It's time for new balance devs. Again.

[XenesisII.1540]

3 hours ago, Mazinger.1084 said:

I blame his boss, who just so happens to have been a huge part of the effort to make sPvP popular from the start.  If anyone is aware of balancing in general and its effects on any game mode (particularly pvp), it's Grouch.  Now as Game Director, how he can look at the state of balancing in GW2 today and think it's ok is beyond me, but this is where we're at.  There's no way CMC gets to do whatever he wants in this game without oversight from Grouch and other higher-ups.  These are the people responsible for the game's deteriorating balance.

I'm a little doubtful of this. Pretty sure Grouch played a scrapper in his wvw guild, and in the past year scrappers have been nerfed to the point of being replaced by tempest in wvw. If he was ultimately calling the shots on balance would he let his main be butchered? On the other hand, given the track record of the current lead balance dev butchering other classes(mesmer), what class he favors, you know, the one that's getting boosted a lot these days, you can't really blame the boss above, but the current boss of that section. So, let's just call it a group effort to screw up the game in their boon spam vision. 🤷‍♂️

[Mewsha.3561]

23 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Virtually all of the features of SotO (outside of baseline story and maps) are cannibalizing old content to remix it as the appearance of "new content". As bad as a lot of these balancing changes are, they are intertwined with this incredibly reckless and haphazard new weapon paradigm. This goes far beyond the balance devs. It is an inherent, systemic dearth of creativity in a dev team that has been brain drained over the years.

This is actually a really interesting take I haven't seen many people bring up.

You're seeing two popular yet contradictory opinions floating around the community. On the one has people are decrying the loss of class/elite spec identity, and on the other they're so excited that they'll now have access to every weapon in the game. Everyone having access to the exact same weapons is a loss of identity and eventually the "is that a Holosmith with a hammer," schtick is going to wear off in my opinion. The balance implications of such a change are something we're only starting to realize in this patch.

It's funny because the popular narrative currently is that Anet would never have implemented boons in the way that they did if they knew what it would snowball into today, and yet we seem to be going down a similar path right now with few people really discussing it because new shiny stuff.

It's no wonder they're being so conservative with changes given that upcoming weapon change alone will break the game, and honestly there's just going to be some classes/elite specs that leave others in the dust. If we thought June's boonpocalypse patch was confusing, imagine what SotO will be like.

Regardless, it currently feels like we're in a state of limbo and I do think it's reasonable to fault the devs for that. Our access to end game content and overall enjoyment of the game is being affected far ahead of the new patch. That's not how it should be. Why should we be wondering which way to go with our builds for this long when SotO doesn't come out for another month and half. It's just prolonged suffering without a plethora of new content to get us through it.

[Astralporing.1957]

38 minutes ago, Garrick.3150 said:

You're seeing two popular yet contradictory opinions floating around the community. On the one has people are decrying the loss of class/elite spec identity, and on the other they're so excited that they'll now have access to every weapon in the game. Everyone having access to the exact same weapons is a loss of identity and eventually the "is that a Holosmith with a hammer," schtick is going to wear off in my opinion.

That's because those opinions are not contradictory. No, classes having access to the same weapons do not necessarily mean loss of identity. Just one cursory look at mesmer greastword should tell you that.

[Batalix.2873]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's because those opinions are not contradictory. No, classes having access to the same weapons do not necessarily mean loss of identity. Just one cursory look at mesmer greastword should tell you that.

Takes a lot of impractical optimism in even the possibility of the devs (and the game itself) being able to reconcile class identity with fewer boundaries for one to consider both positions "not contradictory".

Personally I think it's the sort of appeal to authority, mixed in with an implied teleological fallacy, that amounts to blind faith. "I've decided not to really think through this problem at all, but surely since I can believe there is a solution, a solution much exist."

 

[Astralporing.1957]

51 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Takes a lot of impractical optimism in even the possibility of the devs (and the game itself) being able to reconcile class identity with fewer boundaries for one to consider both positions "not contradictory".

Personally I think it's the sort of appeal to authority, mixed in with an implied teleological fallacy, that amounts to blind faith. "I've decided not to really think through this problem at all, but surely since I can believe there is a solution, a solution much exist."

Oh, no, a solution to this problem lies in a third, unspoken here, desire, that is inherently tied to those both positions. That desire is "we want devs to do their job well". I mean, if that one will not be realized, anything else is, like you said, moot anyway.

If devs can do their job well, then those positions are not contradictory and can be realized at the same time. If devs fail at their job however, none of those positionc can be done decently, even on its own (much less together).

I mean, a claim that having two different classes use the same weapons must result in homogenization is a fallacy, because we already know it's not true, because it has already been done before. The same weapons from different classes do posess their own uniqueness, so a claim that it will suddenly end just because few more weapons are added can only be based on assumption that devs will massively botch the job.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Garrick.3150 said:

It's funny because the popular narrative currently is that Anet would never have implemented boons in the way that they did if they knew what it would snowball into today, and yet we seem to be going down a similar path right now with few people really discussing it because new shiny stuff.

Yeah true, but that is kind of true for the whole game. It was designed to be dynamic and small scale. Weapon swap is not meant to be a dps tool. You don't have these big WvW maps, to then gather 80% of your team in a 1meter radius circle to face of against the other circle. Healing other people was never indented. GW 2 is not supposed to have quest, but a lot of achievement are just quests in disguise. Metas have taken over the game, whole maps are designed around them. Those meta need to constantly split people because the game is not build for that. Boons are meant to be a temporary boon. Events are meant to be dynamic not farmed in a train(which is a gw2 only term).
You can bend an engine only so much. The whole game is a mutated mess.

If you played a little PvP and didn't get the match ruined by something over tuned or whatever, you should know what I mean. The whole system clicks. Boons, weapon swap, utilities, movement, Dodges everything just feels right. They designed a PvP game and changed their mind before releasing it.

Edited July 1, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Astralporing.1957]

6 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

They designed a PvP game and changed their mind before releasing it.

More like they created a PvE game mostly meant for casuals, but introduced a combat (and build) system meant for small scale hardcore pvp encounters. Then confused the system even more by giving it a single-player style visuals, that end up confusing and blinding everyone as soon as there's more players/mobs involved. Simply put, from the very beginning this game lacked single, overriding and coherent vision of what it should be, and what players it should appeal to.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[eXruina.4956]

those patch previews are mostly set in stone, they've been worked on and scheduled to be released prior, and they're probably already working on the next patch realtime. so they most likely won't make any major changes to it, thw ebst they can do is not release it.

 

i don't think they should get fired, i think they should get better. and i believe they can get better.

 

but me and this game has run its course. good luck to gw2 players aspiring for a better state of balance, let me tell you nearly 10 years of waiting wasn't enough, remember that you can always walk away.

[Batalix.2873]

31 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Oh, no, a solution to this problem lies in a third, unspoken here, desire, that is inherently tied to those both positions. That desire is "we want devs to do their job well". I mean, if that one will not be realized, anything else is, like you said, moot anyway.

If devs can do their job well, then those positions are not contradictory and can be realized at the same time. If devs fail at their job however, none of those positionc can be done decently, even on its own (much less together).

I mean, a claim that having two different classes use the same weapons must result in homogenization is a fallacy, because we already know it's not true, because it has already been done before. The same weapons from different classes do posess their own uniqueness, so a claim that it will suddenly end just because few more weapons are added can only be based on assumption that devs will massively botch the job.

A person's idea of "doing well" as a developer is still kind of obfuscating the limitations reality might be constraining on them, and if they are responsibly aware of and working within them.

One person's idea of "doing well" might indeed be just "giving the players what they ask" or "opening up weapons".

That idea still may not, and likely doesn't, consider such realities as:

* The breaking down of largely functioning game structures to do that, and the need to *do* something about that.

* The amount of resources it would potentially take to fix all the complications introduced by such a change.

* Whether the devs have the staffing, resources, desire, or otherwise approval to maintain the kittenstorm they are opening up.

* Whether the "good" created by this was worth all the systemic side effects, or if maybe "good" would have been taking other courses of action.

I think your idea of "good job" is under considered in that light, and your idea of "homogenization" kind of a very limited, specific framing that is missing (or maybe outright circumventing) a lot of related context.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Drag You Down.2615]

On 7/1/2023 at 2:30 AM, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

Unironically, it's a good idea. As a community person, Muk's large % of income depends on people subscribing to his channel, not skipping ads, etc. So he would have the incentive to not anger the community with drastic/untested changes. Same goes for Teapot really.

Sorry I don't think so. They are good reviewers and critics, but design requires to be professional. Like a food critic is not always a good chef, a good music critic is not always a good composer, a good art critic is not always a good painter. Their work is giving feedback, telling their experience in a very comprehensive manner, giving some advice. But they are not the people who solve the problem. 

Trust me, I am in music profession and I really understand that situation. 

And that's why I don't think CmC is competent, because HE IS NOT A DESIGNER AT ALL FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!!!!!

Edited July 1, 2023 by Drag You Down.2615

[Jski.6180]

On 6/30/2023 at 12:12 PM, Gendalfs.7521 said:

WTF asked for reset? Im missing something?

Its been going on for nearly an year and your just committing on it now that i guess has become "your problem" at least in these stronger terms of trying to remove an dev.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

A person's idea of "doing well" as a developer is still kind of obfuscating the limitations reality might be constraining on them, and if they are responsibly aware of and working within them.

One person's idea of "doing well" might indeed be just "giving the players what they ask" or "opening up weapons".

That idea still may not, and likely doesn't, consider such realities as:

* The breaking down of largely functioning game structures to do that, and the need to *do* something about that.

* The amount of resources it would potentially take to fix all the complications introduced by such a change.

* Whether the devs have the staffing, resources, desire, or otherwise approval to maintain the kittenstorm they are opening up.

* Whether the "good" created by this was worth all the systemic side effects, or if maybe "good" would have been taking other courses of action.

I think your idea of "good job" is under considered in that light, and your idea of "homogenization" kind of a very limited, specific framing that is missing (or maybe outright circumventing) a lot of related context.

That's a nice, general speech... that gets crushed by reality. Sure, ideas do not always match the reality, but the reality we're talking here is that what has claimed to be unachievable in the post i was originally responding to (having different classes use the same weapons and yet still be unique), has in fact already been achieved in this game long ago. If it is so impossible, then how did that happen?

I am not talking about hypotheticals and beliefs. I am talking about something that did exist. It is, in fact, possible, to give different classes the same weapon while having them be unique. I know it is possible, because it has been done. And if it has been done once, it can be done again.

The one that rejects reality in lieu of some personal ideas is not me, but you.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Arheundel.6451]

On 6/30/2023 at 10:27 AM, SlayerXX.7138 said:

The people on the forums often act out of self interest and have no concern for general balance. Also their solutions are often times worse then the problem they want to solve. Especially with the grieve avalanche that happens, feedback becomes worse by the second.
Example there was someone on the thief forum who skipped math in high school, complaining that deatheye will struggle with quickness. Turns out 1 cantrip on berserker gear is all we need, but that comment was upvoted all the same.
Alac on druid was way to tight, good that it gets buffed. The general feedback on druid seems to be: No alac on avatar, No alac on utilities. Great? Staff is of the table thanks to weapon mastery. Where to put it? Every solution I can think up would have an equal number of people complain all the same, or would make druid broken.

I get that people need to rant. I too am baffled by a couple of changes. If people just vomit feedback out, don't be surprised that 2 balance guys don't engage with everything.

Thumps up! Someone has the guts to say the truth!

GW2 players want always balance to go their way.....mesmers crying that virtuoso block got nerfed....necro crying that scourge got nerfed...and so on. People talk only out of self-interest, have no clue or care for general balance and are only interested in their daily endorphin dose by playing Rambo and winning on their FOTM-broken OP spec.

 

[Arheundel.6451]

On 6/28/2023 at 9:57 PM, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

Exactly. What even is the point of art, coding, creative and other teams doing their best if balance team will turn all of their effort to dust by making stuff unenjoyable?

I'd say that every sane person on the planet, working on a balance team...would go and ignore 95% of the forum "feedback", I would not want to play any game where the devs actually listen to blatantly biased and uncaring individuals, I can't imagine a reality where any dev actually listen an implement class changes based on say mesmer forum feedback....we'd have something like perma distortion/block teleporting God spamming 10 stacks of torment/confusion on auto-attacks from 1200 range..

[Batalix.2873]

2 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Thumps up! Someone has the guts to say the truth!

GW2 players want always balance to go their way.....mesmers crying that virtuoso block got nerfed....necro crying that scourge got nerfed...and so on. People talk only out of self-interest, have no clue or care for general balance and are only interested in their daily endorphin dose by playing Rambo and winning on their FOTM-broken OP spec.

 

I would generally agree that a lot of comments are made by players who don't really think about or care about the overall game balance.

But there are those that do. I play Mesmer and Necro and I think *most* of the changes were reasonable. I think the changes to shade duration and sand sage largely have no impact on DPS or alac builds, other than forcing them to spam skills more and affording less ground coverage, just to prevent too much alac/barrier targets (which I have to imagine there were other workarounds and I'm not talking about unimaginative railroading traits like putting it alac on Sand Savant). And I think Virtuosos and their razor thin job fantasy need even more nerfs and more imagination injected into that spec.

[Sugar Min.5834]

3 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Thumps up! Someone has the guts to say the truth!

GW2 players want always balance to go their way.....mesmers crying that virtuoso block got nerfed....necro crying that scourge got nerfed...and so on. People talk only out of self-interest, have no clue or care for general balance and are only interested in their daily endorphin dose by playing Rambo and winning on their FOTM-broken OP spec.

 

It must be years ago when you last played this game.

What ANet is doing is not just nerfs. I believe everyone is ok with that if a balance is needed. The thing is, their patches are always KILLING few ELITE professions every year. The team already has been handling out nerf patches here and there throughout the year and still that is not enough? No sir. Wham! They will kill your favorite professions with a crippling and deadly patch once or twice a year. EVERY YEAR.

This has been ongoing for years and I wonder which professions will be in line in2024? And how many more such high handed nerfs can players take it? This is 2023 many newer and more advanced mmos are coming up fast. Is ANet forcing loyal players to quit and go to greener pastures? Many already did that and more will follow up for sure. And for those very unhappy players waiting for the right mmos to appear, I don't know about the rest but for me, simple..  NO MORE GEM AND EXPANSION PURCHASES. Enough is enough. Period.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Min Min.9368

[Arheundel.6451]

42 minutes ago, Min Min.9368 said:

It must be years ago when you last played this game.

What ANet is doing is not just nerfs. I believe everyone is ok with that if a balance is needed. The thing is, their patches are always KILLING few ELITE professions every year. The team already has been handling out nerf patches here and there throughout the year and still that is not enough? No sir. Wham! They will kill your favorite professions with a crippling and deadly patch once or twice a year. EVERY YEAR.

This has been ongoing for years and I wonder which professions will be in line in2024? And how many more such high handed nerfs can players take it? This is 2023 many newer and more advanced mmos are coming up fast. Is ANet forcing loyal players to quit and go to greener pastures? Many already did that and more will follow up for sure. And for those very unhappy players waiting for the right mmos to appear, I don't know about the rest but for me, simple..  NO MORE GEM AND EXPANSION PURCHASES. Enough is enough. Period.

You need to specify what you mean by "killing a spec", and that it's open to interpretation. GW2 players tend to say:" you killed my favourite spec" even when a game bug gets addressed. I played Ranger for 6k hours, one of my other mains and I was really bemused when Rangers players started to cry about the removal of Ancient Seed, saying..you can guess:" Anet killed my spec"...like absolute copium, that trait was pure design nightmare garbage and removing it killed druid???

Mesmers players saying: "you killed my class" after some necessary nerfs to Mirage and Virtuoso...like it's normal going around stacking up to 15s of our immunity/block then going into stealth all the while burst/condi people from 1200 range with no scope skills with auto-homing...that's balanced and correct in a GW2 player's mind

And like mesmers and ranger...all communities think the same, so whenever a GW2 player says:" You killed my spec"...I will take it with a grain of salt

[Imperial.8471]

And you also have people who have objective feedback and see the design flaws of the patch for what they are.

F5 block on Virtuoso is to compensate the absence of clones as decoy defense and fodder from other Mesmer specs. Removing it from WvW and PvP was probably justified, but in PvE ? Virtuoso is now super frail with very little defense. Against a group of trash mobs it can easily get downed if they don't perfectly line up for its piercing attacks. So what's the point of the game modes split ? And also, blocking was all that skill did. That and abysmal damage. When they removed the block, they just removed the block, they didn't bother replace it with something else. That is objectively lazy balancing

On the other hand you have the alacrity on Bladesworn. I love my heal bladesworn, and the last patch left it one of the last healers who doesn't sacrifice its healing for boon uptime. But 18s of alacrity on draggon trigger with my harrier gear ? I can say it is too much and should be nerfed. That's being objective

And the forums are full of this. People pointing out not how their favorite class should be made OP, but how the balance patch destroyed important mechanics, forced poorly designed new mechanics instead (active boon generation on reactive healing skills), and made some classes, if still viable, just awful and unfun to play with way worse button spamming than ever before. And THAT is feedback Anet should listen too. Should have listened too before going through with the update. And will probably just ignore despite specifically asking for our feedback

[GetFoxxed.9478]

7 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Mesmers players saying: "you killed my class" after some necessary nerfs to Mirage and Virtuoso

Mirage dodge nerf in PvE was not necessary. Same for Virtuoso F5 nerf.

[Arheundel.6451]

2 hours ago, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

Mirage dodge nerf in PvE was not necessary. Same for Virtuoso F5 nerf.

The dodge nerf was certainly wrong, nobody can claim otherwise. What should have been nerfed are traits like Infinite Horizon, which made Mirages a royal pain in the kitten to fight to a point where people were simply quitting the game and the same devs called Mirage design...kitten. The same devs who made the spec, called it kitten design. Mirage became a groundbreaking issue when mirage players started to use IH, which was not part of the original Mirage meta at launch. 

Many players, me included, suggested to nerf Mirage in a proper way by hitting the actual issues like Infinite Horizon for starters and ofc....GW2 players being GW2 players, rather than getting behind and suggest proper nerfs to Mirage, they decided to call names and belittle anybody who would suggest nerfs to an OP spec.

Gutting specs is never the correct way to achieve balance and more people should be mindful of that, at the same time, more people should be self-reflecting, less egotistical and humble. Any person with a minimum of common sense, can go and see when something is clearly overperforming, then show some honesty and clearly indicate what needs fixing while maintaining the fun and viability of a spec.

I played Ranger, guardian, warrior and Ele for thousand and thousand of hours and not once I didn't come here to make a nerf thread when things were obviously out of hand:

1. I made a thread to nerf Boonbeast by targeting Moa Stance: got attacked and belittled by ranger main
2. Made a thread to nerf Druid by removing ancient seed: got attacked and belittle by ranger mains
3. Made a thread to nerf burning on ele: got attacked by eles this time
4. Made a thread to nerf the Rampage Elite: got attacked by wars this time
5. Made a thread to nerf DragonHunter and trap runes: again attacked, this time by guardians

I made a thread every time something was clearly broken and all options to try and contain it, were exhausted, only when we reached a point in time with dozen and dozen of people playing the same spec to death everywhere.

I recognize and denounce when something is clearly overperforming, I don't laugh at people and tell them to L2P, just yesterday I made a thread to nerf ele scepter burning output...stupid design and I played ele for 10k hours now. By contrast I well remember mesmer mains telling people to L2P...L2dodge....when facing a condi mirage.....4-5 ambush attacks applying condis while the mesmer was staffing around from 1200 range, unreachable and untouchable..going stealth/distortion rotation if and when under pressure somehow, a kitten design that eventually even the devs had to admit.

When something ger gutted, I feel sorry for that handful of honest players who asked for nerfs beforehand...but the rest..can keep crying wolf and stack sad/confuse emoji all they like

[Arheundel.6451]

2 hours ago, Imperial.8471 said:

And you also have people who have objective feedback and see the design flaws of the patch for what they are.

F5 block on Virtuoso is to compensate the absence of clones as decoy defense and fodder from other Mesmer specs. Removing it from WvW and PvP was probably justified, but in PvE ? Virtuoso is now super frail with very little defense. Against a group of trash mobs it can easily get downed if they don't perfectly line up for its piercing attacks. So what's the point of the game modes split ? And also, blocking was all that skill did. That and abysmal damage. When they removed the block, they just removed the block, they didn't bother replace it with something else. That is objectively lazy balancing

On the other hand you have the alacrity on Bladesworn. I love my heal bladesworn, and the last patch left it one of the last healers who doesn't sacrifice its healing for boon uptime. But 18s of alacrity on draggon trigger with my harrier gear ? I can say it is too much and should be nerfed. That's being objective

And the forums are full of this. People pointing out not how their favorite class should be made OP, but how the balance patch destroyed important mechanics, forced poorly designed new mechanics instead (active boon generation on reactive healing skills), and made some classes, if still viable, just awful and unfun to play with way worse button spamming than ever before. And THAT is feedback Anet should listen too. Should have listened too before going through with the update. And will probably just ignore despite specifically asking for our feedback

I am sorry for those few honest mesmer players...but you can blame those "individuals" who cried blood for months to get distortion on Virtuoso when it was completely unnecessary and those same people, rather than ask for less access to distortion ... went with the usual:" L2P noob, virtuoso is fine"

[Imperial.8471]

Of course some people are idiots. But it's on both the player's and the developper's sides. Or did you forget the previous balance team lead who boosted or nerfed classes based on what he liked ? 

It's a matter of critical thinking, being able to sort objective valuable feedback and whining based on selfish wishes. And it's part of the balance team's job. Problem is their own view of balance seems to be of the second sort

[GetFoxxed.9478]

Just now, Imperial.8471 said:

 Or did you forget the previous balance team lead who boosted or nerfed classes based on what he liked ? 

It seems like these devs do the same. Elementalist is OP in PvP, and guess what. One of the balance devs is pvp/wvw ele main.

[Suyheuti.1732]

1 hour ago, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

It seems like these devs do the same. Elementalist is OP in PvP, and guess what. One of the balance devs is pvp/wvw ele main.

Come on!!! My main is mesmer but elementalists have been suffering for a long time. Let them enjoy their classes for a while. 

[Mongk.2458]

I just hope they give up the mandatory boon sharing of quickness and alacrity.

Let healers heal and provide boons like might, fury, prot with specifics traits that affect their damage and make them a support.

And DPSs have access to self quickness making them a part of the rotation as a burst window. They already started implementing boons as part of traits that ties to the class mechanics, just improve on that and the hell of mandatory boons will fade.