Still worth playing after the "balance" patch?

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

3 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Weird thread ... because none of the other balance patches resulted in you quitting, but THIS is the one?

The straw that breaks the camels back is just a straw.

[Shiina.4192]

3 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Weird thread ... because none of the other balance patches resulted in you quitting, but THIS is the one?

Weird comment ... None of the other balance patches resulted in me quitting, because I tried to be as tolerant of ANet's B.S as I could. And even then, it's this exact patch when the "balance" team has been exposed not knowing how the game works as well as only "balancing" the meta to their favor. So it's not just a possibility that this game's balance is screwed for as long as these certain sunny people remain in the balance team, it's a fact. And the plentiful evidence we recently got is no lie.

Unless they admit their mistake and address the leaks honorably AND listen to the community/take responsibility for the damage they caused with the patch by reversing it, instead of trying to sweep everything under the rug using death threats as a guilt tripping method, they have no right to ask for mine and definitely many others' trust ever again.

Anyway, it took a while for me to quit for good because this game meant a lot to me and helped me through some extremely difficult times in my life. Otherwise, I'd have quit this game for good a long time ago.

Letting go of anything, even an MMO, isn't always easy.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Aselia.1325

[Zaret.1450]

On 7/8/2022 at 1:21 PM, Aselia.1325 said:

Greetings.

I've been playing this game in and out for the past few years. I don't care about the meta, as I don't play raids and whatever (yet). But I heard there was a massive nerf wave. Is it worth to still play the game as someone who mostly focuses on open world PvE? Is it still okay to try out raids or strikes with any class other than mechanist and firebrand? It was my concern for a while, thinking that the balance patch would kitten the game. I don't understand the meta, so I won't pretend to know if all changes were good or bad, but I'd like to know if it ruined gameplay for the nerfed classes.

Should I have anything to worry about in regards to the future of the game with that in mind?

I'm lacking sleep, so I hope this question makes sense.

if you only play open world rhe balance is completely irrelevant for you, no ofense but open world is done with cuantity over cuality.

as for starting raids, in a low li or training group you can still use any build with freedom, of course once you get in a static or more li scuad youll see for yourself if your class lacks or not, my take, build a condi spectre or condi necro and youre good to go

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

The same goes for the forum. Before eod it was bad, but after eod this forum became so toxic it's sad ...

I'd say that in this case it's more a commentary on overall EoD quality rather than on forum or reddit.

[b k.1648]

I couldn't actually care less whether they handle the situation well or not; the changes were not of the magnitude where they could ruin the game, so I have no problem adapting where necessary. I'm sure there are some legitimate complaints in some of those "feedback" threads, but I got tired of scrolling past all the angry toddler noises to find them.

Their design process has some pretty significant flaws (didn't need any leaks to figure that one out, either) but it's resulted in only incremental changes over the years, whereas the big problems that affected my enjoyment of entire game modes were the result of system design choices way before launch. I don't need "trust" or "honour" from these people, they're just making a game. If I like what they do, I'll keep playing. If I don't, there are plenty of other choices out there.

[Labjax.2465]

12 hours ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

The same goes for the forum. Before eod it was bad, but after eod this forum became so toxic it's sad ...

Honestly, its had problems at least as far back as 2014. I remember dealing with some real... troublesome attitudes. Some from people who are still here posting away like nothing happened inbetween (we'll see if I get a slap on the wrist for saying that, even if vague). It's pretty weird to me because I've changed so much over those years, but the forum environment seems about the same, maybe a little worse.

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, Aselia.1325 said:

Weird comment ... None of the other balance patches resulted in me quitting, because I tried to be as tolerant of ANet's B.S as I could. And even then, it's this exact patch when the "balance" team has been exposed not knowing how the game works as well as only "balancing" the meta to their favor. So it's not just a possibility that this game's balance is screwed for as long as these certain sunny people remain in the balance team, it's a fact. And the plentiful evidence we recently got is no lie.

Unless they admit their mistake and address the leaks honorably AND listen to the community/take responsibility for the damage they caused with the patch by reversing it, instead of trying to sweep everything under the rug using death threats as a guilt tripping method, they have no right to ask for mine and definitely many others' trust ever again.

Anyway, it took a while for me to quit for good because this game meant a lot to me and helped me through some extremely difficult times in my life. Otherwise, I'd have quit this game for good a long time ago.

Letting go of anything, even an MMO, isn't always easy.

The irony here is that the recent patch was made with the intention to bridge the gap for players who do not participate in open world content. There is a high chance that your personal performance goes up after this patch if you are sticking to open world content only and have never bothered with improving your game play via say arcdps or golem parsing.

Story time:

Right after the patch a guild member, whom had recently returned for EoD, was concerned that her soulbeast was now not viable for raids any longer (this was before the hotfix patch 2 days later). After all, Arenanet had just changed things and the general consensus was that soulbeast was nerfed (it was at that point).

I explained to her that unless she was planning on playing on a very high level, this would be no concern to her. I was at this point only aware of her returning to the game and her having "some raid experience" from the past.

Fast forward to this week Tuesday after guild training raids, which this week I could not help out on due to rl commitments, and I go through the logs and she was literally racing the supports as far as dps is concerned (with a 90% autoattack rotation, boons provided where decent given the performance of the rest of the group). She wasn't flamed or criticized, I'm not even sure if anyone has sat down with her so far to explain to her that she is so far off from raid performance that which ever class she might go for, she is lacking in the absolute fundamentals.

Long story short:

Unless you are 100% sure that this patch is affecting you in a negative way performance wise and can actually name and describe HOW you are affected, you most likely will benefit from the patch given it has lowered the skill bar on many classes.

Now don't get me wrong, if you are not enjoying the game, by all means, take a break and regenerate. Just make sure you are taking the break because of something relevant which you also understand and not because you get swept up in all the drama.

TL;DR:

Far to many players get swept up in the entire forum drama and rhetoric without realizing they are not even affected. Worse yet, the less experienced or knowledgeable the players, the more likely they are to believe that all this negativity spread is affecting them when the opposite might even be the case.

Were some/many of the balance changes unfortunate or strait up bad, sure. Are some of the decisions questionable at best? Absolutely. Is this of any concern to 80% of this game player base? No.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Obtena.7952]

2 hours ago, Aselia.1325 said:

Weird comment ... None of the other balance patches resulted in me quitting, because I tried to be as tolerant of ANet's B.S as I could. And even then, it's this exact patch when the "balance" team has been exposed not knowing how the game works as well as only "balancing" the meta to their favor. So it's not just a possibility that this game's balance is screwed for as long as these certain sunny people remain in the balance team, it's a fact. And the plentiful evidence we recently got is no lie.

Unless they admit their mistake and address the leaks honorably AND listen to the community/take responsibility for the damage they caused with the patch by reversing it, instead of trying to sweep everything under the rug using death threats as a guilt tripping method, they have no right to ask for mine and definitely many others' trust ever again.

Anyway, it took a while for me to quit for good because this game meant a lot to me and helped me through some extremely difficult times in my life. Otherwise, I'd have quit this game for good a long time ago.

Letting go of anything, even an MMO, isn't always easy.

So it's not about the balancing really ... you just want to validate your departure. That's OK. 

[Astralporing.1957]

3 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The irony here is that the recent patch was made with the intention to bridge the gap for players who do not participate in open world content.

The irony is that the actual changes in that patch do nothing of that sort 😕

[Cyninja.2954]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The irony is that the actual changes in that patch do nothing of that sort 😕

 

On some classes the mark was missed, true. Still even there none of the classes have become unplayable in any open world content, or even instanced content up to a medium level for that matter.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954