EoD vs. PoF vs. HoT - comparing pre-expansion patches shows how ANET are neglecting PvP.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

People often excuse the lack of recent balance patches and general updates to PvP with "they are working on an expansion". With this is mind, I decided to take a look back at what updates we got in the five months before each expansion (and including the expansion itself).

The results show how unprecedentedly few changes were made in preparation for EoD compared to PoF and HoT. The last major balance patch was February 2020, two years ago. Of course it is possible we get some additional changes on the 28th that we don't know about, like a new map.

HoT – released 23rd October 2015

(Every trait was reworked as part of the specialization patch)

Warrior -  93
Thief - 112
Ranger  - 161
Necro - 132
Mesmer - 120
Guard - 106
Engi - 163
Ele - 111

Total - 998

+ Boon Conversion rework, Condition system rework (all conditions stack intensity), Sigil/Rune changes, New class (Revenant), New map (Battle of Champion's Dusk), rework of UI and all traits (specialization update).

PoF – released 22nd September 2017

Warrior - 66
Thief - 61
Rev - 58
Ranger - 61
Necro - 61
Mesmer 49
Guard 59
Engi 54
Ele 60

Total - 529

+ Light Aura rework, Confusion/Torment damage changes, Rework of most PvP Sigils, New map (Hall of the Mists), overhaul of Heart of the Mists, added Automated Tournaments.

EoD – released 28th Feb 2022

Thief - 1
Necro - 7
Mesmer - 1
Guard - 1
Engi - 3
Ele - 5

Total - 18

+ Personal targets added.

Why this immense neglect?

Spoiler

This post on reddit.

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Downstate.4697]

Grab the torches and pitchforks. See you in oregon!

[xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678]

Game perfectly balanced now, perfect new classes and old ones, no need to apply more changes! 😄 

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

8 minutes ago, Svez Poizon XD.5268 said:

Game perfectly balanced now, perfect new classes and old ones, no need to apply more changes! 😄 

That's another thing, there are multiple promises that haven't come to fruition and don't look like they are going to anytime soon:

• Rework of 300 second cooldown passive traits (like Last Stance)
• Bringing back damage to some CC skills.

Edited February 20, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Stand The Wall.6987]

omg another one of these.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

12 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

omg another one of these.

Huh, has this comparison been done before?

[Wild.1705]

Aaaahhhhh, a nice refreshing glass of the facts.

[Sigmoid.7082]

I'm looking forward to the bigger patch in summer when the complaint is going to be Anet is changing too many things 😂 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

For starters, you missed the torment rework and  the resolution/resistance changes.

Second, we know they are redoing support at release and a few months after 

Third, they had a pandemic followed by layoffs hampering their ability to do meaningful changes in tandem with the expansion. FWIW, I think this is a major factor and I'm willing to cut some slack for it.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

31 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

For starters, you missed the torment rework and  the resolution/resistance changes.

Second, we know they are redoing support at release and a few months after 

Third, they had a pandemic followed by layoffs hampering their ability to do meaningful changes in tandem with the expansion. FWIW, I think this is a major factor and I'm willing to cut some slack for it.

No I did not miss the Torment or Resolution changes. In the OP I look at changes that happened quote "in the five months before each expansion". Those changes happened in may 2021 - nine months ago.

Edited February 20, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

54 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

For starters, you missed the torment rework and  the resolution/resistance changes

S'true. There are a bit more changes to note with EoD if you're counting the period between when the expansion was announced and release then this list needs to be longer.

I'm not saying that they were particularly good changes, as listing them all would look a little something like:

-Viper's Amulet has been removed from the PvP Build panel.

-Celestial Amulet has been removed from the PvP Build panel.

-Sigil of Annulment has been removed from the PvP Build panel.

I think you get where this is going. And I understand why the OP didn't include all that.

Quote

Third, they had a pandemic followed by layoffs hampering their ability to do meaningful changes in tandem with the expansion. FWIW, I think this is a major factor and I'm willing to cut some slack for it.

I am also pretty afraid to touch that hornet's nest of a topic, but even with a pandemic it was unnecessary at best to shrink the balance team for PvP specifically to a single possibly paid intern while simultaneously removing that intern's ability to make any sort of change to the functionality of skills & traits. Total freedom to delete whatever they want though.

 

If Arenanet had instead come out and said "The Pandemic combined with the looming expansion release has our devs swamped. Updates may be slower for a while." I would understand.

But the final decision was to enact a nerfpocalypse and to make a bunch of empty promises. Most of said empty promises being made specifically to remedy everything made broken and unworkable by the aforementioned nerfpocalypse.

Perfectly good opportunity to do nothing, and they instead chose to dig us into a hole and then sell us a shovel. So nah. They lost that pass.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Multicolorhipster.9751

[Downstate.4697]

I think the " bring the player, not the build" philosophy is driving their balance decisions. Nerf every outlier and you eventually have an environment where every profession has multiple builds that work. This is bad in the long run because it will make anet more hesistent to make changes and lead to another stale meta. If they rotated different runes and amulets this could be a good comprimise without needing to touch builds as often.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

3 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Huh, has this comparison been done before?

another look how bad pvp is thread. hope one of the mods merges em all that would be funny lol.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

6 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Nerf every outlier and you eventually have an environment where every profession has multiple builds that work. 

This is like the exact opposite of what ends up happening. Nerf an 'outlier' and people just move on to the next least nerfed thing. That's what they've been doing for the past 2 years.

It doesn't increase build diversity, it decreases build diversity because to even arrive at the second least-nerfed build you would first have to abandon the build being nerfed. You lose that option.

That's the very idea behind balance. You lose build options in favor of making everything more samey until eventually; piece by piece, your game is whittled down to being naught but checkers with swords and magic.

6 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

If they rotated different runes and amulets this could be a good comprimise without needing to touch builds as often.

That sounds horrid tbh.

Imagine stepping into a Ranked game filled to the brim with turbo trapper Dragonhunters just because trapper runes and berserker amulet were on rotation that week. 

That would needlessly inject an RNG component to a game that doesn't need it.

[Eurantien.4632]

5 hours ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Grab the torches and pitchforks. See you in oregon!

Seattle is in Washington.

[Downstate.4697]

3 minutes ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

Seattle is in Washington.

Yeah idk why I thought oregon

[Downstate.4697]

20 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

This is like the exact opposite of what ends up happening. Nerf an 'outlier' and people just move on to the next least nerfed thing. That's what they've been doing for the past 2 years.

It doesn't increase build diversity, it decreases build diversity because to even arrive at the second least-nerfed build you would first have to abandon the build being nerfed. You lose that option.

That's the very idea behind balance. You lose build options in favor of making everything more samey until eventually; piece by piece, your game is whittled down to being naught but checkers with swords and magic.

That sounds horrid tbh.

Imagine stepping into a Ranked game filled to the brim with turbo trapper Dragonhunters just because trapper runes and berserker amulet were on rotation that week. 

That would needlessly inject an RNG component to a game that doesn't need it.

I agree with you. Their balance philosophy will do more harm than good. 

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

1 hour ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

another look how bad pvp is thread. hope one of the mods merges em all that would be funny lol.

Do you disagree with its content?

Edited February 21, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

14 minutes ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Do you disagree with its content?

Like one of those Redditers said it’s not a useful data set.

 

You can imagine that if I told you that on Friday I count the apples I own, and I did this for 3 weeks. On Friday of Week 1 I had 10 apples. Friday of week 2 I had 6 apples and on Friday of week 3 I had 2 apples.

 

Out of context you would assume that my total number of apples are steadily decreasing over time…But your assumption would be misplaced, because I only counted how many apples I had on Friday. The correlation between how many apples I had on a certain day is not enough to prove anything.

 

For instance..,in week 1 I owned 40 apples…week 2 I owned 60 apples and week 3 I owned 80 apples… I receive my shipments on Monday and sell them until Friday which is when I count how many I have left.

 

So in that example the number of apples I had increased over time while the data set you provided shows a steady decline of apples.
 

If you showed total amount of changes made between each expansion, and then divided the number of changes over a constant set of time, you’d have fuller picture of a correlation. Say there was 600 changes between A and B, and 300 changes between B and C, but if the time between B and C was 2 years, where A and B was 4 years then the update cadence would be exactly equal (150 changes per year).

Edited February 21, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

8 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Like one of those Redditers said it’s not a useful data set.

 

You can imagine that if I told you that on Friday I count the apples I own, and I did this for 3 weeks. On Friday of Week 1 I had 10 apples. Friday of week 2 I had 6 apples and on Friday of week 3 I had 2 apples.

 

Out of context you would assume that my total number of apples are steadily decreasing over time…But your assumption would be misplaced, because I only counted how many apples I had on Friday. The correlation between how many apples I had on a certain day is not enough to prove anything.

 

For instance..,in week 1 I owned 40 apples…week 2 I owned 60 apples and week 3 I owned 80 apples… I receive my shipments on Monday and sell them until Friday which is when I count how many I have left.

 

So in that example the number of apples I had increased over time while the data set you provided shows a steady decline of apples.
 

If you showed total amount of changes made between each expansion, and then divided the number of changes over a constant set of time, you’d have fuller picture of a correlation. Say there was 600 changes between A and B, and 300 changes between B and C, but if the time between B and C was 2 years, where A and B was 4 years then the update cadence would be exactly equal (150 changes per year).

You try so hard to sound interesting and thoughtful, yet your comments generally lack practical applicability or relevancy. Sorry, but it's true.

Edited February 21, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

You try so hard to sound interesting and thoughtful, yet your comments generally lack practical applicability or relevancy. Sorry, but it's true.

 

You would hear the same thing from anyone else who deals with anything remotely scientific or evidence based.

 

Just because you happened to be at a store the day a crime is committed at that store, doesn't mean you committed the crime. Your study is the equivalent of this. 

 

In the same vein, results of findings are upheld by the the scientific method...reproducibility, independent verification, and standard deviation as measured by the Sigma standard...meaning your finding has to have an accuracy level on par with that system to show anything as statistically significant.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

57 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

You would hear the same thing from anyone else who deals with anything remotely scientific or evidence based.

Just because you happened to be at a store the day a crime is committed at that store, doesn't mean you committed the crime. Your study is the equivalent of this. 

In the same vein, results of findings are upheld by the the scientific method...reproducibility, independent verification, and standard deviation as measured by the Sigma standard...meaning your finding has to have an accuracy level on par with that system to show anything as statistically significant.

I looked at and compared the number of changes made to existing specializations during the 5 months up to, and including, each expansion. All you have to say is "you didn't look at the entire span of each expansion". It is not pertinent. Now kindly stop commenting here, as I know your modus operandi is to latch onto something inconsequential and never let go, derailing into generalities and eventually grinding the thread to a halt.

Edited February 21, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

29 minutes ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

I looked at and compared the number of changes made to existing specializations during the 5 months up to, and including, each expansion.

 

Ya and I said that this is not enough data to correlate to what you said it does, nor of anything of real significance.

 

And like I said about reproducibility, I can and probably will actually compare it to similar sets of data to see if the correlation you made actually holds up...which I highly doubt.

 

This is all without even mentioning how you are also straight up ignoring that they put out an announcement that their expansion patch is going to be late by 3 months, and that the company is half the size as it was 3ish years ago...on top of the false equivalence in time discrepancies.

Edited February 21, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

30 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

Ya and I said that this is not enough data to correlate to what you said it does, nor of anything of real significance.

Wrong, because the point was the lack of results recently (or to put it another way, during the few months just before the expansion)(specifically, to already-existing specs). If I had looked at the last 4+ years (2017-2022) it would have devalued that purpose.

Quote

And like I said about reproducibility, I can and probably will actually compare it to similar sets of data to see if the correlation you made actually holds up...which I highly doubt.

 

This is all without even mentioning how you are also straight up ignoring that they put out an announcement that their expansion patch is going to be late by 3 months, and that the company is half the size as it was 3ish years ago...on top of the false equivalence in time discrepancies.

Now you are giving reasons for the lack of development, which is a separate discussion, the point is that there is a severe lack of development on PvP recently, and that the imminent release of the expansion isn't a good excuse because the months leading up to the previous expansions did produce results.

I just wish there was a way to block you from this thread.

Edited February 21, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

32 minutes ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Wrong, because the point was the lack of results recently (specifically, to already-existing specs). If I had looked at the last 4+ years (2017-2022) it would have devalued that purpose.

 

 

It doesn't  devalue it's purpose...it would either refute or support the correlation. If your purpose is without flaws, then the correlation would be supported obviously by better data.

 

Of course, it's obvious here that the purpose of your study is an obvious skewing of data to show a correlation that is probably way less significant....which is probably why you are getting upset over someone fact checking you.

 

Skewing data points to fit a purpose (like your time selection and i ignoring other factors)...is not how things are done in any evidence based thing you want to do

 

It's like me being a detective and trying to find out how i can best pin the crime on you by generating false correlations with "coincidental" data like..."well you were at the store that day were you not, therefor you must be the criminal." or "Suspect is described with black hair... you have black hair therefor you must be the criminal."

 

If you walked into my office and you gave me your conclusion from that set of data I would throw it in the trash and tell you to get better data, and so would anybody else with their wits about them.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684