One week until the "ratio'd" balance patch goes live - will we hear a response to our feedback before then?

[LichOverlord.6329]

The balance preview post of the update on the 27th has been literally "ratio'd": it currently (at the time of writing this) has 21 likes and 7 "thanks" reactions, which together make 28 positive reactions, and it also has 89 confused and 142 sad reactions - a total of 231 unhappy reactions.

(Note: I disregarded the 4 laughing reactions since those aren't really inherently good or bad, and the small amount makes little difference on the statistic).

The patch is universally unpopular with the community, and the 89% negative response from those who gave feedback is honestly just so ridiculous that Arenanet can't afford to ignore it.

In the past several weeks we've given over 40 pages of feedback - feedback Roy and CMC claim they're listening to and reading like good developers should.

So, with that being said, can we expect a response before this patch goes live? An entire month of radio silence despite the outcry is simply an unacceptable way to treat your community, and I have faith in the Arenanet team that they're true to their word, and they'll step up to the plate and respond to the feedback they've been given.

This isn't a battle, or a war, or "community vs. devs" - we all want the same thing: a high-quality, entertaining game for everyone. We're all on the same side, or at least, we should be.

Please continue to work with us, and please open the dialogue up so some meaningful changes can be made before this patch goes live. The relationship between developers and players is symbiotic, and we need to work together to ensure the success of Guild Wars 2, this wonderful game we all love.

I hope we can expect to hear back from either CmC or Roy (or both!) here soon, and make some much-needed alterations to this upcoming patch so that it will be well recieved by the playerbase!

(Oh, and if by chance anyone from Arenanet sees this post: thanks for listening. Despite our current disagreement, you have a lot of fans among the community, and the majority of us appreciate all your hard work!)

[Gendalfs.7521]

 

[Peter.3901]

Of course not, the devs know what they are doing! i'm pleased to see my ancient seed being removed and tons of more heavy nerfs comming while there are 999 useless stuffs (hello engineer).

Can't wait for the disaster update!

[Helgaley.3619]

I asked ChatGPT 4.0 to provide balance patch notes that would not make anyone angry, and I would strongly recommend Anet take these into consideration: 

Elementalist:

"Meteor Shower" now summons actual meteors from space. Each meteor has a 0.01% chance of causing a mass extinction event. We felt this was a necessary change to make the skill feel more impactful.

"Tornado" now sucks up nearby players and NPCs, depositing them in random locations across the map. We're not liable for any resulting fall damage.

Engineer:

"Flamethrower" now cooks any meat in your inventory while in use. Perfect for those mid-battle BBQs.

"Supply Crate" now has a chance to drop actual crates from the sky, dealing massive damage. Watch your heads!

Guardian:

"Sanctuary" now plays smooth jazz for all players inside, providing a calming atmosphere amidst the chaos of battle.

"Virtue of Courage" now makes your character incredibly brave, allowing them to tell that special someone how they really feel.

Mesmer:

"Illusionary Duelist" now creates an illusion of your character that argues with other players in map chat.

"Portal Entre" now occasionally leads to a random bathroom in Divinity's Reach. Privacy not guaranteed.

Necromancer:

"Summon Flesh Golem" now summons a "Plush Golem" instead. It's less effective in combat but way cuter.

"Death Shroud" now makes your character incredibly morbid, causing them to recite gothic poetry.

Ranger:

"Call of the Wild" now calls a random wild animal to your location. Could be a bunny. Could be a dragon. Good luck!

"Bear Stance" now turns your character into an actual bear. You can't use skills, but you can catch fish with your bare hands.

Revenant:

"Invoke Legendary Dwarf Stance" now turns your character into a legendary dwarf. Your height is halved, but your beard game is unmatched.

"Unyielding Anguish" now causes your character to have an existential crisis, questioning their purpose in the grand scheme of Tyria.

Thief:

"Steal" now allows you to steal the hearts of NPCs, making them fall in love with you.

"Shadowstep" now occasionally leaves behind a shadow clone that does nothing but dance.

Warrior:

"Battle Standard" now plays your country's national anthem loudly, inspiring patriotism in your allies.

"Berserker Stance" now causes your character to rip their shirt off and yell loudly, intimidating enemies with your ripped physique.

I am particularly interested in the Mesmer changes. 

[Flapjackson.1596]

I do feel that for balance patches that are intended to be “big” and encompass all the gamemodes, the quarterly patches, they should warrant multiple rounds of feedback. 

It doesn’t make much sense to me to have a single preview stream at the beginning of the month, then not communicate on updates until the days right before the patch goes live. If we end up getting “here’s what we changed” on Friday, then we are just right back to the last minute communication Grouch said we’d avoid after the disaster it led to last June.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Flapjackson.1596

[Batalix.2873]

I admit I am a bit scared for my future with this game. I have geared up my Herald since that seems to be one of the only (non-EoD) classes that is mostly moving laterally and not unambiguously down. So I could in theory survive on that, although for how long before I quit the game is anyone's guess.

But boy do I find nearly all of the other changes inelegant at best and more often than not destructive and thoroughly unnecessary.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[soul.9651]

With the "forum community", or do you think gw2 has less than a 1k total player base?... Or maybe who knows, maybe this game is dead

[Moira Shalaar.5620]

Looking at Anet's history of responding to community unhappiness, they seem to have a tendency to not say anything until they have missed their real window of opportunity, then to offer platitudes while simultaneously staying the course. That leaves the few times they have not done that as rare exceptions. 

The fact is that expressing our disapproval on this forum notwithstanding, as consumers of their game we have very very little in the way of levers to apply influence, and that might be a good thing in some ways. Given the degree to which many cannot even agree on the forums on what would be a good idea/course of action, imagine a world in which all of us were button mashing trying to pull every lever of influence to try and move ANet in our preferred direction. The company would crash, and be unable to relaunch. Hmm, wondering now if my experience with the game client is influencing the metaphors I use. 

That said, their functional policy of extended silence has always been a pain point with the community. Perhaps there are business reasons of which we as a community remain ignorant. I'd really like to believe that because it is all too easy to become cynical, disappointed and frustrated. 

[ventress.4879]

It's only on the forum I would say for the most part it is received quiet well if you go to Reddit. 

Edited June 20, 2023 by ventress.4879

[GetFoxxed.9478]

14 minutes ago, ventress.4879 said:

It's only on the forum I would say for the most part it is received quiet well if you go to Reddit. 

Reddit been quite a radio silence overall recently

[Mike.7983]

10 minutes ago, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

Reddit been quite a radio silence overall recently

Reddit having issues with the CEO and stuff, hard to post when its been locked down. Tons of protests against changes.

 

[BadLuck.8456]

52 minutes ago, Mike.7983 said:

Is it fair to ask for Cal and Roy to be re-assigned? Swear all of there latest class updates for the past year+ have been met with massive backlash and anger over class changes and pretty much removing a class with nerfs.  Need a dev who actually understands the class and willing to accept community feedback not base it off the 1%, some streamer or just " I plain hate this class so nerf it".

No, it's not.

First of all, it never is appropriate to try to get someone fired/demoted because you disagree with them.

Second, balance is a team effort and you can't lay all your complaints at the feet of two people.

Third, the loudest backlash and anger I have seen is from people wanting things like Healbrand, Banner Warrior, GotL Druid, Alac+Quick Chrono, etc. to keep their treasured places in every group as the only/best by far spec that can provide X. It's not good for the health of the game if only one out of twenty seven specs is allowed to fill X spot.

Community feedback has its place. They listened with gyros. Heck they listened for some of the motivation of this patch since people didn't like taking 3 utility skills and mindlessly spamming them on CD regardless of what they do just to maintain alac/quick.

Design by community alone is terrible and results in the opposite "I plain love this class so buff it. Never nerf it even if it's so brokenly powerful it's distorting gameplay around its presence."

We need a community that actually understands other classes and game design fundamentals and is willing to accept feedback different to their own opinions and not just base it off their own experiences.

 

I don't approve of everything in this preview. I think the shade duration nerf as presented is a HUGE mistake that if it goes through will destroy scourge for months until they can make bigger changes at the design level to figure out what they actually want scourge to do. But I'm here providing my thoughts in a constructive form, not targeting people for a witch hunt and making HUGE generalizations and assumptions in a post where the value can be summed up as "Waaahhh. I don't agree with these changes."

 

TLDR: Waahhhh. I don't agree with this person's disagreement, but I hope people read it and think that maybe they should stop saying exaggerated lies like "Everyone hates this patch and this person. They should go away."

[Myror.7521]

@BadLuck.8456 Well said. Im one of those "weird" persons that do like this patch. Yes there are some nerfs coming in. But will they nerf things to death? Well besides maybe necro, no! Will this changes maybe open the window for more builds and maybe change the Meta over all? Yes! All in all I do not See too many bad points in this patch (aside of class identity skills cause those will going to be "worse") maybe some not needed buffs though ele in PvP/WvW but thats it. 

 

EDIT: the moment you confuse smile a post 1 seconds after it goes life and not read it anyways nice troll ^^

Edited June 20, 2023 by Myror.7521

[GetFoxxed.9478]

11 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@BadLuck.8456 Well said. Im one of those "weird" persons that do like this patch. Yes there are some nerfs coming in. But will they nerf things to death? Well besides maybe necro, no! Will this changes maybe open the window for more builds and maybe change the Meta over all? Yes! All in all I do not See too many bad points in this patch (aside of class identity skills cause those will going to be "worse") maybe some not needed buffs though ele in PvP/WvW but thats it. 

 

EDIT: the moment you confuse smile a post 1 seconds after it goes life and not read it anyways nice troll ^^

Mirage will suck in pve now. Especially in soloing stuff

[REMagic.8937]

6 minutes ago, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

Mirage will suck in pve now. Especially in soloing stuff

This is not true at all.

[Batalix.2873]

44 minutes ago, REMagic.8937 said:

This is not true at all.

Nah it is true. I mean, I don't know to what degree it will suck in PvE, but it will definitely suck more than it currently is.

I think it's a dumb nerf for PvE/WvW. Axe mirage is a light armor glass cannon like Weaver that doesn't do nearly as much damage because it is so dependent on building, preserving, and mirage cloaking its clones. It doesn't have shrounds or barrier like Necro. It doesn't have heals like Tempest. And it needs to be in melee to do anything more than baseline clone ambush DPS. And it needs to spend dodges just to do competitive damage. If any espec deserved the extra survivability of a bonkers mirage cloak dodge, it's Mirage.

And sure, limit it in PvP because I agree that is broken in small number PvP matches. But for anything larger than 5 player teams or against PvE stuff, Mirage kinda needs it. Even with things as they are Virt still outdoes it on damage because Virt has so many fewer variables to balance and honestly doesn't even have to interact with melee mechs.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Myror.7521]

@Batalix.2873 i do not agree with the PvP part of you post. Mirage now is not that bad as peops wana make it. Specialy with a second Dodge it will be even harder to hit that spec at least once (though all the blinds/Blocks/dodges/mirage cloak it could get) so it makes sence to make it Work like a normal Dodge so classes could at least punish it for doing mistakes. Also going in a team fight with a spec/class made for 1v1s is always Bad (it is like going in midfights as warr, outside of a supp role its trash to doing it). The only reason why mirage will be not Meta even after second dodge back is fa Catalyst since this is heavy AoE DPS class and Kills you the Moment your going in melee. Aside of this i don't know about its PvE path. Pretty sure at least this will be a true nerf.

 

[Batalix.2873]

Just now, Myror.7521 said:

@Batalix.2873 i do not agree with the PvP part of you post. Mirage now is not that bad as peops wana make it. Specialy with a second Dodge it will be even harder to hit that spec at least once (though all the blinds/Blocks/dodges/mirage cloak it could get) so it makes sence to make it Work like a normal Dodge so classes could at least punish it for doing mistakes. Also going in a team fight with a spec/class made for 1v1s is always Bad (it is like going in midfights as warr, outside of a supp role its trash to doing it). The only reason why mirage will be not Meta even after second dodge back is fa Catalyst since this is heavy AoE DPS class and Kills you the Moment your going in melee. Aside of this i don't know about its PvE path. Pretty sure at least this will be a true nerf.

 

I think you misread. I am for the nerf to Mirage dodging in PvP. Just not in PvE/WvW.

[Myror.7521]

@Batalix.2873 ah hmm yea maybe i missread it..... my fail then 🙂

[Shae.9147]

3 hours ago, REMagic.8937 said:

This is not true at all.

they are literally removing the core identity of mirage. 

[LichOverlord.6329]

4 hours ago, soul.9651 said:

With the "forum community", or do you think gw2 has less than a 1k total player base?... Or maybe who knows, maybe this game is dead

I meant just "of the people who responded" and used that as a sample size, since unfortunately for better or for worse, the forums is one of the best metrics we have to get player feedback short of shouting in map chat "hey guys what do you think of these changes?"

4 hours ago, ventress.4879 said:

It's only on the forum I would say for the most part it is received quiet well if you go to Reddit. 

I don't see how that's possible considering the Guild Wars 2 subreddit has been private for the past month and has only just now come back online yesterday, with the forum locked except for a poll on whether it should stay private or not (that's a whole thing with the Reddit API controversy, though, and is a whole separate topic of discussion that doesn't really belong here on the forums). 

[ventress.4879]

On 6/21/2023 at 1:22 PM, LichOverlord.6329 said:

I don't see how that's possible considering the Guild Wars 2 subreddit has been private for the past month and has only just now come back online yesterday, with the forum locked except for a poll on whether it should stay private or not. 

I have been able to read quite a few posts on the topic. The most common complaint is the upcoming lack of class diversity but people rightly point out that if you mean broken builds as class diversity then this patch is a good thing. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by ventress.4879

[DanAlcedo.3281]

7 hours ago, soul.9651 said:

With the "forum community", or do you think gw2 has less than a 1k total player base?... Or maybe who knows, maybe this game is dead

 

When the majority of players, who don't read patch notes, get hit by a surprise patch that kills their builds. 

Thats when the real fun begins. 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Meh the majority of the forum posts like to complain/nitpick about small issues. Ontop of that most people seem to think their own class is getting bullied by the devs, while other classes get always buffed. Also ppl tend to think their own struggle with a certain profession are due to inherent flaws of the profession and not inherent flaws of themselves. Whatever balance changes you post, you get alot of negative feedback. 

Devs simply look at trait balancing in an entirely different way then most consumers. Also the multi step fix seems to be favoured by the devs (make a big balance change and then nerf/buff it over the next 1-3 patches). So making drastic changes to some of the classes sort of makes sense . Some classes will probably struggle quite abit post patch, but that doesn't mean the class is forever doomed. Last but not least i believe they simply have a very small crew (wouldnt be surprised if its 1-2 persons only) so interacting with the community about changes in balance would waste quite abit of time. 

They tried to communicate some of the balance patch preview changes in the past and usually led to a cesspool of people complaining even more about some of the changes. The overall balance of the game has improved over the last year, so i guess the devs are atleast doing something right. I quite often disagree on a balance design/philosophy, but overall they seem to be doing a somewhat decent job at it. 

[AresGuildwars.6372]

I did all the stages of grief and am now at acceptance to just quit and not care much further. Haven't logged it once since the preview and touched some grass. Turns out, other devs also have pretty games. Quite the easiest solution. They gonna make more money with a heavily fluctuating playerbase anyway so I shouldn't see myself as the target audience at all. *shrug*