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


Ultramex.1506

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@Ensign.2189 said:

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

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

I mean, it falls on the balance team to come out with many polls before the patches drop, and discuss what would happen if such change occurred, while for the playerbase to look at how to fix the over/under-powered class rather than creating a beast or obliterating them.

The devs should be more open with why the meta is as such and what should be done to fix , so the idea won't come as of 5 minds, but 5 + the players , but that's not a thing.

My point is that not just one side is to hold account, but both.

And in the end, it's a normal discussion not a heated one, it's a game we speaking of, that raging when fixing means nothing.

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@Auburner.6945 said:I mean, it falls on the balance team to come out with many polls before the patches drop, and discuss what would happen if such change occurred, while for the playerbase to look at how to fix the over/under-powered class rather than creating a beast or obliterating them.

I don't know that polls would be all that useful. The median respondent has pretty poor understanding of balance, and having them vote on changes wouldn't really tell you a whole lot.

Similarly asking the playerbase how to fix a balance issue isn't going to get you a whole lot. Outside of very simple numeric changes (which often aren't even easy to identify!) players generally have little sense of how balance changes fit affect interactions between characters and for into the game as a whole. Like players suggesting balance changes, there are often a couple valuable nuggets to work with if you sort through all the slag.

I do think A.Net would benefit from being more transparent earlier in the process. The place players are most useful is in catching when a change is going to miss the mark badly. That is the main benefit of a PBE - not that players can play on it, but that players can see changes very early on and keep you from going off the rails.

The devs should be more open with why the meta is as such and what should be done to fix , so the idea won't come as of 5 minds, but 5 + the players , but that's not a thing.

We would definitely benefit a lot from statements of vision for the different parts of the game. While I think they have done a good job of getting balance to a pretty good place for raids, when it comes to sPvP or especially WvW it is really unclear wtf they are trying to accomplish. sPvP in particular has been running in circles since they got skill splits, playing whack a mile with whatever people complain about a given season but not altering any fundamentals.

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@"otto.5684" said:To summarize:

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

Get the kitten out of here.

Not what I am saying at all. Anet makes mistakes. Mirage. Berserker Skull Grind Nerfs. Nerfing out confusion from the arms line (or wherever they removed it). Not making Medkit worth using for engies. Hyping Spvp at launch but not having anything solid, instead of just allowing it to develop organically (which is how GW1 developed it's PvP scene) and a host of other mistakes.

That said, to absolve the playerbase of any blame, would also be a mistake. There ARE many good builds that people just don't use. This is the truth.

Just to emphasize my point in the whole idea of Dev vs Playerbase thing. I just used the example of Teldo and the Engie in a different topic. The thing is, before Teldo played engie on stream in a tournament setting, Engie was the worst class that no one played. But as soon as people saw Teldo 2v1ing people with is bomb kit build at the time... woaw... Engies were EVERYWHERE!!! But before that, do you know how many "ENGIE IS THE WERST" threads there were?

But let me ask you a question; do you think Bomb kit is viable today?

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@dceptaconroy.7928 said:Balance patch day - Hope for the best expect the worst. Correction..abandon hope expect the worst. Understand they rotate nerf ferocity to encourage extended play through class diversity and bandwagon hoppers get some action.

Was it confirmed any balance changes were being made? Last one had a preview for build theory crafting. The patch if there is one will prob be bug fixes etc.

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@dceptaconroy.7928 said:Balance patch day - Hope for the best expect the worst. Correction..abandon hope expect the worst. Understand they rotate nerf ferocity to encourage extended play through class diversity and bandwagon hoppers get some action.

I do not think there will be a patch today, cuz yesterday was a holiday. Maybe next week, but There was no word about it either.

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It's note worthy, today ANet "improved" a skill from a racial transformation. And not any racial transformation, Melandru's avatar, hand down the cluckiest of all, the worst amongst the worst.... A M A Z I N G !!! Oh and there was a tooltip fix coming along...

They also thought it was the best time to change ranger's shouts into commands...

Meanwhile, Unstoppable union is still a trait granting 4 seconds of unblockable allowing 1200-1500 range burst damage with almost 0 counterplay.

[bALANCE in a nutshell]

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Theres one thing that really frustrates me and that is following: Once they do a change and realizes it might not have been the best it takes way too long (if ever) to revert the change, they just never go back on these things which is frustrating. Or other things like "one spec is overperforming, lets nerf the core profession!" these things is just a big no no

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@Ultramex.1506 said:

  • Skills that people have asked to nerf are instead either buffed or ignored? Or Vice versa
  • Changing profession mechanic with 50/50 chances of upsetting people (Daredevil's steal changed to Swipe with shorter range)?

Umm yeah, because players are not specialized in balancing + the build/profession favoritism is real, you know? All 12 years old players want their favorite build/profession to be the strongest, but should ANET do it? These players demand it and they won't tolerate any other profession up there. Why should ANET listen to these people? I think you see it right and I hope you see it as the right behavior. Just because you don't like a change or it is upsetting you, doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

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@"bluri.2653" said:Theres one thing that really frustrates me and that is following: Once they do a change and realizes it might not have been the best it takes way too long (if ever) to revert the change, they just never go back on these things which is frustrating. Or other things like "one spec is overperforming, lets nerf the core profession!" these things is just a big no no

i think they have not enough time/manpower. Its not only class balance, its the entire game.balance is broken in every game aspect. features added that dont really work takes month or even years to get fixed.

but you can still have fun in this game and its free.

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I could be wrong but it really seems like the team that does the balancing lacks the experience and knowledge to properly balance each class. Yes perfect balance is impossible but the balance changes over last few years have been unacceptably poorly thought out and implemented. This is the balance teams job and they took on the responsibility so if that means playing each class in each game mode on a regular basis to get a firm grasp on its build states and how they interact and fit into each game mode than so be it. If they dont want to invest the time to do so than than arenet needs to find a team that will. Balance will always be poor unless the people doing the changes kno each class in and out and judging by the last few years this team doesn't just going by simple over sights that have happened let alone changes that have been poorly thought out impacting classes and their builds that were clearly not intended but occurred due to poorly thought our or rushed changes. We all have to do things and commit our time to things at our jobs we don't enjoy to perform our best at it,game devs are no different. It is also very frustrating when changes that clearly were rushed or have a far more reaching impact on a class than intended wont get reverted, I dont know if its embarrassment or the fact they think if they dont revert it and just bandaid fix it that the players will think it's intended. A company willing to admit their mistakes and make changes to properly resolve them will garnish far more respect and loyalty from its playerbase.

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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:I could be wrong but it really seems like the team that does the balancing lacks the experience and knowledge to properly balance each class. Yes perfect balance is impossible but the balance changes over last few years have been unacceptably poorly thought out and implemented. This is the balance teams job and they took on the responsibility so if that means playing each class in each game mode on a regular basis to get a firm grasp on its build states and how they interact and fit into each game mode than so be it. If they dont want to invest the time to do so than than arenet needs to find a team that will. Balance will always be poor unless the people doing the changes kno each class in and out and judging by the last few years this team doesn't just going by simple over sights that have happened let alone changes that have been poorly thought out impacting classes and their builds that were clearly not intended but occurred due to poorly thought our or rushed changes. We all have to do things and commit our time to things at our jobs we don't enjoy to perform our best at it,game devs are no different. It is also very frustrating when changes that clearly were rushed or have a far more reaching impact on a class than intended wont get reverted, I dont know if its embarrassment or the fact they think if they dont revert it and just bandaid fix it that the players will think it's intended. A company willing to admit their mistakes and make changes to properly resolve them will garnish far more respect and loyalty from its playerbase.

facts and well said.

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As much as you might want to lump game balance together you really have to break it out by mode, especially after the big structural changes that happened during the first sPvP seasons.

For instance sPvP balance is...not good in no spall part because there have been too many cooks in the kitchen. Besides the balance team you've had community people and programmers pushing their own changes, so it should be no surprise that it is an incoherent mess. When everyone is involved, no one is responsible, and it shows.

WvW has the opposite problem where there is only token attention, due in part to widespread disagreements about what the goals of WvW balance should even be and a status quo bias from the community.

PvE balance is actually pretty good. There's a mix of objectives between raids, fractals, and open world but those are weighed pretty well against each other and there's more variety in these metas than there has ever been. Granted, PvE balance is way easier than competitive balance, but their main mode is in pretty good shape.

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@otto.5684 said:I think the balance changes in the end of HoT were solid.

Lolwat. The reaper DC buff 8 months or so before PoF wrecked havoc on WvW and created the most toxic meta we have ever seen. It literally forced Anet to rebalance the entire game for more counters against condition damage and it still wasnt enough.

Then when PoF was realeased, everyone dumped reaper for the superior scourge... And two weeks or so later Anet FINALLY nerfed the reaper. Really. When no one was playing it anymore. After 8 months.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@otto.5684 said:I think the balance changes in the end of HoT were solid.

Lolwat. The reaper DC buff 8 months or so before PoF wrecked
havoc
on WvW and created the most toxic meta we have ever seen. It literally forced Anet to rebalance the entire game for more counters against condition damage and it
still
wasnt enough.

Then when PoF was realeased, everyone dumped reaper for the superior scourge...
And two weeks or so later Anet FINALLY nerfed the reaper
. Really. When no one was playing it anymore.
After 8 months
.

I was going primarily with sPvP. But which WvW meta was not extremely toxic ?? It is always spam fest zergs and roaming is mostly stealth and one shot combat.

Unless Anet merges WvW and sPvP stats, WvW will never resemble anything that is remotely closed to balanced combat.

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I feel that the balancing can be summed up using the ranger as an example:

Many complaints that Soulbeast is overperforming.

They proceed to nerf Druid

The biggest issue overall for me is not the nerfing per say, it's that they completely kill specs so that it's virtually unplayable in all content. I call it constant "Yo-Yo" balancing. The result is many of the casuals they seem to cater the game to grind and work hard towards gear for a character they enjoy playing, and the class gets so radically changed or nerfed - then you need to grind and save for a totally different set or class altogether.

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@"Strider.7849" said:I feel that the balancing can be summed up using the ranger as an example:

Many complaints that Soulbeast is overperforming.

They proceed to nerf Druid

The biggest issue overall for me is not the nerfing per say, it's that they completely kill specs so that it's virtually unplayable in all content. I call it constant "Yo-Yo" balancing. The result is many of the casuals they seem to cater the game to grind and work hard towards gear for a character they enjoy playing, and the class gets so radically changed or nerfed - then you need to grind and save for a totally different set or class altogether.

As sad as I am to be saying this, the above is precisely why my ranger will reap the biggest long-term benefit from holding onto the one set of legendary armor I've been able to put together so far. I used to main druid in all forms of content, but that's steadily been nerfed out of the picture. At least with legendary weapons/armor, I don't have to reinvest when weird "balance" changes obsolesce an entire specialization.

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