Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview

[Ashen.2907]

52 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

That is a very clinical text for lobbying mob justice. You want to put the whole blame of the company failure on one person based on your emotional state at the moment and a private conversation. We as people shouldn't force the hand of company to fire people and destroy someone's livelihood for 3% less profitable t4 fractals. If you cant see, that he is just the symptom of the bigger failure of the system..

GZ you part of the unthinking mob out for blood.

Besides I'm against firing people so are many others especially based on private chatlogs. The majority doesn't care. Which group should we listen to? You because your are louder? 

Idiots always like the mob in its cathartic, "justified" rage, till the pitchforks point at them.

 

Do i like the guy? Hell no. But I'm not interested in influencing the life of a person i don't know based on a private chatlog and a game patch.

Edit: Btw who want you even get fire? Josh for lacking oversight of its develop team? The QA Person for letting?buggy? Banner changes slip by? The other guys on the balance team for doing a bad job in PvP? Or just the one guys you got the privates log from and as such have  face you can attack?

I have stated repeatedly that I do not want anyone fired and that I consider an employee getting a bit rough around the edges in his communication to be an acceptable aspect of open and honest communication. I would much rather know why a dev thinks that GW2 players are idiots or why he wants his personal preferred characters to remain top of the food chain than have him just keep those thoughts and words to himself.

And we, as players, cannot force the hand of the company to fire someone because of t4 fractals or anything else.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Catilena.8729]

19 minutes ago, Jillian.4502 said:

Any update yet or are they gonna ghost us for 2 weeks just to re-adjust some numbers?

They'll ignore us for a couple weeks and then throw crud at the wall to see what sticks again.

[phantom.1675]

1 minute ago, Catilena.8729 said:

They'll ignore us for a couple weeks and then throw crud at the wall to see what sticks again.

Not sure why people think there is goign to be an update on this today or anytime this week - they probably haven't even had the meeting to discuss the actual balance changes being rolled out yet.

They are also probably waiting to collect metrics on what gets played and how the traits perform.

 

 

[Catilena.8729]

1 minute ago, phantom.1675 said:

Not sure why people think there is goign to be an update on this today or anytime this week - they probably haven't even had the meeting to discuss the actual balance changes being rolled out yet.

They are also probably waiting to collect metrics on what gets played and how the traits perform.

 

 

lol you're funny, next you'll say they'll put out an actual balancing patch that nerfs HAM and Firebrand to not be domineering.

But I agree they are gonna wait. They are most likely waiting for the fire to die down a bit so that they don't feel like they catered to us. A power play if you will.

[Crash.5486]

On 6/27/2022 at 8:21 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Finally, I’d like to thank those of you who have approached this discussion in a civil manner. To those that have chosen extreme toxicity, called for developers to be fired, or sent death threats–you're not welcome in our community.

 

 Since when is asking for incompetent people to be fired on the same lvl as being sent death threats? I did neither but I am super salty about everything. If I do stuff at my job that pisses off the customers soo much as you all did then sorry i would be fired.

You pushed a patch that no one liked. You didnt have to release this patch. I for example would have apreciated it way more if you made a post saying we read your concerns we will postpone the update patch. Now you push a horrible patch on us and hope people just move and forget while changing nothing? 

Maybe start listening to your playerbase and not these few elitist on a hidden secret discord. A PTR that everyone can acces would be an a good asset. Amazon got a lot of sh*t for New World but at least they listen to their players. You guys keep saying you will but in the end you never do. The amount of promisses anet made to make people silent is way too high. If they would actually keep their promisses we would get somewhere. 

I have 2 mains, ele and war. Now both are kittened so I have no other choice but to play Mechanist or Firebrand. These classes that anet devs favourited for so many years seriously need to stop. They promised it would change with this patch, but they made it worse. 

[voltaicbore.8012]

49 minutes ago, Jillian.4502 said:

Any update yet or are they gonna ghost us for 2 weeks just to re-adjust some numbers?

You're learning.

It will be a very pleasant surprise if they do  a major course correction at this point. I think the DE meta is a sign of how things are going to be done: design something contrary to the spirit of the game, pretend like you're listening to "the players," whoever that is, and ultimately just stay the course.

As much as I hate to admit it, picking a course and finding a way to stick with it is an improvement over what we've seen from ANet in the past. I just hope that they have a clear enough vision that they can get us there without losing everyone on board.

[Gilosean.3805]

Quoting Alderez for emphasis:, because this really is the central problem that has been enraging people for 2 years, and which ArenaNet said this balance patch would solve and then doubled down on the class favoritism:

 

I think the biggest issue with the patch notes is that every other class is compared to Firebrand and Mechanist, which ArenaNet seem to have made clear that they're fine with where they're at - but other classes are not allowed role compression with boons and healing, with the option to be boon support or heal support depending on group needs.

If FB and Mechanist had been nerfed, or traits reworked so that they had to choose between boons and healing - and ArenaNet decided that they wanted group roles in the game to consist of:

• Healer
• Alacrity sub-DPS
• Quickness sub-DPS
• DPS
• DPS

Then they should have removed the ability for any class to choose both dedicated healing alongside boon support.

I'm fine with things like the Catalyst damage trade-off, but other classes need similar trade-offs. The imbalance in role compression is the real reason behind the dissatisfaction with the patch. People want to play support, but when another class can perform 2 roles at once, you're forced into that class.

 

https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vl1krq/a_long_time_semi_casuals_perspective_about_the/idt9q61/

[Seremela the Elf Mage.1748]

24 minutes ago, SpellboundTutor.4257 said:

That's a false equivalency from what I'm seeing here.

What I'm seeing, from my perspective, The balance updates were announced, happened, people got upset, attacked the developers personally, this post came out with someone saying people talking that way aren't welcome here, and now that's the focus of the conversation.

It's not an employee making a comment about a customer's race, it's a customer making a comment about an employee's race, then the manager coming out and asking them to leave. Then a group of customers getting upset about one being asked to leave and trying to get the manager fired.

If I am at all mistaken in what the problem is about, please tell me because I hope I'm wrong. Because I haven't had time to scan the 20-odd pages of back and forth banter.

To my knowledge, race was never brought up.
To my understanding the situation is:

• Balance patch preview was met with anger/outcry/dissatisfaction from players commenting on the form (some might say an overwhelming amount of dissatisfaction, but that could be considered an opinion)
• A discord chat log was leaked in which an arena net balance team dev behaved in an unprofessional manner while representing the company. This discord was between Arena Net employees and some select few content creators of the game with the purpose of getting contribution from players on balancing classes. In this conversation the employee admitted to playing favorites when it came to balancing classes, wanting to buff classes they favored, nerf classes like catalyst that overperformed in very specific scenarios in speedkilling teams/very specific comps because they were too strong in that hypothetical scenario instead of what the majority of the playerbase could manage, buffing certain weapons they personally liked and nerfing/ignoring issues with ones they didn't personally like (specifics being they liked mirage staff so they buffed staff because they didn't like axe, even though there has been a fair bit of input over the years on many issues with mirage axe from mesmer players. Another was that they buffed mace and signets on mechanist because they personally did not like engineer kit swapping and didn't want players to have a reason to use them), the employee did not believe that high effort rotations like catalyst/elementalist should not be rewarded for complexity with more damage and that classes should relatively all perform equally with just a few button pushes, they were balancing classes when they did not understand how that class played/how its skills and traits functioned (having to look them up on the wiki and balancing based off that). To top it all off, the employee made comments saying that players were idiots and they could not wait for the salt that would come. (I think a lot of the outrage comes from this point here where you have an employee seeming to be deliberately antagonistic and derisive of the customer while being extremely biased in the execution of their duties as a member of the balance team).
• People who have cited this Discord conversation have been told they are taking things out of context, meanwhile posts linked where the actual chat logs have been linked in full have been aggressively taken down across multiple forums. (How can anyone who wants to learn the context if the original document keeps getting deleted?) The flow of information is being heavily controlled in this conversation where we are freely fed what Anet wants to tell or the narrative they want us to know, but evidence cited by the other side is being actively removed (which makes it seem like there is something in those logs that would reflect badly on the company and they are trying to cover up). Not allowing people access to this information has gotten a lot of people to think that this long thread of mostly outrage is related to the patch notes itself, instead of the call to review the behavior/conduct of an employee on the job that it has become. 
• Anet has claimed it has received death threats from angry players because of this patch while making no comment on the conduct of their employee. To my knowledge there is no evidence to support or refute this claim. They have lumped the players/customers making these threats in with players/customers calling for the balance team member from the discord chat to be reprimanded/reviewed/fired/reassigned, which came across as "any and all criticism, no matter how it's presented is considered toxic and unwelcome".

  Quote

  Finally, I’d like to thank those of you who have approached this discussion in a civil manner. To those that have chosen extreme toxicity, called for developers to be fired, or sent death threats–you're not welcome in our community.

  This stance is further supported by selective pruning of posts in which players have (imo civilly) asked for the employee to be reprimanded and pointed out how it might look when a company stands behind an employee who makes disparaging comments about customers. (See page 9 where @MesmerizedNYC.2479 quoted a post by @Dunklord.5930. The post that was quoted was pruned and the user was issued a 3day ban for "Rude/Insulting comments directed at ArenaNet Staff". Imo it was a polite assessment, no swearing, no threats, a request for an apology to the playerbase and for the developer in question to step down/be removed from the balance team for unprofessional behavior.) I can only say that there were others about arbitrary post deletion by mods, but I was not able to find proof in the form them being quoted elsewhere to preserve the original (deleted) post. That response further fans the flames in this situation where you have an employee who can badmouth customers without repercussions, but customers cannot politely call to question product quality or ask for employee behavior that goes against the company's reported vision to be reprimanded. Instead they're lumped in with people who threaten another's life and told to get out. 
  
  On another note, in many places (including Washington, U.S. where Anet is located) making death threats is illegal (in Washington its felony harassment). If they're players in the game and Anet has their account info, drop the banhammer on them and move on, no way ToS allows it. If its outside of the game, take all the information it to the police. Don't make inflammatory comments on the forums that feed the trolls and sideswipe those who disagree civilly. It seems like a ploy for sympathy (a remark that has come up on previous pages) meant to make them look like innocent victims without any proof and further control the narrative/information they want you to have (removal of civil but critical posts, removal of Balance Discord chatlog records) by shifting the focus of the incident off of their employee's behavior and onto supposed entitled customers threatening the lives and safety of employees. It creates a culture of fear where a person will be shunned or silenced for disagreeing regardless of how "civilly" they express themselves and make it seem like everything is happy and fine by only keeping/allowing supportive posts.
  
  When Anet comes forward and says they have a new team, we will listen to the players more, this incident happens and they say again we will do better in the future while censuring people talking about aspects of this incident other than dissatisfaction over patch notes, not even acknowledge the inflammatory comments that some people are in an uproar over and try to keep details of it from getting out to save face...can we as players, consumers, customers really expect them to make good on a (thus far) empty promise while they continue to repeat the same patterns and engage in the same behaviour?
  
  I personally am afraid I spent the last few hours drafting this only to have it deleted and be banned myself. I'll do it anyway because I find the spread of misinformation to be an abhorrent way to control them. I don't believe in double standards where it's acceptable to bash one group of people while defending others doing the same thing. I don't believe it's right to villainize anyone with a dissenting/critical opinion and make them feel unwelcome to express themselves in a logical and polite manner (i.e. without making threats, resulting to slurs, or bashing intelligence). I believe that if someone is unfit for their job or violates company ethics/code of conduct, they should be reprimanded or removed from their job, not just for the company to save face, but to send a clear message that the company does not condone such action and disrespecting other human beings (employee or customer) will not be tolerated. If that makes me toxic, fine. I'm toxic. Censure me, silence me, ban me, but don't lump me in with the people who allegedly make death threats.

[ShionKreth.1542]

1 hour ago, Seremela the Elf Mage.1748 said:

To my knowledge, race was never brought up.
To my understanding the situation is:

• Balance patch preview was met with anger/outcry/dissatisfaction from players commenting on the form (some might say an overwhelming amount of dissatisfaction, but that could be considered an opinion)
• A discord chat log was leaked in which an arena net balance team dev behaved in an unprofessional manner while representing the company. This discord was between Arena Net employees and some select few content creators of the game with the purpose of getting contribution from players on balancing classes. In this conversation the employee admitted to playing favorites when it came to balancing classes, wanting to buff classes they favored, nerf classes like catalyst that overperformed in very specific scenarios in speedkilling teams/very specific comps because they were too strong in that hypothetical scenario instead of what the majority of the playerbase could manage, buffing certain weapons they personally liked and nerfing/ignoring issues with ones they didn't personally like (specifics being they liked mirage staff so they buffed staff because they didn't like axe, even though there has been a fair bit of input over the years on many issues with mirage axe from mesmer players. Another was that they buffed mace and signets on mechanist because they personally did not like engineer kit swapping and didn't want players to have a reason to use them), the employee did not believe that high effort rotations like catalyst/elementalist should not be rewarded for complexity with more damage and that classes should relatively all perform equally with just a few button pushes, they were balancing classes when they did not understand how that class played/how its skills and traits functioned (having to look them up on the wiki and balancing based off that). To top it all off, the employee made comments saying that players were idiots and they could not wait for the salt that would come. (I think a lot of the outrage comes from this point here where you have an employee seeming to be deliberately antagonistic and derisive of the customer while being extremely biased in the execution of their duties as a member of the balance team).
• People who have cited this Discord conversation have been told they are taking things out of context, meanwhile posts linked where the actual chat logs have been linked in full have been aggressively taken down across multiple forums. (How can anyone who wants to learn the context if the original document keeps getting deleted?) The flow of information is being heavily controlled in this conversation where we are freely fed what Anet wants to tell or the narrative they want us to know, but evidence cited by the other side is being actively removed (which makes it seem like there is something in those logs that would reflect badly on the company and they are trying to cover up). Not allowing people access to this information has gotten a lot of people to think that this long thread of mostly outrage is related to the patch notes itself, instead of the call to review the behavior/conduct of an employee on the job that it has become. 
• Anet has claimed it has received death threats from angry players because of this patch while making no comment on the conduct of their employee. To my knowledge there is no evidence to support or refute this claim. They have lumped the players/customers making these threats in with players/customers calling for the balance team member from the discord chat to be reprimanded/reviewed/fired/reassigned, which came across as "any and all criticism, no matter how it's presented is considered toxic and unwelcome". This stance is further supported by selective pruning of posts in which players have (imo civilly) asked for the employee to be reprimanded and pointed out how it might look when a company stands behind an employee who makes disparaging comments about customers. (See page 9 where @MesmerizedNYC.2479 quoted a post by @Dunklord.5930. The post that was quoted was pruned and the user was issued a 3day ban for "Rude/Insulting comments directed at ArenaNet Staff". Imo it was a polite assessment, no swearing, no threats, a request for an apology to the playerbase and for the developer in question to step down/be removed from the balance team for unprofessional behavior.) I can only say that there were others about arbitrary post deletion by mods, but I was not able to find proof in the form them being quoted elsewhere to preserve the original (deleted) post. That response further fans the flames in this situation where you have an employee who can badmouth customers without repercussions, but customers cannot politely call to question product quality or ask for employee behavior that goes against the company's reported vision to be reprimanded. Instead they're lumped in with people who threaten another's life and told to get out. 
  
  On another note, in many places (including Washington, U.S. where Anet is located) making death threats is illegal (in Washington its felony harassment). If they're players in the game and Anet has their account info, drop the banhammer on them and move on, no way ToS allows it. If its outside of the game, take all the information it to the police. Don't make inflammatory comments on the forums that feed the trolls and sideswipe those who disagree civilly. It seems like a ploy for sympathy (a remark that has come up on previous pages) meant to make them look like innocent victims without any proof and further control the narrative/information they want you to have (removal of civil but critical posts, removal of Balance Discord chatlog records) by shifting the focus of the incident off of their employee's behavior and onto supposed entitled customers threatening the lives and safety of employees. It creates a culture of fear where a person will be shunned or silenced for disagreeing regardless of how "civilly" they express themselves and make it seem like everything is happy and fine by only keeping/allowing supportive posts.
  
  When Anet comes forward and says they have a new team, we will listen to the players more, this incident happens and they say again we will do better in the future while censuring people talking about aspects of this incident other than dissatisfaction over patch notes, not even acknowledge the inflammatory comments that some people are in an uproar over and try to keep details of it from getting out to save face...can we as players, consumers, customers really expect them to make good on a (thus far) empty promise while they continue to repeat the same patterns and engage in the same behaviour?
  
  I personally am afraid I spent the last few hours drafting this only to have it deleted and be banned myself. I'll do it anyway because I find the spread of misinformation to be an abhorrent way to control them. I don't believe in double standards where it's acceptable to bash one group of people while defending others doing the same thing. I don't believe it's right to villainize anyone with a dissenting/critical opinion and make them feel unwelcome to express themselves in a logical and polite manner (i.e. without making threats, resulting to slurs, or bashing intelligence). I believe that if someone is unfit for their job or violates company ethics/code of conduct, they should be reprimanded or removed from their job, not just for the company to save face, but to send a clear message that the company does not condone such action and disrespecting other human beings (employee or customer) will not be tolerated. If that makes me toxic, fine. I'm toxic. Censure me, silence me, ban me, but don't lump me in with the people who allegedly make death threats.

I don't see anything prohibiting talking about employees being reprimanded or fired in the forum code of conduct, and it was openly discussed without reprimand during the Jessica Price/Peter Fries controversy (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/33336-gw-2-devsplayerbase-twitter-discussion/?tab=comments#comment-543585). They should probably update the rules if they're going to publicly tell people they're no longer welcome in the community for doing so... since it seemingly isn't against the rules and wasn't an issue before; otherwise, it just comes across as personal.

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by ShionKreth.1542

[Ruisenior.6342]

4 hours ago, Nagheaded.1306 said:

Is there any feedback to this beyond telling me it's time to quit this game? 

 

Go guardian you wont regret it. You have many options there so when it changes the meta you will be able to adapt easily.

 

My advice is to keep your zerks gear for a dragonhunter and build new gear for some condi based builds, cause any spec besides dragonhunter(more zerk oriented) will benefit from the same condi gear and only having to rely on 1 condi(fire damage), carrion stats with balthazar runes on your armor will serve for instanced content, and for solo play you can build dire stats also with balthazar runes(condi,toughness and vitality) both easy to obtain.

 

As an example build for a starter solo selfish play i link you a core build to later swap to willbender (both builds will use the new signets still not displayed on this build editor). From there you can start optimizing your gear but this will serve you to clear all content with easy rotations.

Starter core:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABw+x/lJwQYdMK2JO+KprNA-zRIUb0zPGs5EpgjZJ1pN-e

Willbender:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABw+x/lJwUZdMK2JWSXbxUA-zRIUb0zPGs5EpgjZJ1pN-e

Edit: if you like your warrior just play and enjoy it, noone can tell you otherwise.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342

[Dante.1508]

Mechwarrior online was struggling with balance issues and they decided to add few players from different parts of their game to help the devs manage the balance changes.. They are called the Cauldron.

While some changes have been not taken the best by and large the game as a whole is doing so much better these days they are even adding new additions, new mechs and maps after three years maintenance mode..

 

I know the games are apples and oranges but my point is it worked it helped and it can be a good thing.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Dante.1508

[Seremela the Elf Mage.1748]

3 hours ago, ShionKreth.1542 said:

I don't see anything prohibiting talking about employees being reprimanded or fired in the forum code of conduct, and it was openly discussed without reprimand during the Jessica Price/Peter Fries controversy (https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/33336-gw-2-devsplayerbase-twitter-discussion/?tab=comments#comment-543585). They should probably update the rules if they're going to publicly tell people they're no longer welcome in the community for doing so... since it seemingly isn't against the rules and wasn't an issue before; otherwise, it just comes across as personal.

 

Maybe that's that infamous Anet double-speak where it applies to certain people in some situations when it benefits Anet, but not to everyone equally? /s Who knows anymore?

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

14 hours ago, Seremela the Elf Mage.1748 said:

When Anet comes forward and says they have a new team, we will listen to the players more, this incident happens and they say again we will do better in the future while censuring people talking about aspects of this incident other than dissatisfaction over patch notes, not even acknowledge the inflammatory comments that some people are in an uproar over and try to keep details of it from getting out to save face...can we as players, consumers, customers really expect them to make good on a (thus far) empty promise while they continue to repeat the same patterns and engage in the same behaviour?

 

Personally i hope they get a new team and no longer hear any1 , because we cannot continue with the mess of balancing around dps addons so and no1 is left out in HIGH LVL PLAY .

Or Berseker classes deal less dps 32k , vs the 39k condition.

You are a guardian/mech that offer all boons > boom 24k dps max > you become a "B tier Dps"

You are a Catalyst > boom 34k "A tier" .

"A tier" cannot goes over that max dps .

You want to stack Catalyst for world first , then we implant an invisible increased damage taken for that person  if more than 3+ specs are in CMS + the only first week of the releases (then we diactivate it and give the winners  of that week a limited Title or limited new KP and at the end of the year-after 15 CM , they can unlock a very sexy skin(people are not allowed to sell these))

 

Spoiler

 

If people want to boycot Steam , then its ok , the game will do the same things and aim for 10million per 3 months  and after 5 years will focus on gw3.

And it might cut the expenses and rather than tailor CM strikes with special care , they will slap a damage/health increase and instead focus on other aspect , such as WvW

 

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[cyberzombie.7348]

With respect I just don't see the logic behind half of the changes. Most notably being the overall replacement of status effects in favor for more boons. Which actually hinders the offensive support capabilities across all classes. With the changes to warrior's banner and  tactics traitline being the worst offender.

[Ascency.3580]

8 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Nice.

Apparently, we now have Rifle Mechanist sitting at 25k only auto-attacking while Berserker dropped to 25k altogether.

Good job, Arena Net, good job!

That was their grand vision cant you see? Its so majestic!

[Ascency.3580]

My tought on the leak is that it proves why balance is done in such a biased manner. If the dev is refusing to even weapon swap on his fb then ofc hes gonna do lower dps hence the constant buffs to the class. Fb has no viable power build hence condi meta. Rest of the classes are balanced based on benchmarks since he cant be bothered and only assumption is that hes other played classes are mech and necro. Also the dumbest kittening sentence that ive read in my life regarding gameplay especially in an mmo regarding no need for level of class complexity having nothing to do with how effective it should be alone makes up the rest of the stupid anger inducing decisions.

Theres ofc a chance that this leak is fake, or we dont get the full contrxt, but oh boy how it all fits to what has been happening with every balance patch since god knows how long.

If it however is true and anet cant realise that someone inside is actively being harmful to their product or this actually IS their idea of aproaching balance then theres no hope.

Based on the fact that they use the "community being toxic" argument in this damage control post does not bode well. No company ever came out on top attacking their customers.

[Gilosean.3805]

12 minutes ago, Ascency.3580 said:

My tought on the leak is that it proves why balance is done in such a biased manner. If the dev is refusing to even weapon swap on his fb then ofc hes gonna do lower dps hence the constant buffs to the class. Fb has no viable power build hence condi meta. Rest of the classes are balanced based on benchmarks since he cant be bothered and only assumption is that hes other played classes are mech and necro. Also the dumbest kittening sentence that ive read in my life regarding gameplay especially in an mmo regarding no need for level of class complexity having nothing to do with how effective it should be alone makes up the rest of the stupid anger inducing decisions.

 

Yeah, it's blindingly obvious how this dev's biases have been allowed to dictate the meta. I was suggesting a few pages back that ANet needs some rules or guidance about how to make balance decisions, because that's the only way to consistently steer clear of letting personal opinions guide decisions.  I've played the game since its first year, and they've always had really obvious signs that no one understands or cares how to actually make all classes viable in all modes and endgame content. They need a cultural change because frankly I'm pretty sick of it and they've burned up all the benefit of the doubt. 

 

Leaving aside the unprofessional behavior in a job-related Discord, i.e. a professional setting, which would absolutely get at least a reprimand in any developer position I've worked in for terrible judgement if nothing else, the total and determined lack of comprehension about how classes play and allowing class choice to be functionally dictated by having an easy class also bring the most to the table is astonishing. 

 

ETA: Reddit has a post linking to a name-sanitized version of the logs, you can read the whole thing and see that the quotes aren't taken out of context that badly.   Some people are getting very invested and should calm down, but the developer openly admits to balancing classes without playing them, not caring about player experience just benchmarks (ex: the emergency Catalyst nerf earlier), buffing favorite weapons or classes to try and make other options non-viable, and is pretty contemptuous of average players overall.   

The Steam sale is going on, I've got some games on my GOG wishlist I haven't played yet...I was looking forward to getting into raiding and making a legendary, but if this is how endgame balance is going to be treated I've got a lot of other games to play. 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Gilosean.3805

[TabrisTiGraf.8591]

I realy want to thank developers for this patch. Yes i'm engineer player and after 9 years i got rifle autoattack changes. To be honest i cried.  
Maybe i will be upset with current patch but i play almost alone so no one influences me. And i remember when other classes was OP. So why when yours favorit specializations was overpowered you play it for month (guardians is still OP) and don't get sooooooo mad? Yes because you like them.
But i don't like play OP mechanist. I would have liked it better if every specialization and every class can play every content game have. So developers please take a break, take a breath and make the game even better.
P.S. sorry for my English =_=
 

[Gilosean.3805]

3 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Mechwarrior online was struggling with balance issues and they decided to add few players from different parts of their game to help the devs manage the balance changes.. They are called the Cauldron.

While some changes have been not taken the best by and large the game as a whole is doing so much better these days they are even adding new additions, new mechs and maps after three years maintenance mode..

 

I know the games are apples and oranges but my point is it worked it helped and it can be a good thing.

 

Part of why this blew up is that there is a Discord that was supposed to be, and instead at least one of the developers treated it like a social clique instead of a job duty. They ignored feedback on classes they didn't like, bragged about how they buffed weapons and classes they liked so that no one would have a reason to play things they didn't like, were very unprofessional, etc. 

 

Many players for a long time have felt that the balance team played favorites. They've pointed at Guardian for ages, or Mechanist also now, vs how other classes are treated.  Lo and behold, this dev's favorite classes are Firebrand and Mechanist.  So, everyone's suspicions are confirmed, and the dev was pretty insulting, and there was a ton of feedback they ignored about how messed up other non-favored classes were going to get.  ArenaNet has burned up a ton of goodwill from many veteran players, and new players are picking up on the vibe and reconsidering playing the game. 

 

Frankly,  unless they really like Firebrand or Mechanist, at this point I think they ought to. This is not the first time a balance dev has played favorites and ANet backed them up to the hilt.  If anything is actually done to address the root causes (company culture allowing a shallow approach to balance and devs to play favorites, basically) I'll be pleasantly surprised, but in the meantime I took a break after HoT released and I may be taking one again.  I'm going to give it a couple weeks to see how things shake out.

[Gilosean.3805]

Just now, TabrisTiGraf.8591 said:

I realy want to thank developers for this patch. Yes i'm engineer player and after 9 years i got rifle autoattack changes. To be honest i cried.  
Maybe i will be upset with current patch but i play almost alone so no one influences me. And i remember when other classes was OP. So why when yours favorit specializations was overpowered you play it for month (guardians is still OP) and don't get sooooooo mad? Yes because you like them.
But i don't like play OP mechanist. I would have liked it better if every specialization and every class can play every content game have. So developers please take a break, take a breath and make the game even better.
P.S. sorry for my English =_=
 

 

The reason people are mad is that chat logs with a dev leaked, where the dev admits that their favorite classes are Guardian and Mechanist, and that the dev buffs things based on whether they like them instead of trying to aim for a good balance.  People have always been irritated by that, and now that it's confirmed dev favoritism by someone who ignored feedback saying this wasn't OK...well, that's a ton of goodwill lost and a lot of players reconsidering if they want to stick around. Including me, frankly. 

[SlayerXX.7138]

7 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I have stated repeatedly that I do not want anyone fired and that I consider an employee getting a bit rough around the edges in his communication to be an acceptable aspect of open and honest communication. I would much rather know why a dev thinks that GW2 players are idiots or why he wants his personal preferred characters to remain top of the food chain than have him just keep those thoughts and words to himself.

And we, as players, cannot force the hand of the company to fire someone because of t4 fractals or anything else.

Well from what i read you don't want to force, just heavily influence it. Which is almost the same in my eyes at least. Preferable class treatment shouldn't even be an option, this a systematic failure. Are you really asking why a employee in his private time thinks his customer are idiots? People ARE idiots in general.

This is a systematic failure of the company as a whole. Focusing blame on a single person based on a PRIVATE chat log is not only morally wrong, it is also unproductive. Will firing that guy ensure that banners don't go out buggy? NO. Will firing that guy stop the next person from being biased? NO. Will firing that guy make them read more feedback? NO.

What positive change do you and other people think will come from firing that guy?

[Labjax.2465]

1 minute ago, Albi.7250 said:

Well from what i read you don't want to force, just heavily influence it. Which is almost the same in my eyes at least. Preferable class treatment shouldn't even be an option, this a systematic failure. Are you really asking why a employee in his private time thinks his customer are idiots? People ARE idiots in general.

This is a systematic failure of the company as a whole. Focusing blame on a single person based on a PRIVATE chat log is not only morally wrong, it is also unproductive. Will firing that guy ensure that banners don't go out buggy? NO. Will firing that guy stop the next person from being biased? NO. Will firing that guy make them read more feedback? NO.

What positive change do you and other people think will come from firing that guy?

What are you even talking about? You're replying to someone who specifically said they don't think anyone should be fired over this.

And beyond that, your excuse here is that people are "idiots"? Seriously? It is not morally wrong to focus criticism on a person who did something wrong, good lord. We don't know what all is going wrong with the company and why. Most of the criticism has been directed at Anet as a whole and some of it specifically at a person who we know did something that some people have problems with. What exactly do you expect people to do? We have no idea if this is a systemic failure of the company or the actions of individuals. We lack TONS of information about what is going on behind the scenes. Of course people are going to latch onto the little bit of insight they get into how the devs are behaving and thinking, when up until this point they've had to rely on pure speculation as to what's going wrong with balancing. That's not unproductive, that's a rational response to being completely in the dark.

[Ascency.3580]

19 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

What positive change do you and other people think will come from firing that guy?

if someone is saying "fire him cos i dont like the patch" then he shouldn't be allowed to speak his opinion cos hes clearly not mature enough to have one. if someone is however saying "if this person is cousing harm to the company thru hes outright malicious aproach to the job hes supposed to be doing and is getting payed for, you, as a company, should take action" then hes completely right. and anet alone has the capacity to verify if this is the case and act accordingly. the fact that it reflects real bad on the individual is also not the communitys fault. the fact he spoke those things either while talking with players, or internally within the dev circle does not change the fact what has beed said. the leak wasnt hes fault so hes a victim in this case. however this shows how fragmented the whole process is. instead of having official feedback channels (oh wait theyt do have those) you rely on backchannels then this might and will happen. someone allowed this to go on for quite some time, maybe even someone greenlighted it. so SOMEONE is responsible for this situation. and yes, anet, as a company should take action, against anyone who affected their product or its image in a way that might affect revenue. calling theyr customers toxic is the worst way they could approach this however. especially since its clearly at their end that the issue materialised.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Ascency.3580

[Deathmaster.1649]

Why do you hate warrior so much? Please fix this banner used to give warriors 50 more precision than others and as power warrior it's now so hard to reach the crit cap, giving 5% more crit chance in arms is useless as that being a condi trait, please fix this, engi auto attack from rifle is doing more dps than a full berserk rotation. 

[GoguSpatzialu.7948]

5 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Mechwarrior online was struggling with balance issues and they decided to add few players from different parts of their game to help the devs manage the balance changes.. They are called the Cauldron.

While some changes have been not taken the best by and large the game as a whole is doing so much better these days they are even adding new additions, new mechs and maps after three years maintenance mode..

 

I know the games are apples and oranges but my point is it worked it helped and it can be a good thing.

This lesson was learned at by DAoC back in 2004. There may have been even earlier ones. It's amazing how Anet can fail so spectacularly.