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

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

6 hours ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

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. 

 

6 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Amplified by a glimpse into apparent arrogance.

 

Also correct.

 

For devs/division heads asking for patience, understand your community has been immensely patient for years. This is just the breaking point for that patience. We need an action that matches what you all claim is going to happen. No patience is infinite. 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

And listen to this joke! 

Apparently Josh is saying now that there is an actual Balance Team post-EoD so ig we got the team we have been asking for! 

😂😂😂😂😂

[Hotride.2187]

5 hours ago, Camniel.7238 said:

Engi Rifle is a sign that they are willing to work on old unplayed content

Oh dear. If weapons are viewed as old and unplayed content (likely because they are 10 layers of bad) and therefore not even worth looking into...

I thought the announcement said they'll look exactly into underplayed weapons and traits?

[Bleikopf.2491]

5 hours ago, Camniel.7238 said:

(not to mention the complaints that Ele Air is the only place Ele gets more crit chance when power Ele builds were already almost guaranteed to take Air for its precision and ferocity)

The complaint is not that Ele gets the 5% Crit chance in the Air traitline.

Ele only gets the 5% Crit chance when attuned to Air when taking the Air traitline.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

22 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

And listen to this joke! 

Apparently Josh is saying now that there is an actual Balance Team post-EoD so ig we got the team we have been asking for! 

😂😂😂😂😂

 

All it took was people literally rioting and someone leaking data that would have been harmless had this action been taken earlier. And we still don't have confirmation on that. As I have said it before, put it in my hand and then I will have a positive opinion of it. Until then it's fluff and damage control. 

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[otto.5684]

The negative press is result of multiple factors. Proximity to a major expansion. Anet over hyping the change, and thus creating expectations that would not be met. PvP, let is face it, has been in a miserable state. Finally, the leaks just put icing on the cake, compounding the issue.

[ixon.2496]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

To be fair, Feb2020 was a one of kind balance patch.

 

Its exactly the kind of work profession balance has been desperately needing, and with the way Anet had been describing this patch on the lead up to the notes seem really disingenuous now to call it major. 

[ixon.2496]

-

Edited June 27, 2022 by ixon.2496
Double Post

[jaif.3518]

I'm with the OP, I think - the problem here is that the massive glaring problems weren't touched.  You think engie rifle is bad?  Fine...what about turrets?  ...and so on and so forth for the many examples in the thread.   They should be nerfing the ultra-performers and buffing the weak, not picking at minor details in the middle.

 

This was much less of a balance patch than a design tweak, IMO.  The result might not be bad, but it's not really about balance.

[coro.3176]

This is good post. Bump

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Wtf lmao. 

Be it fake, be it real, sounds like a great thing! 

Are we allowed to duel the devs? Idk make them get more salty and nerf our classes more somehow! 

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. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Ashen.2907]

For me it IS the content of the patch.

[voltaicbore.8012]

4 hours ago, jaif.3518 said:

I'm with the OP, I think - the problem here is that the massive glaring problems weren't touched.  You think engie rifle is bad?  Fine...what about turrets?  ...and so on and so forth for the many examples in the thread.   They should be nerfing the ultra-performers and buffing the weak, not picking at minor details in the middle.

100% this. You know what it looks like to me? It looks like some "balance" devs didn't have the time, insight, or raw skill with the game to figure out higher priority fixes. So they just find a few things they can improve just to fill up the patch notes.

This happens all the time in other areas of business. It's not that the workers didn't care at all about the more important things, but they just didn't have what it takes to actually get the important things done. So when the deadline rolls around, the only things that are ready to ship are the most worthless parts of their project. Now the company is stuck trying to sell this sub-par set of products as "ZOMG this is the bestest thing evaaar that we pinky-promised you, dear customers! Rejoice!"

[Ashen.2907]

22 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

100% this. You know what it looks like to me? It looks like some "balance" devs didn't have the time, insight, or raw skill with the game to figure out higher priority fixes. So they just find a few things they can improve just to fill up the patch notes.

This happens all the time in other areas of business. It's not that the workers didn't care at all about the more important things, but they just didn't have what it takes to actually get the important things done. So when the deadline rolls around, the only things that are ready to ship are the most worthless parts of their project. Now the company is stuck trying to sell this sub-par set of products as "ZOMG this is the bestest thing evaaar that we pinky-promised you, dear customers! Rejoice!"

Solid reasoning. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Thank you for saying this.

 

Honestly I’m frustrated by this entire situation because the patch even though there’s a lot of it I don’t like…there’s for the first time in 3 years reworks and not nerfs and removals…something this game and PvP desperately needs.
 

on top of this, Anets blatant callous usage of the word diversity has tainted its meaning to gw2s Reddit community who now want “homogenization” which ironically hasn’t changed in this patch. Homogenization of target caps and boon application are prevalent in this patch and it adds confusion as to what people are really even mad about.

 

anyway…diversity, the only thing that can redeem this game is now connected to this controversy because Anet has been conflating it with homogenization principles…rather than the mountains of pages I’ve spent trying to explain that this is not how that works.

 

honestly it’s doomed. There’s no hope for the game. Nobody understands these hard to understand problems. 

 

 

[Labjax.2465]

As someone with less familiarity with the details of recent years balancing, I'm put off enough just by getting a window into the handling of the entire thing.

Despite what some of my more... ah, energized posts on forums might imply, I can be very accommodating, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. But when someone/entity screws up, won't properly admit to fault and/or admits to fault for the wrong things, and tries to redirect some of the blame to you for how you responded to it... in a situation like this, that's the kind of thing that gets me looking for the uninstall button. I'm not gonna do the announcement thing and say I'm leaving, but what I can say is I've uninstalled this game before over far less and the only real reluctance right now is sunk cost fallacy and the disruptive hassle of finding something else to play.

At a certain point, I have to evaluate whether the unprofessional behavior is worth the fun I can get out of the game. It's hard to think it's a good idea to stick around when I feel unwelcome by the kind of people who have the power to ban me at any moment.

[MathiasXII.7240]

I love these kind of threads and I hope GW2 teams pays attention to what is said here, because it really brings a more constructive  to what happend and how to manage it later on. 

 

I do agree with OP's point being the message. Completely outside of any specs conversation, I'd even push this a lil' more specific and say they completly miss the mark as to expectation management.

 

Having a good considerable amount of experience in software development, managing expectation is the key to so many things! Everything you say has a weight. It especially has a greater weight if people care about it. Having an excellent software with very bad expectation management got some companies almost to dust, while other companies where the software wasn't all that good, but expectation management was spot on, it was still thriving. I think it also applies to gaming industry.

What I think happened is : 
- *Announcement* : We're doing a long awaited and long overdue updates on professions with quarterly updates, starting June 28th. 

- *Expectations from ANET Team* (I have no idea what they are, so I'll leave this blank)

- *Expectations from players* AAH Finally, after so many years having lacks of build variety, a stagnation in metas, skills and traits that became completely useless, nerfs/OP buffs, etc., they're FINALLY gonna address the game imbalance. 

On a sidenote, I was actually quite surprised they announced such a big update on such a short notice, but that's because, like other players, I had HIGH expectations on all these balance changes. My expecations were so high, that I forgot to read about the quarterly part, which made me think it was going to be delivered all in one go. I don't know what were the expectations in ANET Team, but I'm pretty sure the gap was probably unexpected, but should have been expected though. 

 

I think there's also trust issues about updates that has grown amongst the community in a series of failed expectations in balance patches, except expectations were not too high, so the disappointment was limited. 

 

When this pattern is repeated on a much bigger scale update, that's when things got sour real quick!

 

So question to y'all. What made you lose trust in patches ? Is it that you don't feel heard? Is it that the balances patches don't meet your expectations?

[voltaicbore.8012]

35 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

sunk cost fallacy and the disruptive hassle of finding something else to play.

This is keeping a lot of us here, myself included. For that, ANet can thank the Legendary Armory - it's still hard to imagine any other game providing the durable account-wide value something like this provides. Lots of other little things GW2 does well (all QoL, not combat). Combine that with the famous sunk cost fallacy, and it's hard to walk away from GW2.

Hard, but not impossible. Never has ANet succeeded in pushing me so close to that line. At best, ANet is counting on sunk costs to keep salty veterans mollified long enough so they might throw us another bone later. At worst, there are enough indifferent casuals that they simply don't need to care, and won't actually care.

[voltaicbore.8012]

3 minutes ago, MathiasXII.7240 said:

So question to y'all. What made you lose trust in patches ? Is it that you don't feel heard? Is it that the balances patches don't meet your expectations?

Expectations is barking up the wrong tree here, and risks excusing incompetence. Speaking of incompetence, that's the reason why I think a lot of folks (myself included) lost trust in patches.

Since you seem oblivious to it, I'll just mention that recently there was a leak of some Discord chat where a balance dev spoke quite openly with members of the community. Among other things, one thing that stands out is that the dev at one point stated that they didn't know how an ability worked, and would have to look it up on the wiki. 

Here's the problem: why does ANet allow a dev to change a skill if they don't even kittening know how that skill works? It's perfectly okay that someone only knows mesmer skills, or guardian skills - if all they have responsibility over are mesmer and guardian skills. Who cares if that dev needs to wiki a warrior skill to see how it works? It's literally not their job to know. 

So I don't mean "incompetence" to be a personal jab at that particular dev, or any particular dev. Competence is something that companies need to manage properly, to make sure the responsibilities of an employee line up with the skills and knowledge that employee has.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

8 hours ago, solemn.9608 said:

Should be a pre-requisite for every anet dev to fight harbingers on elementalist/warrior (no antitoxin rune allowed) In WvW. Make them main ele/warr for an entire week and when they've given up/lost all hope, maybe we'll see some logical changes.

They already got death threats. But torture on this magnitude is just wrong man. 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

11 hours ago, solemn.9608 said:

Should be a pre-requisite for every anet dev to fight harbingers on elementalist/warrior (no antitoxin rune allowed) In WvW. Make them main ele/warr for an entire week and when they've given up/lost all hope, maybe we'll see some logical changes.

Double post. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[DanAlcedo.3281]

11 hours ago, solemn.9608 said:

Should be a pre-requisite for every anet dev to fight harbingers on elementalist/warrior (no antitoxin rune allowed) In WvW. Make them main ele/warr for an entire week and when they've given up/lost all hope, maybe we'll see some logical changes.

Ohh baby a triple. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[DanAlcedo.3281]

11 hours ago, solemn.9608 said:

Should be a pre-requisite for every anet dev to fight harbingers on elementalist/warrior (no antitoxin rune allowed) In WvW. Make them main ele/warr for an entire week and when they've given up/lost all hope, maybe we'll see some logical changes.

 4 times the charm. 😬

Edited June 28, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Gorem.8104]

I still honestly can't wait to see the justification for the essential removal of One wolf pack from pve content. 

[MathiasXII.7240]

9 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Expectations is barking up the wrong tree here, and risks excusing incompetence. Speaking of incompetence, that's the reason why I think a lot of folks (myself included) lost trust in patches.

Since you seem oblivious to it, I'll just mention that recently there was a leak of some Discord chat where a balance dev spoke quite openly with members of the community. Among other things, one thing that stands out is that the dev at one point stated that they didn't know how an ability worked, and would have to look it up on the wiki. 

Here's the problem: why does ANet allow a dev to change a skill if they don't even kittening know how that skill works? It's perfectly okay that someone only knows mesmer skills, or guardian skills - if all they have responsibility over are mesmer and guardian skills. Who cares if that dev needs to wiki a warrior skill to see how it works? It's literally not their job to know. 

So I don't mean "incompetence" to be a personal jab at that particular dev, or any particular dev. Competence is something that companies need to manage properly, to make sure the responsibilities of an employee line up with the skills and knowledge that employee has.

Are you serious ?! Yeah I was oblivious to that. 

 

Okay, it is seriously ef'ed up to put such pressure on devs. They shouldn't be the ones who decides what is balanced, they should be the one who makes the magic happen as this is usually enough on their plate as is. What saddens me is that they received angry mobs and death threats over this, but I don't think any devs would be willingly making decisions on changes they don't feel confident about. If they do, they probably didn't know what they were getting themselves into. I also blame the management about this, not the devs.

 

This has me wondering though about their thinking process in balance changes and what channel is missing to speak to the right people. I'm pretty sure many players that are used to playing one class in particular would be willingly happy to help them sort this out without necessarily being hired to do so. There's a passion about this game as we can see by very angry reactions to balance changes that suggests that some of the best players could help out.