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New Balance Cadence


Svarty.8019

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Waaay back in the beforetimes, multiple posts appeared on the forums from people who worked for Arenanet, the developers of Guild Wars 2.

Here is the post:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/96750/balance-patch-preview-wvw/p1

Future Balance CadenceThis patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm than it is a regular balance update, and the result is a giant set of changes. Moving forward with competitive >balance, we want to make smaller adjustments more often. The specific cadence for balance will always depend on our overall release schedule, but ideally it will be closer to every 4-6 >weeks, while still having the opportunity to make minor tweaks outside of the regular balance update. The goal here is to have better flexibility to fix problems in a timely manner.

4-6 weeks.

Now, I'm not an unreasonable person. I accept that these are exceptionally trying, and thus not "ideal", times and there's good reason for not following up on the promise in the post. But I wonder, can we get an idea of where we are in this cadence? I mean... the patch happened at the beginning of February and it's Mid-June now and there hasn't been a single mini-balance patch.

Personally, I'm not too bothered because I run from every 1v1 and hide on walls most of the time. I'm only asking because it seems NOTHING is happening for WvW and I think Anet like it that way. All we hear in the livestream are excuses and hypotheticals.

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From what I can gather, all balance suggestions must pass an almighty vote at some director's meet. NOTHING gets done without this approval. As far as I can tell this board of directors govern the entire game, and they have the ultimate power to choose what goes into the next content release.

Now it is very likely that they simply said no more sPvP balance indefinitely. Could be for many reasons like the server rollback response, the pandemic, something revenue specific or game-wide.

It is also very likely they told every department to reduce communication - for whatever reason.

My point is I don't believe the sPvP team is at fault in any way, I'm pretty sure they are working hard every day but they simply can't do anything until the directors give the go ahead.

Knowing anet, long periods of silence are usually followed by a big reveal to distract the community, so chances are they will reveal the next expansion soon. With it comes more balance, more alliances and more Living World. Because these things require alot of workhours - something an expansion would be able to fund and it would be financially strategic for them to wait until then.

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@"Svarty.8019" said:Waaay back in the beforetimes, multiple posts appeared on the forums from people who worked for Arenanet, the developers of Guild Wars 2.

Here is the post:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/96750/balance-patch-preview-wvw/p1

Future Balance CadenceThis patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm than it is a regular balance update, and the result is a giant set of changes. Moving forward with competitive >balance, we want to make smaller adjustments more often. The specific cadence for balance will always depend on our overall release schedule, but ideally it will be closer to every 4-6 >weeks, while still having the opportunity to make minor tweaks outside of the regular balance update. The goal here is to have better flexibility to fix problems in a timely manner.

4-6 weeks.

Now, I'm not an unreasonable person. I accept that these are exceptionally trying, and thus not "ideal", times and there's good reason for not following up on the promise in the post. But I wonder, can we get an idea of where we are in this cadence? I mean... the patch happened at the beginning of February and it's Mid-June now and there hasn't been a single mini-balance patch.

Personally, I'm not too bothered because I run from every 1v1 and hide on walls most of the time. I'm only asking because it seems NOTHING is happening for WvW and I think Anet like it that way. All we hear in the livestream are excuses and hypotheticals.

We’d love to have you out in the battlefield with us, so I hope the devs can fix things up for you sooner than later!

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What does it matter, they'll nerf the wrong things anyways, the one legged mirage waves at you with their peg leg. Immob boon spam druids/soulbeast, torment spam revs, cc aura spam tempest, burn spam dragonhunters, supertank warriors, running around these days and feels even less fun than the last meta. What happened to balancing outlier skills? Nerf bird damage but not the plant that can immobilize you for up to 9s when the other pet immobs hit you for 1-3s. Oh right they run around in a zerg once a week half paying attention and saying balance is important about 30 times on a stream and call it a day.

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Using the pandemic as an excuse simply for lack of balance patches and fiscal stress is a crock. Voice overs for the new content I can understand . Programming can be done from home . As for fiscal stress I don't buy it one bit. This is an Online game where more people are playing during the Covid thing more than ever . This means more people are buying gems.
If ANET is having financial issues it's not because of lack creativity but a lack of communication with or acknowledgement of the "costumers" .

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Yeah. Same goes for pve. Expecting a balance patch every 3 months, we are already behind the schedule.At that time the new living world map came out, so a lot of bugfixes had to happen.

So I do understand that it's late.What I don't understand, is that communication is once again pretty lackluster.

I think if something delays the balance patches for wvw and pve, why can't the just communicate that? Making a post that says "hey, we're sorry, new map took the most of our resources, balance patch will be delayed until next month" or something like that.

I'd be fine with that, but the absolute silence is pretty annoying.I was super hyped when they announced the 4-6weeks of tweeks.Yet those tweeks almost only happened for spvp.

I mean, a nerf for burn guard reducing burn duration from 2 to 1,5seconds?And that's it?

Almost immortal condi revs running around roaming?

Still no nerfs to perma stealth of thieves or their mobility.

Power scrapper still incredibly strong (it's fine that classes have different viable specs, but it shouldn't be one spec, that can do everything. Like healing and dps)

Immob spam like crazy (biggest offender being ranger)

Dmg warrior being basically unplayable from what I heard (I don't play warrior)

Mesmer basically only good for 3skills being veil, illusion of life and gravity well.

There's a lot of things that need to see some change in wvw.

But hey, it's another Tuesday, maybe we gonna get or at least see something today

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@rng.1024 said:From what I can gather, all balance suggestions must pass an almighty vote at some director's meet. NOTHING gets done without this approval. As far as I can tell this board of directors govern the entire game, and they have the ultimate power to choose what goes into the next content release.

Well, the so call director must have been playing without the Anet tag and gotten so many 1 shots by Mes/Chrono/Mirage that he would have suggested himself to the dev to nerf Mes/Chrono/Mirage into the ground.

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"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."

Anet is the exact opposite of this. The moment they find a reason to not do something, they don't do it. But hey, don't look at me, just look at the graveyard of temporary and abandoned content (dungeons, guild content, LS1). Then look at fractals and raids being dumped for the new shiny Strike Missions. WvW is no different; I hate to say it, but we're just a relic of the times.

Of course apologists will probably say that blah blah this game is such a mess and the people that originally designed it aren't there and can't integrate it to the current version of the game. But then again, that's kinda what you get for being shortsighted. I'm sure there are those that are trying their best but are burdened down in that red tape and out of touch higher ups. Maybe cleaning up the mess of the predecessors. That doesn't really help us here though.

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I was empathic to them once the pandemic hit. I understand that given the last balance patch being a major overhaul of the game, they would need some time to monitor things to make sure everything is working as they intended. And with the pandemic I was even more understanding. But as we approach the 4th month without any communication on the current status of balance patches, my patience is beginning to run out. I don't even need a time line at this point, I'm willing to give ANet all the time they need because the pandemic is nothing we've faced before and I can't begin to wonder what challenges they are facing. But its time for some sort of communication, even just a simple "The pandemic is making large scale balancing right now harder than anticipated" would be worthwhile. Unless of course they think the small nerfs they've produced since the patch were the '4-6 weeks' promise, in which case lol.

Maybe by July, after Dragon Bash we might get one... right before Festival of the Winds.

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@"Svarty.8019" said:Waaay back in the beforetimes, multiple posts appeared on the forums from people who worked for Arenanet, the developers of Guild Wars 2.

Here is the post:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/96750/balance-patch-preview-wvw/p1

Future Balance CadenceThis patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm than it is a regular balance update, and the result is a giant set of changes. Moving forward with competitive >balance, we want to make smaller adjustments more often. The specific cadence for balance will always depend on our overall release schedule, but ideally it will be closer to every 4-6 >weeks, while still having the opportunity to make minor tweaks outside of the regular balance update. The goal here is to have better flexibility to fix problems in a timely manner.

4-6 weeks.

Now, I'm not an unreasonable person. I accept that these are exceptionally trying, and thus not "ideal", times and there's good reason for not following up on the promise in the post. But I wonder, can we get an idea of where we are in this cadence? I mean... the patch happened at the beginning of February and it's Mid-June now and there hasn't been a single mini-balance patch.

Personally, I'm not too bothered because I run from every 1v1 and hide on walls most of the time. I'm only asking because it seems NOTHING is happening for WvW and I think Anet like it that way. All we hear in the livestream are excuses and hypotheticals.

They do not care. Balance is fine for them. Reason why I stop playing for months and then come back for couple of weeks and eventually play time goes from a few hours to 1 log in, jumped by 3 or 4 thiefs from stealth , insta a** raped and log of right away.

CC still horrible with no ICD and playing with 3stun breaks or more and dodges still not enough against boon unblocable strip from thiefs. Not saying one should survive most outnumbered fights but dying should be by not being able to ripost and being disabled constantly but to not keeping up with heals and damage receive. (so beatten to a pulp would be more fun instead of rendered useless to counter)

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The covid situation is not really an excuse anymore, there's other games putting out major balance updates and patches and even expansions during this time still.They just finished the living story episode, dragon bash next week, more likely putting their time into the expansion development right now, balance is not a priority, they don't play their game enough to know what to change anyways.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

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@Justine.6351 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Amen to that! and im not even a religious person!

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@GROMIT.7829 said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Indeed. Not that I would play such a game, given what happened to this one.

But you do have to realize WvW was intended as a bridge to PvP for pve players; much like how they say Strike Missions are a bridge to the real thing-- raids. It was never meant to be as popular as it was. When the espharwts of PvP failed, WvW had outlived its use, and just exists along the giant pile of the content that Anet has abandoned like dungeons, jumping puzzles, or super adventure box. It's just the natural progression of a game development vision that has the attention span of a goldfish. So of course they just pretend it doesn't exist and then can finally can it once nobody plays it.

It is quite sad, since this game is still able to deliver content for many of us even in its current state, though I would imagine many like me are only around to chill with their friends/guildies while they wait for something better to come out. Maybe I'm just over gaming, given the way how developers approach things as a whole.

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@Justine.6351 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

NCsoft seems to have taken more direct control after Mike O'Brien left.MMORPG's are NCsoft's thing. I kinda think it's the future in non-MMO's that left with Mike.

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@LetoII.3782 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

NCsoft seems to have taken more direct control after Mike O'Brien left.MMORPG's are NCsoft's thing. I kinda think it's the future in non-MMO's that left with Mike.

That may be true but clearly gw2 isnt ncsofts "thing" cuz for a company its size gw2 is getting very little developmental backing. Maybe ncsoft is working on a new mmorpg that's non gw2 related as they look to their future, it's pretty evident that isn't gw2.

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@LetoII.3782 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

NCsoft seems to have taken more direct control after Mike O'Brien left.MMORPG's are NCsoft's thing. I kinda think it's the future in non-MMO's that left with Mike.

Could you clarify that last line please?

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@Svarty.8019 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

NCsoft seems to have taken more direct control after Mike O'Brien left.MMORPG's are NCsoft's thing. I kinda think it's the future in non-MMO's that left with Mike.

Could you clarify that last line please?

He thinks Mike O'Brien wanted to do more than just MMOs and when ncsoft killed those side projects Mike just ended up leaving to create a new studio.

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@Justine.6351 said:

@"GROMIT.7829" said:Sup my dude, WvW has been abandoned again and the little they do do is simply to stem the whining in their eyes.

Can't wait for Guild Wars 3 to come out with no World Vs World because you can gauntee they don't want that headache.

Gw3 would go back to the gw1 party format probably, we'll IF done "right".

Given the lack of development and support not to mention passion anet has had for gw2 in last couple years I doubt gw3 will be a thing, I'd guess a completely different game probably of a different genre is probably where anets heads are at.

NCsoft seems to have taken more direct control after Mike O'Brien left.MMORPG's are NCsoft's thing. I kinda think it's the future in non-MMO's that left with Mike.

Could you clarify that last line please?

He thinks Mike O'Brien wanted to do more than just MMOs and when ncsoft killed those side projects Mike just ended up leaving to create a new studio.

We might never know.

I suspect Mike was bored with the production-line mentality that circumstances squeezed him into adopting.

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