More Frequent Balance Updates

[Obtena.7952]

@The Ace.9105 said:

Wait? So now you are saying that your point isn't that it takes 3 months to make the balance patch when you said this:

Do you SEE me saying a number in there? No you don't ...

You know why? Because I didn't want to lose you guys in the weeds. I paved the smooth path here ... you still got lost.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

The argument that criticizing someone or something is not possible because the critics do not know the person/entity being criticized is not a new one. The truth is, though, that such criticism is based on observed effects, not unavailable information. Thus, "insider knowledge" of factors like process, or true nature, are irrelevant. The important thing is that there is a current state of affairs that some observers find wanting, and that their observations are based on information that is available.

Some people may not be affected by the state of balance in the game. Others are clearly unhappy with it. That not everyone agrees there is a problem does not mean the problem is not there. It may mean that those in disagreement are: burying their heads in the sand; prefer resources be spent on things that do matter to them; or prefer the status quo for some other reason. Reasonable discussion can be had over the latter two possibilities offered. There can be no rational discussion if the first is in play -- and in the perceived absence of any cogent reasons, that seems to be where the thread is going.

The truth is that people believe ANet could do better. The suggestion in this thread is that faster, less robust changes have worked elsewhere and thus might work here. At one point, that's exactly what ANet stated their intended approach to balance would be. However, the current state of affairs appears far from that stated ideal. Asserting that suggestions for improvement are invalid is a de facto assumption that ANet cannot be mistaken or do better. Such an assumption is a disservice to the community who want the game to be better. It's also a disservice to ANet. People produce their best work when pushed.

Maybe ANet is happy with the numbers of players participating in PvP and WvW. Maybe, though, there is room for improvement. If it's not going to be better balance passes via faster and less drastic changes, then maybe it ought to be something else.

In either case, suggesting improvements is the purpose of this forum. Attempts to invalidate suggestions based on appeals to authority and/or arguments from incredulity do not in any way invalidate those suggestions. Such arguments do nothing but create a tangent that detracts from the discussion rather than adding to it. However, I suppose that could have been the idea all along.

[The Ace.9105]

Let me fix that for you.

@The Ace.9105 said:

Wait? So now you are saying that your point isn't that it takes 3 months to make the balance patch when you said this:Furthermore, I CAN conclude it takes as long as it does ... because I can SEE it takes that long.

@"Obtena.7952" replied:

Do you SEE me saying a number in there? No you don't ...

You know why? Because I didn't want to lose you guys in the weeds. I paved the smooth path here ... you still got lost.

There you go.

Yeah, so basically all you have managed to achieve is to troll the forum moderation, forum participants and the community. Your purpose here was to be provocative and cause toxicity to the already sensitive topic. You knew you can have great reactions and that you can be all important person here with your "clever" points and all that just cause you don't want to lose to us guys "in the weeds"?

What do you mean "in the weeds"?

I paved the smooth path here ... you still got lost.

Seems like you are acting like you are better than the rest of us here but if you were you wouldn't need the ego boost that comes from all your toxic comments.

Your points have been all debunked and you still keep arguing against. Anet can do more frequent balance patches and that way address more issues and fix things instead of making one big patch and not fix stuff gradually.

Even if anet released one balance patch per year or not balance patches at all it wouldn't magically increase the pve content the game has if that is the real thing behind your arguments. Pve has the release schedule restriction as well. Anet already has tons of content made ready in their backlog but they are keeping them for the release schedule so that they have something to release for every release if things go south.

[Obtena.7952]

Think what you want ... I never made a point about balance patches taking 3 months ... if I did, you would see it ... just like you can see how long it takes between patches if you know how to use a calendar.

[The Ace.9105]

@Obtena.7952 said:

1. Frequency has nothing to do with quality of patches or some idea that we get to 'better' faster. Whatever process Anet has, it makes no sense for anyone to assume it could be faster to get us balance because no one knows what their process is. It's such a flawed bit of nonsense.
2. So you just want more frequent and could care less about what the result is? I don't see the value of that.
3. The whole idea that more frequent patches delivers more balance is based on a completely nonsensical assumption about how Anet uses their resources.
4. Furthermore, I CAN conclude it takes as long as it does ... because I can SEE it takes that long.

Also your vote: No, we don't need more Balance Updates.

To me and probably everyone else too this sounds like you are trying to say that anet needs the 3-4 months to make a quality balance patch and that's the reason why they shouldn't take less time. Isn't that your whole point here?

[Obtena.7952]

@The Ace.9105 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

1. Frequency has nothing to do with quality of patches or some idea that we get to 'better' faster. Whatever process Anet has, it makes no sense for anyone to assume it could be faster to get us balance because no one knows what their process is. It's such a flawed bit of nonsense.
2. So you just want more frequent and could care less about what the result is? I don't see the value of that.
3. The whole idea that more frequent patches delivers more balance is based on a completely nonsensical assumption about how Anet uses their resources.
4. Furthermore, I CAN conclude it takes as long as it does ... because I can SEE it takes that long.

Also your vote: No, we don't need more Balance Updates.

To me and probably everyone else too this sounds like you are trying to say that anet needs the 3-4 months to make a quality balance patch and that's the reason why they shouldn't take less time. Isn't that your whole point here?

They should take whatever time their process requires. I never hung my hat on '3 months' or whatever number you think I did because I knew far too many people would want to make a pedantic argument about it ... turns out even when I take the effort to smooth that path, people still do that anyways. Maybe they think nit picking the details degrades the point ... I can assure you it doesn't. /shrug

The question isn't if we should get them faster because the bandwidth to 'do patches' is finite. Pushing for faster assumes too much about how they do things and no one here has enough knowledge of that to make a reasonable argument for it.

Basically, if you want faster patches, the current process has to go. So the question is if it's worth it, not all the ways it can be done.

[zealex.9410]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:let me ask you then ... if it take 10 patches or 1 patch in the same amount of time ... is the result different?Yes. I have already said why in this very thread.

@Obtena.7952 said:No, I just know how to count. You know how a calendar works right?If you did know how to count, you would have noticed that the 3-month long balance schedule is only the current one. If you're claiming that the balance process for a single balance patch takes them 3 months, how do you explain that in the past history the very same process took them a different amount of time?

I don't care how long it takes and I've never made any 'point' that it takes three months between patches.

My point is that people can't assume that Anet doing it faster is better for balance. Yes, I've read your posts. I don't put much merit in what you have to say because like everyone else, you don't know their process either. Any argument to make balance better by doing it faster is fundamentally flawed thinking because they are based on assumptions about the Anet's balancing process details.I do know that the quality of their individual balance patches now isn't any better than it was when they were iterating faster. As such, i can say that more balancing passes

is

indeed better. And if their current process doesn't allow for that, they can always change it.

In short, i know that the overall quality of balancing over long time is heavily dependant on the number of balance passes. I know, that Anet can do faster balance passes (because they managed to do that in the past). I know that smaller changes at shorter intervals are generally better than packaging those changes into one single patch. I know that at the moment GW2 balance is in a bad shape. As such, i don't need to understand what Anet internal balancing processes are - they are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That's because their balancing process is

not

set in stone. It

can

improve.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Obtena.7952 said:Basically, if you want faster patches, the current process has to go.Yes. Of course it has to go. That's what people have been arguing for since the beginning of the thread - for Anet to change that process.

And yes, obviously, people arguing for it do believe it would be worth it. They wouldn't be arguing for it otherwise.

[Obtena.7952]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Basically, if you want faster patches, the current process has to go.Yes.

Of course

it has to go. That's what people have been arguing for since the beginning of the thread - for Anet to change that process.

And yes, obviously, people arguing for it do believe it would be worth it. They wouldn't be arguing for it otherwise.

And that's all you can say, because if you don't know what they do now, it makes no sense to suggest how they should change it.

You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

@Obtena.7952 said:> You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

So now you know what the selling point is for every player that plays this game, and you know why they choose to play this game, what keeps them here? That's by far the most patronizing thing you've ever said and there have been many over time. You don't know what people think or want nor apparently does the balance team.

[Obtena.7952]

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:> You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

So now you know what the selling point is for every player that plays this game, ....

Yes, That's EXACTLY what I said ... I speak for EVERYONE, including you :+1:

:SIGH: It's only patronizing to you because it's completely fabricated by you to illicit some argumentative response.

The fact is that balance isn't a selling point of this game ... and' that's not me being a Psychic like you love to accuse me of. That's just another observation that if it was, we would have it by now.

[Dante.1763]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:> You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

So now you know what the selling point is for every player that plays this game, ....

Yes, That's EXACTLY what I said ... I speak for EVERYONE, including you :+1:

:SIGH: It's only patronizing to you because it's completely fabricated by you to illicit some argumentative response.

The fact is that balance isn't a selling point of this game ... and' that's not me being a Psychic like you love to accuse me of. That's just another observation that if it was, we would have it by now.

Actually, as someone not involved in this argument you DID say that NOBODY Cared about balance in this game. You also said its not a make or break thing for people, again, wrong. If they keep going the route they are going with ele over the next few months i will be done with this game. Having your favorite class destroyed by terrible decisions because of one game mode IS irritating to the point of making me quit.

[Vision.7265]

There should be less. I personally don't like chrono, but it shouldn't just instantly be nuked into the ground like what is planned for tomorrow. I don't think ANY spec or class deserves to be automatically irrelevant after a patch. I made chronos for portal and Moa. Now the distance for port is short and Moa isn't breaking any break bar unless you have a full team of chronos.

A balance patch should fix what's broken. Vanilla core engineer comes to mind, a class I mained since I started years ago and abandoned recently because it had no love. I went to guardian instead.

Think about it. Timeless games have had little or no balancing needed. Think chess and checkers. My favorite open world WvW PvP game Fantasy Earth Zero (core game before greatsword) was balanced between warrior, scout, and mage in a rock, paper, and scissors type of balance. Warrior was strong against scout and weak to mage. Scout was strong against mage and weak against warrior. Mage was strong against warrior and weak to scout. They had perfect balance between classes until the introduction of greatsword and other classes thereafter. I heard they had even reached balance between their old and new classes after a while.

I would still be playing if they didn't abandon it in the US since it was mismanaged.

Coming back to our game here, I wish there were more done prior to the release of any class or spec. It would take a lot of work (remember we have three game modes and specialized content in each) as well as skin purchases by the community to fund it. Again, no class or spec should be either so broken that it needs to buffed to the nth degree nor should any class or spec be neutralized to the point of "why should I even use this?"

TL:DR - If it were balanced, you wouldn't need to patch it. If it needs a patch, it wasn't balanced to begin with.

RIP chrono

[Obtena.7952]

@Dante.1763 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:> You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

So now you know what the selling point is for every player that plays this game, ....

Yes, That's EXACTLY what I said ... I speak for EVERYONE, including you :+1:

:SIGH: It's only patronizing to you because it's completely fabricated by you to illicit some argumentative response.

The fact is that balance isn't a selling point of this game ... and' that's not me being a Psychic like you love to accuse me of. That's just another observation that if it was, we would have it by now.

Actually, as someone not involved in this argument you

DID

say that

NOBODY

Cared about balance in this game. You also said its not a make or break thing for people, again, wrong. If they keep going the route they are going with ele over the next few months i will be done with this game. Having your favorite class destroyed by terrible decisions because of one game mode

IS

irritating to the point of making me quit.

If you care about balance and you are still here, then you don't care enough about it for it to make you leave because it's been unbalanced for 7 years. It's NOT a selling point of this game. If you quit because of balance issues, then GW2 wasn't the game for you in the first place, because 'good balance' isn't what this game was ever about. Nothing you're going to say is going to change that. It makes you unhappy that balance isn't that big a deal in this game? OK ... but that's not a reason for it to be a big deal either. If the market that sustains this game cared more about it, it would affect Anet's revenues more and they would adjust accordingly. That hasn't seemed to happen to any significant extent and if anyone claims it would at this point ... feels like a lot of fear mongering to try to compel the idea we need better.

Pretty sure you and me had this conversation before ... and I'm no less wrong now than I was when we had it the first time.

[Vision.7265]

I agree with the previous comment. It HAS been unbalanced for years. I'm here for gymkhana simulator. Haha.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Basically, if you want faster patches, the current process has to go.Yes.

Of course

it has to go. That's what people have been arguing for since the beginning of the thread - for Anet to change that process.

And yes, obviously, people arguing for it do believe it would be worth it. They wouldn't be arguing for it otherwise.

And that's all you can say, because if you don't know what they do now, it makes no sense to suggest how they should change it.It's definitely no less sense than you using your lack of knowledge as a basis to claim they

shouldn't

change it.

You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

A good state fo balance may indeed not be something that will bring in new players. Bad state of balance however is something that can chase some players away, and lower engagement/enjoyment levels of others. This has been proven many times over in many games, GW1 and GW2 included. Lack of balance is especially destructive for both the competitive modes, and the endgame content.

Sure, pure open world players will not care, but if they were the only players Anet was thinking of, they wouldn't bother to balance anything in the first place.

You may think it's not worth the effort, but the existence of this thread, again, shows that there are players that disagree with you.

[Dante.1763]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Dante.1763 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:> You can argue it's worth it all you want. These are irrelevant comments. the meat is why. Honestly, I don't see any reason for Anet to put more effort into balance than they have been because it's not a selling point of the game to anyone ... even to the people that claim it's important. It's simply not a make or break element for people choosing to play this game.

So now you know what the selling point is for every player that plays this game, ....

Yes, That's EXACTLY what I said ... I speak for EVERYONE, including you :+1:

:SIGH: It's only patronizing to you because it's completely fabricated by you to illicit some argumentative response.

The fact is that balance isn't a selling point of this game ... and' that's not me being a Psychic like you love to accuse me of. That's just another observation that if it was, we would have it by now.

Actually, as someone not involved in this argument you

DID

say that

NOBODY

Cared about balance in this game. You also said its not a make or break thing for people, again, wrong. If they keep going the route they are going with ele over the next few months i will be done with this game. Having your favorite class destroyed by terrible decisions because of one game mode

IS

irritating to the point of making me quit.

If you care about balance and you are still here, then you don't care enough about it for it to make you leave because it's been unbalanced for 7 years. It's NOT a selling point of this game. If you quit because of balance issues, then GW2 wasn't the game for you in the first place, because 'good balance' isn't what this game was ever about. Nothing you're going to say is going to change that. It makes you unhappy that balance isn't that big a deal in this game? OK ... but that's not a reason for it to be a big deal either. If the market that sustains this game cared more about it, it would affect Anet's revenues more and they would adjust accordingly. That hasn't seemed to happen to any significant extent and if anyone claims it would at this point ... feels like a lot of fear mongering to try to compel the idea we need better.

Pretty sure you and me had this conversation before ... and I'm no less wrong now than I was when we had it the first time.

Weve had similar conversations, yes, and usually i agree with what you say at least in part. I dont here due to the way youve worded your post..

As to telling me what should affect my enjoyment of a game, you are wrong. period. Your idea of who this game was "for" (ive never seen marketing at all, even their earliest videos that said balance doesnt matter, or that this game is for casuals only) have no bearing here, and telling somebody that a game theyve played for so long isnt the game for them, is hilarious .

If what i enjoy is no longer enjoyable because of nerfs my interest in the game takes a massive dive, and i LOVE this game(i think being here for 7 almost 8 years actively playing it shows that), but i only do anything on two characters(ranger and ele), if either of those are made useless(like ranger used to be, and i did actually stop for awhile due to it.) i draw the line, without being able to use the classes i enjoy playing as in the game modes i enjoy playing, i stop playing until it gets fixed, end of story.

Bad Balance is and will always be a big deal to me as it does change my enjoyment of the game, period end of story.

Will 75% of the player base even notice bad balance? probably not, given the percentages of players who dont play around with builds im not surprised they dont notice. But for those of us who do and care, it obviously matters, and the only way to bring attention to it is to discuss it.

[Obtena.7952]

Actually, the market this game targets with the focus Anet has on the game VERY MUCH has everything to do with what we are discussing. I'm not telling you what you should and shouldn't enjoy. I'm simply telling you that if you don't like the flavour of the meal you have been eating for the last 7 years, that's not Anet's problem. Anet hasn't changed that flavour for 7 years, but now the flavour is an issue? That's not just not being honest. Apparently, enough like that flavour to keep this joint this open ... and as long as that's true, whatever flavour is missing is not all that significant to their business. If the flavour that is missing bothers you enough, that's when you find someone with a place with the flavour you like ... and you eat there instead. I can guarantee that if Anet's flavour was as bad as people want to believe, they would have changed it in way more significant ways.

What I really like is that how this discussion is going, it's clear that there is some truth to my theory that people think more frequent balance patches is somehow the answer to getting the balance they want. More meals made doesn't change their flavour.

[Obtena.7952]

@Astralporing.1957 said:You may think it's not worth the effort, but the existence of this thread, again, shows that there are players that disagree with you.

It's not a question if some people want better balance. The question is what the value is to give it to them for the investment. Clearly, it's not much, or you would have it by now. Like anything else, money talks and if this game was as significantly impacted by people leaving due to balancing, Anet would change their focus to address that. Apparently, the return on investment is something bigger.

The bottomline here is that you can discuss how Anet should balance better all you like, but I think a more critical look at the game and it's targeted market will give you some insight to why it hasn't happened in a more significant way or in a direct more inline with traditional MMO's.

[Kumouta.4985]

even just number changes to keep everything in check would do

[Theriverpriest.9472]

I believe that Anet is doing a great job now and I like what they are doing

[Delofasht.4231]

From what I have seen in other games, more frequent balance patches results in a more balanced game and content introductions come with big patches. Big balance patches are usually a big mistake, where things can get pretty messed up, changes end up being too big or too small. Better to work fast and small, with the ability to tweak it further, than large and dramatic.

Just like DPS, small chunks happening frequently result in less variance over a shorter duration and hit the end goal or mark more efficiently. A big change could nail the mark outright, but more often will overshoot or undershoot by a large margin.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:You may think it's not worth the effort, but the existence of this thread, again, shows that there are players that disagree with you.

It's not a question if some people want better balance. The question is what the value is to give it to them for the investment. Clearly, it's not much, or you would have it by now. Like anything else, money talks and if this game was as significantly impacted by people leaving due to balancing, Anet would change their focus to address that. Apparently, the return on investment is something bigger.

The bottomline here is that you can discuss how Anet should balance better all you like, but I think a more critical look at the game and it's targeted market will give you some insight to why it hasn't happened in a more significant way or in a direct more inline with traditional MMO's.The argument "it's the best we can get, or the Anet would have changed it already" you base your whole reasoning on is false. If we were to believe in it, Anet would not change anything ever - and we know they do that all the time. And while many changes are small and relatively insignificant, some of them are anything but.

Your second argument, "people do not care" is also evidently false. You may not care, but the mere existence of threads like this (and the fact that people did quit this game over this) show it is by no means a view shared by everyone.

And honestly, you do not have any better arguments than that.

[DoomNexus.5324]

Yes we definitely need a much quicker balance patch cycle and Anet shouldn't be afraid of hot fixes too. Like with Berserker Arc Divider. Being able to dish out 31k to everyone within the entire node should have been fixed no later than the next day for example. Instead it stuck around for 3 weeks (and is still ridiculous but hey.. berserker still gets overshadowed by spellbreaker so why bother right?).Also those balance changes should be much smaller then and not adjust 10 screws at a time, completely overshooting the goal, like Anet regularly does with those occasional "big" patches.

And as far as theorycrafting and time to settle goes.. While I can fully understand that this is indeed important, it isn't really a good argument here imo, they could easily put out another balance patch in which they then address stuff like Holo or Firebrand+Scourge, so a completely new and independent balancing to the current/next one.Instead we will have to wait another 3 months to let our hopes for finally a better balance die.So.. I wouldn't expect them to instantly revert or further balance already balanced stuff (unless direly needed) but could then simply address other stuff too.

And yes. P L E A S E . keep on nerfing the classes because the constant buffing and power and sustain creeping has to come to an end!

[Sarrs.4831]

I don't think I want balance patches so much as I want stuff patches. New skills, weapons, etc.