Why do we rarely see changes reflective of what players are actually asking for?

[Helgaley.3619]

Title. It's been like this for years. I get that the people who post on the forums and subreddit account for a small percentage of the game population, but what gives? Where are these changes coming from? What is the point of having these profession forums if you guys aren't going to incorporate our feedback into these balance patches? Is it just a front to get us to buy gems? 

[Xenesis.6389]

Discord. Personal bias. Advice from their "friends" and class "professionals". 🤷‍♂️

[FrancisN.9276]

To be fair, devs do listen from time to time. But if everyone gets what they want, the power creep will worsen fast.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

There's some things.  In no particular order:

• Player suggestions tend toward serving their self interests.  It is unfortunate to say, but in the modern day the idea of "greater good" is frequently used just as another method for the pursuit of self interests.
• There's a limited scope to player suggestions.  While players are good at diagnosing the problem, they aren't always best at solving them.  Players don't think about the game as a full time profession.
• There's a silent majority that has to be considered.  Suggestions don't seem that bad at first, largely because there's very little motivation to boot up the forums and shout at each other over every random idea.  That changes the moment the changes hit game, and then there's a lot of motivation.
• Most of the in-house code is a secret.  Sadly, even to the developers themselves.  Simple changes aren't always so simple to actually change.
• The in-house politics and corporate structure are also a secret.  Everything needs a paper trail and a complicated web of interpersonal politics to wade through to accomplish simple tasks.
• The devs are artists, and want to maintain a personal stamp to the changes made to the game.
• Your suggestions may have been considered and silently dismissed already.  It isn't productive to spend all employee time arguing with customers.  Most times it is prudent to say nothing at all.  

[the krytan assassin.9235]

For most changes i can understand why the devs want to change certain aspects and i do agree with most of the changes of the balance patch. I do think however that the dev team is making some critical errors that will cause problems with future balancing/game design. Also i really believe the devs can be extremely inconsistent in their profession design when it comes to reliability & difficulty level of a build & access to utility/sustain while being simultaneously very consistent in potential dps output. A mentality that i personally really dislike and in my opinion flawed.

They introduced the concept of power budget in their balance philosophy, it was said all builds should have somewhat similar output when combining all the output of that build: dps output, burst, ramp up time, boon support, healing, CC access, condi cleanse access, boonrip, pulls, pierce, portals, immunes etc etc. Currently the dps & ability to quick/alac support seem to be the only real 2 factors being taken into account. For example virtuoso is already the most consistent class in terms of dps output in instanced PvE condi fights and the avg xjj/ko/olc CM group that i joined the last couple weeks had anywhere between 33-100% of the dps covered by Cvirt. Now im reading the balance preview and it seems like the want to further increase its cc potential & make dagger 2&3 even more consistent. Meanwhile the proposed bladesong distortion change is still way long so it doesn't really matter anyways.  Just taking virt as an example, but this unfortunately applies to a couple more builds. 

Lately there has definitely been a trend of powercreep which has (imo) a negative impact on the existing content, especially the older content. Either builds need to be nerfed hard or the content needs to become more difficult. 

To end it on a positive note i do like that theyre correcting the alac/quick on core traitlines and give every profession access to quick/alac. I do think that theyre putting to much attention in giving all classes alac/quick straight away instead of also making the options viable, but this might be a more logical step for the balance dev's pov.  

 

[Helgaley.3619]

1 hour ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

There's some things.  In no particular order:

• Player suggestions tend toward serving their self interests.  It is unfortunate to say, but in the modern day the idea of "greater good" is frequently used just as another method for the pursuit of self interests.
• There's a limited scope to player suggestions.  While players are good at diagnosing the problem, they aren't always best at solving them.  Players don't think about the game as a full time profession.
• There's a silent majority that has to be considered.  Suggestions don't seem that bad at first, largely because there's very little motivation to boot up the forums and shout at each other over every random idea.  That changes the moment the changes hit game, and then there's a lot of motivation.
• Most of the in-house code is a secret.  Sadly, even to the developers themselves.  Simple changes aren't always so simple to actually change.
• The in-house politics and corporate structure are also a secret.  Everything needs a paper trail and a complicated web of interpersonal politics to wade through to accomplish simple tasks.
• The devs are artists, and want to maintain a personal stamp to the changes made to the game.
• Your suggestions may have been considered and silently dismissed already.  It isn't productive to spend all employee time arguing with customers.  Most times it is prudent to say nothing at all.  

This is a reasonable response. What really bothers me is that the June 2022 balance patch also left a lot of people scratching their heads, and then those Discord chats leaked and we saw the lead balance dev admitting flat out to 1) making design decisions based on personal preference and 2) being so unfamiliar with other professions he had to use the wiki. That individual also happened to be responsible for designing the mechanist, and he enjoyed staff mirage, and both of those specializations received buffs that year. 

This year, for the June 2023 patch, we have a lead balance dev who mains elementalist and who has a PVP background, and we have a balance patch that's still filled with head scratchers, but it also just happens to buff a number of elementalist skills and traits used in PVP builds. 

I think it's fine for developers to put their own personal stamp on a profession that reflects their vision for the class, but that isn't what we're seeing. This is just personal bias. 

[foxof.8752]

1 hour ago, Helgaley.3619 said:

This is a reasonable response. What really bothers me is that the June 2022 balance patch also left a lot of people scratching their heads, and then those Discord chats leaked and we saw the lead balance dev admitting flat out to 1) making design decisions based on personal preference and 2) being so unfamiliar with other professions he had to use the wiki. That individual also happened to be responsible for designing the mechanist, and he enjoyed staff mirage, and both of those specializations received buffs that year. 

This year, for the June 2023 patch, we have a lead balance dev who mains elementalist and who has a PVP background, and we have a balance patch that's still filled with head scratchers, but it also just happens to buff a number of elementalist skills and traits used in PVP builds. 

I think it's fine for developers to put their own personal stamp on a profession that reflects their vision for the class, but that isn't what we're seeing. This is just personal bias. 

The truth will get deleted.

[Tails.9372]

We don't even get to see A-Net sticking to what the say their design philosophy is. It's as if their "balance philosophy" post was written by the marketing team and the actual Devs responsible for the changes went "lol, anyway...".

The only times we see the Devs actually taking feedback into consideration is when there is a massive outrage about something. But, in general, the whole thing is extremely intrasparant and on occasion borderline schizophrenic, which is something they even acknowledge from time to time but never follow up on.

[prototypedragon.1406]

It would be interesting if they could get the team from 2012 back. Granted idk if any of us would want to do that to the golden years team. Given the mess they would have to sift through now.

[ericpeggy.8206]

If you have seen all players advice on the forums and subreddit, you will know they do refer something from part of players.

But about recent patches, they make many weird changes too.

Just like they don't know where is the problem about balance, so they try some experimental change.

Really hope they have enough time and people to discuss the problem of classes.

We only can know is the mirage staff fan doesn't have a say in balance anymore.

[Helgaley.3619]

6 hours ago, foxof.8752 said:

The truth will get deleted.

Either way, I'm uninstalling. I'm not going to support the game just for the developers to focus on making it fun for themselves. I can't think of a single other MMO where this is such a blatant ongoing issue. We even have an Anet employee admitting to it in a Discord chat with high end players that don't even work there, and that's on top of his comments about looking forward to how salty the community would be in response to his changes. I don't care how fun every other aspect of the game is, I'm not going to support a company that has that kind of culture. 

[loregnum.3619]

Because anet employees doesn't really care what the players want or don't want. This goes beyond stuff concerning classes and balance. I'd give examples but I am sure a mod here would just delete my post so I'll have to shut up. I have had it happen before where I wrote committed the crime of wrong-think.

[Batalix.2873]

In honesty crowd sourcing from consumers of media is often terrible. Most don't delve deep into their ideas and usually the most low-hanging fruit--with little regard for things like overarching artistic vision/themes/rules or the many related affected pieces--is what gets memetically propagated.

And if given enough time to coalesce and develop metas, then we get things like an alac/quickness, "everyone DPS" meta that the devs need to rebalance and homogenize everything around.

People need to take some accountability. Everyone complained about role requirements while simultaneously over-requiring Chrono and Druid in HoT. Everyone slid into boon group metas and overused FB, Ren, and Scourge in PoF. And everyone by and large accepted and spammed garbage passive especs like Mech and Virt in EoD. When the players all give in to taking the easiest, fastest route to clearing content, the content itself suffers and of course the devs are going to lean into that. We do have some responsibility to pushback against and not indulge bad designs, and we didn't. And we have gotten what our consumption record says we wanted.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Obtena.7952]

Probably because players don't understand that they aren't in control of changes to the game and tend to have biased ideas. Also, it's literally impossible for Anet to deliver to players ideas because there isn't a unified view from players about how the game should work. 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Mppa.3250]

Pretty much all written above. Its a combination of almost all the comments. And I would add that many players spent a lot of time in the game and so are too invested to quit. Also a gw2 enjoyer cant easily find a good replacement. Will you go to WoW and get your loot being decided by others? Will you go to FFXIV and have no dodge and half or more of your abilities on cooldown every time your press a skill? New World to have nothing to play everytime they have downtime due to a patch and then again due to a patch that fixes the bugs due to the 1st patch and hoping that the game will not die completely and/or will not be abandoned? To farm elite chests 5 dungeons and 1 raid? Or to do open world node farm and once you get to a node, an another neckbeard arrives first and puff its gone now? Or wait for Throne and Liberty to get past the old runescape battle age?

I believe Anet knows all the above and will continue to balance by having other things in mind like marketing/efficiency and etc and not the pure "fun" and enjoyment as focus which yeah its also subjective. Last year they started it with the death of the old bannerslave and even then after all the rage they got,  they didnt take back the change. They did gave lots of quickness to the banners made them a bit less ugly (gave  berserker a tankier option) and kept it like this for 1 year. Now again, after everyone died already inside, they changing them again and giving quickness to the burst skills instead. Thats in fact a 2nd death and the added alacrity on the ninja spec burst isnt the revive banner warrior enjoyers wished for (at least not in my opinion). Nor the changes that come with the burst-for-quickness link, like the arc divider single spin that takes away the best spin to win in game skill (biggest radius melee attack x3).  It might turn out to be good for the game? who knows?

The sure thing is that many of the players are too invested and the rest available mmos are not anywhere close/similar to gw2 systems, battle and pay model . After all, in each "cycle" there will always be some op/fun builds to play.. Meanwhile new players will not care much and some vets with 35 accounts that generate passively hundreds of gold without needing to buy anything else anymore, yes might quit, but as you understand that will not be a blow.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

I'm not sure listening to the community is always the best solution; as players may advantage their own class, their own gameplay style rather than watch all indicators, and provoke an outcry. This is nice too sometimes a  kick in the anthill to destabilize the players, the meta and launch new experimentations, new gameplay styles.

Yet clearly developpers have big bias too ; players have a wide range of experiences on all situations, levels of skill, they have reflection outside the framework, they have their own indicatords (like wingman); what developpers lack a lot apparently (or I don't get how they get their data).
When players massively say a balance is bad, may be it'd be interesting to look at it more precisely and listen for suggestion rather than cover ears as the One who knows everything.

[Vidit.7108]

Anet does sort of generally listen, i think the problem is that they half-listen and don't really have an interest in fixing the problem just making it go away with their limited resources.

Players complained about spamming all their utilities limiting their options, so they're fixing that. They won't listen though to proposed alternatives or solutions, and instead are focuses more on making it "engaging". Which with this balance team seems to be bad ideas that are convoluted or just as restrictive. I think also some of their solutions are in service of a goal they want and not what the players asked for. Like they're probably nerfing Scourge's revive because that's something they've always wanted to do not because it would be too busted to have that and alac. Specter spamming shroud skills is not better moment-to-moment gameplay than wells, it's just restrictive in a different way.

They made up the excuse that they've run out of design space for future specs and yet they're now shoehorning boons onto classes that were simply not designed to do boon application.  For players who want alac warrior the solution is to make a heal alac espec for warrior not stuff alac onto one of the worst possible parts of bladesworn.

[Incurve Giidis.7829]

because the sc secret club was a fiasco. new teapot fan club is an even worse joke, balance just keeps going downhill lmao

theyve probably given up and are trying to imitate xiv as hard as possible without second thought to their own game

also daily casual and endgame is like a totally different world in terms of balance which is hard to balance but no excuse for what we have atm

Edited June 11, 2023 by Incurve Giidis.7829

[Xenesis.6389]

I'm kinda glad they're trying to destroy necro, maybe it'll finally bring boon spam to the forefront since that profession is an important counter to it, and now they're trying to convert to another boon bot. People need to finally draw the line on the boon spam issue.

On 6/10/2023 at 7:20 PM, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

I'm not sure listening to the community is always the best solution; as players may advantage their own class, their own gameplay style rather than watch all indicators, and provoke an outcry. This is nice too sometimes a  kick in the anthill to destabilize the players, the meta and launch new experimentations, new gameplay styles.

Yet clearly developpers have big bias too ; players have a wide range of experiences on all situations, levels of skill, they have reflection outside the framework, they have their own indicatords (like wingman); what developpers lack a lot apparently (or I don't get how they get their data).
When players massively say a balance is bad, may be it'd be interesting to look at it more precisely and listen for suggestion rather than cover ears as the One who knows everything.

Listening to only a few community "influencers" isn't a good idea either, which they have largely been doing, those same people are only after their own self interest as well. They should be listening to everyone in general and finding the middle ground. They should listen when there is a large outcry over something, like they did when they tried to change scrapper gyro wells. Their role of balancing the game professions is to actually balance and find a place for every spec they have provided. Not personal bias, not showing favoritism, not just following the advice of "so called experts" who only play certain parts of the game.

On 6/10/2023 at 5:47 PM, Batalix.2873 said:

In honesty crowd sourcing from consumers of media is often terrible. Most don't delve deep into their ideas and usually the most low-hanging fruit--with little regard for things like overarching artistic vision/themes/rules or the many related affected pieces--is what gets memetically propagated.

And if given enough time to coalesce and develop metas, then we get things like an alac/quickness, "everyone DPS" meta that the devs need to rebalance and homogenize everything around.

People need to take some accountability. Everyone complained about role requirements while simultaneously over-requiring Chrono and Druid in HoT. Everyone slid into boon group metas and overused FB, Ren, and Scourge in PoF. And everyone by and large accepted and spammed garbage passive especs like Mech and Virt in EoD. When the players all give in to taking the easiest, fastest route to clearing content, the content itself suffers and of course the devs are going to lean into that. We do have some responsibility to pushback against and not indulge bad designs, and we didn't. And we have gotten what our consumption record says we wanted.

That isn't the players fault, players will always gravitate to the easiest and best performing specs in any mmo, especially in pve which is a dps race. It's up to the developers to properly implement those specs and their unique tools, they are the ones that set all the rules, the players conform to what's provided.

They shouldn't ignore player overwhelming reactions, the planned scrapper wells and warrior banners last year were bad designs, the planned scourge changes are bad design by trying and convert it to just another alacrity bot. Game already has a couple alacrity bot specs, they can say it's about having group options, and design like 5 different alacrity specs, but end of the day the best one is always going to be chosen anyways. Then you have the other part of the spectrum where players are flocking to a certain spec, like groups suddenly using 5-10 mechanist, when either of those situations happens, that obviously says something is wrong and they should take a step back and reassess the changes.

They should be designing and balancing professions for the players, not for themselves. Locking a spec down in the basement for 3 years cause they can't be bothered to change it, while also buffing another spec through the roof for those same years is not fair or professional. It's still a business and they need to keep as many happy as possible, within reason, to keep playing the game.

Profession/class/spec/combat balance is a very important aspect of mmo's, this part of the game is what players are using/playing 100% of the time in the game, something this company has still failed to realize in 10 years, barely able to take it seriously enough to do proper balancing every quarter. Now they've resorted to butchering specs to shoehorn roles, cause they have no clue on how to properly balance their boon spam other than make sure everyone can do it.

[Batalix.2873]

13 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Listening to only a few community "influencers" isn't a good idea either, which they have largely been doing, those same people are only after their own self interest as well. They should be listening to everyone in general and finding the middle ground. They should listen when there is a large outcry over something, like they did when they tried to change scrapper gyro wells. Their role of balancing the game professions is to actually balance and find a place for every spec they have provided. Not personal bias, not showing favoritism, not just following the advice of "so called experts" who only play certain parts of the game.

Hard agree on this. As much as I respect creators, I get the impression that the ANet partners are somewhat reserved in their criticisms. By far the most frustrating is Teapot, who is always like "guys, guys, this class is so good" and doesn't seem to have much, if any, distinction between "broken good" and just "poor design decisions".

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

1 hour ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

I'm kinda glad they're trying to destroy necro, maybe it'll finally bring boon spam to the forefront since that profession is an important counter to it, and now they're trying to convert to another boon bot. People need to finally draw the line on the boon spam issue.

 

On the stream this is basically what they mentioned in regards to WvW.

Across the board they nerfed boon removal / corruption (Mesmer, Spellbreaker, Necro), saying the intent was to reduce boon removal or make it more risky to do? (Shorter Mesmer spell ranges, Necro has more pin-pointed removal instead of throw everything out and be constantly stripping).

They acknowledged that this will shift the meta into a boon ball one, but once boon removal is peeled back they can more easily see the effects of the boon meta and see what skills and boons are most problematic. Then from there they would begin nerfing boons.

May not be the most ideal way of going about it, but that’s how they see it.

(Also that all seemed to be in regards to WvW, not PvE)

[Dadnir.5038]

Balance patchs are meant to shake the statu quo and this is something that many players need to keep being interested in the game. 

A bit after EoD release, the devs told us their balance goal and as far as the quarterly balance patchs goes, they are keeping their words.

I was skeptical after the last quarterly patch as they half baked the removal of CD reduction traits that they sold us with a lot of excitement but this patch show that, for once, they are willing to go all the way with the idea. (I'll be kitten, this is the first time in close to 11 years that it happen, we gotta respect that!)

They've also defined their idea of the various PvE roles that they want to be used in group and they are making a move to allow every profession to have a shot at every single of these roles. (Again the fact that they are true to their vision of the game is worth being respected)

Now, it's true that some things that the player base have taken for granted over the years are lost in the process but it's natural that when they introduce something new they need to balance the budget by removing something else. In any ways, if the numbers aren't quite there after the patch, they will eventually round them up nicely. They've proved many time that they can transform lead into gold by inflating numbers.

At best, the goal of the patch will be achieved after it's released, at worst this patch will have introduced the foundation necessary for the goal to be achieved. In anyway, our job as a player will be to adapt and explore the new limit of the various professions and from there, we will most likely establish new "metas".

[Xenesis.6389]

29 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I was skeptical after the last quarterly patch as they half baked the removal of CD reduction traits that they sold us with a lot of excitement but this patch show that, for once, they are willing to go all the way with the idea. (I'll be kitten, this is the first time in close to 11 years that it happen, we gotta respect that!)

Sorry but that went out the window for me when they decided to do this with master of manipulation trait, but then didn't apply the bonus back to blink or arcane thievery. Meanwhile they got a new spec that runs around with near dozen mobility skills available to it. So pardon me if I don't get excited over that. 🤷‍♂️

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

On the stream this is basically what they mentioned in regards to WvW.

Across the board they nerfed boon removal / corruption (Mesmer, Spellbreaker, Necro), saying the intent was to reduce boon removal or make it more risky to do? (Shorter Mesmer spell ranges, Necro has more pin-pointed removal instead of throw everything out and be constantly stripping).

They acknowledged that this will shift the meta into a boon ball one, but once boon removal is peeled back they can more easily see the effects of the boon meta and see what skills and boons are most problematic. Then from there they would begin nerfing boons.

May not be the most ideal way of going about it, but that’s how they see it.

(Also that all seemed to be in regards to WvW, not PvE)

They don't need to go bare bones on boon removal to see it's effects, squads already run around with 12 boons on them all the time for years now. The only place for boon removal is for precisely timed bombing, even worse now with even more nerfs. I highly doubt they're going to reduce boon spam after this, and at the rate they do balance patches that'll be what in 2 years? (and watch it be something as lame as nerfed boon cap duration in wvw to 25sec! and call it a day).

Nerfing boon removals hurts small and the less organized more than those bigger organized groups. Every patch positioning has less importance, tactics like portals and stealth bombs are less effective, we're just heading for the stand in spot and melee meta, minus the conditions too. 🤷‍♂️

Edited June 14, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[Echostorm.9143]

On 6/10/2023 at 5:47 PM, Batalix.2873 said:

In honesty crowd sourcing from consumers of media is often terrible. Most don't delve deep into their ideas and usually the most low-hanging fruit--with little regard for things like overarching artistic vision/themes/rules or the many related affected pieces--is what gets memetically propagated.

And if given enough time to coalesce and develop metas, then we get things like an alac/quickness, "everyone DPS" meta that the devs need to rebalance and homogenize everything around.

People need to take some accountability. Everyone complained about role requirements while simultaneously over-requiring Chrono and Druid in HoT. Everyone slid into boon group metas and overused FB, Ren, and Scourge in PoF. And everyone by and large accepted and spammed garbage passive especs like Mech and Virt in EoD. When the players all give in to taking the easiest, fastest route to clearing content, the content itself suffers and of course the devs are going to lean into that. We do have some responsibility to pushback against and not indulge bad designs, and we didn't. And we have gotten what our consumption record says we wanted.

I agree that no matter what they do people will drift to meta builds but I disagree with the disdain you seem to have to the mech and virt builds.  The notion that a class is only good if it has an unforgiving 60 step rotation is the sort of try hard elitism that pushes casuals, the vast majority population of the game away to other titles. There need to be low intensity builds that can still put up respectable numbers, that isn't bad design, if anything it is correcting for years of wildly over complicating combat to placate the loudest voices.