Follow up to the June 28 Balance Update Preview

[Ashen.2907]

Thank you for the update. I do appreciate it but it is going to take a LOT of  "context" to convince me that nerfing middle of the road classes/builds while leaving those that outperform them unchanged, or actually buffed, is a good thing. I am not sure that I am willing to wait until fall in the hope that this situation gets addressed because the current circumstances were created intentionally, leaving no reason to think that the favoritism will not continue.

Waiting until fall only to see the issue(s) made worse and be asked to be patient and just keep spending money in the gemstore until the winter patch....and then the spring patch, and so on is not reasonable.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[zeyeti.8347]

Arenanet phylosophy : Guardian , Nécro , Engi are kings , all other pleb class should bow to them and give em all their belongings.

 

"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." 

 

Wow , no scarcasm there , thats ... have no words , death threats ! I am sincerely pissed about that patch , and i think the patch team know as much of the game as i know about astrocosmetic astrology, but still it's a game , death threats for that .... those people need to see a doctor !

[Firefox.4632]

@Josh Davis.7865 So it turns out, not replying to anyone in this thread just drills in the point that everyone is assuming of "We are saying we are listening to the players, but we're not going to reply to anyone about anything regarding this, and hope they believe us when they say we are listening.''

 

It really isn't that hard to say "We kittened up" and just shelve it for another day after some serious reworking, instead of pushing something that no one wants while telling people "we know you really want this anyways." And honestly, shelving it for another day and doing some serious reworking would probably be a massive step in getting the player base to like you more.

 

That being said, someone who doesn't know how classes work, and has to "guess" at how to balance them, probably shouldn't be heading your balance team, but that one should be a fairly obvious fix.

[Nyel.1843]

49 minutes ago, Joe.5310 said:

this is an unbelievable joke.

You can't be serious.

If this goes live, your game is dead.

 

 

The game will be fine and I am sure you and all the other complainers will still play. 

[delaydackel.3219]

51 minutes ago, Tycura.1982 said:

Does that mean the official stance is to back what was said in those discord chat logs? My job would fire me if I spoke about customers in such a way.

Sorry to hear that you're working for such an aweful company.

 

This, right here, is what you do when you actually value your employees.

[Hpez.2908]

TLDR version : We heard you and we'd like you to know that we care. Oh... and we're not doing any form of revision and pushing through it anyway.

[Mangageek.9074]

I just find this post so incredibly irritating and unempathetic. As someone that has played GW2 since 2014, it is so incredibly obvious that over the years, Anet has just completely fallen apart. This post was so scripted and unapologetic and insincere. "We care about our community, except for the feedback, their comments, what they really want, etc...let's keep delivering empty promises to them," is what I have been reading every time this nonsense is posted. Enough is enough. We need a team who actually cares about their community. 

[SlothPanda.7280]

The devs explanation:

"this class is my main = buff"

"This class is not my main = nerf"

"this build is so difficult, I only want to press 11111 = nerf"

"I like camp axe with firebrand = nerf scepter"

"Catalyst gives boons and dps = nerf"

"mechanist and firebrand gives boons and dps = its OK"

 

We need people in balance discussion with knowledge in all classes, not someone with 2k hours with firebrand. Anet, play your game.

[phokus.8934]

1 hour ago, 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.

Josh Davis
Game Director

The toxic behavior that was stirred up by one of your employees.  Tighten it up, you know and can do better.

[akipappi.3917]

maybe next update mesmers glamours can get a bit more love ... been waiting since 2015 to get some traits for my favourite skill type

[JaCkSoN.2018]

Let me simplify the post:
 

1. Some sweet talk to calm players down. And thats it, they dont give and wont give a kitten, they just want you to calm down while they pretend to listen (this isnt the first case of the whole "we need better comms" and bla bla bla).

 

2. Anet do not want any of you who exploded in rage. Those of you are all beyond redemption, go away. You HAVE to be extremely polite no matter what.

 

3. The item 2. seems kind of reasonable, right? But there isnt a single word about a dev saying how careless he is doing his job and what message that sends to the player base (WE care about the WHOLE game, the dev guy just want his staff to get better cause he dislike axes / or someone nerfing something in a class he never touched, like OWP/Ranger).

 

4. Anet bets that new players dont care because they dont know the game in-depth enough yet and the old ones, like u and me, we are stuck into it,. We are not going to leave this game that easily after so many hours invested despite being treated like trash. Anet knows that. And deep down so do we.

 

5. Not quiting the game doesnt mean we cant acknowledge Anet doesnt give a kitten to what we say. Never did, prob never will.

6. This game longevity, considering how much anet cares, is like the gameplay complexity having a higher potential - its an accident....if you know what I mean.

 

[Halaku.6097]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

To those that have chosen extreme toxicity, called for developers to be fired, or sent death threats–you're not welcome in our community.

 

I am both thankful to see you / Anet draw a line in the sand, and sad that it had to happen in the first place.

[Nyel.1843]

3 minutes ago, Hpez.2908 said:

TLDR version : We heard you and we'd like you to know that we care. Oh... and we're not doing any form of revision and pushing through it anyway.

What could they change in 2 days? Right, nothing. This would mean pushing back the balance patch for another 4 weeks or so. And by that time they're already working on the next balance patch. This patch will go live as it is, players will still be playing and then you and all the others have three months to offer valuable feedback. 

[PhantomKnight.2183]

I'm not goanna lie to you Anet, this patch reminds me of Season 5 of the League of Legends World Championships when they released the Juggernaut meta onto the world stage. Yes, the games are different and yes, that was for a competitive tourney, but that patch ruined the game and integrity of the sport. While I do appreciate the quick and handled response, this patch is a all-time low for both the company and for the players. 

[score.2561]

1 minute ago, Nyel.1843 said:

...you and all the others have three months to offer valuable feedback. 

 

They've been receiving the valuable feedback you think we never offer for the past 10 years.

[Esquilax.3491]

While we appreciate the communication, it didn't really achieve more than radio silence could have...

 

Saying "Oops we tried to take feedback but got it wrong. Patch goes live anyway and we'll try to fix it in three months" is a nothing sandwich.

[Skyroar.2974]

Good to see that Anet is doubling down on communication, instead of overreacting and going full silent-mode (which would only make things worse).

The general design balance philosophy for this game actually seems solid in theory to me, it's just that a player won't know what that vision is unless they read the leaked chat and track a dev's comments on reddit. And even then, they only get a fragmentary view of Anet's way of thinking. So I'm also glad for a blog post that directly addresses that in the future.

My biggest issue with the next patch is not the balance vision, but its execution (and sometimes even its downright contradiction). To give an example, the fury/precision changes are being made to streamline gearing, which is great to me, but at the very same patch elementalists are getting a very conditional +5% crit chance for fury, which forces ele players to either gear for 95/100/95/95%, or 100/105/100/100%. I don't need to explain why that feels bad. Another example of poor execution (also affecting the poor elementalist class) is how a spec like Chronomancer has been given the tools to apply either quickness or alacrity both at the beginning of combat and during it, while tempest cannot give alacrity at the beginning due to it being tied to overloads (plus the questionable decision of having to spam overloads to maintain it, when half of them aren't meant to be used immediately but instead only at specific times).

Edited June 27, 2022 by Skyroar.2974

[Luria.2317]

I was really hyped that gw2 got a boost in interesst from the developer. But I dont see the "we hear you" part.
Everything we said was ignored, but a tiny majority from high end raid content is now in charge for the changes? 
You said you want to make this changes to increase class diversity, but all you did is making the already op classes (Firebrand, Mechanist) even stronger.

[Gibson.4036]

 

6 minutes ago, delaydackel.3219 said:

Sorry to hear that you're working for such an aweful company.

 

This, right here, is what you do when you actually value your employees.

It depends a lot on the context. If the behavior has been repeatedly addressed and remains unchanged, there comes a time when a company has to make a choice between loyalty to an employee and the culture it wants to foster. If it hasn't been addressed, then the first step is doing that in a sober, meaningful way.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

Constructive feedback was submitted plenty of times. CmC got the whole mesmer community to write a doc about mesmer's state in PvP, with suggestions, analysis and what not; @JazzXman.7018 herself curated it and made sure he would receive it. I'm still salty because I was among those helping with the document, making sure it was insightful and concise, as we perfectly know time from a professional is precious and scarce.

No response was ever received after this community effort. No feedback has ever been acted upon. It's been about 2 years now.
Neither was a response received after the several tickets I've personally raised about bugs in the game (rev's reveal is STILL 900 range, the phantasms summoned by Phantasmal Berserker and Echo of Memory are STILL unaffected by quickness even though there's a trait specifically providing quickness to them, Phantasmal Rogue STILL updates its thinking once per second unlike all other phantasms which update instantaneously, which means you can summon the phantasm and many times it will just stare at nothing, waiting for its AI to tick, Well of Calamity STILL won't allow any redirecting with instant ground targeting + allow skill retargeting, unlike every other well in the game which can be retargeted mid cast). I'm not even talking about bad balancing here, these are actual literal bugs which were reported several times both with online tickets and in-game tickets, to no avail.

One would think, after mentioning "listening" for 10 thousand times in a row, sooner or later some listening would be done. This has not been the case, both with balancing issues (mesmer is currently rock bottom, and has been solidly so for years) and with actual bugs. The only reason you're appreciating the "non toxic people" is because they can safely be ignored, as it's been done plenty of times.

Here's the thing tho; I'm a customer.

I'm not here because I like you (trust me I don't), or because you like me (you probably wouldn't, which is fine).
I'm here because I've seen a cool game and I paid to play it, then the same game (after taking the money, of course, not before; wouldn't have bought it otherwise) turned into a clown fiesta, and every player into the dummy targets for necromancers and guardians to test their DPS on. So sometime, someday, I'd like to get some sort of service, instead of just WAITING.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Luxogo.5908]

Thank you very much for admitting mistakes! I can´t wait to see those design notes.

[Nyel.1843]

3 minutes ago, score.2561 said:

 

They've been receiving the valuable feedback you think we never offer for the past 10 years.

They are still free to not use it. They're still the devs and we're still the players. And again, players are complaining for years now, predicting this patch will kill the game or that patch will kill the game and yet, years later, they're still around playing. 

[Leigor.3781]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

We’ve added a follow up balance update to our release schedule in the coming weeks to address critical issues.

my one main class that i've invested into was already middle tier in PvE is getting nerfed, and now i have to wait another month if i want it to be viable or to get into a group? admittedly, i know nothing about game development, but does it really have to take that long to reanalyze and tweak numbers? feels bad, guess i'll farm silverwastes and get a set for a mechanist until then

[Sourde Noire.5286]

37 minutes ago, Min Wyseman.2813 said:

 

I don't normally post on these forums but this time I just want to thank you so much for saying this. It was extremely disheartening to see the absolute vitriol a part of the community was throwing at a certain dev, pulling their messages out of context to make them look incompetent or even malicious, while if you read the full conversation it is obvious this person cares very much about the game and is a driving force behind a lot of positive changes as well. It is great to see ANet leadership going out of their way to support their devs in the face of this hate mob.

 

I find this added paragraph at the end of the dev post really pointless actually. Whatever became of "ignore the trolls", the internet 101 from the very beginning?

Especially for companies or people speaking in capacity of the company. Ignore non-constructive feedback. Do you think telling people who are frustrated that "they are not welcome in this community" will make them tone it down? It will only further radicalize the fronts. Naturally threats and the like are not okay, but as a company you rise above it. Don't complain about it and tell people off, that's only going to achieve the opposite.

 

On the topic of what was being said, I find it hard to believe seeing the track record. And that the patch goes live regardless, despite the overwhelming feedback, without any core issues addressed, meh.

[Chaba.5410]

For those of you quitting the game over this, can I have your stuff?