Why Everyone's Mad About This Patch In Particular: It's Not The Balance

[Lazze.9870]

On 6/27/2022 at 2:23 PM, Ragnar.4257 said:

To illustrate this, a problem the community were hoping to see addressed was NOT that Core-Guard is 2% more effective at support than Tempest in PvP. That was NOT the problem. The PROBLEM was that nobody has even considered playing Druid as a support in the last 7 years

Thanks. I feel like I have been shouting this in an empty chamber for several years now.

They finally gave druid some pvp/wvw buffs though. The problem in pvp is that it has zero stab and lack of instant revival, so guard and tempest are still way better.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Lazze.9870

[SaferMurderweapon.7143]

I wanna come back to the game but their refusal to fix gutted specs (Support Chono in my case) is keeping me from playing. I was super invested into my Mesmer with max bag slots and everything only for it to get shoved into the dirt. I just don't want to bother kitting out another character just so I can enjoy the game 

[Noenp.2041]

So basically, Anet just wrecked Shadow Arts, making it basically useless for anything but support, now to stealth with a specter i have to either not have any stealth so i can give alecrity or use skills for stealth but not give any alacrity. Good job making the wishes of the players that cried to nerf stealth from thief come true.

[Harbinger Of Ducks.9183]

2 hours ago, Mazdan.2071 said:

Hrmm, so you are against right-wing authoritarianism (whatever that is. folks like you call Joe Rogan and Elon Musk "alt-right" yet they are classic liberals), yet it's the Left wing that are imposing their authoritarian views and standards onto those who don't think the same way--just like you demonstrated here.

It's the Authoritarian Left who censors, Twitter (until Elon Musk takes over--who is not right wing), Facebook or "Meta", these message boards, Metacritic, Rotten tomatoes, Netflix who is now feeling the burn (thank God) and so forth, and again this censorship was denied for a long time but now it's come to light and the defense is: "those alt-right jerks deserve to be censored". 

I'm against all authoritarianism and censorship. Oh and "hate speech" is jsut speech that snowflakes like you use to censor speech that you don't like or agree with or have no argument to backup you position. For example: if you hate the Obi Wan tv show it's because "you're a bigot", not because it's canon breaking with horrible writing, character development, bad acting, bad directing, bad lightsaber duels, and I could go on. The Authoritarian Left censors such criticism jsut like Anet does and instead says: "You hate black women, or you hate gays!!" See the pattern here? Wake up.

You are right, this isn't a debate as you do not have any verifiable facts or observable reality to back up anything you say. You say I'm a right wing bigot without even knowing me. Why, because it's easy for you. And BTW, go right ahead. The word "bigot" or whatever "istaphobe" coming from a snowflake like you means nothing.

I fought in a war for your freedom to say whatever you want and yet I get called a bigot and censored because I want escapism and game balance and the folks who are paid and supposedly trained to provide that, instead give us "current year" identity politics and ignore the classes/traits/skills that need the most help.

Again before hurling insults realize that folks like me actually picked up a rifle after 9/11 to protect our free way of life and it's folks like you who want to take it away because "feelings". If you are a real man, pick up a rifle and show your mettle, otherwise sit down, shut up and sleep under the blanket of freedom folks like me provided for you little boy. You have no idea what we sacrificed for you. Show some gratitude.

You really do not sound anywhere near as smart as you think you do lol for one thing nobody even called you a bigot in the first place the dude just pointed out that social agendas or w/e are completely unrelated to any of this. You were the only person actually using that word or even similar words. I seriously have no clue where you even got that idea about those being an issue from in the first place. He just went along with the conversation when you perceived it that way for some reason. For another you never actually gave any sort of facts either. You stated some observable realities but incorrectly assumed that there was only one possible explanation for it and that it was irrefutable evidence for your preconceived idea. You did not give anything to link the observed reality to your reasoning whatsoever. Also, censorship and misinformation is something that both sides do in spades. It is not tied to a political party. More than that however removing or flagging things from social media is not necessarily "internet censorship" people often forget this but free speech has and always had reasonable limitations. Free speech does not mean that you literally can say anything and everything that you want to anywhere you want and without consequence social media really only acts within the bounds of those clearly established limitations, the very same way that would be done in real life. I'm not about to sit here arguing about your perspective or anything though because not only would I just feel gross having that very needlessly politicized discussion at length in a thread about pointing out a problem with the game (that we all love, sometimes begrudgingly, hence why we are even here in this thread) & dev team and more importantly WHY the problem is a problem but also you really do not seem remotely genuinely open to listening to different perspectives and I would just end up spending far too long arguing in circles doing nothing but wasting time. Its cool you are a veteran btw and I respect that but the way that you brought it up was completely unreasonable and unnecessary. You literally only brought it up to try to assert your superiority over another person who disagreed with you, there was no other reason, and I absolutely do not respect that its kind of pathetic. Anyways I just wanted to point out all of the clear flaws with your mentality and what you are saying here for anybody else who comes along and reads this, gonna go back to enjoying the game! Thank you op for the thread I hope that the devs see this and take it seriously 🙂

Edited June 28, 2022 by Harbinger Of Ducks.9183

[SugarJohnson.4596]

On 6/27/2022 at 2:23 PM, Ragnar.4257 said:

Every balance patch attracts complaints. That's unavoiadable. It's important to recognise that this time it's not just more of the same, it's different. I have never, in 10 years here since launch, seen the community so depressed and gloomy.

So why is this patch in particular generating such despair? It's not the actual content itself of the patch, on paper its fairly inoffensive and mild. The problem is the message that this patch gives of what the direction is going to be for the game going forward for the foreseeable future.

Over the last 2 years, first with Covid and then with the development of EoD, the community has been fairly understanding of the fact that balance patches and updates would be smaller and infrequent. Yes there's a whole host of issues that have gone unaddressed for 2+ years, but there was supposed to be light at the end of the tunnel. With EoD done, life mostly returning to normal after Covid, and by ANets own words (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/) through their communications in March/April/May, we were really hoping to see a fundamental gear-shift in the patches/updates. We were supposed to be moving away from the dark-days in the year up to EoD where all we saw was the occasional +2% damage to X and -3% healing to Y, and moving to actually getting stuff done with regards all the super-underperforming and under-used weapons/traits/specs/skills. And we were supposed to be seeing some serious attention paid to the classes/specs that have been non-meta for so long that people have forgotten they exist.

To illustrate this, a problem the community were hoping to see addressed was NOT that Core-Guard is 2% more effective at support than Tempest in PvP. That was NOT the problem. The PROBLEM was that nobody has even considered playing Druid as a support in the last 7 years. The problem is that nobody (above Gold) has even considered equipping a staff on their Tempest in the last 7 years.

Another easy case to see is the 300s traits that surely, surely, must be a top priority to fix.

The fact that Meta-Build-A is 1% more effective than Meta-Build-B is not the problem. The problem is that Build-C has been grief-tier for the best part of a decade. What this patch signals in big flashing letters is; "No, we are not going to go and fix up Build-C. We're going to go back to business-as-usual as it was before EoD, and continue to just make minor tweaks to Meta-Build-A and Meta-Build-B, because those are what 90% of the playerbase are playing, to make it look like something is happening".

This is what was communicated in the March 22 Studio Update:

Profession Updates
Balance and maintenance of Guild Wars 2‘s extensive combat system, including the latest elite specializations released with End of Dragons, is important for keeping gameplay engaging and varied across PvE, WvW, and PvP. Moving forward, we’ll be making professions and elite specialization updates a higher priority.

Our plan includes quarterly profession updates, with smaller releases in between as we monitor and respond to how the meta in each game mode takes shape. In addition to the number tweaks that you’re used to seeing, the team will be revisiting some underpowered and underused weapon skills, traits, or utilities for each profession in each profession update to help expand your arsenal. We will continue to make game-mode-specific balance adjustments as needed.

We’ll be releasing some PvP and WvW balance changes in the March 29 update, and our first major profession update will drop on June 28.

This is what we'd all been hoping to see. The fact that Willbender is 2% more effective than Herald isn't the problem. The problem is that NEITHER spec has considered using a Hammer in years. And yet, this update, the only actual meaningful changes to underused weapons/specs/traits/utils appears to be the tweaks to Engi Rifle. And they don't even appear to be very extensive, just adjusting the range values. The previewed patch notes is very long, with lots of lines of writing, but 99% of it is all just fluff. It's all +2% damage here, -2% healing there. This isn't going to do anything to address all the severly under-used weapons/skills/traits, because most of them or not just numerically broken but mechanically broken.

The community had been waiting to see if pain-points which they have been patiently waiting for years to be addressed, while they had patiently waited through the understandable disruptions of Covid and EoD, would finally now start to be picked up. And the message now appears to be that no, the game will continue to be balanced and updated in the exact same way as it was for the last 2+ years. That's why this particular patch is drawing such disappointment. Please, please, please, understand that it is not just a load of man-children being salty about Build-X being 1% more effective than Build-Y. This is the community discovering that what they thought was the light at the end of the tunnel, is just another tunnel.

 

Well said and very diplomatic but there is also this little story with the discord leak that showed us the actual balance practice behind all this. I think this is an very important point why people are this angry. The whole forum made jokes how the devs wouldn’t play class X or class Y and that Favoritism and bias was daily practice. That it actually is like that was i guess the last spark to start the long due fire. 

[Geoff Fey.1035]

7 hours ago, Vincenzo.3145 said:

. I just don't want to bother kitting out another character just so I can enjoy the game 

I didn't consider this but that's a fair point and a problem for in-game sales.

Many of the "character only" upgrades are losing their value because balance patches damage the ability of the profession to operate within the game at an acceptable level compared to others. Hence, there will be less sales for those professions specifically because "why spend money on something of less value" and you will also see the same effect on those "favoured" professions because "what happened to other professions can happen to us". This makes character specific upgrades less valuable because a character that you enjoy can suddenly be made non-viable in your favoured mode due to a balance patch, so the money you invested into that character becomes "wasted" since you'll play them less due to more viable options.

And yes, if you enjoy a profession: play it. But keep in mind that a lot of players focus on maximizing rewards which is a primary core component of MMO's. If it takes you 1 hour of difficulty to achieve the same rewards that someone else could achieve in 0.75 hr with half the difficulty, most people will gravitate towards the faster/easier option. That's just how people work.

The only valuable upgrades are those that affect the entire account as a whole because their value will not degrade due to balancing in the game--and their value actually increases because of streamlining by reducing different boxes, tokens, having Legendary Armoury, etc. (disclaimer: we get inventory bloat with every new release and then it drops back down over time).

[Svarty.8019]

On 6/27/2022 at 1:23 PM, Ragnar.4257 said:

What this patch signals in big flashing letters is; "No, we are not going to go and fix up Build-C. We're going to go back to business-as-usual as it was before EoD, and continue to just make minor tweaks to Meta-Build-A and Meta-Build-B, because those are what 90% of the playerbase are playing, to make it look like something is happening".

 

You had hope. How cute. 

[yavi.3105]

Where exactly are good things in this patch? Do you mean the skyscale/griffon dismount fix?

[DeceiverX.8361]

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone had any semblance of hope considering this has been going on since HoT.  Back when they had hundreds more people working on the game and way more money, with vested game direction.

This patch did *some* good things, but did far too little to actually be a real positive for those changes, and did a lot of very ugly things that probably make the game worse on the whole.

Truth is, they committed even more towards making people play into the single biggest complaint and build-railroading in the game (boons), and went even further with the already-ridiculous levels of balance-format-splits that continue to muddy the already convoluted mire that is balance discussion between the formats by making things like boons even *less* consistent cross-mode.

I'm glad at least the people who stuck around post-HoT/PoF are finally catching wind of what's been going on since 2013.  Staff Ele and Hammer Guard aren't even the worst offenders.  When was the last time you saw a warrior or Mesmer running OH sword?

[JTGuevara.9018]

14 hours ago, yavi.3105 said:

Where exactly are good things in this patch? Do you mean the skyscale/griffon dismount fix?

That and I believe...a cursor...lmao

[draxynnic.3719]

9 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

  When was the last time you saw a warrior or Mesmer running OH sword?

OH sword is meta for power DPS mesmers in PvE right now.

Used to be for quickness chrono, too, but the patch forcing shield may have put paid to that.

But yeah, that's just a case of "picked the wrong example". There are a lot of languishing weapons, some I'd say are more critical than warrior and mesmer offhands (both have plenty, so if one is underperforming it isn't critical to the profession).

Edited June 30, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[Lite Ning Strike.5203]

On 6/27/2022 at 4:42 PM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I won't say anything that gets my post removed, but I will mention I also saw that dumpster fire with my own eyes and the description this post above relates to is accurate. 

It's just so weird. Like I would be fine with antagonism but balance it properly first. You can be polarizing once everyone's enjoying their stay. 

 

By all means be careful of what you say, I got posts removed and naughty points assigned for saying "Bless your heart" I really don't care I mostly post on Reddit they can't touch that.

[Hydrangea.6014]

On 6/27/2022 at 8:23 AM, Ragnar.4257 said:

the light at the end of the tunnel, is just another tunnel.

Ah, a man of culture with the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei quote. 

I'm in despair!  The "balanced" mechanist has left me in despair!

[Myxam.2790]

The only way you achieve balance in a game this complex is to make finding the answer more complex than anyone is willing to find, not by reducing complexity. The more things that are removed that muddy the waters around Class/Spec/Build Power, the worse the game will get. 

[DeceiverX.8361]

On 6/30/2022 at 6:18 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

OH sword is meta for power DPS mesmers in PvE right now.

Used to be for quickness chrono, too, but the patch forcing shield may have put paid to that.

But yeah, that's just a case of "picked the wrong example". There are a lot of languishing weapons, some I'd say are more critical than warrior and mesmer offhands (both have plenty, so if one is underperforming it isn't critical to the profession).

Fair enough - I should have specified sPvP/WvW.  I do not play any PvE, so my knowledge of what's good there is more or less restricted to the last time I left the build editor on PvE settings back in like 2018.

Both of those weapons have been more or less unusable in said modes well-before that.

[Kozumi.5816]

Things only get meaningful buffs when it's something the game producer or lead balance dev wants to main. God syndrome.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Fwog.9387]

I was already upset before the friday patch notes or the thing that dropped saturday right after. The only thing that still ties me to this game is my friends. I could walk away from the game tomorrow and i wouldn't miss the game at all. But if i walk away from the game tomorrow... i would miss the friends i made while playing the game. I was putting the game down in march and it was my friends that pulled me back in. We started raiding. A shared goal and an activity to do while spending time with my friends on discord. My concern is that when i leave the game, the group and the people i have met and care about will start to drift apart. So i have decided to see through our current goals to the end before i step away from this game. We have not downed all the raids as a group yet. I should try to finish that before i go. 

[Kozumi.5816]

On 6/27/2022 at 3:02 PM, Asum.4960 said:

The skills and balance team clearly needs to be looked at and invested in, like a decade ago.

Money can't fix stupid.

[draxynnic.3719]

27 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Money can't fix stupid.

Depends on how it's invested. A bit of oversight, accountability, and ensuring that decisions aren't being made about balancing a profession without input from people who actually understand the profession would go a long way, and all of that costs someone's time and, therefore, money.

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:41 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Depends on how it's invested. A bit of oversight, accountability, and ensuring that decisions aren't being made about balancing a profession without input from people who actually understand the profession would go a long way, and all of that costs someone's time and, therefore, money.

That's corporate america in a freakin' nutshell: "We can't afford to fix social problems, but we can CERTAINLY afford to fill executives' and shareholders' pockets! There's always time for that!"