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More Frequent Balance Updates


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The way that the game company Blizzard is frequently changing and updating their game, Hearthstone, lately (since the dev team changed) should really be looked at as a model for all games as a service for the future. That game was honestly about the die (or at least be a shell of its former self) and recently within the last 6 months they have changed everything dramatically. Frequent and community driven small balance changes, quality of life implementations within the game and client, more transparent communication with the community, etc.. All of their work has revived the game and their esports scene and would really work wonders in this game as well.

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@"Endless Soul.5178" said:I voted "other" simply because I could not care less about balance updates as I barely Wvw, and do not PvP at all.

It impacts PvE too. Things there are not exactly great. In PvE, more than any other mode, most skills and weapons are near useless. But if you want 1 power and 1 condi raid/high fractal build per class, we have that. But that is like 5% of overall PvE content? And with 2 elites+core+more than 6 years in the game age, that is not remotely good.

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@"Obtena.7952" said:People voting Yes have no idea ... I guess you like being the game QA department as well as a customer?

I'm astounded at the ratio of "Yes" to "No" votes as well. Maybe we naysayers have been around since the beginning and are just cynical based on the pattern we've observed over the last 7 years.

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@Interpretor.3091 said:The way that the game company Blizzard is frequently changing and updating their game, Hearthstone, lately (since the dev team changed) should really be looked at as a model for all games as a service for the future. That game was honestly about the die (or at least be a shell of its former self) and recently within the last 6 months they have changed everything dramatically. Frequent and community driven small balance changes, quality of life implementations within the game and client, more transparent communication with the community, etc.. All of their work has revived the game and their esports scene and would really work wonders in this game as well.

Bingo.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:People that want more need to think back to all of the previous balance updates. Every time there's a balance update, the forums always get flooded with complaints as people are disappointed about one thing or another. Do you really want more of that?

More frequent updates does not mean that the updates you want are more likely to occur.

development agility drives behaviours that ultimately creates quality and content nearer to the point in time when it is desired. As with everything this requires skill and understanding to do well. Beware the silo'd QA department from a gone age!

Waterfall development on the other hand is awful unless perhaps your building software to drive critical medical machines etc.

look at google - daily code deployments, they do this for a reason.

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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:People that want more need to think back to all of the previous balance updates.
Every
time there's a balance update, the forums always get flooded with complaints as people are disappointed about one thing or another. Do you really want more of that?

More frequent updates does not mean that the updates you want are more likely to occur.

development agility drives behaviours that ultimately creates quality and content nearer to the point in time when it is desired. As with everything this requires skill and understanding to do well. Beware the silo'd QA department from a gone age!

Waterfall development on the other hand is awful unless perhaps your building software to drive critical medical machines etc.

look at google - daily code deployments, they do this for a reason.

The fact will always remain that as long as people bring their traditional MMO baggage with them, Anet could do a balance patch every day and those people would still say the game isn't balanced. Anet's approach to balance simply is NOT like what most other games try to target and it's all related to their decision to abandon the holy trinity.

It's going to take a very long time before people finally accept that we are likely very close to 'balance' in this game, unless there is a revolutionary deviation from the current game model, like true separation of PVP from PVE for instance.

No, we don't need more balance patches. What we actually need is for Anet to tell us the target and tell us how close they think they are to getting there. That would put LOTS of these debates to rest.

@Zephyr.5382 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:People voting Yes have no idea ... I guess you like being the game QA department as well as a customer?

I'm astounded at the ratio of "Yes" to "No" votes as well. Maybe we naysayers have been around since the beginning and are just cynical based on the pattern we've observed over the last 7 years.

It's just people's wishful thinking ... they believe if they get more frequent balance patches, they will get to whatever their idea of balance is faster. Problem is that they don't realize how much deviation there is between what they think is balance and what Anet's target is.

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We had six balance updates from July 2018 until Jun 2019. That's more than once per quarter, and though it's not technically one every two months (more like they did two months in a row, skipped two, then did two more in a row) I think that's honestly a good goal to aim for. I do NOT want a balance pass every month. Every other would be just fine thank you. (balance patches were July, August, October, December, March, April)

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I spend most of my gw2 time solo roaming in wvw so other than spvpers I'm guessing class balance probably affects me more directly than any other play group but I've never really seen it as being very important. Everyone has access to all the same builds so an 'unbalanced' system gives you greater flexibility in how much you want to handicap yourself given your personal skill and the level of competition you are facing . . .

I'm not saying anet shouldn't fix things that are clearly broken, but that doesn't mean something is clearly broken just bc I can't beat it with my preferred class/build. I would MUCH rather be given more time to perfect my play with a current build than have the game skills changed to accommodate an unbalanced class matchup . . .

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@Ashen.2907 said:

@"Ben K.6238" said:Frequent does not mean better.

Actually in software development methodologies it does.

To be fair, "it does" should be replaced with, "it can."

More frequent bad changes that compound each other is not better than fewer changes that might very well have more consideration put into them.

Indeed. "Fail fast, fail often" should be applied to internal testing only. Doing it on live servers is a good way to earn a bad reputation.

For computer games in particular, players take some time to adapt to new balance values. Making further adjustments before the meta has time to adjust can easily result in compounding error, so the only time that should be done is if something has gone horribly wrong (e.g. some unusual interaction between skills that makes a player permanently invulnerable).

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@Ben K.6238 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:Frequent does not mean better.

Actually in software development methodologies it does.

To be fair, "it does" should be replaced with, "it can."

More frequent bad changes that compound each other is not better than fewer changes that might very well have more consideration put into them.

Indeed. "Fail fast, fail often" should be applied to internal testing only. Doing it on live servers is a good way to earn a bad reputation.

For computer games in particular, players take some time to adapt to new balance values. Making further adjustments before the meta has time to adjust can easily result in compounding error, so the only time that should be done is if something has gone horribly wrong (e.g. some unusual interaction between skills that makes a player permanently invulnerable).

Reducing or increasing dmg by half a percent each week is zero risk,whereas 2 monthly drops (at best)is MUCH MUCH more damaging than making an error in judgement that u fix a couple of days later. This kind of stuff is well established theory now. Example - ele uncompetitive in spvp in all but 1 build that requires 1k heal. Its taken 2 years with many many stale patches and they STILL haven't sorted it. Now imagine they incrementally tweaked ele every so slighty per week and they monitored trends. This is balancing. That is sustainable.

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@Jski.6180 said:The faster you can brake up the meta the better. At best ppl are just asking for one way to play the game for months on end with longer time in-between updates.

This shows a big misunderstanding of the goals of balancing. It's not there to break up meta and meta never goes away either. Also, it is important to maintain so sense of continuity in a class. For the meta to 'break up', you need to smash something pretty hard.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I am 99% sure that ANet would like to offer more balance updates, too. The question is: how do they pay for it, given the resource limitations and plans that they already have?

Like with most of the stuff they do for the game its an investent. They invest in faster balance with the hope it will lead to overall better balance and that will bring/retain more players.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@Jski.6180 said:The faster you can brake up the meta the better. At best ppl are just asking for one way to play the game for months on end with longer time in-between updates.

This shows a big misunderstanding of the goals of balancing. It's not there to break up meta and meta never goes away either. Also, it is important to maintain so sense of continuity in a class. For the meta to 'break up', you need to smash something pretty hard.

You need to smash it hard enough and often enough for it to not be tale for too long.

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@White Kitsunee.4620 said:Less patches mean more to to figure out how to play against a broken build. And more time to figure out how to nerf it correctly.

Even if they don't nerf things correctly all the time the principle still holds true.

Less patches also mean that broken op or broken up remain op/up for longer which is not good for the game.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:People that want more need to think back to all of the previous balance updates.
Every
time there's a balance update, the forums always get flooded with complaints as people are disappointed about one thing or another. Do you really want more of that?

More frequent updates does not mean that the updates you want are more likely to occur.

development agility drives behaviours that ultimately creates quality and content nearer to the point in time when it is desired. As with everything this requires skill and understanding to do well. Beware the silo'd QA department from a gone age!

Waterfall development on the other hand is awful unless perhaps your building software to drive critical medical machines etc.

look at google - daily code deployments, they do this for a reason.

The fact will always remain that as long as people bring their traditional MMO baggage with them, Anet could do a balance patch every day and those people would still say the game isn't balanced. Anet's approach to balance simply is NOT like what most other games try to target and it's all related to their decision to abandon the holy trinity.

It's going to take a very long time before people finally accept that we are likely very close to 'balance' in this game, unless there is a revolutionary deviation from the current game model, like true separation of PVP from PVE for instance.

No, we don't need more balance patches. What we actually need is for Anet to tell us the target and tell us how close they think they are to getting there. That would put LOTS of these debates to rest.

@Obtena.7952 said:People voting Yes have no idea ... I guess you like being the game QA department as well as a customer?

I'm astounded at the ratio of "Yes" to "No" votes as well. Maybe we naysayers have been around since the beginning and are just cynical based on the pattern we've observed over the last 7 years.

It's just people's wishful thinking ... they believe if they get more frequent balance patches, they will get to whatever their idea of balance is faster. Problem is that they don't realize how much deviation there is between what they think is balance and what Anet's target is.

The game will never be balanced but anet has done a better job in the past when they balanced more often in gw1. You dont base changes in aproaching balance with the idea of whether it will finally bring balance or not.

You base changes based on whetjer it has the potential to improve the balance which alot of cases says it does, gw1 included.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@Jski.6180 said:The faster you can brake up the meta the better. At best ppl are just asking for one way to play the game for months on end with longer time in-between updates.

This shows a big misunderstanding of the goals of balancing. It's not there to break up meta and meta never goes away either. Also, it is important to maintain so sense of continuity in a class. For the meta to 'break up', you need to smash something pretty hard.

Braking up meta is part of that goal of balancing. Player base will explode any thing buffed as long as it easy to make another hero in that strong class from the last update. Its just how humans work and class loyalty only goes so far. If it was hard to level up a class you would have a point but gw2 is no longer that type of game.

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