instead of having elites being a sidegrade, they are a complete upgrade. Core was supposed to fulfill all three roles. Most classes can only play 1-2 roles max, even with 2 elites.

Game is balanced in open world PvE. Group PvE, limited builds. PvP, where balance is most important, vast majority of builds do not work at all.

Anet devs constantly make explanations for changes that are completely out of sync with the changes results. There are changes that clearly indicate however made them never played that class before or have an idea how it the class works.

If there is one thing I have come to find from playing MMOs all these years, it's that the players are the ones who don't know how to balance.

When a build is powerful, instead of trying to figure out another set-up to counter it, they just all jump on the same bandwagon and then complain that the build is OP.Seen it happen so many times. And it hasn't stopped.(That being said, Mirage WAS pretty stupidly OP. I admit that.)

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@Dirame.8521 said:

@"otto.5684" said:All condi builds, except scourge, are not PvP viable.Most support builds except FB are not PvP viable.Overall, instead of having elites being a sidegrade, they are a complete upgrade. Core was supposed to fulfill all three roles. Most classes can only play 1-2 roles max, even with 2 elites.

Game is balanced in open world PvE. Group PvE, limited builds. PvP, where balance is most important, vast majority of builds do not work at all.

Anet devs constantly make explanations for changes that are completely out of sync with the changes results. There are changes that clearly indicate however made them never played that class before or have an idea how it the class works.

If there is one thing I have come to find from playing MMOs all these years, it's that the players are the ones who don't know how to balance.

When a build is powerful, instead of trying to figure out another set-up to counter it, they just all jump on the same bandwagon and then complain that the build is OP.Seen it happen so many times. And it hasn't stopped.(That being said, Mirage WAS pretty stupidly OP. I admit that.)

I have to disagree with that... partially. Riot Games, the creators of one of the most played games in the history stated in one of their interviews that the player base is fast to figure out what's meta and what's not the moment the patch notes are released, even faster than the balance team. Sure there will be "not right" balancing suggestions but those who know are way ahead of the balance team... and they are not a few... Also, if the devs know better and listened to the "not right" suggestions, then it isn't the player base to blame.

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@Dirame.8521 said:

@otto.5684 said:All condi builds, except scourge, are not PvP viable.Most support builds except FB are not PvP viable.Overall, instead of having elites being a sidegrade, they are a complete upgrade. Core was supposed to fulfill all three roles. Most classes can only play 1-2 roles max, even with 2 elites.

Game is balanced in open world PvE. Group PvE, limited builds. PvP, where balance is most important, vast majority of builds do not work at all.

Anet devs constantly make explanations for changes that are completely out of sync with the changes results. There are changes that clearly indicate however made them never played that class before or have an idea how it the class works.

If there is one thing I have come to find from playing MMOs all these years, it's that the players are the ones who don't know how to balance.

When a build is powerful, instead of trying to figure out another set-up to counter it, they just all jump on the same bandwagon and then complain that the build is OP.Seen it happen so many times. And it hasn't stopped.(That being said, Mirage WAS pretty stupidly OP. I admit that.)

I have to disagree with that... partially. Riot Games, the creators of one of the most played games in the history stated in one of their interviews that the player base is fast to figure out what's meta and what's not the moment the patch notes are released, even faster than the balance team. Sure there will be "not right" balancing suggestions but those who know are way ahead of the balance team... and they are not a few... Also, if the devs know better and listened to the "not right" suggestions, then it isn't the player base to blame.

@otto.5684 said:All condi builds, except scourge, are not PvP viable.Most support builds except FB are not PvP viable.Overall, instead of having elites being a sidegrade, they are a complete upgrade. Core was supposed to fulfill all three roles. Most classes can only play 1-2 roles max, even with 2 elites.

Game is balanced in open world PvE. Group PvE, limited builds. PvP, where balance is most important, vast majority of builds do not work at all.

Anet devs constantly make explanations for changes that are completely out of sync with the changes results. There are changes that clearly indicate however made them never played that class before or have an idea how it the class works.

If there is one thing I have come to find from playing MMOs all these years, it's that the players are the ones who don't know how to balance.

When a build is powerful, instead of trying to figure out another set-up to counter it, they just all jump on the same bandwagon and then complain that the build is OP.Seen it happen so many times. And it hasn't stopped.(That being said, Mirage WAS pretty stupidly OP. I admit that.)

Anytime I see anyone claiming ten of thousands of people (if not hundreds) cannot figure out how something works, I know they have no ideas what they are talking about.

People do not play condi builds in PvP, except scourge, not cuz they are misunderstood or there is some secret setup or plan Anet devs have. They just do not kitten working and Anet is to lazy or incompetent (or both?) to fix it. There is nothing more to it than that.

Dev incompetence should not be mascaraed as the players lack of willingness to adjust. If it works, a large group of players would have figured it out a long time ago.

To both you lovely gentlemen. I have done this dance, this exact topic, this exact discussion too many times. It always ends the same. The proof is in my experience with this specific playerbase.Riot games, fortunately for them, has a large playerbase of COMPETITIVE PLAYERS whilst GW2 just doesn't have that large a playerbase of COMPETITIVE PLAYERS. So Riot has a better chance of balancing their game properly than GW2 does.

Competitive players will always try the most insane 1,000,000 iQ builds whilst others will just follow. GW2 is largely made up of more followers than innovators. This is why the situation we always have is people complaining more than they innovate.

When people complained about Staff Evasion thief, Necros could've run spectral Wall and Guardians could've used their rings to mess them up but very few (if any) did, when people complained about Boon spam Mesmers, Necros could have run more boon corruption skills but did they? When people complained about Dragonhunter, all those players could have run some sort of reflect to annoy them. But in each case, instead of countering it, many people just played those same classes they called OP, making the situation look worse than it actually was.

In each case in the complaining meta, there has always been a counter that people just completely did not want to utilize because they were too rigid in their thinking.(apart from Mirage. Mirage was definitely OP) And if most players would just step outside the box of "meta builds" for about 2 seconds, they would find a myriad of builds ranging from hilarious to high-skilled.

To summarize:

GW2 player base is bad, unintelligent and unskilled, but every other game players base are the opposite.There are so many hidden meta builds but no one uses them, cuz people are dumb.Anet devs wisdom is beyond question.

Get the kitten out of here.

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I think that I might be a minority by saying that but I think this game is not as unbalanced as many people say here. Do not get me wrong, there is stuff can could be buffed/nerved but as a whole, I am pretty happy with what we have so far.

Now here is the thing: The question is, what does "balance" even mean? Does it mean "fairness" between classes? Does it mean "equality" between classes? Does it mean "every class can do the same"? As you can see, balance has a pretty loose definition.

For me, balance means "fairness" between classes. And by that I mean that no class is, in general, superior to another class. And I think that this is the case in GuildWars2. Quite frankly, I have never seen an MMORPG + SPVP (In that combination) game that is as balanced as GuildWars2.

I assume that most of your guys definition of "balance" would mean "equality". But I assume, that this is not what a lot of player do want to see, not even in PvP. At least I don't want it. I LOOOOVE that Gw2 has such unique classes with diffrent styles to play even within themselfs.

Now, let me explain to you why I think this way: Let's break the combat in Gw2 down to a very simple term. If you take away all of the graphics, all of the sound and all of the visual stuff, combat is all about numbers. You have 17000HP, you get attacked by 500, you now have 16500HP and so on. Your goal is to get the enemie to 0HP and prevent yourself from getting to 0HP. Very simple. This is how it works.

Now, this would not be a game if we just run a simulation. So the player has to do something. Now, there are 3 ways to prevent yourself from getting to 0HP. 1. Healing: Reverse of Dmg, 2. Dodge/Block: Active evasion of an Attack or by a well timed skill, 3. Defensive stats: Toughness and Vitality to have more HP and/or take less dmg.

And here lays the Problem: Unlike other MMORPGs, ANet or Gw2, choose the way of "Dodge" and "Block" for the main way to negate damage. What does that mean?Well, in most MMORPGs (unless you fight a super mega ultra uber boss) if you build on Max. HP and Def. you can facetank a mob. However, if I go full Toughness and Vitality in GuildWars2, it won't change a lot. Sure, I have more HP and I do get less damaged but that only means that I won't die in 2secs but in 5secs. While this can have an impact in fights, it does not make a lot of sense, especially in PvE (Where dmg is the key!). So timing, dodging and blocking is the key element of defensive gameplay.

Now, let me put this clear: I am not a superb player. Yes, I am a Veteran player and I do play sPvP and PvE likewise regulary. However, this is only my point of view!

So, why am I telling you this? Well, I think that GuildWars2 (and this should not become a rant about anyone) has the worst skilled players of all online competitive games (And I count endgame PvE to that) I have ever played!Many Many Many player, even in PvP, do not understand what their class can do, how interactions work and how certained mechanics work. Yes, sometimes they even refuse to learn it!Let me give you an example of a Goldish-Platnium PvP Ranked game:I had a support Tempest with me, which I like because I think that support tempest is really underrated in PvP. Running menders and Dagger/Warhorn. During a teamfight, our team needed an urgend AOE heal as we all were pretty low. So the Tempest reacted, switched to Water, used his Warhorn 5 and 4 for the AOE heal. However, I saw that he did not blast his Dagger 3 into the Warhorn 5 as it started. Thus losing ~1k AOE heal. I saw that happening many times in that game so I wrote him after that and invited him into my party. In the Arena I showed him that he can blast his Dagger 3 right after he used Warhorn 5 for an extra heal "for free". He said "Wow, I didn't knew that".Now sure, this some more or less advanced mechanic but still, people do not understand what their class is fully able to do and how combos e.g. work.Even dodging is still not a thing in most players heads. Thus the whole basis of the combat system is not adapted by the player.

The same goes for PvE, no it is even worse! Sometimes I think they don't know any other skill than "1". And that low player based skill is destroying the basic idea of the combat system! I see so many player never dodging an attack in PvE. The combat system is very proactive! While I like the system very much, it does not work out for many player as their gameplay-skills are very low.

So what does ANet have to do to make the game enjoyable for them (Beside making PvE ridiculously easy)? Yes, you got it! They buff all classes. This happend with the release of the first generation of elite specs. And ever since then, we reached a power creep. Classes got so ridiculously strong, especially in PvP, that it broke the balance and Core GuildWars2 PvE content got so easy that it feels like a tutorial.

Well, after writing this Novel of stuff you may think: "Well Wubbbi, but there is a contradiction in what you just said. You said that there IS an imbalance". Yes, there is an imbalance. But not in terms of fairness. There is an imbalance in terms of power spike and player based skills.As you know, I define balance by "fairness" which means that I can play any class I want and whether I win or lose does solely depends on my gameplay skill. And for me, this IS the case in Gw2. There is not a single class in the game where I can say "Okay, now I can not use this class for XXX" or "This class is complete garbage". Not even in PvP. People hate Elementalists in PvP because they think it is somehow weak compared to others. Sure, I lose fights as an elementalist, I lose games too. But I also win fights and I also stomp my enemies in other fights. And that goes for all classes.

You have to find a perfect way to keep classes unique and give them some sort of fairness. I can not see a huge, unbalanced fairness gab between all 9 classes. For me, there is no class where I feel like "Okay, this class is garbage, delete it". No, not at all.

So, that is why I think that the balance between classes is not as bad as people tend to say. Sure, there are some opimizations to be done. Please respect my opinion on that as I did yours.

Greetings

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Extreme roles are bad because it becomes a counter vs counter battle. If somebody is running full zerker damage set then you need to either be zerker too or bunker up or condition them. The damage mitigation just isn’t enough to outlast the dps in this game. This means the fights don’t last very long unless you’re in a huge zerg (wvw) but even then pro guilds will wipe pugs every time.

Also base stats like toughness and health are different across professions. Stability, condition removal, healing, crowd control and dps is unevenly spread across them too. This means that some professions are more suited to “tank” roles. While others are more suited to “condition spam”. Then there are others suited to “zerker” burst dps.

This makes the game very difficult to balance because it is unbalanced to begin with. While yes it is true every profession can be any role some are more suited to it than others. The game can not be balanced except by numbers it seems.

There is many lessons to be taken from gw1 such as all professions having the same base health. Also healing being much more effective than it currently is. Then the pvp in this game might be more than just spamming of conditions and dps. There would be a true counter rather than just damage avoidance.

I think the biggest problem is balancing for different skill levels. Because some players have better reflexes or more experience playing a profession. This means that it is not even the professions that are unbalanced but the actual players themselves.

So what I have seen Arenanet do is make very easy builds like condition bunkers that everyone can use. Then there’s zerker thieves, elementalists, bunker guards, etc, that take a bit more skill. The main problem as discussed in Sirlin’s book is balancing for skill.

This is very difficult and he said that by giving easier options that can work, but don’t work as well as something which requires more skill. That is balance and I think Arenanet know this and what we have is a game balanced for different skill levels.

That seems to be the logical way of thinking about the metas of this game in pvp and wvw. And to me it does seem balanced and if people complain they simply need to “learn to play”. But that does not mean that builds that require much more skill should faceroll everybody either.

So in conclusion Balance is very subjective but if you balance for different skill levels it becomes much easier. And that is why a game can not ever be truly balanced. Because players and people have so many different skill levels.

The way we experience competition is by winning or losing. But also I understand that by being too subjective in our opinions of balance is bad feedback. By making the pvp combat challenging but also not too hard to learn creates a diverse pvp community.

The problem is when the game is objectively balanced completely without any player feedback then it becomes very unpopular quickly. This is why Balance is subjective because players who pvp want to have fun which is highly subjective. This is just my opinions of course because I’m sure that general balance is much harder than it seems.

Let's use the conquest meta as an example. We fight each other on small circles. And we have to hold these circles to win the game.

It’s not just the power creep that is the reason these 1-shot classes are the best. It’s simply the fact that everything else that could counter the Conquest Meta has been nerfed by Arenanet to make way for Esports.

Instead of a power based twitch reaction time meta we have an abundance of 1-shot DPS and passive gameplay. We have area of effect skills ticking away on a point. We have Bunker Specs putting out enough damage to kill players.

Why is this? Because Arenanet has removed tanky amulets and replaced active damage mitigation with passive invulnerabilities. Now instead of dodging power based attacks with well timed evades we have classes running max 1-shot DPS.

These 1-shot DPS classes are dominating because other classes cannot bring enough sustain to compete with them. They are kings of DPS and 1-shots at the same time with the best ability to stack boons.

You want to know why this game isn’t an ESport Arenanet? Because you catered too much to casuals and made this game too simple. If we had Monks they at least could heal the other classes without sustain directly instead of them slowly dying to AOE and conditions.

I call this game Gank Wars 2 and there’s a simple reason why. Immobilise stacking, Stun/Daze chaining and CC spam is neverending and only certain classes have enough Stability or condition removals to escape.

There is a general lack of sustain and too much dps (both conditions and power). What is the counter to DPS? Nothing…but in GuildWars 1 it was a Monk and that is why this game lacks depth. Dodge rolls aren’t a replacement for healing and protection that a monk class would offer.

I find it funny when people assume GW1 was only theorycrafting builds and counters. The combat was just as if not more active than GW2. The fact is it had interrupts and hexes (based around punishing enemy for spamming). Proper protection and healing spells (able to almost full heal from a spike of dps). Along with Conditions, Melee and kiting, Aoes, block skills/spells and teleports. Also I probably need to mention you couldn’t just spam skills either. They were reliant on energy which you had a supply of and when you ran out it had to regenerate.

^ There’s an example of what is possible with monks. Also here’s a list of monk spells in gw1: “Monks…with their unparalleled gift for keeping their allies alive” http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_monk_skills

Just some ideas and my opinion about the different builds. Since the meta seems to be either extreme conditions bunker or burst spike with not much room in the middle. I’m hoping healing support can be made more viable instead of people just seeing green numbers but not getting any loot.

Bunker and support do very little damage unless they’re a hybrid to do conditions but you generally need some healing power to be a good support player.

Arenanet are buffing support healing and I am glad for it. Problem is most of the full zerker burst spike damage just cannot be outhealed. There’s not much you can do to mitigate the damage either apart from your main heal, dodges, blocks, invulns and evades.

A full zerker amulet player will die in a couple of hits yet can 1-shot other players, while a full on bunker such as a guardian can tank hits from multiple players. Also the condition guys in the middle cant really be blamed either since he needs to tank and do some dps through the toughness of the bunkers.

Even Monks can die and be pressured from burst damage as seen in the video but most importantly it gives a real counter to spamming of dps (either conditions or power damage). Right now it’s just a race to see who can spam and avoid the most damage to win hence we have all these “passive” condition builds and burst spikes that rely on being invulnerable.

Boons run out and can be stripped not to mention if the player isn’t in bunker gear they won’t be enough usually unless they have a good amount of toughness. Healing and condition removal is what keeps you alive in an actual fight and it seems to only work in wvw with lots of players running support.

Evades/dodges, condition removal, block and invulnerable skills all have cooldowns meanwhile the damage just keeps coming from autoattacks and aoes. This is why I think this game would benefit from having a monk, to counter the insane burst damage.

What I want simply is a game with monks like gw1 had where fights can actually last longer than a couple of minutes. But apparently Arenanet decided that healers are boring and everyone should just kill each other with dps. Healing and Damage Mitigation needs a real buff if this game wants to have any chance at being competitive and balanced.

Fights lasting longer hones skills and teamwork with players. The best example I can use in gw2 is wvw where there is enough support and the aoe limit of 5 prevents players being bursted down instantly if they make a mistake. The stacking zerg meta is there for a reason and all zerker and condition damage does is make it even more needed.

Remember gw1 we had so many skills and different builds and they could all be used because they countered each other. But that didn’t mean that some builds weren’t better than others for certain things. There is too many players complaining that 1 build is too powerful but in my opinion its all based on skill level. Burst can 1-shot bunker or condis but they have more defense making it harder.

Do you guys want a game with no “Overpowered” skills and everything the same and boring? Half the fun of games is to have fun and in gw1 I sure had fun in pve with my shadow form tank lol. So in all honesty maybe try different classes more and try to learn all the different skills and how they can be countered. There is no reason for nerfs because you guys refuse to adapt to the meta.

I played gw1 had fun but this combat system is more dynamic being able to actively dodge and every class having their own heals. I just get bored of the whole dps wins everything while damage mitigation and healing is not even considered. I think gw2 lacks depth and with a monk it could easily have it.

Maybe I’m just the type of player that likes when I’m needed such as Shadow Form tanks in gw1. There are many other players that I think want to be able to feel like they can help the party and be useful instead of just another player. This is why I love healing and damage mitigation and tanking is so fun.

I truly believe Thief's burst meta with bunker Guardian’s tankiness and Warrior’s Healing Signet and Revenant's invuln balance each other out. Also Engineer’s, Necromancer's and Elementalist’s Aoe damage controls conquest points. Meanwhile Ranger's pets and long distance damage can take out these targets from a distance. Mesmer’s spamming of clones also allows them to easily confuse an enemy long enough for them to burst them down. This is truly the best meta we can get and if you don’t like it experiment with builds and kill the passive no skill builds as you call them.

If some builds don’t have a counter then reroll to them since they’re obviously so overpowered and never die. Maybe try playing as a team instead of trying to 1v1 everything. Burst/zerker will die quickly that’s a fact. Would you prefer the meta to be bunkers and conditions only?

This is the state of the meta and Arenanet will not change it because it attracts the most players. Do you think that there is more skill to playing your build and everything else is cheese? This is called not playing to win and making excuses.

Everybody plays for or against a profession and thinks it is Overpowered. Well I am simply going to say that is your opinion. There is no balance when everything is “overpowered”.

Arenanet will not listen to your complaints obviously biased against certain professions. Because all you want is for them to be nerfed and your own profession buffed. I will link “Playing to win” by Sirlin now.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

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@Dirame.8521 said:If there is one thing I have come to find from playing MMOs all these years, it's that the players are the ones who don't know how to balance.

I agree with the top line conclusion but it glosses over a lot of nuance.

Players generally have a strong sense of what is strong and what is not. They are keenly aware of pain points and things that are overtuned. Players rarely complain about nothing; if you see players complaining there is invariably something there.

However, player suggestions about what to do about a balance problem are usually pretty bad. Few players dig deep into the issues driving an imbalance. They also tend to be pretty myopic and not see the broad interactions and tradeoffs between archetypes. Consequently their suggestions tend to be pretty scattershot and most are pretty bad.

That doesn't invalidate the root issues that they are trying to address though. If you look at a list of balance suggestions and drill down into the pain points they are trying to address there's usually a lot of good insight there, even if the suggestions are poor.

@"Auburner.6945" said:I have to disagree with that... partially. Riot Games, the creators of one of the most played games in the history stated in one of their interviews that the player base is fast to figure out what's meta and what's not the moment the patch notes are released, even faster than the balance team. Sure there will be "not right" balancing suggestions but those who know are way ahead of the balance team... and they are not a few... Also, if the devs know better and listened to the "not right" suggestions, then it isn't the player base to blame.

This is absolutely true, but the problem is that the players who are in the know about the impact of any particular change are not the same players from patch to patch or change to change. A balance team can in no way out-think a player base of thousands; collectively the players know a lot more than a few people working on balance!

The problem of course is how to distinguish feedback from those in the know from those who are clueless in real time. The majority are usually not right, after all, and bandwagons are formed by those who are persuasive, not necessarily those who are right.

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@"getalifeturd.8139" said:Extreme roles are bad because it becomes a counter vs counter battle. If somebody is running full zerker damage set then you need to either be zerker too or bunker up or condition them. The damage mitigation just isn’t enough to outlast the dps in this game. This means the fights don’t last very long unless you’re in a huge zerg (wvw) but even then pro guilds will wipe pugs every time.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

Annnnndddd i've read from start to finish

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@"Dirame.8521" said:

To both you lovely gentlemen. I have done this dance, this exact topic, this exact discussion too many times. It always ends the same. The proof is in my experience with this specific playerbase.Riot games, fortunately for them, has a large playerbase of COMPETITIVE PLAYERS whilst GW2 just doesn't have that large a playerbase of COMPETITIVE PLAYERS. So Riot has a better chance of balancing their game properly than GW2 does.

Competitive players will always try the most insane 1,000,000 iQ builds whilst others will just follow. GW2 is largely made up of more followers than innovators. This is why the situation we always have is people complaining more than they innovate.

When people complained about Staff Evasion thief, Necros could've run spectral Wall and Guardians could've used their rings to mess them up but very few (if any) did, when people complained about Boon spam Mesmers, Necros could have run more boon corruption skills but did they? When people complained about Dragonhunter, all those players could have run some sort of reflect to annoy them. But in each case, instead of countering it, many people just played those same classes they called OP, making the situation look worse than it actually was.

In each case in the complaining meta, there has always been a counter that people just completely did not want to utilize because they were too rigid in their thinking.(apart from Mirage. Mirage was definitely OP) And if most players would just step outside the box of "meta builds" for about 2 seconds, they would find a myriad of builds ranging from hilarious to high-skilled.

Well, I kind of agree, the idea of what a hard counter means and how I barely see it in this game, but here is a difference between MOBAs allowing one player to play many characters while in MMOs there is a lack of such to let players do so. For example, you can fill in the middle lane in a MOBA, there are 20+ to play in mid, 4-5 of them are meta with which your selection pool rotates around and you don't focus much on playing the champion, but rather on playing the game, which isn't the case in GW2, where some classes are harder to master than others even if those others are the hard counters to such meta... to solve this, at least 2-3 of the classes should have a stumbling block to a certain meta with which the class that has such block will become meta, even if it was 1 in a squad of 50 (Veil bot is a good example) and given that they are 2-3 classes with this ability, it's easier to get into the hard counter idea, but that's not always the case - sometimes there are no counters, other times it's a counter that not all players can play given their playstyle. Now let's say this issue of the lack of counters didn't exist, then I would get my 70%ish agree to a 100% agree as the resources exist, leaving the it to the players to decide - this is pretty clear as of Chrono vs Alacrigade/Quickbrand meta, though the duo is considered better in certain scenarios than 2 Chronos as of now, Chrono still rules, and thus Chrono shouldn't see nerfs anymore as a Boonmancer.

Another point would be the prolonged periods of stale metas, like how long Staff Weaver was top DPS by miles away, like Firebrand that's a must-have pick in WvW, like Chrono's 3+ years of ruling the PvE meta, etc. The way of which the meta barely changes causes frustration, which leads to many complaints, be it right or wrong. Though I am not justifying the act of putting out wrong ones, but the one with the power should also be held responsible if they followed the wrong that were mainly caused by the lack of change, and there has been classes' playstyles that got thrown out of the meta/viable zone.

Since the game has PvX, when both PvE and PvP/WvW meet, the probability of incorrect changes/complaints would go higher, be it only 1 'X', this wouldn't have existed, yet the weight shouldn't always lie on the player's shoulder but on the ones in charge too, and if the ones in charge would do what's actually right or listen to the good ones, then those with incorrect suggestions would surely agree when things go live.

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