ANET, Where are you?

[Morwath.9817]

6 minutes ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

Here's the answer. 

 which starts from the core guardian (one needs to run so much, the second needs to do that kind of damage, the third needs to do this pew pew, the fourth needs to put on a shroud of this size, the fifth needs to do boon corruption of this size and other meta modifiers, etc) and all this to play with the current core guardian meta (a replacement for the past more complex version of guardian - FB, without macro game and counterplay between other supports). Willbender probably won't even be able to scratch his core version.

 

Thats not the answer to the question, but I will answer myself.

Meta builds are usualy theorycrafted or tested by trial and error and popularized by top players, exceptions happens, but thats how it is. Back in the day, when game was more competitive EU and USA had periods with different metas, like EU played Viper Revenants and everything was dying super fast after HoT release and USA had Chronobunkers and Celestial Revenants with low damage output leading to some games being surrendered in tournament play after 1st cap. Obviously those metas affected each another after time, but you get the idea.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Morwath.9817

[Tescao.3042]

12 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

Thats not the answer to the question, but I will answer myself.

Meta builds are usualy theorycrafted or tested by trial and error and popularized by top players, exceptions happens, but thats how it is. Back in the day, when game was more competitive EU and USA had periods with different metas, like EU played Viper Revenants and everything was dying super fast after HoT release and USA had Chronobunkers and Celestial Revenants with low damage output leading to some games being surrendered in tournament play after 1st cap.

Forget about the past it will be gone. Maybe it was even worse there.  Perhaps you did not understand the meaning of the words macro game (imagine that economy = game and it is divided into macro game and micro game), here is one example if you know what Rdruid from Warcraft is, he will calmly heal dot pressure from unholly death knight + Ice chains, but dot pressure from aflication warlock + fear will gradually eat the druid. This is one example of a microgame scenario's development, so 2vs2 WoW will always be garbage.

Edited November 13, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[Morwath.9817]

1 minute ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

Forget about the past it will be gone. Maybe it was even worse there.  Perhaps you did not understand the meaning of the words macro game (imagine that economy = game and it is divided into macro game and micro game), here is one example if you know what Rdruid from Warcraft is, he will calmly heal dot pressure from unholly death knight + Ice chains, but dot pressure from aflication warlock + fear will gradually eat the druid. This is one example of a scenario's development, so 2vs2 WoW will always be garbage.

Wow =/ GW2.

You know GW2 has split skill balancing between modes like GW1 and can be balanced within game mode.

[Tescao.3042]

Just now, Morwath.9817 said:

Wow =/ GW2.

You know GW2 has split skill balancing between modes like GW1 and can be balanced within game mode.

The balance of skills in WoW is also divided between modes, I will also tell you for more insight, some of the creators of gw were at the origins of the creation of WoW. Gw2 is unique (like WoW), I am not trying to turn gw2 into WoW, I am trying to explain what macro and micro game and counterplay are and how wise it is.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 hours ago, Morwath.9817 said:

That being said. If I would have mission to build a balance team, I'd hire tournament players to work with my designers together.

And what do you think CMC has been doing over the past two years? He’s been consulting with top players to make balance decisions, and look where that has got us. Half of them were probably the match manipulators that were banned.

[Morwath.9817]

23 minutes ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

The balance of skills in WoW is also divided between modes, I will also tell you for more insight, some of the creators of gw were at the origins of the creation of WoW. Gw2 is unique (like WoW), I am not trying to turn gw2 into WoW, I am trying to explain what macro and micro game and counterplay are and how wise it is.

 

Last time I played WoW was during vanilla around its orginal release and pvp there was so awful, no idea what has changed since then tbh 🙃

 

8 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

And what do you think CMC has been doing over the past two years? He’s been consulting with top players to make balance decisions, and look where that has got us. Half of them were probably the match manipulators that were banned.

 

I don't know what CMC is doing, I don't know how does balancing process look like in GW2 due to lack of any communication between development and community. We don't even know how they want sPvP to look after EoD, just radio silence.

We did hear about PvE, we did hear about WvW and thats it.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Morwath.9817

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

8 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

Last time I played WoW was during vanilla around its orginal release and pvp there was so awful, no idea what has changed since then tbh 🙃

 

 

I don't know what CMC is doing, I don't know how does balancing process look like in GW2 due to lack of any communication between development and community. We don't even know how they want sPvP to look after EoD, just radio silence.

We did hear about PvE, we did hear about WvW and thats it.

Is the EOD streams not enough communication for you? CMC went through every skill and trait and explained what they do, what strategies he believes those specs will develop in spvp and you can identify his balance and design philosophy from those streams.

In addition they’ve provided nearly every balance patch with a 2 week notice post, that explains what they intend to change in order to gather feedback from the community before those changes go live. 

honestly what more communication do you want? At what point does that communication become useful? Do you want him to go to your house and talk about balance with you over dinner? 

Edited November 13, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Tescao.3042]

1 hour ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

Last time I played WoW was during vanilla around its orginal release and pvp there was so awful, no idea what has changed since then tbh 🙃

 

yea, then pvp was just auto attacks and a few pew pew, consider the beginning of pvp WoW with the advent of Death knights, they connected ranged and melee with an invisible thread.

Edited November 13, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[Morwath.9817]

8 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Is the EOD streams not enough communication for you? CMC went through every skill and trait and explained what they do, what strategies he believes those specs will develop in spvp and you can identify his balance philosophy from those streams.

 

In addition they’ve provided nearly every balance patch with a 2 week notice post, that explains what they intend to change in order to gather feedback from the community before those changes go live. 
 

honestly what more communication do you want? Do you want him to go to your house and talk about balance with you over dinner? I don’t get it. 

 

I want to know how they want to keep sPvP alive, if they want to improve matchmaking, if they think about disabling duoQ or bringing back teamQ. I'd like to know, what kind of balance they want to achieve, what would be fun kind of meta in their mind and so on, not how they see EoD specs, but whole piece. Kind of article every other game mode got lately what plans they got about it.

 

I also miss communication we had here, on the forums.

Edit: Do you remember amout of communication we had pre-Hot when they were introducing current trait system and condi stacks?

Edited November 13, 2021 by Morwath.9817

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 hours ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

I want to know how they want to keep sPvP alive, if they want to improve matchmaking, if they think about disabling duoQ or bringing back teamQ. I'd like to know, what kind of balance they want to achieve, what would be fun kind of meta in their mind and so on, not how they see EoD specs, but whole piece. Kind of article every other game mode got lately what plans they got about it.

 

I also miss communication we had here, on the forums.

Edit: Do you remember amout of communication we had pre-Hot when they were introducing current trait system and condi stacks?

 

I've been here, since Guild Wars 1 Factions, almost 15 or so years now, and I remember the level of communication Anet has had over the course of that time :

 

Back in Gw1 days, there was no "communication" with the community...there was no forum, and the only way people spoke to each other about balance issues was on Wikipedia discussion pages...If you look back on those discussion pages, there was no interaction between Arena Net and the playerbase...it was only the player-base, and there was no belief that complaining about it enough would get something nerfed. 

 

There was no Twitch, there was no Forum, there was no Reddit...no YouTube even...there was N O T H I N G, and we had a better game, better balance patches and pretty much better everything back then, then we do now....because those devs knew how to design games...and like Dom pointed out, many of those devs came from Blizzard and started Arenanet as a result to make Guild Wars.

 

Same thing seems to be the case with Gw2...things just went downhill when they started listening to people who have no idea how to make their own game.

Edited November 13, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Morwath.9817]

1 minute ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

I've been here, since Guild Wars 1 Factions, almost 15 or so years now, and I remember the level of communication Anet has had over the course of that time :

 

Back in Gw1 days, there was no "communication" with the community...there was no forum, and the only way people spoke to each other about balance issues was on Wikipedia discussion pages...If you look back on those discussion pages, there was no interaction between Arena Net and the playerbase...it was only the player-base, and there was no belief that complaining about it enough would get something nerfed. 

 

There was no Twitch, there was no Forum, there was no Reddit...no YouTube even...there was N O T H I N G, and we had a better game, better balance patches and pretty much better everything back then, then we do now....because those devs knew how to design games...and like Morwath pointed out, many of those devs came from Blizzard and started Arenanet as a result to make Gw2.

 

Same thing seems to be the case with Gw2...things just went downhill when they started listening to people who have no idea how to make their own game.

 

I don't want them to listen to the crowd, I want to know what they want to do and why. Playing GW since GW1 release btw.

[Tescao.3042]

18 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

I want to know how they want to keep sPvP alive, if they want to improve matchmaking, if they think about disabling duoQ or bringing back teamQ. I'd like to know, what kind of balance they want to achieve, what would be fun kind of meta in their mind and so on, not how they see EoD specs, but whole piece. Kind of article every other game mode got lately what plans they got about it.

 

I also miss communication we had here, on the forums.

Edit: Do you remember amout of communication we had pre-Hot when they were introducing current trait system and condi stacks?

I hope you will be happy with how the game turns out. I just understand that 36 specializations (taking into account the core) is a serious level, without a wise counter game between specializations and their roles, just new animations will replace the old ones in the new meta. With the possibilities of healing in gw2, probably only starting with 10 people, you can start balancing supports with each other, then balancing the rest of the roles of roamers, duelists, tanks, teamfighters, sidenoders, but for such a beautiful macro game, the conditions of conquest and the size of 5vs5 maps are small. Just an imo

[Morwath.9817]

1 minute ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

I hope you will be happy with how the game turns out. I just understand that 36 specializations (taking into account the core) is a serious level, without a wise counter game between specializations and their roles, just new animations will replace the old ones in the new meta. With the possibilities of healing in gw2, probably only starting with 10 people, you can start balancing supports with each other, then balancing the rest of the roles of roamers, duelists, tanks, teamfighters, sidenoders, but for such a beautiful macro game, the conditions of conquest and the size of 5vs5 maps are small. Just an imo

Yes, they need to balance within roles and its exremly lacking right now.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

AneT DeCiDes WhaT ThEY wiLl Do WiTh THe GAMe, NOt PlaYerS

 

ConSuMe DraGoN SkiFF 

[Downstate.4697]

They game doesnt need balance; it needs variety and consistent changes based on total play time of each profession and tournament/ranked performance. A once a month or once a quarter balance update

[Tescao.3042]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

There was no Twitch, there was no Forum, there was no Reddit...no YouTube even...there was N O T H I N G, and we had a better game, better balance patches and pretty much better everything back then, then we do now....because those devs knew how to design games...and like Dom pointed out, many of those devs came from Blizzard and started Arenanet as a result to make Guild Wars.

Unique post
These words explain everything. The same immense consumption of information played a cruel joke with WoW,  especially with hi end PVP content - RBG, which people still don't know how to play wise in 2 tanks.

Edit.

Edited November 13, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

36 minutes ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

Unique post
These words explain everything. The same immense consumption of information played a cruel joke with WoW,  especially with hi end PVP content - RBG, which people still don't know how to play wise in 2 tanks.

Edit.

 

My fault bro, i said "Morwath pointed out" where i should have said "Dom pointed out" because you pointed that out. My bad.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Morwath.9817 said:

 

I don't want them to listen to the crowd, I want to know what they want to do and why. Playing GW since GW1 release btw.

 

Then what does it matter to you if they aren't gonna listen to you anyway? How does it change anything whether YOU know anything about the game or not. The only thing that matters is what Anet knows...and if anet doesn't know how to make a good game, then that's what you will get regardless of whether they communicate to you or not...because the community sure as hell does not know how to make a good game.

Edited November 13, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Tescao.3042]

10 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

My fault bro, i said "Morwath pointed out" where i should have said "Dom pointed out" because you pointed that out. My bad.

It's okay my friend, thanks for the fixes, but I realized that you were just wrong. The very meaning of the post was unique.

[Leonidrex.5649]

3 hours ago, DomHemingway.8436 said:

You may be right, but how do they know what adjustments need to be made if they have never played a builds that is not meta at high levels. Most likely some of them are jumping between meta builds.

I think this requires representatives of the class, players who are of a high level, but who understand the class as a whole and its specializations, and not representatives of meta builds. The wisest game to see is the multi-faceted counterplay between specs, to balance this, GW2 have another difficulty, this weapons that open up new styles, but at the same time become hostages of meta modifiers

the problem is that developers will see which builds are overperforming or are frustrating, but have absolutely no idea why.
mesmer in general is a good example of this, as a mesmer player I see there was 0 idea in all mesmer nerfs, and they had to do like 10 different ones back to back and all it did is leave the class hallow. Why not listen to someone like Jazz that actually knows why mesmer is strong.
Then we have a flip side, scourge was OP, and all necro specs are, and bright developers idea was to remove a kittening amulet to fix scourge, all it did is kick tempest in the nut, didnt even phase a scourge at all.
And blind nerfing COULD work if you patched the game once a week and revert poor changes but devs have a huge ego, they can do NO wrong, and they patch once every 3 months so we are left with their kitten ups for months or forever

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

12 minutes ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

Then we have a flip side, scourge was OP, and all necro specs are, and bright developers idea was to remove a kittening amulet to fix scourge, all it did is kick tempest in the nut, didnt even phase a scourge at all.
 

 

Dude no don't play that card. Menders amulet removal was a result of the top level players begging for it's removal. I and a few others were the only ones who pointed out that Menders shouldn't be removed because it wasn't going to "fix" scourge.

[Morwath.9817]

Just now, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

Dude no don't play that card. Menders amulet removal was a result of the top level players begging for it's removal. I and a few others were the only ones who pointed out that Menders shouldn't be removed because it wasn't going to "fix" scourge.

Well, did removing any amulets solved anything? 😒

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

Well, did removing any amulets solved anything? 😒

 

No it didn't...obviously it made the game worse...like i keep saying your "top level players" are ruining the game and have been doing so for 2 years now...because they don't understand how to design or balance games. 

[Morwath.9817]

4 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

No it didn't...obviously it made the game worse...like i keep saying your "top level players" are ruining the game and have been doing so for 2 years now...because they don't understand how to design or balance games. 

You see, this is exacly why I think person making balance decisions have to fully understand user experience 😅, so they fillter feedback properly. This is why I'd like to hear more about direction sPvP is going, will they keep removing things? And so on...

[Kuma.1503]

4 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

unbiased top level player who plays only meta builds knows why they are meta, and will make adjustments to introduce new ones, or bring the stronger specs more in line, making the game more varied and interesting.
Developer nerf random kitten as he is clueless and we have what we have now.

I'm tempted to agree because, in theory an unbiased top level player would understand the game and the meta at a fundamental level and know what changes need to be made to improve it.

There's just one problem. People aren't unbiased. 

Even proffesional players have comfort picks, classes they know the ins and outs of more than others. Playstyles they prefer over others, or metas that personally enjoy. These things will influence how they balance their game whether they realize it or not. 

If you mostly play ranger, but you can "flex" every other class at a high level, the lens in which you view the game will be influenced by the time you spent playing ranger because that is most familiar to you, creating an information bias (not sure what the technical term for this is).

Never believe someone when they say they are "unbiased". It is a blatant lie, even if they believe it themselves. 

It's better to have someone who is biased, is aware of those biases, and are open and honest about them, because that person is at least more aware of when those biases effect their decision making process. 

In the end, a good way around this is simply not relying on a single person. Having a pool of top level players each with varying opinions and perspectives will help. While it isn't a perfect solution, it at least helps counterbalance the fact that we are creatures of bias by our very nature.

One actionable way Anet could go about this is getting on a podcast with several top level players and discussing potential changes. That would also allow them the benefit of gauging the community reaction to what was discussed. Obviously, not all community feedback will be constructive, but if the overwhelming response is either positive or negative, that generally merits paying attention to. 

To sum everything up: People aren't unbiased, but the more qualified people you add, the more you can mitigate that. 

Either that, or find someone who has a bias that for a certain kind of product, call it a "Vision" and then pursue that vision and hope it turns into a good game. 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Kuma.1503