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Let's Talk About PvP Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

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@Gandarel.5091 said:

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

For sPvP, have you consider a change in the stat budget through amulets? I know this puts WvW aside (or at least it would requires more work) but capping the main offensive stats to lower numbers while having the defensive ones remains the same would necessarily tone down the global power level but keep the power ranking of individual skills. A skill designed as powerful would remain powerful but would give more reaction time to the defender who could survive a bit longer. I thought it was the original idea of having separate modes : balancing the game mode by adjusting the stats and keeping a global balance for skills.

Amulet stats are absolutely something we are looking at.

If we're at amulets, would you consider adding some of the removed ones back?

Settler's Amulet for example was removed at the sime times as Celestial in an effort to kill off the bunker meta (eventhough this amulet never really made it into high tier play).

Condition builds were initially meant to outlast opponents but many of the things that'd enable this playstyle (such as Settler) have been removed from PvP, which is one of the reasons why there are hardly any viable condition damage based sidenoders right now. Adding them back could help build diversity.

Outlasting everything simply because you play a certain way...it's really not a valid design choice in any game

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@Solori.6025 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

I could have not said it better...it's time to stop nerfing things based on forum outcry and use instead actual metrics like :

-Percentage of players using a certain build/set up-Representation in high tiered pvp matches and wvw gameplay

To nerf something because "Bob" comes to the forum and complain about what killed him....it's not valid feedback

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@"zoopop.5630" said:We Need to take a look at the Overall spec that are just over performing In Spvp and Monthly tournaments.

Spec that get Rewarded for Spamming "evade" NEEDS to be really look into a lot more then what the last patch even touched on. Ambush from Mirage Clones is a major issue with the entire aspect of PASSIVE game play rewarding players for not timing much of anything or being smart with how any of their abilities work. Then we also have the Issues with Condi DD thief and Staff DD thief both spec that can reward for a massive up time on Evade. It Takes FOREVER to push a Staff thief off node let alone even KILL it if the players 0 idea on how to time any of their abilities. This makes for really really boring Games and Duels on nodes.

If we can't stop making these Spec any dumber to understand/play then theirs 0 chances of a competitive scene ever coming back especially if these Balance patches that we wait on for over 3 months don't even address the issue in the first place.

@"Cal Cohen.3527" If you really serious about improving this game my recommendation would be as follow:

1: Better and Actual meaningful Balance Notes/Changes that would help solve the issues with certain specs2: Actually READ the Feedback's, Play the Game and TEST out the actual Spec in question about needing nerfs to get an understand of it3: Support the Players making actual Tournaments during Off Season and On Season that are trying to bring players into the game mode

Because other then that NO one wants to take the time in trying to improve in this game mode anymore due to the lack of Support, rewards, team ques and etc. You Guys don't offer any reason for players to actually play as a team to get better/improve unless you assume a Monthly tournament for a Gizmo is enough? We need More stuff like ToL and Monthly tournaments for people to invest into wanting to stick as a team and not a random last min group. Fix the 3 issues I gave you and then Look for a way to make players want to play as a team and this game would be a lot more healthier for sure.

Preach it brother

Monthly representation...AT finals....TOP 250 games...WvW zerg representation...these are the things they should look , like "OK during an average PvP match out of 10 players , we have 4-5 playing the same class/spec..maybe we have a problem here"...you know this sort of thinking.

Balance based on populism..it's not balance at all, no matter how harsh it sounds.....your right to an opinion does not make it valid

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

For sPvP, have you consider a change in the stat budget through amulets? I know this puts WvW aside (or at least it would requires more work) but capping the main offensive stats to lower numbers while having the defensive ones remains the same would necessarily tone down the global power level but keep the power ranking of individual skills. A skill designed as powerful would remain powerful but would give more reaction time to the defender who could survive a bit longer. I thought it was the original idea of having separate modes : balancing the game mode by adjusting the stats and keeping a global balance for skills.

Amulet stats are absolutely something we are looking at.

If we're at amulets, would you consider adding some of the removed ones back?

Settler's Amulet for example was removed at the sime times as Celestial in an effort to kill off the bunker meta (eventhough this amulet never really made it into high tier play).

Condition builds were initially meant to outlast opponents but many of the things that'd enable this playstyle (such as Settler) have been removed from PvP, which is one of the reasons why there are hardly any viable condition damage based sidenoders right now. Adding them back could help build diversity.

Outlasting everything simply because you play a certain way...it's really not a valid design choice in any game

Nobody said that they should just equip an amulet and never die. Conditions however are damage over time effects, anything built around them is supposed to.. you know, do damage over a longer period of time. How do you do that without proper sustain?

Most viable condition damage builds at the moment have better burst than most power based ones (like S/D daredevil, fire weaver). That was never supposed to happen. Yet if Anet toned down the condi bursts almost every single condition build would become useless because they just don't have the sustain to actually win a battle of attrition.

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@Gandarel.5091 said:

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

For sPvP, have you consider a change in the stat budget through amulets? I know this puts WvW aside (or at least it would requires more work) but capping the main offensive stats to lower numbers while having the defensive ones remains the same would necessarily tone down the global power level but keep the power ranking of individual skills. A skill designed as powerful would remain powerful but would give more reaction time to the defender who could survive a bit longer. I thought it was the original idea of having separate modes : balancing the game mode by adjusting the stats and keeping a global balance for skills.

Amulet stats are absolutely something we are looking at.

If we're at amulets, would you consider adding some of the removed ones back?

Settler's Amulet for example was removed at the sime times as Celestial in an effort to kill off the bunker meta (eventhough this amulet never really made it into high tier play).

Condition builds were initially meant to outlast opponents but many of the things that'd enable this playstyle (such as Settler) have been removed from PvP, which is one of the reasons why there are hardly any viable condition damage based sidenoders right now. Adding them back could help build diversity.

Outlasting everything simply because you play a certain way...it's really not a valid design choice in any game

Nobody said that they should just equip an amulet and never die. Conditions however are
damage over time effects
, anything built around them is supposed to.. you know, do damage over a longer period of time. How do you do that without proper sustain?

Most viable condition damage builds at the moment have better burst than most power based ones (like S/D daredevil, fire weaver). That was never supposed to happen. Yet if Anet toned down the condi bursts almost every single condition build would become useless because they just don't have the sustain to actually win a battle of attrition.

How exactly would be different to allow condi builds to win by attrition to what I have said about equipping a single amulet to win the fight? That's exactly the problem in this game builds having dmg and sustain both at peak level, when you should have one or the other...at most a very light version of both

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@"Curunen.8729" said:

Sure it's not directly comparable, but it can be related that a number of players don't find it fun to, in a broader sense, have their game plan disrupted and pushed to improvise. The key here is "is it still possible to win" - and that's where there is a difference between subjective "fun" and balance. Because while there are many vocal complaints about various aspects of the game - eg dying to condi - I guess there is a population who don't mind or even enjoy going up against some of the supposedly "not fun" factors that get highlighted on this forum.

Thats the thing i dont mind losing if i felt like i had a "possible" chance to win or make plays that could have gotten me the win. IF you make a read but someone else left themselves open knowing you would read them as bait... well played i say. Even if im using something thats technically the underdog in the match up. For me its not so much being killed by condi its the way the condi is applied and the pressure behind it. Its endless and fairly quick rmaping with higher burst while allowing the caster to play extremely safe it wont be fun or feel like a good match unless you have constant clears to counter it which not everyone has options for that. When Defensive tools can totally cover the small windows of exposure for the first few rotations making it feel like there is not a window of opportunity to actually take your turn to fight back.

Similar to condi thief right now. Its very safe when applying its conditions but generally once it performs its biggest burst there is a down time in which you have time to counter attack them before they can "add more" and if they over aggressively push to add too much via safe application then they are left defenseless "Lack of evades" due to burning their dodges and using all their initiative points. Its very frustrating to fight yes but I do feel like i often have a chance to beat it or combat it there is a pretty clear cut period in which you have to take action and win before you lose.

I just think the window in which you have to defeat a mirage before its damage kills most classes is way too small and those windows are covered by several defenses they often have in their kits. So you need to force out those defenses throughout the constant application of conditions which ramp moderately fast and burst which ramp insanely fast. For a wide range of classes this is certainly not easy and can often feel over pressuring. The windows for attack even more so on a point can feel so small that may seem like there are not any depending on the situation. There are probably several ways to open up the gap a bit more or cut back the pressure of its exposed down time where condis are less damaging without killing the spec as a whole.

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@Arheundel.6451 said:I stand with what @"Solori.6025" said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

And as long as they are taken seriously, threads like the beautiful one Cal did will be useless and nothing will change

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

Left out the part where i said devs should be able to filter through that and find the constructive feedback which tends to be a bit more well written from an un biased standpoint.Sorry to say i dont agree metrics an data only get you so far and dont create a perfect balance you may stand where you like but ive played enough games to know how balance can fail based on only data and metrics alone which leads to periods of "balance and imbalance" if something is balanced for someone its likely not balanced for someone else and thats always going to be a thing. IF something becomes too imbalanced for a majority despite the data saying its doing fine and players decide to strike against it then it means something was over looked that the data alone could not reveal. Its happened in the past it will happen in the future.

I dont discredit the use of metrics and data for balance i welcome its use. I just dont think it should be the main and only source for balance.

As far as him referecing that the devs need to understand flawlessly the potential of what the professions can and cannot do ill go into detail why thats not possible in most cases.

Even if the devs do play competitive when exploring design and balance work they can't expect how thousands of players will take that content and explore it and build onto it. The minds of a few dozen or hundred cant simulate the results of how thousands will explore it.That's how obnoxious builds and skill abuse/tactics even pop up to start with it's because players come up with ideas that the devs never considered during balance and design.When you design something it's very easy to get tunnel vision on finite limits that only you see through your eyes but when you give it to hundreds if not thousands of other people they may not see anything of what you see and take it in a completely different direction. In some cases the direction ends up being very unbalanced.That's why I said it's impossible for devs who design and balance the game to fully understand the game it happens in every single game I've ever played. The only way you could make this happen is to cut a massive amount of content out of the game and make almost everything play the same way with the same rules and finite limits where it cant be changed.

Guild wars 2's profession system is far too vast for that despite how much of a down scale is from the original guild wars. There are too many build options too many build stat factors and too many different mechanics for anyone to expect the devs to be able to predict every single possible build outcome, play style, and expect broken things not to pop out of the woodworks with each balance pass or new content addition.

All of this also adds whole new level to metrics and data that would need to be analyzed when trying to balance the game off that alone that would possibly work against itself in some cases. For example some tools/traits/skills are not or rarely used right now but might not be used till something new is added in the future. But because the data in the past implies it either wont be used or wont make a factor how could you balance for it off that alone? Your data shows that its not a problem now but it becomes one when you add new content or change existing content in some way.

Trust me going off data alone is simply not always the best way. Data is and can be a good source of information but so can the people who respectively play the content.

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@Crozame.4098 said:

  • Will you plan to look at
    toning down overly rewarding safe rapid condition application?
    For example conditions that are applied constantly from say mirage (and its staff auto and ambush) or super safe application practices like the more recent dare devil thief which can apply its main damaging condition by simply using skills that evade.

How conditions are applied is a big thing that we're looking into.

That's good! Please remember though, that if rapid condi application is nerfed, then condi cleanse options should also be nerfed to match. It is really frustrating trying to apply my 12s cooldown blowtorch burn when my opponents have ample cleanse on a shorter cooldown via traits and other build options. I imagine if mesmer or thief are nerfed to be more like condi engi, they will face the same frustration.

Thanks

Then nothing changes mate.......

Not quite. Imagine all classes apply condi in a similar way (for example) that condi engi does. With the current amount of cleanse, condi engi is extremely unviable because its high stacks of burn and medium cooldown cover will always be cleansed instantly. In order for such a build to be playable, its opponents need to have less cleanse available to them.

If you nerf the condi spam but don't touch the condi cleanse, then all condi builds are relegated to unplayable tier like condi engi.

I'm not saying condi spam is good. It's not, but at present it is necessary due to how much cleanse everyone has available.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:You want to play with, me, here we go :

@ZDragon.3046 said:Particularly on staff especially those smaller wind of chaos attacksOn a side note, wind of chaos is the unique skill in this game that you can bait by walking on the opposite direction because the projectile move at the same speed as you. (with 5 shield maybe.)This is not plausible while fighting a mirage if you actually want to fight the mirage lol. You pretty much just told me that i should run / move away from the mirage 's auto attack and while it is slow it aint that slow. Will catch a player running with swiftness while the are in combat the only time it does what you said is when you are near the projectile max range limit. Like this is not even a real......... plausible wait of baiting not if you want to fight and assuming the mirage does not chase you at all.Of course this is possible, watch boyce stream and how he completly bait clone auto while fighting mesmers, same for majority of other steamers.[...big block with nerf mirage evade...]There isn't viable core mesmer build without stealth atm, that mean if tomorrow you make mirage can't evade when he want, welcome to PU mesmer meta should it be burst or condi. Which is basically useless as a change because people will more whine about a "perma stealth mesmer who do damage from nowhere" than about a "I feel mirage can perma evade".If they nerf mirage cloak and PU, welcome to full out of point non-viable mesmer meta who will put burst condi or burst direct damage where people will still cry about how mesmer can do damage.If they nerf mirage cloak, PU and damage output condi and direct damage, welcome to a running gag, solo heal mesmer meta with superspeed who did nothing apart running on the map where people will still cry about how mesmer is "unkillable".And I can probably continue for next 5,6 nerfs if I want.It's fun how we can predict the next 6 months of whine based on current "game improvement suggestions" who will just make the class more or more unplayable while not reducing at all the whine % in this forum.

Im not sure where you are pointing at with all these nerf assumptions.And lol really "big block with nerf mirage evade......" nice way of shoving words in someones mouth if someone else was to read this how would they even know what text you are referencing replying to while making such a blunt statement.It's the polite version to insinuate that your post contain much false affirmations but ok here we go :Aoe damage is most professions weakness how ever i get what you are going for.I don't know that now "most professions" have destroyable illusions as main gameplay ?If you get what we are going for, why did your first sentence is putting out a false thing ?This is false, mesmer who relie on illusion is way more sensible to aoe than "most professions".So long as the current IH exists people will not accept dodging while cc'ed as an ok thing as it allows clones (should they be alive) to deal massive damage as they may not be stunned at the time.So 3k clone ambush in the form of condition is massive damage, can't wait to see this "massive damage" on everyclass then.When the mirage dodges IH triggers which results in the person who just performed the stun and trying to follow up the stun taking tons of condi retaliation as a reward for attempting to follow up their stunWhy are you follow up if you knoiw that the mesmer didn't burn his 2 evade ??? I know this game is for 4 years old child but come one, look at what happend on the screen before doing cycle like a robot.Either Fix IH or force mirages to take a trait apart from HI to evade while under cc. You really should be forced to choose between both options.Already answer to this.One more explanation, at PoF start did people used IH or EM ? Then if you split mirage evade did people still use IH ? (the answer is no.)

The last bit of this i dont agree with being out of endurance is simply being out of endurance regardless of which class you are you are all in the same boat at that point i wouldnt say any class is particularly weaker than another once its out of endurance.Problem is when a main mechanic is around endurance while beeing far to have the best endurance regeneration in this game.

As mesmers still have other defensive tools they can depend on i dont think them being out of endurance makes them overly weaker than the other classes in the game.Defensive tools which are needed to survive that basically explain why a core mesmer build without stealth isn't viable because you can't drop survival skill like blink to take MoC for example.Note that mesmer isn't either the best class when it comes to weapon sustain.

I just think its common for people to say "dodging during cc" for such a short time frame is not that big of a deal and that its perfectly ok. When in truth it really can be a big deal even more so when it comes with potential passive retaliation attacks from other sources sometimes.Bingo, you found out why core mes with no stealth isn't viable whereas mirage is, congratulation !

You cant always fix everything by looking at numbers from the profession alone further more who would even gather this data.If they shout class representation and win/lose ratio it will drastically reduce the "feeling whine" about what is op and should be nerfed.You know, the difference between efficiency and skilled.

CI being disabled was a good example of this.Thanks to remember here that we get one more dead trait thanks to whine.

Chances are if people are saying something is wrong then something is wrong even if they cant point 100% in the right direction of where the problem might be or where you think it might be they know that something is wrong.Forum whiner never had long terms view of what they ask for, never...

Now you can ignore me if you want, it didn't matter that I will be there as soon as there is post like this full of biased view who contribute to class destruction while still continue whining patch after patch.

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

I could have not said it better...it's time to stop nerfing things based on forum outcry and use instead actual metrics like :

-Percentage of players using a certain build/set up-Representation in high tiered pvp matches and wvw gameplay

To nerf something because "Bob" comes to the forum and complain about what killed him....
it's not valid feedback

Id like to point out that balancing based on metrics alone is what got us to where we were at the beginning of PoF.

While Bob's complaint on its own is probably not all that useful, it may shine a light on an oversight metrics can't find or adequately describe.

You need feedback, metrics, and developer testing, all in equal measure, if this balance is going to be stable.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

Left out the part where i said devs should be able to filter through that and find the constructive feedback which tends to be a bit more well written from an un biased standpoint.Sorry to say i dont agree metrics an data only get you so far and dont create a perfect balance you may stand where you like but ive played enough games to know how balance can fail based on only data and metrics alone which leads to periods of "balance and imbalance" if something is balanced for someone its likely not balanced for someone else and thats always going to be a thing. IF something becomes too imbalanced for a majority despite the data saying its doing fine and players decide to strike against it then it means something was over looked that the data alone could not reveal. Its happened in the past it will happen in the future.

I dont discredit the use of metrics and data for balance i welcome its use. I just dont think it should be the main and only source for balance.

As far as him referecing that the devs need to understand flawlessly the potential of what the professions can and cannot do ill go into detail why thats not possible in most cases.

Even if the devs do play competitive when exploring design and balance work they can't expect how thousands of players will take that content and explore it and build onto it. The minds of a few dozen or hundred cant simulate the results of how thousands will explore it.That's how obnoxious builds and skill abuse/tactics even pop up to start with it's because players come up with ideas that the devs never considered during balance and design.When you design something it's very easy to get tunnel vision on finite limits that only you see through your eyes but when you give it to hundreds if not thousands of other people they may not see anything of what you see and take it in a completely different direction. In some cases the direction ends up being very unbalanced.That's why I said it's impossible for devs who design and balance the game to fully understand the game it happens in every single game I've ever played. The only way you could make this happen is to cut a massive amount of content out of the game and make almost everything play the same way with the same rules and finite limits where it cant be changed.

Guild wars 2's profession system is far too vast for that despite how much of a down scale is from the original guild wars. There are too many build options too many build stat factors and too many different mechanics for anyone to expect the devs to be able to predict every single possible build outcome, play style, and expect broken things not to pop out of the woodworks with each balance pass or new content addition.

All of this also adds whole new level to metrics and data that would need to be analyzed when trying to balance the game off that alone that would possibly work against itself in some cases. For example some tools/traits/skills are not or rarely used right now but might not be used till something new is added in the future. But because the data in the past implies it either wont be used or wont make a factor how could you balance for it off that alone? Your data shows that its not a problem now but it becomes one when you add new content or change existing content in some way.

Trust me going off data alone is simply not always the best way. Data is and can be a good source of information but so can the people who respectively play the content.

After 6 years it doesn't seem to me they did a good job in filtering constructive feedback, they still tend to overnerf things because of uproar on the forum. The last example of what I am saying is whey they disabled Chaotic Interruption , they did not solve the problem with mirage (mirage cloack applied to clones), they simply reduced the build options for mesmer mains.

-They go and nerf the most used pets on rangers...but they do nothing to solve the problem with the other pets non hitting any moving target or having stupid CD and cast times

-They nerf sustain of eles using healing amulet...but do nothing to solve the dependency of ele on healing power..and so on for every other profession.

Up to this very moment, the devs have proved to be unable to discern constructive feedback from simple blubbering , they still nerf things for the sake of nerfing in order to please the angry mob on the forum, they never think why something is never used..they only care to "fix" what get overused for lack of other options and that tend to leave things in the gutter after they're done...only to come back later and overbuff something and bring the class back to relevance .

In an ideal world you'd be 100% correct but in this world maybe it's better for the devs to stick to metrics because it seems to land better balance decisions

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@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

I could have not said it better...it's time to stop nerfing things based on forum outcry and use instead actual metrics like :

-Percentage of players using a certain build/set up-Representation in high tiered pvp matches and wvw gameplay

To nerf something because "Bob" comes to the forum and complain about what killed him....
it's not valid feedback

Id like to point out that balancing based on metrics alone is what got us to where we were at the beginning of PoF.

While Bob's complaint on its own is probably not all that useful, it may shine a light on an oversight metrics can't find or adequately describe.

You need feedback, metrics, and developer testing, all in equal measure, if this balance is going to be stable.

How many are the chances that what Bob is complaining about will remain a problem just for him?...not many I'd say. I was the one who made a thread about tactics war even before he'd get recognition even at AT levels, I was the "Bob" at that time.

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

Left out the part where i said devs should be able to filter through that and find the constructive feedback which tends to be a bit more well written from an un biased standpoint.Sorry to say i dont agree metrics an data only get you so far and dont create a perfect balance you may stand where you like but ive played enough games to know how balance can fail based on only data and metrics alone which leads to periods of "balance and imbalance" if something is balanced for someone its likely not balanced for someone else and thats always going to be a thing. IF something becomes too imbalanced for a majority despite the data saying its doing fine and players decide to strike against it then it means something was over looked that the data alone could not reveal. Its happened in the past it will happen in the future.

I dont discredit the use of metrics and data for balance i welcome its use. I just dont think it should be the main and only source for balance.

As far as him referecing that the devs need to understand flawlessly the potential of what the professions can and cannot do ill go into detail why thats not possible in most cases.

Even if the devs do play competitive when exploring design and balance work they can't expect how thousands of players will take that content and explore it and build onto it. The minds of a few dozen or hundred cant simulate the results of how thousands will explore it.That's how obnoxious builds and skill abuse/tactics even pop up to start with it's because players come up with ideas that the devs never considered during balance and design.When you design something it's very easy to get tunnel vision on finite limits that only you see through your eyes but when you give it to hundreds if not thousands of other people they may not see anything of what you see and take it in a completely different direction. In some cases the direction ends up being very unbalanced.That's why I said it's impossible for devs who design and balance the game to fully understand the game it happens in every single game I've ever played. The only way you could make this happen is to cut a massive amount of content out of the game and make almost everything play the same way with the same rules and finite limits where it cant be changed.

Guild wars 2's profession system is far too vast for that despite how much of a down scale is from the original guild wars. There are too many build options too many build stat factors and too many different mechanics for anyone to expect the devs to be able to predict every single possible build outcome, play style, and expect broken things not to pop out of the woodworks with each balance pass or new content addition.

All of this also adds whole new level to metrics and data that would need to be analyzed when trying to balance the game off that alone that would possibly work against itself in some cases. For example some tools/traits/skills are not or rarely used right now but might not be used till something new is added in the future. But because the data in the past implies it either wont be used or wont make a factor how could you balance for it off that alone? Your data shows that its not a problem now but it becomes one when you add new content or change existing content in some way.

Trust me going off data alone is simply not always the best way. Data is and can be a good source of information but so can the people who respectively play the content.

After 6 years it doesn't seem to me they did a good job in filtering constructive feedback, they still tend to overnerf things because of uproar on the forum. The last example of what I am saying is
whey they disabled Chaotic Interruption
, they did not solve the problem with mirage
(mirage cloack applied to clones)
, they simply reduced the build options for mesmer mains.

I would argue to say not all of it was constructive feedback so im not sure thats a fair assumption to make.A large portion of poor balance choices were made because of all game modes being tied to one another or design changes being made blindly with what seems like no input at all or opposite imput from what people suggested.

This is what ive mostly seen over the past 6 years. Not them following the general "nerf x thing cause its op"

-They go and nerf the most used pets on rangers...but they do nothing to solve the problem with the other pets non hitting any moving target or having stupid CD and cast times

Maybe they thought the most used pets were too strong and wanted them to be leveled with the other pets. Not ever balance direction has to be up in some cases its down. Every profession catches this karma from time to time and we never understand why it happens. If only 2 pets out of the several dozen are the only ones being used what would the data then suggest? That those 2 pets are too strong or that all the others are just too weak? Which side to you pick now? If feed back was ignored from players how do you know the result would not have been the same based on the data alone?

-They nerf sustain of eles using healing amulet...but do nothing to solve the dependency of ele on healing power..and so on for every other profession.

Most other professions dont play the same way that ele does. Ele has always been a bit of a different beast in itself. Once again some times the direction is down and not up. Do you nerf how healing stats work with ele or do you just buff how healing power works on everyone else and ignore the ele. Based on the data alone which direction do you take. Without player imput how do you know the result would have not been the same?

Up to this very moment, the devs have proved to be unable to discern constructive feedback from simple blubbering , they still nerf things for the sake of nerfing in order to please the angry mob on the forum, they never think why something is never used..they only care to "fix" what get overused for lack of other options and that tend to leave things in the gutter after they're done...only to come back later and overbuff something and bring the class back to relevance .

I point to my first statement again. I highly doubt its been specifically 6 years of only following constructive feedback anything i would say its been more so 6 years of not following feedback with a few niche case exceptions from time to time. We wouldnt be in this problem now if devs had listened to players years ago who wanted balance, numbers, and mechanics to be split between game modes years ago. They chose not to follow that advice that landed us in the mess we are in now.

In an ideal world you'd be 100% correct but in this world maybe it's better for the devs to stick to metrics because it seems to land better balance decisionsThere is no proof of this. But we can wait and see i guess. The fact that they are finally splitting pve from pvp and wvw means they are fianlly taking players advice now that they realize how much balancing 1 or 2 professions in 1 or 2 game modes can ruin it in some form or another in the other game modes. This is likely not a metrics decision alone.

Like ive said ive seen games where devs have streams with the players and share the data that they look at when balancing something and have watched them creat imbalance based on those numbers with changes they think will help even the numbers for all players involved a good many times.

In an ideal world the devs would allow players to beta test upcoming balance patches before they go live for a weekend or a week (they did this before HoT released twice and once or twice before PoF released)Doing this would let them get both data and feedback that could help everyone in the long run but of course this is not something they do.

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I play my Ranger 90% of the time in PvP so I'll speak on thatReflects: Whether it be axe, shortbow, or longbow, rangers are one of the only classes that HEAVILY use projectiles. Scrappers reflect projectiles without trying, weavers reflect as part of their rotation, guardians have many different bubbles they can project (5?) that stop projectiels, and 1 which reflects them all, elementalists can make the large wind field that stops all projectiles. It feels as though more and more classes are getting “reflect” baked into their skills that they are pressing without even thinking about it, and there is nothing more frustrating then having my stun arrow that I fired at someone who didn’t know I was there bounce back and hit me in the forehead. I would take a damage hit to use the druid staff (the only ranged ranger weapon that is not projectile) but the staff does 25% of the damage of a longbow autoattack, so it is incapable of killing anyone.

Condition Cleanse: Nearly every ranger has to run wilderness survival for condition cleanse. If you are a soulbeast you can use bearstance as an alternative…. That’s it. They are both fully functioning but very limiting to build diversity, feeling that you always have to have wilderness survival or soulbeast as one of your 3 specializations, no matter what.

Druid: I love my druid but he just doesn’t work well in conquest anymore. If you compare how many druids you see in the top 50% with how many firebrands or even tempests (the other two “support” roles) it doesn’t even compare, because it doesn’t work. Because of the astral power system it is either a worse healer, or a worse dps depending on how you build the character. Meanwhile a firebrand can be bunker/healer with respectable damage, or a terrifying damage dealer with a mountain of utility.

On general topic: I would love to hear about balancing based on skill usage. As an example: “Oh, only 0.01% of the top 50% of rangers are using Frost Trap in Conquest, can we do something there?” or “100% of warriors are using rampage, is it too strong? Are the other elites too weak? Both” etc

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

Left out the part where i said devs should be able to filter through that and find the constructive feedback which tends to be a bit more well written from an un biased standpoint.Sorry to say i dont agree metrics an data only get you so far and dont create a perfect balance you may stand where you like but ive played enough games to know how balance can fail based on only data and metrics alone which leads to periods of "balance and imbalance" if something is balanced for someone its likely not balanced for someone else and thats always going to be a thing. IF something becomes too imbalanced for a majority despite the data saying its doing fine and players decide to strike against it then it means something was over looked that the data alone could not reveal. Its happened in the past it will happen in the future.

I dont discredit the use of metrics and data for balance i welcome its use. I just dont think it should be the main and only source for balance.

As far as him referecing that the devs need to understand flawlessly the potential of what the professions can and cannot do ill go into detail why thats not possible in most cases.

Even if the devs do play competitive when exploring design and balance work they can't expect how thousands of players will take that content and explore it and build onto it. The minds of a few dozen or hundred cant simulate the results of how thousands will explore it.That's how obnoxious builds and skill abuse/tactics even pop up to start with it's because players come up with ideas that the devs never considered during balance and design.When you design something it's very easy to get tunnel vision on finite limits that only you see through your eyes but when you give it to hundreds if not thousands of other people they may not see anything of what you see and take it in a completely different direction. In some cases the direction ends up being very unbalanced.That's why I said it's impossible for devs who design and balance the game to fully understand the game it happens in every single game I've ever played. The only way you could make this happen is to cut a massive amount of content out of the game and make almost everything play the same way with the same rules and finite limits where it cant be changed.

Guild wars 2's profession system is far too vast for that despite how much of a down scale is from the original guild wars. There are too many build options too many build stat factors and too many different mechanics for anyone to expect the devs to be able to predict every single possible build outcome, play style, and expect broken things not to pop out of the woodworks with each balance pass or new content addition.

All of this also adds whole new level to metrics and data that would need to be analyzed when trying to balance the game off that alone that would possibly work against itself in some cases. For example some tools/traits/skills are not or rarely used right now but might not be used till something new is added in the future. But because the data in the past implies it either wont be used or wont make a factor how could you balance for it off that alone? Your data shows that its not a problem now but it becomes one when you add new content or change existing content in some way.

Trust me going off data alone is simply not always the best way. Data is and can be a good source of information but so can the people who respectively play the content.

After 6 years it doesn't seem to me they did a good job in filtering constructive feedback, they still tend to overnerf things because of uproar on the forum. The last example of what I am saying is
whey they disabled Chaotic Interruption
, they did not solve the problem with mirage
(mirage cloack applied to clones)
, they simply reduced the build options for mesmer mains.

I would argue to say not all of it was constructive feedback so im not sure thats a fair assumption to make.A large portion of poor balance choices were made because of all game modes being tied to one another or design changes being made blindly with what seems like no input at all or opposite imput from what people suggested.

This is what ive mostly seen over the past 6 years. Not them following the general "nerf x thing cause its op"

-They go and nerf the most used pets on rangers...
but they do nothing to solve the problem with the other pets non hitting any moving target or having stupid CD and cast times

Maybe they thought the most used pets were too strong and wanted them to be leveled with the other pets. Not ever balance direction has to be up in some cases its down. Every profession catches this karma from time to time and we never understand why it happens. If only 2 pets out of the several dozen are the only ones being used what would the data then suggest? That those 2 pets are too strong or that all the others are just too weak? Which side to you pick now? If feed back was ignored from players how do you know the result would not have been the same based on the data alone?

-They nerf sustain of eles using healing amulet...but do nothing to solve the dependency of ele on healing power..and so on for every other profession.

Most other professions dont play the same way that ele does. Ele has always been a bit of a different beast in itself. Once again some times the direction is down and not up. Do you nerf how healing stats work with ele or do you just buff how healing power works on everyone else and ignore the ele. Based on the data alone which direction do you take. Without player imput how do you know the result would have not been the same?

Up to this very moment, the devs have proved to be unable to discern constructive feedback from simple blubbering , they still nerf things for the sake of nerfing in order to please the angry mob on the forum, they never think why something is never used..they only care to "fix" what get overused for lack of other options and that tend to leave things in the gutter after they're done...only to come back later and overbuff something and bring the class back to relevance .

I point to my first statement again. I highly doubt its been specifically 6 years of only following constructive feedback anything i would say its been more so 6 years of not following feedback with a few niche case exceptions from time to time. We wouldnt be in this problem now if devs had listened to players years ago who wanted balance, numbers, and mechanics to be split between game modes years ago. They chose not to follow that advice that landed us in the mess we are in now.

In an ideal world you'd be 100% correct but in this world maybe it's better for the devs to stick to metrics because it seems to land better balance decisionsThere is no proof of this. But we can wait and see i guess. The fact that they are finally splitting pve from pvp and wvw means they are fianlly taking players advice now that they realize how much balancing 1 or 2 professions in 1 or 2 game modes can ruin it in some form or another in the other game modes. This is likely not a metrics decision alone.

Like ive said ive seen games where devs have streams with the players and share the data that they look at when balancing something and have watched them creat imbalance based on those numbers with changes they think will help even the numbers for all players involved a good many times.

In an ideal world the devs would allow players to beta test upcoming balance patches before they go live for a weekend or a week (they did this before HoT released twice and once or twice before PoF released)Doing this would let them get both data and feedback that could help everyone in the long run but of course this is not something they do.

Ok so if I understand what you're saying : balance decisions based on metrics alone tend to get rid of outliers but not explain why the outliers exist in the first place and here is when the player's feedback is required. Fair enough but again that feedback has been given in the past and openly ignored or partly acknowledged by the devs who simply got rid of the outliers as per request of the forum.

In the end decisions based on metrics would fail eitherway , I stand corrected but my points mostly remain , the devs do tend to nerf things for the sake of nerfing while not fixing any problem, taking the ranger as an example here : they keep nerfing the most used pets but the other pets simply can't reach the target because of bad coded AI and pathing issues on top of lack of raw stats

In this instance the devs have listened only to the feedback on the forum asking for nerfs apparently confirmed by metrics...which funny enough on the other side of the coin tell us what is not being used and the devs should ask themselves...why

P.S let me add about ele:The clas is indeed a different beast, it's the lowest Hp class with the lowest armor forced at melee range to be effective with traits that mostly work on being hit, the absurdity of the design forces ele players into a bunkery role that get hammered down by nerfs at every turn as obviously the playerbase will find bothersome to deal with an ele..but again is the ele player's fault or the devs who came up with such an outlandish class design?

Again the devs listen to negative feedback and one side of the metrics

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Solori.6025 said:It's why a wonder, why would a dev ask for subjective feedback instead of forming more non biased opinions through metrics,statistics, and knowledge of how the classes work.Because metrics can't tell you whether it's fun to play.

Players are very good at identifying what frustrates them. They're not as good at identifying why and even less so at fixing it. But the devs first need to know what isn't fun so they can figure out where to start looking for changes.

........" Metrics, statistics, and
knowledge of how the classes work.
"Fun is subjective, and by asking players to identify what they like and dont you are creating an outlook that is mostly biased.This is only true until a certain majority of people say that something is or is not fun at which point it starts to become less subjective and more factual. Fun is a part of the game. Some people play for fun for some people fun is winning or having a well fought match win or lose. Fun is indeed subjective and it can be a driving force of what keeps people playing the game.

I stand by what I said then. Since you also acknowledge "fun" being subjective. That you can't use that feedback then as a starting point in balancing talks .

That's not how you achieve balance, and I covered most of that in the first post I made in this thread.Its not always how you achieve balance but some times its a good place to start. If some one says something is not fun and some one say something is super fun which do you believe? If a majority of people who main many different professions also start to say similar things do you think all of them are just subjective or does it mean that something is clearly an issue. Do you think that a large number of people would make false accusations on the subject of how fun something is? I would say its its very unlikely.

Simply saying its subjective so your statement does not apply to the input of something is not a good way of really looking at it.What happens if someone says you telling someone something is subjective is also subjective should we just void out your statement too?

As i told some one else its half and halfWhen possible metrics and statistics should be part of it but the other half should consist of client feedback data. Thats why businesses and companies often ask you how a service was to you.Say you order a package.Looking at metrics data tells the sender that the box got from point A to B.It might say how fast it got there and which route it took.

But it does not tell them in the condition of how the box was when it got there or how pleased you were with how fast it got there. Maybe it got there at a bad time leaving your product to sit out all day exposed or maybe it got there quick but not quick enough to your liking.

Subjective feedback is rather important one cannot simply dismiss it as it is a part of balance.

And once again, I covered this in my first post, people seem to gloss over the bolded part of "Knowledge of how the game works"....Or from my first post in this thread"Devs should have an intimate understanding of what EVERY class is capable of.When I say intimate, I mean like this class shows up in your dreams intimate.Too often we have seen knee jerk fixes or changes to a class that don't make sense to the people playing, and sometimes these changes are contradictory to the way the class functions or even what the balancing "idea" for that patch tried to achieve.The Devs first and foremost need to play this game, and understand it to the level that people who have been playing since launch do."

If you are relying on players to identify,
WITHOUT BIAS
the things that make a class over-perform you have set the ground for failure. Plain and simple. Even in this thread, you have evidence of that. No one want's to be nerfed further and everyone is pointing fingers at everything BUT what they have.This is why I said those 3 things are needed.Too many times player X throws out hyperbole to get player Y's class nerfed.It always goes like this " Bob plays a class (We'll call it class X) and wants to feel powerful, and be powerful, but bob gets killed by Tim on class Y. Bob could either, go into the game and make class Y and figure out what the strengths and weaknesses are, OR, he could complain about the class. Clearly Bob is a pro and class Y is just broken. So he makes a thread ( OR post in a thread with a dev asking what's fun or not) and decides to complain about everything he doesn't like. Citing that other people don't like it either. For added effect, Bob wiki's every skill and throws them all in, complaining about every effect Class Y has , then going through all the traits and doing the same. Bob creates a franken build that realistically CAN NOT EXIST. Then to put the final touches he creates scenarios in which no class could actually perform. Bob writes this as fact, and everyone that plays class X like bob agree's. This franken build to them exist in reality, and it does exactly what bob says.Tim and the other people playing class Y try and tell bob what actually happened but then it devolves into a shouting match where insults like " you main the class so you don't get a say" come in.

This entire scenario, if we just stuck with player feedback. Would end up ( and has ended up) with a class being stripped of multiple tools it needs to function at a competitive level across multiple builds. It generates dead builds because they have been cried about repeatedly.

This can not continue, and is unhealthy.The Devs MUST know how to pull apart fiction from fact.The devs need to play this game first,
The devs must understand this system and game first
, the devs need have to have every statistic, and metric first, before gathering feedback where players can't even be bothered to complain about specific aspects of a class and create these out of reality things and then complain about it.

Edit: ALSO if they devs understood how this game worked, how classes worked, and how they fit in the grand picture of this game. We wouldn't have things like Launch day scourge, deadeye, mirage, spellbreaker, holosmith, weaver, renegade, etc. This is more than a numbers game, I acknowledge that. But changes like these tell me that in a grand picture for balance their was little or no vision. That needs to change like yesteryear.

It goes without saying this is true but devs cant perdict what players will do once they get their hands on the content or how they will adapt to playin it after the fact. It is impossible for them to know every possible result because they are a group of a few hundred and we players are up in the thousands if not hundred thousands. We will try combos and playstyles that they would have never considered which may lead to unexpected or abusive mechanical tactics that will not be healthy for the game.

To say tha the devs must understand the system without fail is simply not plausible as new content is added.The devs should not be doing balance on what they think is fun they how ever should mind how other players feel about that same content even more so in compeitive modes.Im sorry but if something causes major frustration because its not balanced then its not ok i dont really care how subjective you think it is. Fact is a game should not cause frustration to a person or a majority of people and once that starts to happen it means there is a problem that needs to be addressed.To ignore feedback and subjective feeling from the clients you provide a service too is very ignorant and what leads to the game gettin to the state its in right now.

Players time and time again have told anet things they liked and did not like only to have the opposite happen in terms of balance in one mode or another. Players often came up with very creative and possibly balanced solutions to frustrating issues only to have anet ignore them and the problems remain problems for 6 months at a time.

Its not so much pulling apart from the fun factor. When i say the devs must consider feed back data from people because its important it means just that. I dont mean the devs should be biased and design or blanace things based on how the feel when they play the game themselves. IF you dont agree the devs should listen to the people who play the game at all then you cant expect the game to ever be balanced.

Im sorry i just wont agree with you no matter how you put it because when you say data is the only thing that should be looked at wont solve the problem. 1 patch you are on top because data said you were doing bad next patch you are trash because data said you were doing good. Data will be smothered by people who flock to what wins and works in the same way it is now by your above example of player x says player y's main class should be nerfed while player x's main class is still obviously broken but they defend it anyways.

Regardless of how you "subjectively" think it should be done i don't agree. ITs a half and half situation for the best results. Devs are human beings and know how to read quality statement when they see it. Simply saying "nerf x class because y reason while im playing broken z profession" is not something they probably pay attention too.

You said it yourself : "nerf x class because y reason while I am playing broken z profession" is not something the devs listen to. Players here tend to forget how frustrating it is to be at the receiving end of their own class ...while they complain about the frustration of being themselves at the receiving end of some other matchup...like "it's fun to hardcounter others...but I don't want to be hardcountered and what hardcounter me is clearly OP"

I stand with what @Solori.6025 said : " you cannot balance an effective balance process on player's feedback" , a feedback based on emotions and self-preservation is not something to be ever taken seriously.

Left out the part where i said devs should be able to filter through that and find the constructive feedback which tends to be a bit more well written from an un biased standpoint.Sorry to say i dont agree metrics an data only get you so far and dont create a perfect balance you may stand where you like but ive played enough games to know how balance can fail based on only data and metrics alone which leads to periods of "balance and imbalance" if something is balanced for someone its likely not balanced for someone else and thats always going to be a thing. IF something becomes too imbalanced for a majority despite the data saying its doing fine and players decide to strike against it then it means something was over looked that the data alone could not reveal. Its happened in the past it will happen in the future.

I dont discredit the use of metrics and data for balance i welcome its use. I just dont think it should be the main and only source for balance.

As far as him referecing that the devs need to understand flawlessly the potential of what the professions can and cannot do ill go into detail why thats not possible in most cases.

Even if the devs do play competitive when exploring design and balance work they can't expect how thousands of players will take that content and explore it and build onto it. The minds of a few dozen or hundred cant simulate the results of how thousands will explore it.That's how obnoxious builds and skill abuse/tactics even pop up to start with it's because players come up with ideas that the devs never considered during balance and design.When you design something it's very easy to get tunnel vision on finite limits that only you see through your eyes but when you give it to hundreds if not thousands of other people they may not see anything of what you see and take it in a completely different direction. In some cases the direction ends up being very unbalanced.That's why I said it's impossible for devs who design and balance the game to fully understand the game it happens in every single game I've ever played. The only way you could make this happen is to cut a massive amount of content out of the game and make almost everything play the same way with the same rules and finite limits where it cant be changed.

Guild wars 2's profession system is far too vast for that despite how much of a down scale is from the original guild wars. There are too many build options too many build stat factors and too many different mechanics for anyone to expect the devs to be able to predict every single possible build outcome, play style, and expect broken things not to pop out of the woodworks with each balance pass or new content addition.

All of this also adds whole new level to metrics and data that would need to be analyzed when trying to balance the game off that alone that would possibly work against itself in some cases. For example some tools/traits/skills are not or rarely used right now but might not be used till something new is added in the future. But because the data in the past implies it either wont be used or wont make a factor how could you balance for it off that alone? Your data shows that its not a problem now but it becomes one when you add new content or change existing content in some way.

Trust me going off data alone is simply not always the best way. Data is and can be a good source of information but so can the people who respectively play the content.

After 6 years it doesn't seem to me they did a good job in filtering constructive feedback, they still tend to overnerf things because of uproar on the forum. The last example of what I am saying is
whey they disabled Chaotic Interruption
, they did not solve the problem with mirage
(mirage cloack applied to clones)
, they simply reduced the build options for mesmer mains.

I would argue to say not all of it was constructive feedback so im not sure thats a fair assumption to make.A large portion of poor balance choices were made because of all game modes being tied to one another or design changes being made blindly with what seems like no input at all or opposite imput from what people suggested.

This is what ive mostly seen over the past 6 years. Not them following the general "nerf x thing cause its op"

-They go and nerf the most used pets on rangers...
but they do nothing to solve the problem with the other pets non hitting any moving target or having stupid CD and cast times

Maybe they thought the most used pets were too strong and wanted them to be leveled with the other pets. Not ever balance direction has to be up in some cases its down. Every profession catches this karma from time to time and we never understand why it happens. If only 2 pets out of the several dozen are the only ones being used what would the data then suggest? That those 2 pets are too strong or that all the others are just too weak? Which side to you pick now? If feed back was ignored from players how do you know the result would not have been the same based on the data alone?

-They nerf sustain of eles using healing amulet...but do nothing to solve the dependency of ele on healing power..and so on for every other profession.

Most other professions dont play the same way that ele does. Ele has always been a bit of a different beast in itself. Once again some times the direction is down and not up. Do you nerf how healing stats work with ele or do you just buff how healing power works on everyone else and ignore the ele. Based on the data alone which direction do you take. Without player imput how do you know the result would have not been the same?

Up to this very moment, the devs have proved to be unable to discern constructive feedback from simple blubbering , they still nerf things for the sake of nerfing in order to please the angry mob on the forum, they never think why something is never used..they only care to "fix" what get overused for lack of other options and that tend to leave things in the gutter after they're done...only to come back later and overbuff something and bring the class back to relevance .

I point to my first statement again. I highly doubt its been specifically 6 years of only following constructive feedback anything i would say its been more so 6 years of not following feedback with a few niche case exceptions from time to time. We wouldnt be in this problem now if devs had listened to players years ago who wanted balance, numbers, and mechanics to be split between game modes years ago. They chose not to follow that advice that landed us in the mess we are in now.

In an ideal world you'd be 100% correct but in this world maybe it's better for the devs to stick to metrics because it seems to land better balance decisionsThere is no proof of this. But we can wait and see i guess. The fact that they are finally splitting pve from pvp and wvw means they are fianlly taking players advice now that they realize how much balancing 1 or 2 professions in 1 or 2 game modes can ruin it in some form or another in the other game modes. This is likely not a metrics decision alone.

Like ive said ive seen games where devs have streams with the players and share the data that they look at when balancing something and have watched them creat imbalance based on those numbers with changes they think will help even the numbers for all players involved a good many times.

In an ideal world the devs would allow players to beta test upcoming balance patches before they go live for a weekend or a week (they did this before HoT released twice and once or twice before PoF released)Doing this would let them get both data and feedback that could help everyone in the long run but of course this is not something they do.

Ok so if I understand what you're saying : balance decisions based on metrics alone tend to get rid of outliers but not explain why the outliers exist in the first place and here is when the player's feedback is required. Fair enough but again that feedback has been given in the past and openly ignored or partly acknowledged by the devs who simply got rid of the outliers as per request of the forum.

Some times yes in some cases balance choices made on metrics alone can get rid of some outliers but like a coin every tool has two sides. IF metrics show that something is not being used and a totally new mechanic or change enters the game that when combined with that skill/trait/perk which data says "is weak or underused" makes that same skill/trait/perk very over powered how could the data alone have prevented it from becoming such an outlier.

Outliers will always pop up over time because its not possible for devs to find them all during internal design and testing. There is no such thing as outliers not existing they will always exist and via popping up and vanishing as changes come in the future. I have yet to play a game where something if not multiple things were not inherently broken at any given time.

In some cases Outliers are so extreme that short term action is required to remove them or fix them. These would be the "niche" cases i spoke of. Now one thing i will say is that i dont always agree with anets methods of fixing a solution for the short term and then leaving it that way for a long period of time after which its seen as "fine or ok" be it something thats heavily used or not.

In the end decisions based on metrics would fail eitherway , I stand corrected but my points mostly remain , the devs do tend to nerf things for the sake of nerfing while not fixing any problem, taking the ranger as an example here : they keep nerfing the most used pets but the other pets simply can't reach the target because of bad coded AI and pathing issues on top of lack of raw stats

Nerfs happen. To everyone i don't think they nerf something just for the sake of nerfing it i would like to think in most cases there is always a reason for it even if they don't communicate or properly communicate that reason. I agree with you that some ranger pets are bad but most pets with beast mastery will reach their targets just fine. Even if we go on on your idea thta the pets cant reach their targets would the data suggest that the pets or bad or that player mobility is just too good? Do you make the pets even faster to compensate this or do you just cut everyones mobility by perhaps increasing how conditions like cripple and chill work against mobility?

In this instance the devs have listened only to the feedback on the forum asking for nerfs apparently confirmed by metrics...which funny enough on the other of the coin tell us what is not being used and the devs should ask themselves...why

In some case exceptions changes need to be made more harshly. Depending on the topic and whats involved yes nerfs are handed out after complaints are issued. In alot of these cases though there is something wrong that should be changed. How quick or how much that thing changed depended upon what game mode it was breaking and then there is the limitation of how much you can change it with all game modes being tied together. Which as i said landed us in this whole mess. Even if they had split pve completely from pvp and wvw years ago people would still complain about major issues that became imbalanced. The biggest difference would be the wider range of options anet would have had to tackle the issues which could have saved some professions from becoming dead in some game modes to this very day.

This is the first time im mostly looking forward to nerfs in pvp and wvw because as he said the general direction is down. IT was a nice refreshing reminder that not always is the case that the weak stuff needs to be moved up some times the top end things can be moved down to make the unused tools usable again. Everyone talks about power creep in this game and its nice to see that they might be trying to for once de-power creep the game for a change.

There will likely be more even more imbalance for some professions before reaching better balanced state for everyone unfortunately as only so much every goes into any balance patch.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"Curunen.8729" said:

Sure it's not directly comparable, but it can be related that a number of players don't find it fun to, in a broader sense, have their game plan disrupted and pushed to improvise. The key here is
"is it still possible to win"
- and that's where there is a difference between subjective "fun" and balance. Because while there are many vocal complaints about various aspects of the game - eg dying to condi - I guess there is a population who don't mind or even enjoy going up against some of the supposedly "not fun" factors that get highlighted on this forum.

Thats the thing i dont mind losing if i felt like i had a "possible" chance to win or make plays that could have gotten me the win. IF you make a read but someone else left themselves open knowing you would read them as bait... well played i say. Even if im using something thats technically the underdog in the match up. For me its not so much being killed by condi its the way the condi is applied and the pressure behind it. Its endless and fairly quick rmaping with higher burst while allowing the caster to play extremely safe it wont be fun or feel like a good match unless you have constant clears to counter it which not everyone has options for that. When Defensive tools can totally cover the small windows of exposure for the first few rotations making it feel like there is not a window of opportunity to actually take your turn to fight back.

Similar to condi thief right now. Its very safe when applying its conditions but generally once it performs its biggest burst there is a down time in which you have time to counter attack them before they can "add more" and if they over aggressively push to add too much via safe application then they are left defenseless "Lack of evades" due to burning their dodges and using all their initiative points. Its very frustrating to fight yes but I do feel like i often have a chance to beat it or combat it there is a pretty clear cut period in which you have to take action and win before you lose.

I just think the window in which you have to defeat a mirage before its damage kills most classes is way too small and those windows are covered by several defenses they often have in their kits. So you need to force out those defenses throughout the constant application of conditions which ramp moderately fast and burst which ramp insanely fast. For a wide range of classes this is certainly not easy and can often feel over pressuring. The windows for attack even more so on a point can feel so small that may seem like there are not any depending on the situation. There are probably several ways to open up the gap a bit more or cut back the pressure of its exposed down time where condis are less damaging without killing the spec as a whole.

Condi was just an example off the top of my head - but you see pretty much everything complained about being not fun at different points - whether it's projectile spam, insane power burst, various defensive spam, boons, etc.

The point of "is it still possible to win" should in practice be interpreted as a spectrum of results rather than a definitive yes/no - ie "by how much, under what circumstances" and so on.

From a gameplay perspective my point of view is anything that is spamming one particular game mechanic to be successful is not as fun as it could be - whether defensively such as evades mentioned, or otherwise. Every build should incentivise a variety of techniques to do what it's supposed to, survive, support, control, kill...

In terms of mirage I don't enjoy how it has been homogenised into this one dimensional pseudo-old school phantasm style, when on release there were options to play more active and bursty through more access to teleports - lower cooldown Jaunt, IA, broken powerful Elusive Mind and so on - where it did play a little more like the magical thief it should. Instead now we have this monotonous and mediocre spam playstyle being carried by two traits (I wrote more on this in a post previously in this thread).However even in this state of the class being less fun to play than in the past, and presumably less fun to face - personally I find it much easier to combat (ie a mirror match) with greater opportunity to be able to succeed in eg landing a burst, more often. From a defensive point of view, following the repeated nerfs to vigour and mirage cloak, the windows to land damage are huge compared with before.

This of course doesn't make it as fun as it could be, both for the player (which I want more solid active options to build around) or the opponent due to the playstyle Anet has pushed this into from the nerfs - which frankly are down to a lot of whining in the community here about this or that - and maybe if the nerfs had been different we wouldn't end up in this state encouraging such monotonous play.So in this way it is more than just continued nerfs to what players on this and other forums find subjectively not-fun, but there should be a philosophy of a thematic foundation for every single spec and the various ways they are envisioned to play through trait and skill choices, which should be solidly adhered to so as to maintain the fun and flavour of each spec.

Sorry if that's a bit vague, it's a bit late and I can't articulate the ideas too well right now but still wanted to respond. It looks like a big job now for balance and subtle redesigns to be done - and I'm looking forward to the big patch after the next one when hopefully things start moving in a more healthy direction.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Hope I’m not too late on this discussion.

I’m a long time theorycrafter and been going at it since gw1.

The major issue I would like you guys to focus on is the traits. The way the traits are mapped out are a mess, with no clear cut vision, and a fundamental philosophy should be established for every traitline.

Consider that we have minor and major traits. Major traits when picked, should drastically change your style of gameplay. Right now we have a lot of major traits that simply do not change how you play your class.

For example, if I have a trait that “inflicts vulnerability on shroud attack 1”, well my class already functions by using shroud and auto attacking with it, so this trait doesn’t CHANGE how I play the class. Likewise, other traits like “+7% damage” don’t change how i play... stat boosts like these should exist only on the minor traits that help to improve the classes particular traitline to better enable it at using that particular Traitline.

The way I see it is that build diversity is the key to balancing the game. When there are builds that people gravitate towards, there should always be a build that can keep that build in check. Having build diversity starts by having every trait able to drastically alter the way you play a class.

Great idea and fully agreed.Good examples would be like Scourge's Harbinger Shroud trait, and Core's Devouring Darkness Scepter 3 trait.It changes the skills into something more/different.I imagine it would be a lot of work/changes to implement it across every single trait though.For a start it would be nice to see it being implemented in the GM traits first.

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Overcoming my class bias, I would like to suggest really making "choice" something we have liberty of when picking traitlines.I'm willing to sacrifice all comfort zones if it means we get a fresh and interesting take on sPvP.

Some traitlines are essential to the functionality of some classes that are too crippled to do without, e.g. Warrior + Discipline, Mesmer + Dueling, Thief + Trickery.But, some traitlines have interesting choices, while they never see play, because of the current, extremely snowbally game, e.g. Thief + Shadow Arts.

It's a tall order to be sure, but what could be nice in the long, long run is to either:(1) nerf meta skills so hard that other neglected traitlines see play(2) change "essentials" to have completely different but viable utility(3) buff obscure traitlines so much that they become the meta pick and change up the whole game (while this has a high chance of breaking things)(4) boring integration of "essential" traitline features into base class to free up choice

Hopefully all traitlines become capable tactical choices to countercomp or tweak for team synergy.It's just a dream though.

P.S. When will Renegod assume its utterly deserved god-hood? It's been graciously conceding the stage for far too long...

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Here's few general tips/thoughts to create a better pvp balance:

1) Capabilities of classes in this game could be summed up in : dmg, sustain(healing), active defences(block, invuln,evade), mobility. No class should EVER have all 4, infact I'd argue a class should have just 2 at full power and one on really minor side.

2) Boons: it has been since the launch of HoT i've asked for you Anet devs, to tone down the boon spam, but instead you doubled down on it.REDUCE THE BOON SPAMWe've classes that can spam every boon available really frequently(firebrand) or cases (ranger)when a simple buff like stability can be stacked for 8-10 even more with copy capabilities and on not so short time.If you nerf boon spam as consequence necromancer corruption necessity to keep it in check will decay and free the necromancer from this pidgeon hole role.To keep dmg in check i would also reduce might contribution to power and condition dmg.

3) Ferocity if you want to keep power dmg in check across all the classes, this is the way to go. Take a look at it. I would add a coefficient on each skill that makes the use of certain % of ferocity when doing a critical dmg, so not only you can control the normal hit power contribution but also the critical one.

4) Condition dmg and duration: Some conditions like burning when highstacked can go into power burst dmg like, because a 5-6k+ ticking burn is a death sentence in few seconds. So extremely dmging condition should not be spammable as much as lower dmging (bleed) ones. The pace of the game has speeded up so much that conditions to be usefull had to transform in high dmg on time as oppose to just dot. To combat that you have increase condition clear and to combat this measure you have increased condition dmg even more. It is a loop don't you see it?

I'll add more if sometimes else comes to my thoughtsI specifically avoided to talk about meta builds, because general concepts are far more important than a shifting meta. Since if you understand the right thought process on how to improve balance pvp, the meta improvement will follow.

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It's definitely a project that would take a long time to move through, and would need to be done gradually so as to not egregiously break everything on the way, but I think in general the game has grown too many counter-mechanics and then counter-counter mechanics, and I'd like to see them all lessened. Examples:

Block & Unblockable

Unblockable should absolutely not be a mechanic. If you use a big attack, and your opponent recognises it and uses their block skill to counter it, then that's on you. A good PVP balance would have you bait out a block on a lesser skill, or CC your opponent before landing a big hitter. The counter-side to this is that unblockable wouldn't need to be a thing if blocks themselves were less problematic. Aegis and block should a) not be passively applied, b) be rare enough that blowing one on something unimportant actually matters and c) shouldn't be able to be channeled for long periods of time. If you equip a shield and use it to block it should be rewarding because you managed to block that giant 8k crit, or maybe the incoming knockback, not because you can dance around on the point taking no damage for the next 5 seconds.

Condis & cleanses

There is way, way too much condi damage and cover condi application in the game. Naturally, this means everyone has been given tons of passive / easy cleanses, and the few classes that don't have good cleanse, or the condi classes that don't come with high reapplication or their own fetid raft of cover condis are out in the cold. Look at eles speccing fire for example, why are there two separate condi cleanse fire traits in a row that you can grab both of? It shouldn't be needed or desirable to take them, nor should it be possible to and then largely eliminate whole sets of condi damage.

Resistance should likewise be deleted. Your defense against condis already exists, and it is cleanses. Having two different defenses makes it that much harder to properly balance.

CC, Stability & Stun breaks

Too many classes have too much ability to chain CCs, one after another. Instead of rewarding people who use it to interrupt at the critical moment, or to tie an opponent down for that crucial big hit, it's so simple to chain CCs that there's no penalty to doing so. This of course has lead to an increase in access to stability, giant stacks of stability, pulsing stability skills etc. I do think stability is an important type of defense against CC in particular situations, (e.g. safeguarding a stomp or res) so I don't advocate deleting it in the same way I do unblockable, but it should be extremely limited. I think nearly every skill that grants it should grant 1. Rare exceptions with long cooldowns maybe 2. Nothing short of an elite should grant 3 (think about this, if you give someone 5 stacks of stab say, you're telling them it's okay for them to eat 5 CCs without even trying to avoid them. It's madness!). I would also remove all sources of pulsing stability, and things like the elementalist trait that throws it on to all stance skills.

Likewise, lots of skills now have stunbreaks, including some pretty random placements. This, too, devalues CC and thus in turn requires classes to have more access to CC in order to reliably lock someone up since they can potentially just pop out of multiple CCs in a short period of time. Less skills should come with stunbreaks, and those that do should be on long cooldowns with few other mechanics tied in. Perhaps skills with stunbreaks should have significantly longer cooldowns if used when stunned?

Going for a CC should be an important moment you have to time well, missing or mistiming it should matter, but it doesn't if you have too much CC. Using your stability ability should be something you have to think carefully about popping and if the current situation justifies it, or if there's a better way to avoid that CC, or a better time to ignore it.

Mobility

Feels like almost everyone now has tons of access to swiftness, superspeed, or lots of movement tied into weapon & utility skills (e.g. warrior greatsword). In a game that's about point control, this devalues your ability to read the map and be in the right spot ahead of time. Getting out of position / fighting at the wrong place just isn't punishing enough if half the players on the team can roll across half the maps in 20 seconds.

Evades & damage immunities

Feel like these should also prevent capture-point contribution just like going invincible does. If another player on the point literally can't even do anything to you to move you off it, why should you get to count as contesting that point?

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@NecroSummonsMors.7816 said:2) Boons: it has been since the launch of HoT i've asked for you Anet devs, to tone down the boon spam, but instead you doubled down on it. REDUCE THE BOON SPAMUnless condition spam gets massively toned toned down, boons need to be equally sufficient available.Condition damage already is overwhelming, so there needs to be access to a great amount of positive effects.

Resistance should likewise be deleted. Your defense against condis already exists, and it is cleanses.Massively tone down the condition application rate and amount, then Resistance might be toned down.Seeing as cleansed conditions IMMEDIATELY are applied again, condition cleanse/conversion is little more than a split-second joke.If anything, with the currently levels of condition application and damage, cleanse/conversion should apply Resistance.

CC, Stability & Stun breaksToo many classes have too much ability to chain CCs, one after another. Instead of rewarding people who use it to interrupt at the critical moment, or to tie an opponent down for that crucial big hit, it's so simple to chain CCs that there's no penalty to doing so. This of course has lead to an increase in access to stability, giant stacks of stability, pulsing stability skills etc. I do think stability is an important type of defense against CC in particular situations, (e.g. safeguarding a stomp or res) so I don't advocate deleting it in the same way I do unblockable, but it should be extremely limited. I think nearly every skill that grants it should grant 1. Rare exceptions with long cooldowns maybe 2. Nothing short of an elite should grant 3 (think about this, if you give someone 5 stacks of stab say, you're telling them it's okay for them to eat 5 CCs without even trying to avoid them. It's madness!). I would also remove all sources of pulsing stability, and things like the elementalist trait that throws it on to all stance skills.Likewise, lots of skills now have stunbreaks, including some pretty random placements. This, too, devalues CC and thus in turn requires classes to have more access to CC in order to reliably lock someone up since they can potentially just pop out of multiple CCs in a short period of time. Less skills should come with stunbreaks, and those that do should be on long cooldowns with few other mechanics tied in. Perhaps skills with stunbreaks should have significantly longer cooldowns if used when stunned?Going for a CC should be an important moment you have to time well, missing or mistiming it should matter, but it doesn't if you have too much CC. Using your stability ability should be something you have to think carefully about popping and if the current situation justifies it, or if there's a better way to avoid that CC, or a better time to ignore it.

A simple solution I will always be in favour of would be to simply add break bars to players, so a distinct amount of the current CC spam is needed to have an effect. Seeing as Arenanet won't do this however, the amount of Stun Break and Stability currently is absolutely necessary.Reliably locking people down should not be a thing. After all, PvP stands for player vs player, not for player vs Ragdoll. If taking the hands of the keyboard is the only correct solution (like with many builds for Mirage and Scourge a few seasons ago), than it's definitely a problem.

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