Would Balancing Be An Issue If Re-Speccing Wasn't So Costly?

[Kaleban.9834]

I don't like the balance patch that's about to drop. I think many don't. I think a lot of it is people have favorite professions (me: Elementalist) that keep getting gutted over and over, and the PR team/devs just expect us to smile and take it.

Fine. That's a terrible relations policy, but it's your game and if you want to continue to drive players away for longer and longer periods of time that's your development philosophy. I won't debate the merits of such.

What I'm asking and perhaps offering is a wake up to playing multiple professions.

• You have to pay gems for:

1. Bank Storage
2. Material Storage
3. Bag Slots
4. Build Storage
5. Equipment Templates
6. Shared Inventory Slots
7. QoL Items like Infinite Tools (per character)

• Etc., Etc.

The cost to upgrading just a "main" character are prohibitive in real world money, and on par with a lot of Pay-To-Win games out there. And yes, you could argue that inventory space and such is a luxury, but we all know that's not really the case and the game is designed around inventory bloat anyways.

Guild Wars 1 had build templates as part of the design, and you didn't have to drop 500 gems on it.

If the cost was nil on migrating from an Elementalist to a Guardian for example, then perhaps players wouldn't be so salty when their mains get nerfed into the ground, or have their playstyle reworked despite all common sense.

And it wouldn't be that hard to make all of the above list free as a way of acknowledging that it's insane to expect a playerbase to drop literally HUNDREDS of dollars to upgrade basic QoL that is free in other games on multiple characters. And that would go a long way to mitigating the sting of switching mains thanks to poorly thought out, ham-fisted balance patches.

As it is ANet asks us to give them tons of money just to make the base game playable, well above most AAA games (not including EA and Activision obviously) and then expects us to bend over and smile when the characters we've spent all this money on become basically useless and unplayable in all the high end content they've released.

That's a one-two KO.

[Cyninja.2954]

15 minutes ago, Kaleban.9834 said:

I don't like the balance patch that's about to drop. I think many don't. I think a lot of it is people have favorite professions (me: Elementalist) that keep getting gutted over and over, and the PR team/devs just expect us to smile and take it.

 

I think 95% of all players aren't even affected by most of the changes.

Yes I get it, everyone thinks because they've made a build, tried themselves at the golem a few minutes (and probably gotten to like 80% of the given benchmark) and have successfully raided or cleared fractals they suddenly are top end players (and I don't even dare consider anyone else who hasn't even put in this amount of work).

You aren't. Most players aren't. In fact even most "good" groups aren't.

I am putting some blame on top end players here who went all gung ho immediately. Yes, some of the changes make little sense or are iffy at best. Time will tell. If there are serious issues, those will get looked at in a followup patch. Everyone experienced enough should have known better than to go ballistic. It's known that most lemmings have no clue on how this game works and now suddenly every single player thinks they will be negatively affected.

News flash: you won't. Most players will see moderate damage increases even because some of the optional buffs, which were not present begin with regularly for many groups, are getting baked into the system. Experienced players will even tell you as much. The issue experienced players have with this patch are at the very top end in general (bar some very very unfortunate changes).

Here is a checklist to follow in order to see if one is affected, if all of these are true for you, then you might likely be affected:

1. I do raids/strikes/fractals

2. My raid group always has access to banners and spirits in every encounter

3. I perform at around the top 1 percentile of players on most encounters

4. I make sure to be crit capped in group content (for example asking for spotter from your raid lead)

5. I have min-maxed my gear and using proper stat infusions, food, full ascended/legendary

6. when playing elementalist, I almost never incorporate downstate skills into my rotation

If any of those answers is no, you will not be affected or at best not affected a lot by the patch so just chill. Everything beyond that will get worked out.

TL;DR:

If you are getting all worked up about this patch without actually knowing HOW it will affect you in detail, you won't be affected at all and most likely will even benefit from it performance wise. This is the fractal pre-buff rework all over again where most players don't even realize it had NOTHING to do with them.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Hotride.2187]

16 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I think 95% of all players aren't even affected by most of the changes.

Ah, most of the quarterly balance patch doesn't affect 95% of the players. I am relieved.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Deadric.1427]

25 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I think 95% of all players aren't even affected by most of the changes.

Yes I get it, everyone thinks because they've made a build, tried themselves at the golem a few minutes (and probably gotten to like 80% of the given benchmark) and have successfully raided or cleared fractals they suddenly are top end players (and I don't even dare consider anyone else who hasn't even put in this amount of work).

You aren't. Most players aren't. In fact even most "good" groups aren't.

I am putting some blame on top end players here who went all gung ho immediately. Yes, some of the changes make little sense or are iffy at best. Time will tell. If there are serious issues, those will get looked at in a followup patch. Everyone experienced enough should have known better than to go ballistic. It's known that most lemmings have no clue on how this game works and now suddenly every single player thinks they will be negatively affected.

News flash: you won't. Most players will see moderate damage increases even because some of the optional buffs, which were not present begin with regularly for many groups, are getting baked into the system. Experienced players will even tell you as much. The issue experienced players have with this patch are at the very top end in general (bar some very very unfortunate changes).

Here is a checklist to follow in order to see if one is affected, if all of these are true for you, then you might likely be affected:

1. I do raids/strikes/fractals

2. My raid group always has access to banners and spirits in every encounter

3. I perform at around the top 1 percentile of players on most encounters

4. I make sure to be crit capped in group content (for example asking for spotter from your raid lead)

5. I have min-maxed my gear and using proper stat infusions, food, full ascended/legendary

6. when playing elementalist, I almost never incorporate downstate skills into my rotation

If any of those answers is no, you will not be affected or at best not affected a lot by the patch so just chill. Everything beyond that will get worked out.

TL;DR:

If you are getting all worked up about this patch without actually knowing HOW it will affect you in detail, you won't be affected at all and most likely will even benefit from it performance wise. This is the fractal pre-buff rework all over again where most players don't even realize it had NOTHING to do with them.

 

Theres a problem with youre 95% number considering 12% of the player base is (Soon to be was) Warriors. Care to show the proof supporting your numbers? 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Deadric.1427

[Cyninja.2954]

6 minutes ago, Deadric.1427 said:

 

Theres a problem with youre 95% number considering 12% of the player base is Warriors. Care to show the proof supporting your numbers? 

Even among those warriors, most will see a damage increase game wide. Unless you want to seriously tell me that every single warrior player has crit capped gear or is even remotely close to bechmark cap.

 

Now as far as banners and a sure spot in content, that is gone. Doesn't mean warriors will see no more grouping.

 

Back when I was playing warrior as main class in a static mid HoT, I would regularly be top dps in pug raids as bs (when just raiding for fun after the weekly clear). That hasn't changed to this day.

 

Most players are really bad at this game, even ones in "challenging" content. Want to get taken along as warrior in raids? Be better than the other dps. Not very hard to do.

 

Unless you are running in one of the remaining 3-4 top end raid groups. Which if you are, you are already multiclassing and switching classes constantly. So again a moot point.

I will yield though that warrior is one of the classes with more questionable changes, which I am sure will get resolved down the road. Primarly the crit in arms getting moved.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Lottie.5370]

12 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Ah, most of the quarterly balance patch doesn't affect 95% of the players. I am relieved.

 

Oh thank god, I was starting to get worried.

[Tukaram.8256]

33 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I think 95% of all players aren't even affected by most of the changes.

I have no basis to comment on the 95% bit... but I read through the patch notes and did not see anything that will negatively affect any of my gameplay.   I never cared much for my warrior and rarely play him, but even when I did - I never used banners. I would never tie up a potential damage skill slot with a support skill as I play solo. 

Matter of fact this update may encourage me to dust off my warrior and see what he can do. 😎

[Dante.1508]

The issue for me is they are making needed gear like exotics harder and harder to get like grieving, trailblazers, commanders, sinister, celestial.. to the point i've pretty much gotten tired of the whole thing.. I'm not going to hunt across the world to find some rng dude that may or may not spit out a recipe after 5000 days..

 

I hate to think what new players are doing after watching their youtubers say you need this this and this only to find out its 300g a set or just impossible to get..

[mindcircus.1506]

It's entirely possible that you don't understand what "Re-Speccing" actually means.
In Guild Wars 2 it is done any time the player is out of combat.
For free.

Ps:Notepad....also Free.

[Lottie.5370]

40 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Here is a checklist to follow in order to see if one is affected, if all of these are true for you, then you might likely be affected:

1. I do raids/strikes/fractals

2. My raid group always has access to banners and spirits in every encounter

3. I perform at around the top 1 percentile of players on most encounters

4. I make sure to be crit capped in group content (for example asking for spotter from your raid lead)

5. I have min-maxed my gear and using proper stat infusions, food, full ascended/legendary

6. when playing elementalist, I almost never incorporate downstate skills into my rotation

If any of those answers is no, you will not be affected or at best not affected a lot by the patch so just chill. Everything beyond that will get worked out.

 

Well, kitten, 1 to 5 are a yes but on the rare occasion I have to do something open world on my ele I'm perma red downstate, guess I'm part of the 95%.

 

You don't need to be in the top 1% to be affected. If you are someone that likes to run meta builds, you are already affected - your build (likely) will change after the patch, maybe you have to change stats or sigils, or change your traits. You don't need to be some super elite hardcore raider to want to have a meta build.

 

You might just be a casual player that likes to run well of action to give yourself some quickness in open world, you are now affected as you can no longer do that - you've got to choose something else to run instead. I can go on, I won't.

 

I think what you're trying to say, is that a large majority of players won't be too negatively impacted, but to say that almost the entire player base (95%) will not be affected is just wrong.

[LSD.4673]

36 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

It's entirely possible that you don't understand what "Re-Speccing" actually means.
In Guild Wars 2 it is done any time the player is out of combat.
For free.

Ps:Notepad....also Free.

You don't just change your talents and job's a good'n. armour, runes, sigils, weapons. Expensive, time consuming, tiresome. 

[mindcircus.1506]

39 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

I hate to think what new players are doing after watching their youtubers say you need this this and this only to find out its 300g a set or just impossible to get..

You mean the new players that are kicked down with an entire set of celestial gear for free?

[mindcircus.1506]

2 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

You don't just change your talents and job's a good'n. armour, runes, sigils, weapons. Expensive, time consuming, tiresome. 

This is not what respeccing means. Respeccing in an MMO relates directly to picking your traits.
Regearing is different.
And is likewise ridiculously cheap and less time consuming than any other MMO.

[LSD.4673]

1 minute ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

This is not what respeccing means. Respeccing in an MMO relates directly to picking your traits.
Regearing is different.
And is likewise ridiculously cheap and less time consuming than any other MMO.

So it's a case of "ackshually", then?

[Kaleban.9834]

35 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

This is not what respeccing means. Respeccing in an MMO relates directly to picking your traits.
Regearing is different.
And is likewise ridiculously cheap and less time consuming than any other MMO.

And here we are missing the forest for the trees.

 

GW1 had hundreds of permutations of skills and traits and could be done for free.

GW2 has far fewer and costs PER character to switch between more than a couple of builds.

So did ANet become less skilled at programming and GUI, or are they milking as much as they can for basic QoL that they established in their own IP?

I know I just LOVE having to use out of game resources to make my gameplay enjoyable. /sarcasm

 

And that's not even the point that flew completely over your head. Players would be less angsty if switching to a new main because the "balance" patch kicks their old character out of everything except open world node farming didn't cost multiple hundreds or even thousands of gems to do so.

Example: it costs 2000 gems just to unlock all of one character's bag slots. Not to mention the in-game time and gold requirement to acquire decent size bags. Getting it from both ends as it were.

[Yello.3406]

I'm sorry, but I never bought a single bag slot and I am fine. 100 slots (5x20) is good enough for me. So I will agree that switching builds or even professions is expensive in Gold and/or time consuming. But you really don't need to dump a couple of thousand gems for that.

Some time ago I made a post about the tedious farming of charged quarz for cele-set. Not to mention the hoops you have to jump through just to get the new ritualist or dragon stats.

So I will say, that all stats should be obtainable equally easy, since technically none is better than the other. You only create disadvantage for certain professions who need specific stats for their build to shine. Or not even professions, just power vs. condi. Berserker is way easier to get and cheaper than viper.

[Sarius.9285]

9 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

If any of those answers is no, you will not be affected or at best not affected a lot by the patch so just chill. Everything beyond that will get worked out.

I don't play ele and I'm not always the highest DPS, but I'm still affected cause I had actual hope that they would improve warrior instead of making it even more boring by reducing its build variety even more 

[Labjax.2465]

I think I get what you're saying, but part of the problem is just that people become attached to a specific class and its ins and outs, and in that alone, they shouldn't be expected to change classes just to be viable. And in general, leaving any class in a bad state means new players come in and pick it unwittingly some of the time and then get all the way to end-game only to find it's not competitive.

The solution is to make sure they (the classes) are all uniquely fun to play, bring something to the table that is their own, and are balanced in value well enough that they won't be rejected by competitive players. Anything less is not only disenfranchising existing players, but setting up a percentage of new players to fail.

Some games choose homogenizing to do this, but that only fixes the new player problem and still disenfranchises existing players. It also devalues use of alts, which is a big thing in a game like this.

[Dante.1508]

13 hours ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

You mean the new players that are kicked down with an entire set of celestial gear for free?

Thats only if they use an 80 boost which is really silly to do on a new account with no idea how to play..