Anet please do not release the balance patch.

[Gehenna.3625]

25 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Now I'm really confused. I thought wvw was a cornerstone of the game? But they keep making changes for pve only... hmmm hmmm... hmmmm.......

Yeah that confuses a lot of people lol

22 minutes ago, Taclism.2406 said:

I mean, a mismanaged game can have glaring flaws and still be enjoyable on some level.  I liked Anet in the first place because they dared trying innovation. But its easy to missmanage innovative projects with wrong projections / cost estimations.
The fact that the balance will be out of whack wont diminish my enjoyment of roller bettle / griffin.  

Definitely, I was just honestly curious.

[Hotride.2187]

2 hours ago, fenriswolfman.5486 said:

There is so much abandoned or repeatedly reworked content in this game its unreal. Thats a lot of wasted time and resources. I was honestly amazed they rehired the guy who was in charge of that mess.

I don't think I've played an "f2p" game that has been around for a while, that doesn't have the same situation. The devs just keep trying to reinvent the wheel and then later on abandon whatever new "toy" they came up with. Might be due to changes in employees, who knows. Its definitely sad and frustrating though, cause you get hooked to the core gameplay and you are like "woah this is good". And then you start following the updates and go "woah this is bad".

At least in GW2 you still get things added that expand the strong core gameplay - new open world zones. And theoretically, new specs that let you play the game in new ways. As long as that keeps going likely the game will too.

E.g. in Warframe they piled weird gameplay on top of weird gameplay, that had almost nothing to do with the core game (at least last time I saw the game). No rebalancing efforts to make the tons of available weapons/warframes useful, just a pile of junk for you to try out and abandon too.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Ariurotl.3718]

3 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

The very name "guild wars" implies PvP focus.

Hahahahaha, it really really REALLY doesn't. It doesn't refer to the in-game guilds, it refers to a historical event in the lore. People still get tripped up by this after 10+ years? How?

[LSD.4673]

25 minutes ago, Ariurotl.3718 said:

Hahahahaha, it really really REALLY doesn't. It doesn't refer to the in-game guilds, it refers to a historical event in the lore. People still get tripped up by this after 10+ years? How?

...

Did you never think to yourself "why would they name a generic war a guild war"?

GW's "duh huh deeps lores" are just a background to explain a PvP-focussed game. It's a "retcon", and you've clearly been conned. So climb down off your high horse.

[Ariurotl.3718]

6 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

...

Did you never think to yourself "why would they name a generic war a guild war"?

GW's "duh huh deeps lores" are just a background to explain a PvP-focussed game. It's a "retcon", and you've clearly been conned. So climb down off your high horse.

Sure, but by the time GW2 (WHICH IS THIS GAME) was in development, this "PVP focus" was no longer the case. They pivoted during the development of 1. And if you think that GW2 was EVER focused on PVP in any way, you're just delusional. PVP was always the runt of the litter, a place to nudge all the toxic sociopaths towards so that they wouldn't ruin the fun for adequate people.

And sadly I cannot climb down from that high horse you've mentioned as there are no horses in Tyria.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Ariurotl.3718

[LSD.4673]

13 minutes ago, Ariurotl.3718 said:

Sure, but by the time GW2 (WHICH IS THIS GAME) was in development, this "PVP focus" was no longer the case. They pivoted during the development of 1. And if you think that GW2 was EVER focused on PVP in any way, you're just delusional. PVP was always the runt of the litter, a place to nudge all the toxic sociopaths towards so that they wouldn't ruin the fun for adequate people.

And sadly I cannot climb down from that high horse you've mentioned as there are no horses in Tyria.

You've just moved your own goal posts. Your first comment was claiming teh deep loreds is about the epic guild wars of time and space, and i just showed you that's not the case. 

Now you're saying "ackshully GW2 is a different game and has nothing to do with PvP!!!".

If you look at the their "manifesto" blog posts pre-release, and their developer comments, you can see all their claims of PvP as a core aspect of the game. Even last year they were claiming PvP as a "cornerstone" of the game.

 

Now, considering sPvP is overrun with bots, WvW hasn't been touched with so much as a barge pole in years, and competitive balance is being handled by one guy who plays one class, and releases one patch a year, it's pretty clear that their definition of the terms "core" and "cornerstone" aren't the same as anyone else's.

 

But hey, nice high ground you get there, branding people "delusional, toxic, sociopath" for...playing a different game mode to you?

[Hotride.2187]

3 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

WvW hasn't been touched with so much as a barge pole in years

They did add engi to the zerg meta. If you play you probably know why.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

If anything, this patch but also the discord leaks showed to me that Anet/Anets devs believe in the exact opposite of what I personally believe.

 

Me: I believe balance should be fair and equal without bias.  
Anet dev: Balances based on what they personally like or dislike.

Balancing should happen without your personal feelings being involved. A dev that hates Mirage Axe should still be able to fix the problems Mirage Axe has, and not decide to randomly buff something else simply because they like that weapon more.  
In the same vein, if something you personally like overperforms, you should be able to set those feelings aside and nerf it. You should not, because you designed and loved Mechanist, decide to buff it just because. And if something you dislike, like for example elementalist, could use help, you should not massively nerf it because of your own feelings towards the class. Neutrality and fairness, not biased.

 

Me: Act professional when talking about people, including clients or customers, no matter the environment.  
Anet dev: Actually voices dislike and disdain towards players.

I get it, people are dicks, clients are high maintenace and customers are more often wrong than right. And you do not have to take abuse lying down. But there is no reason to actively insult a part of your passionate playerbase, even going as far to insinuate that you are going to enjoy their tears and resulting salt, as if you love upsetting them. You represent the company in that discord. Never forget that.

 

Me: If you balance something you should have a deep and intricate knowledge of the class you are going to balance.  
Anet dev: Plays less than a year, only a limited amount of classes/specs, and still manages to have quite a few embarrasing takes.

Nobody can know everything I get it. But the lack of knowledge displayed by Anet devs about classes is highly worrying, especially when said devs admit they actually DO balance (at least partially) based on benchmarks and that they often have to look at the wiki what a skill or trait does. You cannot properly balance something if you do not understand how it works. Increase your skill and knowledge, hire more people, or split balancing into smaller chunks so you are able to focus more ( one class per person for example. We used to have class leads for this in the past).

 

Me: If someone is doing something that is very complex and hard, it should be rewarded with a stronger or better result than someone who is doing something similar but on a very basic or easy level.  
Anet dev: Unwilling to reward complexity or difficulty, but wants to make everything easier instead to the point that something easy with 3 button presses should have the same outcome as something hard on a different prof that takes 50 button presses.

I do not argue that there is a need for simple builds for those that cannot handle a complex class or 50 step piano rotations. Rarely anyone does. This is why LI builds and simplified rotations exist, where you get a big chunk of the result for a substiantal lower amount of effort. But mastering your class and rotation SHOULD ALWAYS be rewarded with a better result. Higher DPS, better heals, better boons, you name it. Improving yourself (horizontal progression?) should matter. Because if not, why would people try? Why learn a 50 step elementalist rotation if I can do the same by pressing 4 buttons on Mechanist?  This design philosophy is worrying. A spec should have a LI option and a, for the lack of a better words, 'try hard' option that is harder, and thus gets rewarded with a better result. How much better can be up for debate.

 

Me: Classes should have unique things to bring to the table when it comes to utilities, playstyles and traits.  
Anet dev:Uniqueness is kitten, simplify everything as much as possible and take away unique stuff whenever we can.

I get it, banners were overcentralising and many crit-cap calculations assumed Spotter.  
That needed a change. But now you just took something unique away and gave something generic back in return, in almost every case something passive or completely worthless that even deleted an entire class from high end PvE. Not even a unique playstyle. Everytime Anet takes something away, they give something less active and more simplified in return.

At this point I honestly wonder if I should continue playing this game, considering Anet apparently believes the complete opposite of what I consider to be good, fun and engaging.

[Veprovina.4876]

I honestly feel like i don't exist to theese people. They only care about their own mains, and that's why Firebrand and Mechanist are top now, and everything else is getting such baffling changes that have no logic attached to them...

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Guess I'll be the devils advocate here, but I've been a big proponent of making the game easier to play.  Ease of use directly ties into accessibility, both for players entering into the game and for players getting into high end content.  One of my biggest gripes for a long time about this game was that you don't spend most of your time fighting the encounter.  Instead, you're fighting the UI, because the most difficult part of doing anything in this game is the convoluted sequence of buttons that you need to press with split second timing in order to function at a basic level.  It takes days of practice against a defenseless golem just to learn how to play your profession, and most players will not have the knowledge, drive, or time to even accomplish this. 

Damage is how anything gets done in this game.  If the simple rotation damage done by players is too low to accomplish anything, then it means that players are set to the level of incompetency by design.  It is like handing the player a set of tools that are ineffective and cannot accomplish the tasks handed to them, while expecting the players to somehow derive this information from playing the game.  This is not good design, and it does have financial repercussions on this game.

Just compare this to a lot of other "hard games."  In the Soulsborne series, doing damage is really simple and the fight is more about engaging with the enemy  Similar thing with FPSes, where maximum damage is done with a left-click.  Take Cuphead, where you just hold down 1 or 2 buttons to do damage, and doing well is about learning how to avoid all the attacks.  GW2 is the only game that I've played where the greatest difficulty in performance isn't the encounters, but fighting the UI itself.  A game where most of your damage comes from 3 non-auto skills with everything else being allocated for defense and utility sounds like a much better system, and I cannot fault the devs for wanting to go in that direction.  

[Lottie.5370]

7 hours ago, Taclism.2406 said:

Well Reddit mods arent Anet employees, they are pro [company or game the subreddit is about], unpaid janitors.
And its extremely often for power trips. No well ajusted person wants to mod.

 

The posts weren't simply complaining though, they have left up the posts (including one with the thing we will probably get banned for mentioning here, with names removed).

 

---

 

This isn't the first patch where I've felt like quitting the game, but it's definitely the one that has pushed me closest to it. All of the builds I loved to play the most have been hit by the patch, some feel like they'll be unplayable after (qChrono, cqChrono, signet share hFB).

 

For the first time I feel like I have nothing to look forward to playing. I hope it's not as bad it sounds.

[Taclism.2406]

2 hours ago, Ariurotl.3718 said:

you think that GW2 was EVER focused on PVP in any way, you're just delusional.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_World_Tournament_Series
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pro_League

It was focused on PVP, it almost tanked the company, THEN they gave up that approach
 

Who's delusional again?

Edited June 26, 2022 by Taclism.2406

[fenriswolfman.5486]

Everything pvp esports came out of the marketing department. The devs have said so themselves in the past. It was either that or more cringe fantasy taxi commercials or crossovers with random fast food chains. Anyone remember that stupid car? Or the 3d printed guitar?

[Hotride.2187]

46 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Damage is how anything gets done in this game.  If the simple rotation damage done by players is too low to accomplish anything, then it means that players are set to the level of incompetency by design.  It is like handing the player a set of tools that are ineffective and cannot accomplish the tasks handed to them, while expecting the players to somehow derive this information from playing the game.  This is not good design, and it does have financial repercussions on this game.

That other popular game has addons that let you track your dps. Thats probably supported in the game at this point, with no addon. Now if realistically over half the gear/weapon/util choices in GW2 (I'm being generous with 50% here) are noob traps because they have not been re-balanced since the release of the game... then yeah you are being handed an ineffective tool. Not because you are too dumb to figure out how to use the tool through experimentation and practice, but because the tool is bad, period. Its not a question if simplifying the game so you are red-carpet lead to the right choices (there are guides for this if you really need it), its a question of giving you actual choices. That is something only balancing the game can achieve, instead of cherry-picking a few simple builds, buffing them up to be competitive and calling it a day.

Add to the fact that the game gives you no incentive to do good dmg / to be efficient, and you end up where you are in GW2 and its casual playerbase. You will eventually go through the encounter - there is no resource you will run out of aside from your time (obviously raids with enrage timer excluded, but not exactly content a casual player would do).

The only part of "fighting the UI" I agree to is not having actual visual feedback for your dps. If you want to improve your dps, you always need to see a dps meter to know what you are doing. On each and every encounter you do. That is how you know that your experimentation has landed on a more successful way of doing things, which you can then try to practice. Or maybe you read up on a build and how to use it - you also need visual feedback of whether you are "doing it right".

Quote

Just compare this to a lot of other "hard games."  In the Soulsborne series, doing damage is really simple and the fight is more about engaging with the enemy  Similar thing with FPSes, where maximum damage is done with a left-click.

That is massive oversimplification of both souls (have to time and space things) and FPS (have to aim) that its kinda weird to read. Doing dmg in GW2 (in any MMORPG really) is usually many times more simple.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[JTGuevara.9018]

13 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

Instant Reflexes and Hard to Catch in Acrobatics on Thief. Not that this not being an isolated case changes anything about it's ridiculousness that this hasn't been addressed yet - quite the opposite. 

 

I think we are all getting tired of temporary band-aid fixes with better changes on the horizon, things being on the table, stuff being open to feedback - and so on, just for then nothing to ever happen even years down the line, other than shuffling around some modifiers.

Yup, it's just kicking the can. Simple as that.

"We'll fix it on the next update!" (wink)

[otto.5684]

3 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

I honestly feel like i don't exist to theese people. They only care about their own mains, and that's why Firebrand and Mechanist are top now, and everything else is getting such baffling changes that have no logic attached to them...

I dunno. FB is trash in PvP, and has been for a while now. Actually, anything guardian that is not WB and core support is nearly not viable in PvP. Then we get these signet changes that are beyond baffling. The only reason Perfect Inscriptions trait was considered, is for support builds to add some omf to allies. With the support aspect removed this trait is 100% useless. And the changes to all signets, other than elites, is absolutely useless and pointless. I am not even sure how the elite will pan out.
 

And then no nerfs to WB. So no, guardian is not getting good changes either. The balance patch is miss nearly across the board.

Edited June 26, 2022 by otto.5684

[Artemis.8034]

I think what you all should be asking for is separation balance of pve from pvp/wvw because across the board changes never balance out across game modes.  I know it seems like a lot to ask but other games have caught on to the idea and spells and stats are changed depending on game mode one does not affect the other. 

[Astralporing.1957]

18 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

I think what you all should be asking for is separation balance of pve from pvp/wvw because across the board changes never balance out across game modes.  I know it seems like a lot to ask but other games have caught on to the idea and spells and stats are changed depending on game mode one does not affect the other. 

That is hardly going to help the situation where the changes meant for the mode (in this case PvE) are a problem in that very mode they are meant for.

[Artemis.8034]

4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That is hardly going to help the situation where the changes meant for the mode (in this case PvE) are a problem in that very mode they are meant for.

Then experienced players need to show how this will hurt the class , if it wrecks the class then post your videos spreadsheets w/e it takes. I dont think they will break the class for long if they do. Look at Cata it was pretty broke, then they buffed it, they are not going to make the class unplayable. Plus you have people in here talking about pvp and wvw mainly so thats why i said what i did.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Artemis.8034

[otto.5684]

21 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

I think what you all should be asking for is separation balance of pve from pvp/wvw because across the board changes never balance out across game modes.  I know it seems like a lot to ask but other games have caught on to the idea and spells and stats are changed depending on game mode one does not affect the other. 

I am guessing the reason they wanted to see how changes will pan out before making PvP changes. Hence why there were almost none. But, with the exception of a very small PvP patch, we did not have PvP balance in a while. So 🤷‍♂️

[Artemis.8034]

1 minute ago, otto.5684 said:

I am guessing the reason they wanted to see how changes will pan out before making PvP changes. Hence why there were almost none. But, with the exception of a very small PvP patch, we did not have PvP balance in a while. So 🤷‍♂️

I still say you cannot change across the board that way, you need to separate the modes and base off that.

[otto.5684]

3 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

I still say you cannot change across the board that way, you need to separate the modes and base off that.

What would nice if we have a test server. That could help significantly. But it also requires that devs go through the feedback in detail, which is probably why we do not have it 😝

[Artemis.8034]

1 minute ago, otto.5684 said:

What would nice if we have a test server. That could help significantly. But it also requires that devs go through the feedback in detail, which is probably why we do not have it 😝

Hey I can honestly say things move at a snails pace in gaming, look at blizzard billion dollar company with tons of staff for everything, they still slow to change and get balancing right. Sometimes its a right mess.

[Trigarta.3841]

21 hours ago, Swing.6439 said:

Just hold it off and actually read and listen to your playerbase, then make the appropriate changes. I don't want to lose what little friends I have left on this game because the things they enjoy will be shoved into obscurity.

I wholeheartedly agree!

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

5 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

That other popular game has addons that let you track your dps. Thats probably supported in the game at this point, with no addon. Now if realistically over half the gear/weapon/util choices in GW2 (I'm being generous with 50% here) are noob traps because they have not been re-balanced since the release of the game... then yeah you are being handed an ineffective tool. Not because you are too dumb to figure out how to use the tool through experimentation and practice, but because the tool is bad, period. Its not a question if simplifying the game so you are red-carpet lead to the right choices (there are guides for this if you really need it), its a question of giving you actual choices. That is something only balancing the game can achieve, instead of cherry-picking a few simple builds, buffing them up to be competitive and calling it a day.

Add to the fact that the game gives you no incentive to do good dmg / to be efficient, and you end up where you are in GW2 and its casual playerbase. You will eventually go through the encounter - there is no resource you will run out of aside from your time (obviously raids with enrage timer excluded, but not exactly content a casual player would do).

The only part of "fighting the UI" I agree to is not having actual visual feedback for your dps. If you want to improve your dps, you always need to see a dps meter to know what you are doing. On each and every encounter you do. That is how you know that your experimentation has landed on a more successful way of doing things, which you can then try to practice. Or maybe you read up on a build and how to use it - you also need visual feedback of whether you are "doing it right".

That is massive oversimplification of both souls (have to time and space things) and FPS (have to aim) that its kinda weird to read. Doing dmg in GW2 (in any MMORPG really) is usually many times more simple.

 

You're deliberately misconstruing what I've said.  Selective quoting aside, I'll emphasize the important part:

 

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

In the Soulsborne series, doing damage is really simple and the fight is more about engaging with the enemy

Going by Soulsborne standards, Slothasor (which is the least defeated raid boss) wouldn't be hard.  The tells are obvious, there's ample time to walk out of each of its attacks, and there's no branching tree of follow-through attacks and abilities that would force players to improvise on the fly.  Fromsoft is able to make all of the bosses in their game more complex, because performance is so much simpler.  The strategy for each boss is simply "don't get hit, hit them until they die" and they make that first part really difficult to accomplish.  Sure, there's weak attacks, strong attacks, and moving in a direction can cause the animations to change.  It takes all of about 5 minutes to get the hang of a new weapon there.  In those games, and like most other games, the primary obstacle is the actual engagements themselves.  But that is not how it is in GW2.

To give a comparison point, here's the snowcrows breakdown of condition renegade.  Know that without a toggle active, Rev regenerates 5 energy per second, so all actions and events that happen between increments of 5 energy require split second timing.  This, particularly, includes the times where you need to wait for a split second to get the timing right on certain skills, as well as reaching the sub-10 mark with limited skill actions to use Charged Mists.  If there's a temporary lapse in button pressing, positioning, or the application of quickness and alacrity, then the whole rotation falls apart because skills either fail to fire or Charged Mists fails.  Delaying to use another skill to reach the Charged Mists threshold also results in a loss of DPS, due to Invoke Torment being responsible for so much damage.  Because of this, to play condition renegade you need to pay attention to

• Weapon swap cooldown
• Weapon skill cooldown
• Legend swap cooldown
• Energy levels
• Boon uptime
• Character animations

All while paying attention to the usual stuff you have to make note of in games (endurance, health, enemy attacks, enemy position).  Condition renegade isn't the only profession like this.  The continuum split rotation makes the chronomancer suffer from a similar issue.  The Weave Self rotation makes condition/hybrid weaver also suffer from this issue.  Heck, hammer catalyst used to have this problem, too, until we managed to get that changed.  But back to condition renegade: to perform the listed rotation you'll have to press 10 different buttons in an exact sequence with split second timing in order to accomplish the most basic function in this game: doing damage.  Doing something as simple as moving the mouse slightly to put a cursor over an enemy in an FPS is nowhere near this complexity.  I've only had experience in a few MMOs (Phantasy Star Universe, City of Heroes, DCUO, PSO2), and they didn't have this complexity, either.  Dumbed down overworld content doesn't make this good design.