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Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview


Josh Davis.7865

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15 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

I wish Anet would stop apologizing and just do it right the first time. It isn’t that hard to communicate effectively. This post is a great example of good communication. Too bad you are wasting time writing an apology than just doing the notes correctly the first time.  What really chafes is that Anet has told us multiple times over the years ‘we are going to communicate better’ and yet, here they are apologizing for not doing that, yet again. 

 

This post is not example of communication, it sounds like stalling people like politicians. I love this game and I lost hope after leaks. I dont even want to just only login in the game at the moment. Thanks to your devs. 

 

Dear Director, do not release any expansion, anything before balance everything. We need to see some action if you want us to believe you back.  (Also you should balance your team as well)

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7 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

But the game is the result of the devs' vision

A dev's vision can also be bad. Especially when he has no idea about the classes and admits it and clearly favors certain classes while others are flushed down the toilet. I think no one here has the claim to know everything. But this game has veterans who play the game for almost 10 years and have thousands of hours on certain classes. 

 

If I were this dev, I would first get a real picture. This includes playing and judging all classes objectively. In addition, do not shy away from being advised by long-time players and take the feedback seriously. All these are puzzle pieces that provide an overall picture that can be built upon.

Edited by Leolas.6273
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1 minute ago, Ratnoon.4251 said:

Also something that should be said is that when the playerbase have strong reactions like this, it should be an indicator to our passion for the game! If we didn't care, we wouldn't comment. 

 

For me personally, I'm more sad than I am angry. I'm sad and also tired of being sad.

 

It's comparable to being in a unhealthy relationship with someone you truly care about. I try to love you, but I just keep getting hurt. And at some point, I'm gonna have to look out for my own best interests.

 

I think many would agree on this.

Definitely. I would like nothing more than to log into a video game I like, know it'll be fun, and know if there are updates occasionally, they'll be thoughtful and skillfully done. Apart from being a decent mental workout calling out mental gymnastics, I really don't want to be on forums posting criticism. I don't think I can say I get enjoyment out of doing so. What I do enjoy doing is doing things like commanding a fun run in Drizzlewood or AB and encouraging other players for doing a good job. And I like it when there are new players around and I get to help them have a fun experience learning a new meta and winning at it. I feel like a different person when I'm doing that compared to here. Here I feel like I have to be on the defensive all the time, whether it's from other players or the actions and attitudes of Anet. I almost wish I could just hide from it and stick to the game itself, but these things have a way of finding their way in game sooner or later.

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I'm all for more communication. A lot of times some changes just don't make sense to me and often times they still don't. Sometimes I correct myself and my opinion changes as the game evolves and new systems come in place, but other times my opinions on things remain the same for 9 years.

Sometimes I'll be repeatedly talking about pain points I have which some of them should be simple fixes that go unaddressed for years. Example being the Necromancer Axe auto attack animation for female human, sylvari and norn looking incredibly awkward when preformed when before it looks great and felt great to use even though it was mechanically much weaker. Little animation errors like this which are easy to notice make the game look sloppy. I know this isn't balance, its just aesthetic, however its stuff like this that doesn't get addressed for half a decade that really makes these sorts of statement's kinda hollow.

Even with this criticism, I do very much love the game and I do believe y'all devs are extremely passionate about the game and do genuinely want what's best. I'm skeptical about this patch, but that's because it looks like the first step in a long process of major reworks, and trying to view it from a single piece of the puzzle isn't going to be valuable. So my judgement is reserved.

You have had some decent communication in the past followed by silence. And this has been a pattern. So it would be nice if we could just have some better communication all the time. The guild wars 2 community isn't just the players, its the devs too. I love getting to hear y'all nerd out about what you've been working on, and clearing up misconceptions is great.

I hope we can talk a bit more. I know y'all do listen, since a few posts I've made and others have made have been implemented or expanded on in the game, so if a Nobody player like me can influence some change its y'all do listen. It just would be nicer to get more transparency. You don't need to address every player individually, but a bit more back and forth would be nice.

Anyway, in spite of my skeptisim I'm actually pretty excited for the patch. Warhorn inflicting fear has been something I've desired since you announced it from beta. Never got to use it though so now I can make my jank terror buid and that does make me happy.

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One thing this game needs is a Public Test Environment (PTS) that could help collect feedback on changes before they are implemented. The folks over at ESO have this, and it appears to work well for them, from what I observed. I'm not sure why this isn't a thing with GW2 @Josh Davis.7865 . Could you clarify?

Also, what's with all this secrecy before releases? Are you afraid of something? Perhaps that people will not like the changes? As you can see, people clearly don't like these unpleasant surprises that are a result of lack of testing and the absence of a more open environment for doing so. I work as a UX Researcher, so I know considering user feedback early and often is crucial. It feels like this game has had a good UX investment when it came to the UI, but what happened to everything else? What happened to CX? What happened to testing?

On a more general note, while I understand that many changes don't make much (in some cases any) sense, and I understand people's frustration, resorting to death threats and similar nonsense is way off the charts, and I think some people need to detach from the game. It's not real, it's pixels, it means nothing. Literally, nothing.

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9 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Video game fans get called dramatic and overreacting time after time, meanwhile in many other industries, screwups of the kind that are a regular occurrence in the video game industry simply don't happen. Video game fans get expected to have saintly patience in the face of screwup after screwup and calmly explain how they would like things to be different while they continue to play and pay.

Being a video game fan is continual exposure to gaslighting. Being told over and over from different angles and people that your concerns don't matter, that you are exaggerating what is occurring, that you are acting out, and that you need to behave more. It doesn't matter if you rant or write an academic essay, you will still get dismissed by anyone and everyone, if not laughed at and mocked.

Meanwhile, the alleged (pretty much never is evidence provided) awful actions of a fraction of a fraction of a given game community get put front and center and paraded around as the representation of what video game communities are and suddenly said communities that are normally thought of as diverse and broad are talked at as if they are an organized, conspiring group that is supposed to be policing and/or taking responsibility for the alleged actions of a fraction of them. And the ones who have the patient of a saint are given a pat on the head for "behaving."

The cycle is never-ending.

Interesting, that seems to be a direct inversion of what's happened here. My post which you've quoted: 10 confused reacts. Your post saying you get universally dismissed for making criticism: nothing but likes. Seems to me what actually happens is that complainers circle-jerk and this leads to them rightly getting dismissed as being dramatic. Meanwhile the majority of people who see them as being dramatic and catastrophising everything go largely unrepresented because if you go against the circle-jerk you get mocked. And it isn't really accurate that people only become this dramatic after many eons of bad decisions — the vast majority of the people being dramatic about this were probably doing the same thing 3 months into the game's existence lol

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9 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

 

  •  I recognize that the way feedback is collected for balance updates is far from ideal. We need to preview updates earlier so we’re never in this situation again, and we need to solve for how we go about getting balance feedback from qualified individuals. Eliminate the unofficial backchannels. I’m going to own finding the right solution for this.
  •  We added a follow up balance update in the coming weeks to our schedule.


 

 

Other MMO's like WoW, ESO or NW have Public Test Servers for big Patches, such as this. There the players can test out the intended changes weeks in advance and give feedback. I never understood why GW2 doesn't use that model. 

Hopefully the follow up Patch will be enough. You really need to communicate what you are going to do to fix this mess this time. If it takes a month or 2 so be it. But we need to see you are on it and don't just hush it up like other things in the past.

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2 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I'm gonna take it you were trying to say that to me since I just used that phrasing:

They scolded and lumped together people who called for a dev to be fired and people who allegedly did a death threat (no one I know of who followed this closely has said anything about seeing such).

Then they distinguished from that people who were "civil" about it. And said the 1st group is not welcome in "our community." So what does that clearly communicate? If you criticize any more deeply than changes themselves, you aren't welcome. Despite the stuff they tried to bury that made one of their employees look bad and faced that classic internet phenomenon where attempting to bury something only gets people talking about it more. So... people criticized beyond changes themselves because they had information that led them to believe the problems here went deeper than a difference in design philosophy and Anet essentially communicated that doing so makes them toxic and unwelcome here. Ergo... Anet thinks it's toxic for someone to want them to be held accountable for their actions. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Never mind the fact that players are just saying that and have no power to make it happen at all.

And being "civil" basically means nothing at this point. It has been so chronically misused by those in power in a given situation whose description of civility amounts to "speaking politely and maintaining decorum, no matter what is happening to you or by whom."

This feels a little extreme but not completely off base by any means.
I think it's fair to start questioning just how much good will and trust should the consumer be expected to have.
I mean just simply taking this situation at face value, subtract all the "good will" comments and suggestive parts of the post that allude to some hopeful solution in the future... You're left with one result.
It's too much work for them to fix so the player base has to deal with it.
As mentioned prior by myself and many others, this is completely contrarian to what's being said and while the range of extremes can be discussed, that's what is being said here. Is that once again the player base has to deal with the outcome of something they have zero control over. There are posts of people practically writing a thesis paper on issues saying they're done. So now the player is expected to be patient AGAIN....
They expect people to believe they're gonna change by doing the exact same thing again?

Why is the standard to expect the consumer to put up with lower quality product with little more then a promise & not even an actual apology for it?
I'm not saying be extreme or lash out, I'm more the one that encourages people to just go spend elsewhere, but it's definitely a fair point you make... If the customers aren't appreciated, they don't feel appreciated, and no genuine effort is made to appreciate them for their support (words are not enough).... This sort of backlash should be expected. If any person here should underperform at their job or career they're held accountable, not saying take the guy to the guillotine but the solution is asking the customers to just deal with the obvious mistakes?
Again, be civil is my vote, just don't spend or support until it's appreciated n deserved, it's ok to not let your good will be exploited.

Edited by Voyant.1327
grammar
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3 minutes ago, Trigarta.3841 said:

Other MMO's like WoW, ESO or NW have Public Test Servers for big Patches, such as this. There the players can test out the intended changes weeks in advance and give feedback. I never understood why GW2 doesn't use that model. 

Hopefully the follow up Patch will be enough. You really need to communicate what you are going to do to fix this mess this time. If it takes a month or 2 so be it. But we need to see you are on it and don't just hush it up like other things in the past.

Building Public Test Servers requires money, no money for that they gotta pay the people High positions.

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2 minutes ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Interesting, that seems to be a direct inversion of what's happened here. My post which you've quoted: 10 confused reacts. Your post saying you get universally dismissed for making criticism: nothing but likes. Seems to me what actually happens is that complainers circle-jerk and this leads to them rightly getting dismissed as being dramatic. Meanwhile the majority of people who see them as being dramatic and catastrophising everything go largely unrepresented because if you go against the circle-jerk you get mocked. And it isn't really accurate that people only become this dramatic after many eons of bad decisions — the vast majority of the people being dramatic about this were probably doing the same thing 3 months into the game's existence lol

That might mean something if it wasn't for the fact that probably most criticism I've posted on these forums gets those emojis on it and from what I've seen, it's only when there is something resembling a consensus about a particular criticism and I'm siding with that criticism that it's less likely to happen. But even then, I'm sure it still happens. I stopped paying attention after a time by literally blocking them out from even showing up on the page for me, since they contribute nothing to discussion and are basically just noise.

So... all you are really describing is that when there is something close to a consensus, disagreeing with it probably won't go over well, which is a basic given of social environments. That doesn't mean the consensus is a "circle-jerk who is dramatic." And ending your argument with "they were probably doing..." isn't really helping your case. Just wild speculation regarding people you don't know at all.

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2 minutes ago, DKRathalos.9625 said:

Building Public Test Servers requires money, no money for that they gotta pay the people High positions.

Wrong. Anet uses AWS cloud servers. They have no need to build new servers. It is completely diff technology compared to old dedicated servers placed in XYZ

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10 minutes ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

Interesting, that seems to be a direct inversion of what's happened here. My post which you've quoted: 10 confused reacts. Your post saying you get universally dismissed for making criticism: nothing but likes. Seems to me what actually happens is that complainers circle-jerk and this leads to them rightly getting dismissed as being dramatic. Meanwhile the majority of people who see them as being dramatic and catastrophising everything go largely unrepresented because if you go against the circle-jerk you get mocked. And it isn't really accurate that people only become this dramatic after many eons of bad decisions — the vast majority of the people being dramatic about this were probably doing the same thing 3 months into the game's existence lol

I mean ofcourse it can't be possible that your opinion isn't widely shared across the community??? 

Your OP was childish, didn't add any usefull contribution to the discussion and is almost exact the opposite of the opinion of the vast majority on this thread. 

And now you're crying and being dramatic because people don't agree with your point of view? Calling the vast majority overly dramatic, catastrophising and accusing Them off circle jerking?

You should probably take a look in the mirror and rethink wether your own opinion is actually logical.

Or Just keep crying on the forum i guess, maybe you can get more negative reactions lol

 

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4 hours ago, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

For someone who complains about "toxic players" you sure sound rather toxic yourself and more so than them in fact. The irony howered not surprised by lack of self awareness

There's a large difference between stating a different view point or critiquing a decision and outright harassing people. Making death threats and going fir their jobs. 

You can say the patch is a miss, isn't effective, and hit the wrong places changing nothing, without telling the person they should get fired or be killed. 

Feel some people don't reliese these days you can be civil among a disagreement. 

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Nothing excuses 300 second cd skills still being in game, as well as the state of mantras for FB in pvp. Other decisions you can have a discussion around.  There is no amount of 'miscommunication', 'philosophy', 'new people in new roles', or what ever excuse you want to come up with that can justify this. 

 

The same people who chose to keep Trapper Runes in game are the same ones still participating in the decision making process.  That's what leads to this current state.

Edited by Pyrial.2917
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3 hours ago, Melian.5368 said:

See where I am going with this?

You lose the confidence of your players little by little like this.

I remember reporting a bug around launch in 2012 about asura wvw medium armor gloves being bugged. One point in the gloves model is stuck on the characters torso creating a stretchy polygon whenever the character moves their arms (which asuras do quite a lot). I waited for a while, it didnt get patched, I thought to myself maybe my bug report info was insufficient and tried a few more robust and detailed reports. Nothing. I gave up on medium armor and swapped classes because I really liked those gloves.

 

Tried my old thief again at EoD launch, the gloves are still bugged. No legacy code to blame. Just a low impact graphical bug on one item on one armor class on one race. No time to unstuck that one polygon vertice in 10 years. I get it being low priority but it didnt inspire confidence back then to see it ignored and I've never expected much from Anet since.

Edited by Uuni.3561
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16 minutes ago, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

Wrong. Anet uses AWS cloud servers. They have no need to build new servers. It is completely diff technology compared to old dedicated servers placed in XYZ

But either way they have to "rent" or "buy" it will include money, better use the money to pay the high position person.

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I generally avoid the forums for numerous reasons but in light of recent revelations and upcoming changes I felt it important to say my piece.

The upcoming design notes and design philosophy will be of critical importance, probably the most critical thing so far in my time with GW2. While I'm most likely not the target of the changes in this patch I will still be affected, but it is the future vision of class design that will ultimately decide if organized group content is something I actively want to participate in.

Granted I mostly interact with high end content in a limited fashion. I find the constant group stacking gameplay so-so, but mainly it is the boon addiction this game suffers from that I generally avoid. Reducing class diversity by removing unique gameplay elements in favor of boons to feed this addiction feels bad. 
Additionally I want to add that one of the reasons I started to play was because there was no holy trinity but more of a hybrid combat with self-sufficiency with minor support and combo interactions. Boons where a bonus, not a rule. Having recently replayed the old dungeon content that doesn't cater to stacking you can really tell this direction has shifted dramatically from modern PvE. Now we have the holy trinity (or quartet) in all but name and it feels... uninspired. Especially if the intent is for all the classes to be simplified and homogenized, removing meaningful class choices. Not counting certain... favored classes.

Cheers.

Edited by Dashiva.6149
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Just now, DKRathalos.9625 said:

But either way they have to "rent" or "buy" it will include money, better use the money to pay the high position person.

Neither. The only thing that will cost them money is dev time spent setting up new virtual machine with patch build and players being logged there to play and test stuff - which in practice cost 0 cuz if they play on test they cant play on live servers so the cost here stays the same.

Regardless test server is pointless cuz they simply do not care about forum feedback as it was proved already by the leaks itself and all the bugs that never got fixed despite being reported countless times in betas for EoD

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5 minutes ago, glass.3245 said:

After reading the consistent criticisms from people who've played your game for thousands of hours, I hope you change your philosophy before publishing it. The community is looking for reassurances for the future, not more explanations.

The community is not looking for reassurance. Community is looking for a single patern, philosophy, direction in which the game and balancing is going. We dont need another "it will be fine in the next update" for x amount of updates to come. We need to actually know it and see it in action, not like it is atm (for example they said in an interview that ranged weapons shouldn not do as much damage as melee and that was their philosophy for nerfing staff ele. But now we get scourge/virtuoso that deals loads of damage on 900-1200 range, which contradicts mentioned above). My point is if you want to nerf all ranged dps - good, but do it for every class. If you want to make supports do no damage - good, but do it for every class. Not like it is now, when rules are being "broken" each times. I myself have posted multiple times in elementalist forums asking devs on "what is your vision of elementalist class" and "how do you actually want us to play ele". So did many others. Not a single response. 

I personally would be fine if anet was like "in this patch we want to butcher the class system into the grounds, and upon its ruins build a new system and here is how it will work - "wall of text"". But we get none of that. 

Edited by soulknight.9620
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In another ten years you will find articles written on Guild Wars 2 dissecting it's mutilated corpse the same way people write about City of Heroes. They will document how but a few egotistical devs with the idea that a game with a legacy as strong and unique as GW2 should instead cater to their personal desire by transforming it into little more than a PC-played mobile MMO is enough to drive a dedicated playerbase who played for a love of the complexities of the combat and mechanics away and instead have it replaced by people who are happy to do little else than press 1 on their keyboards in order to reap all the rewards the game has to offer. Don't pretend you in away way care about GW2; your vision for the game is on totally incongruent with the previous nine years of it's life and the community the game has accrued thus far.

Edited by ephixel.9708
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8 minutes ago, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

Neither. The only thing that will cost them money is dev time spent setting up new virtual machine with patch build and players being logged there to play and test stuff - which in practice cost 0 cuz if they play on test they cant play on live servers so the cost here stays the same.

Regardless test server is pointless cuz they simply do not care about forum feedback as it was proved already by the leaks itself and all the bugs that never got fixed despite being reported countless times in betas for EoD

Thank you for correcting me but my point is they are not willing to spent ANY amount money for Public Test Server, not willing to put it on budget. Even with with no PTS and bad balance they still keep their playerbase, no need to spent money for PTS.

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