Completely impartial and unbiased design of professions is a job requirement, full stop, no excuses.

[Puck.3697]

6 hours ago, ChronoPinoyX.7923 said:

Meanwhile, I'm just here thinking this is a whole load of nonsense, and I had to QA test balancing for the better part of my 3 Years for different characters in an MMORPG

If a dev has massive bias towards any professions during balancing, then whoever is balancing things needs to get fired ASAP. And I'm saying that in a professional capacity. In all the games I've played (and tested) we don't take our own personal biases into consideration, we take player feedback as much as possible to better understand the state in which the game is at when it comes to balancing. And from there we work out what is good solutions, bad solutions, things we can adjust without changing major elements of the profession and elements which could be buff or nerfed relative to what's been shown by majority of the feedback we get.

Anyone who has dev bias when it comes to balancing obviously has no idea what they're actually doing at that point because they've got absolutely no idea on the state of the game, especially for an MMORPG, because at that point, they're blind to the other professions and how they've been balanced. If they stuck to just balancing one profession, what will simply happen is they'll end up with literally just a soup of nonsensical balancing because all they'll be thinking is "Oh we can do this, oh we can do that for this one specific profession"

The solution isn't a dev per profession, you can easily have 3 devs cover 9 professions including all E-Specs. What they need is to diversify their team into having 3 core balancing teams: PvE, PvP and WvW, with each core group consisting of at least 3 Dev members, which can then equate to 9 devs total covering 3 professions each for a specific game mode. They can then compare and contrast notes on how each profession would interact both towards each other in Co-Op modes and against each other in PvP modes. 

Then you would need to fire 80% of the industries employees lol. 

To add, Karl mclain is a systems dev. He created elite speccs. He doesn't actually do alot surrounding balancing them.  

 

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[draxynnic.3719]

13 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

No ethics govern game development. Do not assume there is a requirement here because it would make you feel better.

You see the game how you think it should be, not how it is.

Seeing the difference between how something is and how it should be is how progress is made.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, ChronoPinoyX.7923 said:

Meanwhile, I'm just here thinking this is a whole load of nonsense, and I had to QA test balancing for the better part of my 3 Years for different characters in an MMORPG

If a dev has massive bias towards any professions during balancing, then whoever is balancing things needs to get fired ASAP. And I'm saying that in a professional capacity. In all the games I've played (and tested) we don't take our own personal biases into consideration, we take player feedback as much as possible to better understand the state in which the game is at when it comes to balancing. And from there we work out what is good solutions, bad solutions, things we can adjust without changing major elements of the profession and elements which could be buff or nerfed relative to what's been shown by majority of the feedback we get.

Anyone who has dev bias when it comes to balancing obviously has no idea what they're actually doing at that point because they've got absolutely no idea on the state of the game, especially for an MMORPG, because at that point, they're blind to the other professions and how they've been balanced. If they stuck to just balancing one profession, what will simply happen is they'll end up with literally just a soup of nonsensical balancing because all they'll be thinking is "Oh we can do this, oh we can do that for this one specific profession"

The solution isn't a dev per profession, you can easily have 3 devs cover 9 professions including all E-Specs. What they need is to diversify their team into having 3 core balancing teams: PvE, PvP and WvW, with each core group consisting of at least 3 Dev members, which can then equate to 9 devs total covering 3 professions each for a specific game mode. They can then compare and contrast notes on how each profession would interact both towards each other in Co-Op modes and against each other in PvP modes. 

This doesn't really negate the point @Daddy.8125 is making, though. You don't necessarily need to have one person exclusively focusing on one profession. But you do need to have a situation where each profession has somebody on the team who understands how the profession works, what its strengths, weaknesses and problems are, and can make reasonable predictions about what the effect of those changes are going to be. It doesn't matter if you've got one person who's expertise is, say, guardian, mesmer, and thief, as long as they are genuinely committed to making those professions fun and versatile without being OP, and there are others on the team that cover the other six.

What this patch has made abundantly clear, however, is that the current team doesn't have that. We don't even need to look at the leak to see this, just at the patchnotes. Too many of the changes are just unfun or can be shown via envelope maths to be far too conservative to have the desired effect. The leak only confirmed what many already suspected - that many professions are being balanced by people who don't understand or even actively dislike the profession.

Nobody would care about the leaks if the ignorance and bias hadn't been evidenced in the patch notes, not just last month, but for years.

[Ascency.3580]

Ppl stating that the devs are only human and theres nothing that can be done are detatched from reality. Its their job. Theyr getting paid to do this job. There are guidelines they have to follow. If ur a clerc in a mall u cant charge 100$ for a bubble gum becouse u feel like it. If u do u WILL get fired for doing something against your job description, and potentially harmful to the mall owners, becouse ppl will notice they are getting scammed and call the authorities. The failure here is that this was happening for this long, and no action was taken even after players were calling them for it, so there is clearly a management issue on top of the fact devs can do what they want without being held accountable. Them as a company need to have regulations and control methods in place in order to not allow such incompetence to be tolerated.

[Karagee.6830]

16 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

No it's not. It's being inhuman. 

It is entirely reasonable to expect little to no bias from a person who understands the systems and has tested what he's worked on. It's not inhuman, it's normal

[Bookah pls.9352]

Who could ever have predicted that letting a guy who mainly just plays firebrand with some mechanist alt be in charge of most of the pve balance changes would result in said dev constantly making changes to keep firebrand and mechanist being dominant in pve for its entire existance?

 

There should be an entire team making balance changes, not 1 or 2 people, not a single person can kitten me in to believing that that's the case when you have the aforementioned dev claiming they had to wiki what an ability did before balancing it, that kitten wouldn't be happening if you had an actual diverse team who are knowledgeable on all classes.

 

The game is rigged and that's not ok, this needs to be addressed, slapping some quick number tuning into a hotfix because you got caught with your pants down and a smoking gun in hand doesn't fix that.

[ThunderX.6591]

I don't know, i mean, if the balancer person play the class (guard whatever elite), AND the class after the balance patch, on the DPS side, is one of the most nerfed in damage as resulted from the change the patch had imported to the game, i really don't know what to think about all the "balance" ideas they have about the game.

Because, you need to remember, that DPS guard + elites are one of the classes who loose the biggest damage with this patch (expecially condi variant)...... and the guy who balanced them play them, right???

So, what the class would had became if he didn't play it?

[melcor.1094]

On 7/3/2022 at 3:46 AM, Daddy.8125 said:

I get what you mean. But sadly every nmorpg is guilty of this. 

This is why back in the old days. You had class devs. Was because this exists. The devs are human and will be human. 

It happens in every mmorpg. 

You cannot both play a mmorpg. And balance that same mmorpg without some level of bias. 

It's just company's now no longer structure the teams to deal with human emotion and leave 2 people to balance 9 proffessions while they will naturally have a main and obviously are more aware and experienced at dealing with the proffession their spending all their time on. 

Just sadly.. this one managed to get himself caught out by admitting to thar bias. But has always existed. Maybe not for the same proffessions from the start as devs change. But it's always existed. 

Saying anything right now would be considered damage control and wouldn't be believed sadly. So it wouldn't really fix anything. The only thing that could rectify the situation is the actions they make following this. 

Basically when we get to preview rhe August changes they need to be on point. The community from every proffession will need to feel listened to when they give us the opportunity to provide feedback to those notes. And the finished product will need to reflect that. 

If it doesn't nothing they say between now and then will fix the damage those leaks caused. 

Even humans can have way more objectivity than devs are showing since good 4 years. First of all devs should not be imcompetent and with comepetence there comes more objectivity and professionality and with that better balance. The whole "we want bad players to be more competitive without them improving" is already stupid like crazy. The damage doesn't come from the leaks, they just prove what everyone with a bit clue about the game was more or less knowing already and what the bad balance is showing since years. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by melcor.1094

[Puck.3697]

8 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

It is entirely reasonable to expect little to no bias from a person who understands the systems and has tested what he's worked on. It's not inhuman, it's normal

I'm not saying being leaked admitting to bias is the play to make. 

However it exists in every game. And that's just factual humans can't help to be bias. 

It's reasonable to expect a company to correctly equipp a balance team with more then 2 people to ensure the final result isn't bias however. 

Bias is avoided by adding multiple people of different wants to a table. Not via forcing a singular person to main everything. 

[Karagee.6830]

Just now, Daddy.8125 said:

I'm not saying being leaked admitting to bias is the play to make. 

However it exists in every game. And that's just factual humans can't help to be bias. 

It's reasonable to expect a company to correctly equipp a balance team with more then 2 people to ensure the final result isn't bias however. 

Bias is avoided by adding multiple people of different wants to a table. Not via forcing a singular person to main everything. 

Well I disagree with all of this. Bias, unintended bias does indeed exist. Intentional bias is a different story.

Normally what would happen is the person in question would correct him/herself until he/she achieves a satisfactory result in line with the job requirements. Unfortunately the person in question in this case is very unprofessional or unskilled or both and seemingly unable to do what it's asked of him/her.

[Lighter.5631]

On 7/2/2022 at 9:46 PM, Daddy.8125 said:

I get what you mean. But sadly every nmorpg is guilty of this. 

This is why back in the old days. You had class devs. Was because this exists. The devs are human and will be human. 

It happens in every mmorpg. 

You cannot both play a mmorpg. And balance that same mmorpg without some level of bias. 

It's just company's now no longer structure the teams to deal with human emotion and leave 2 people to balance 9 proffessions while they will naturally have a main and obviously are more aware and experienced at dealing with the proffession their spending all their time on. 

Just sadly.. this one managed to get himself caught out by admitting to thar bias. But has always existed. Maybe not for the same proffessions from the start as devs change. But it's always existed. 

Saying anything right now would be considered damage control and wouldn't be believed sadly. So it wouldn't really fix anything. The only thing that could rectify the situation is the actions they make following this. 

Basically when we get to preview rhe August changes they need to be on point. The community from every proffession will need to feel listened to when they give us the opportunity to provide feedback to those notes. And the finished product will need to reflect that. 

If it doesn't nothing they say between now and then will fix the damage those leaks caused. 

untrue, personally i would love to make the weapons i dislike better and actually viable if i had the power. instead of playing the same weapon over and over again. like i hate this war hammer right now, i'ma make it more desirable 

there are people who actually like to balance stuff equally instead of having biased opinion.

[Obtena.7952]

22 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Seeing the difference between how something is and how it should be is how progress is made.

For anet, not for players. When players imagine the difference, it's just wishful thinking. The fact is that these class changes are not governed by ethics or morals or whatever people want to call it. If you look at history of this game, changes are determined by thematics more than anything. 

When op says there is some requirement to design classes in an unbiased, impartial way, they are wrong. It's not a requirement just because they want something

Edited July 6, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Puck.3697]

5 hours ago, Lighter.5631 said:

untrue, personally i would love to make the weapons i dislike better and actually viable if i had the power. instead of playing the same weapon over and over again. like i hate this war hammer right now, i'ma make it more desirable 

there are people who actually like to balance stuff equally instead of having biased opinion.

Untrue??. 

WoW spent almost a decade screeching over the fact ghost crawler kept frost mage number 1?? 

And that's just one example off the top of my head. 

Easier said then done I'm afraid. 

When your given a huge list of required changes. And you can only put in 200 of 20,000 due to budget size. The situation is abit different. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Puck.3697]

21 hours ago, Ascency.3580 said:

Ppl stating that the devs are only human and theres nothing that can be done are detatched from reality. Its their job. Theyr getting paid to do this job. There are guidelines they have to follow. If ur a clerc in a mall u cant charge 100$ for a bubble gum becouse u feel like it. If u do u WILL get fired for doing something against your job description, and potentially harmful to the mall owners, becouse ppl will notice they are getting scammed and call the authorities. The failure here is that this was happening for this long, and no action was taken even after players were calling them for it, so there is clearly a management issue on top of the fact devs can do what they want without being held accountable. Them as a company need to have regulations and control methods in place in order to not allow such incompetence to be tolerated.

When the patch is hacked away at due to budget. And allowances I'm afraid it's just not true. 

He can't change every proffession. Because the budget won't allow for it. People seem to have forgotten anet answer to NCSoft. This isn't a company which can just do what it wants. 

It is his job sure. But the situation of the game itself likely makes his job incredibly hard to do if we are talking trying to make 9 proffessions balanced. 

If a superstore. Only employs 1 person for the entire till section, it's not their fault thered queues everywhere. 

It's the company for not putting a team together which is capable of dealing with the problem. 

2 people to balance 9 proffessions in 3 game modes. With a catalog of backdated changes which still need implementing. 

Bias will take over, because its simply not possible to fix all 9 in that sorta environment. So you will fix what you know as that will consume the least time as you already have the answers. 

I.e you will fix the proffession you spent all ur time on. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Karagee.6830]

8 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

 

I.e you will fix the proffession you spent all ur time on. 

Yes and by fixing surely you mean nerfing, not making it mind even more OP (firebrand and mechanist) like it happened for the last 5 months. Otherwise you can take your stuff and move to a different department (not marketing and PR, because you have done enough dmg in that area also).

[Puck.3697]

35 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Yes and by fixing surely you mean nerfing, not making it mind even more OP (firebrand and mechanist) like it happened for the last 5 months. Otherwise you can take your stuff and move to a different department (not marketing and PR, because you have done enough dmg in that area also).

Firebrand was nerfed on EoD launch. 

And while people are screeching about guard buffs. They buffed skills which firebrand wasn't using in a pve environment. 

So it wasn't rly buffing firebrand. Just making bad options alittle less bad. 

Willbender also took a pve and pvp nerf., and while we can agree it wasn't enough in pvp. Nor were the harbinger nerfs. 

There can be agreement around nerfs weren't hard enough, however to say they buffed firebrand would be a incorrect statement. 

Firebrand has swallowed several nerfs. It was demolished from pvp content (granted its still OP in WvWvW tho, but again so is scourge) 

The issue is core guard is sooooo high compared to core other proffessions. That you cant rly nerf firebrand enough unless you went out your way to delete firebrand viability via something extreme. 

Other proffessions need reworks for that to realistically be achieved, but asking 1 dude to rework 9 proffessions properly. 

Is extremely expensive in man hours. 

Is likely not rly achievable without a team 

Would be hugely time expensive. 

So they simply aren't happening. But firebrand has been nerfed, several times since EoD launch. 

I come from alot of mmorpgs so I'm afraid I'm used to this behaviour, as my examples above show. Specific proffessions just being continously meta while others are kept in bad shape. 

I mean Ion admitted on a QnA that he was continously nerfing demo lock because he didn't want players to play it lmao. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Karagee.6830]

17 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Firebrand was nerfed on EoD launch. 

Whatever the case, it hasn't been nerfed enough to make it comparable with alternatives, so it hasn't been balanced.

19 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

There can be agreement around nerfs weren't hard enough, however to say they buffed firebrand would be a incorrect statement. 

And I didn't say they got buffed I said they were buffed but that they are more OP. There is a difference between the 2. You can nerf FB by 10% output and it still can be more OP than it was before if you remove all viable alternatives. Right now, there is no way support is going to be anything other than FB or Mech for the foreseeable future. Specialisation distribution statistics already show that beyond any reasonable doubt.

24 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Firebrand has swallowed several nerfs. It was demolished from pvp content (granted its still OP in WvWvW tho, but again so is scourge) 

The issue is core guard is sooooo high compared to core other proffessions. That you cant rly nerf firebrand enough unless you went out your way to delete firebrand viability via something extreme. 

What about aegis coming back. What about untouched stability and reflects? Most classes have personal stab for a few seconds, guardian has syg for longer, consecration, the elite mantra skill plus all the stab from Tome 3. Let's say guardian has no aegis anymore other than shield 4 (no more tome aegis either and certainly no come back to aegis on healing skill), syg is reduced to 2 seconds with protection, consecration does not provide pulsating stab anymore and you are left with elite plus tome 3. Then reduce the quickness provided by FB on healing mantra so that you must have fmw to maintain 100% quickness. Now guardian is suddenly more in line with every other support profession in that it does not have a monopoly on key defensive skills (aegis and stability) and there is an actual trade off (stab elite vs quickness elite). There problem solved: no need to rework another 5 or 6 support builds.

[Ascency.3580]

3 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

When the patch is hacked away at due to budget. And allowances I'm afraid it's just not true. 

He can't change every proffession. Because the budget won't allow for it. People seem to have forgotten anet answer to NCSoft. This isn't a company which can just do what it wants. 

It is his job sure. But the situation of the game itself likely makes his job incredibly hard to do if we are talking trying to make 9 proffessions balanced. 

If a superstore. Only employs 1 person for the entire till section, it's not their fault thered queues everywhere. 

It's the company for not putting a team together which is capable of dealing with the problem. 

2 people to balance 9 proffessions in 3 game modes. With a catalog of backdated changes which still need implementing. 

Bias will take over, because its simply not possible to fix all 9 in that sorta environment. So you will fix what you know as that will consume the least time as you already have the answers. 

I.e you will fix the proffession you spent all ur time on. 

Copium. They advertized the patch 10 months prior. They had 4 months since eod lauch where they stated resources will be allocated to balancing the game among other aspects. They even had a group of devs not having anything to do at this point so they were allocated to addressing some of the older problems-see dungeon rewards changes or anvil changes. There is absolutely no excuse for this patch going live in the state it did. Stating that balance team consists of one or 2 devs is silly tho not impossible. And Even one person would have done a better job over 4 months if a single kitten was given by him, and he had any quality control checks to fulfil.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

On 7/3/2022 at 3:10 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

So, basically, after years of calling out the devs asking if they play their game, we now ask them to stop playing it? 🤪

To play the entire game, including other professions.

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Ascency.3580 said:

Copium. They advertized the patch 10 months prior. They had 4 months since eod lauch where they stated resources will be allocated to balancing the game among other aspects. They even had a group of devs not having anything to do at this point so they were allocated to addressing some of the older problems-see dungeon rewards changes or anvil changes. There is absolutely no excuse for this patch going live in the state it did. Stating that balance team consists of one or 2 devs is silly tho not impossible. And Even one person would have done a better job over 4 months if a single kitten was given by him, and he had any quality control checks to fulfil.

Saying they diverted all budget to balancing. Doesn't state what budget they actually have for such. 

If they have 40 hours left in the budget. Putting all 40 hours into the balancing is still diverting all the budget. But that doesn't mean its going to establish much. 

This game needs overhaul levels of change to actually get this direction correct. 

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I don't think you need 9 people playing 9 professions. I think you need one person that plays some of those 9 professions and has a cohesive vision for what their roles are, what they should be BiS for, second BiS, what their weaknesses should be, and what they should excel at. That one person can then delegate their vision to their team to implement it.

 

Basically the Balance lead needs to be spending time playing and learning all specs of all professions in all game modes rather than camping Firebrand and Mechanist for raids and strikes. And no, corner camping in WvW for a year to get 2 legendary armor sets does not count as playing WvW.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/4/2022 at 12:12 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Council from wvw, lmao, that would end up being guild leaders of zerg guilds and balancing around boon spam, which they already do.

pvpers is a big lmao too, everyone not vallun is very biased 

top end pvers also all want 1 shot entire raid if you dont play perfectly for 60m straight design

 

These are the people you DONT talk to when designing a MMO. Too bad all MMO devs don't understand this, and it's why the genre is in the sad state it's currently in.

Enjoy designing your game for 50 people I guess.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/4/2022 at 1:20 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

The last expansion shows once again the major bais they have to guard necro engineer class.

Game producer - support scrapper main.

Lead balance dev - FB main.

Pure coincidence!

[solemn.9608]

On 7/3/2022 at 12:04 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

This is what happens when you hire young college grads that you can pay cheap.

Nvm, Post edited/removed bc last time I said something remotely negative about a dev I was suspended 🙂

Edited July 6, 2022 by solemn.9608

[solemn.9608]

7 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

pvpers is a big lmao too, everyone not vallun is very biased 

top end pvers also all want 1 shot entire raid if you dont play perfectly for 60m straight design

 

These are the people you DONT talk to when designing a MMO. Too bad all MMO devs don't understand this, and it's why the genre is in the sad state it's currently in.

Enjoy designing your game for 50 people I guess.

Valluns great and I enjoy him/his content but remember he's also the one who suggested using sylvari elite on staff dps weaver in WvW/some other strange trait combos alongside it that I can't remember. He is not a god of balance, just knowledgeable/consistent/good in general. We need a team of valluns