It's time for new balance devs. Again.

[Serephen.3420]

3 minutes ago, Ken Yuudachi.9807 said:

I just got fired last month. The customers ordered some mustard burgers, but I sneaked in ketchup, which I “thought” was better and caused some fatal allergies among 300 customers.

Lmao

Wow...that kinda sucks😅

Thankfully balance changes don't kill anyone so it's a bit of a different situation 😂

[Gendalfs.7521]

3 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

Thankfully balance changes don't kill anyone so it's a bit of a different situation 😂

Yeah I dont want GW2 to be killed.

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 6/29/2023 at 3:17 AM, Echostorm.9143 said:

There are literally hundreds of pages of people talking about classes and balance here spanning years utterly devoid of anet engagement.  It's astonishing CMC is still even involved after the leaks. 

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.

Edited June 30, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[GetFoxxed.9478]

28 minutes ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

The people on the forums mostly 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.

Mirage dodge nerf in PvE was outright atrocious.

[Esufer.8762]

I don't agree that we need new balance devs, more that we need more staff supporting them in the pre-patch cycle - that is testing that everything works properly and there's no outliers/obviously broken stuff that makes the game borderline unplayable for some days.

[Gendalfs.7521]

3 hours ago, Esufer.8762 said:

I don't agree that we need new balance devs, more that we need more staff supporting them in the pre-patch cycle - that is testing that everything works properly and there's no outliers/obviously broken stuff that makes the game borderline unplayable for some days.

What about 4 weeks of feedback, theoretical ofc, but ..

[Esufer.8762]

11 minutes ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

What about 4 weeks of feedback, theoretical ofc, but ..

I appreciate that feedback was given, but I doubt the feedback included the -95% damage reduction herald, Spellbreakers stripping all boons every single boon strip, or Deadeyes stealing for 10k in competitive game modes - unless the feedback did manage to forsee all those in which case I will stand corrected.

Also, more people to go through and digest feedback is surely not a bad thing?

[Echostorm.9143]

Get rid of CmC and hire MukLuk.

[GetFoxxed.9478]

22 minutes ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Get rid of CmC and hire MukLuk.

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.

Edited June 30, 2023 by GetFoxxed.9478

[Gendalfs.7521]

13 minutes ago, 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.

Hiring a youtuber can be risky. I like Mukluk how he called this patch what it is without saying anything.

Youtuber could be adviser, but what makes adviser if dev cant get the thing right.

P.s. Theres a theory that Teapot is involved with this patch, dunno if its true, but he was rating scourge S++ and now its nerfed 😄

Edited June 30, 2023 by Gendalfs.7521

[Jski.6180]

The current dev did to an update to the update with in 2 days that kind of fast (maybe a bit too fast for ppl to get the full feel of the update).

[GetFoxxed.9478]

3 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

The current dev did to an update to the update with in 2 days that kind of fast (maybe a bit too fast for ppl to get the full feel of the update).

And didnt address a lot of issues. Signets on necro. Dodge on mirage. Druid having to waste heal skills for alac. Etc.

[Jski.6180]

Just now, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

And didnt address a lot of issues. Signets on necro. Dodge on mirage. Druid having to waste heal skills for alac. Etc.

That the thing they are removing all cdr on traits and mirage one dodge has been part of the class for some time AND alac / quickness is part of the class effect not its utility.

These things have nothing to do with the dev but just the way the game is moving. Its like trying to ignore the changes to the other classes up to this point but once they start effects your classes then there a problem. The current updates are just making every thing else in line with the reset of the game ppl have been using them as meta because they where not inline with the reset of the game.

[Gendalfs.7521]

34 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

The current updates are just making every thing else in line with the reset of the game

WTF asked for reset? Im missing something?

[Acheron.1580]

I don't really think the updates are lining everything up though. They don't even test them, let alone understand them. Here's the most basic example I can give, Druid alac vs Specter alac. They both require you to use your "Shroud form" skills. Druid's alac uptime was .75 seconds, specters was 2 seconds. Druid CA form can't be used unless it has full bar, you lose bar when you leave it, specter has neither of those problems. At every single angle of this which is the closest simple comparison, it makes literally no sense that druid got shafted so hard, or that they were designed so drastically different. That is also ignoring the more serious issue that the CA is an important healing utility and tying their alacrity to it was a mistake, or the fact that since the update they can't maintain might or prot anymore either. It becomes a nightmare piano spam playstyle that not only feels but performs badly. Rather than trying to modify numbers to fix it it really needs to be reconsidered as a whole, and they are instead ignoring the problem and trying to treat the symptoms they caused themselves.

So what do the devs suggest? .25 seconds more alac uptime on CA abilities and more might but only on a trait. It's laughably bad and doesn't address any of the concerns the community has. The problem with the current team is that they have demonstrated

- lack of knowledge and understanding  of their own game (beyond the one class they play) across PvE, PvP and WvW.

- lack of critical thinking skills when making changes and how it will impact the class as a whole, or ability to reverse course when it doesn't work.

- the inability to listen to constructive feedback and apply it

- the humility to admit they made a mistake and either A) delay the patch or B) fix it or roll it back

- demonstratively don't even run internal tests which would have shown that their "conservative" values wouldn't work

- lack of communication. They didn't even acknowledge anything until patch day. Barely. It was a sidenote in the patch notes.

Some of these are easily fixed by having more people to help out, and then there are some where it's just a flaw in the person themselves. They clearly have the ability to set up Beta tests, as we just got one, they just don't put in the time or effort and that's something you don't want from someone you pay to do their job.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Acheron.1580
Accidentally a word

[Mike.7983]

2 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Get rid of CmC and hire MukLuk.

You mean hire someone who actually plays the game and is way more qualified? yes please.

[Voyant.1327]

On 6/28/2023 at 12:48 PM, GetFoxxed.9478 said:

There is a reason why great soldiers don't always make for great commanders..

This is perfect. Too many people think its hostile when its just plain true. Not everyone is cut out for every job or role. Good leadership requires listening, good execution, inspiring confidence, and delivering results.

That's not happening.

We're getting chaos & uncertainty. 

[Zuras.5394]

Areanet is better at pushing new skins for people to buy then they are at fixing and listing to their players advice. They barely can come up with original ideas anymore. First intro of the new expansion I see the "eye of Sauron" twice.  Really devs?  Then this whole wizard in a castle, the entire concept taken from ESO third expansion Summerset.  sigh....professions still have issues, why not fix them before releasing new content?   I don't what happened to this company, its not like it was anymore and its becoming frustrating.

[melcor.1094]

Totally agree. Only have to add: Bad/ average soldiers make even more unlikely good commanders

[Batalix.2873]

This goes beyond balance devs at this point.

The many specific design decisions behind SotO seem pretty clear evidence to me that the entire dev team is comprised mostly of people who likely didn't work on the brilliant pre-IBS design that gave this game so much of its fundamental strengths. This is a unified effort, one that (a) does not respect or particularly care about preserving older systems/features that were cornerstones of GW2, and (b) is not investing much forethought into the future stability and depth of the game.

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 by a company that gave up on this game in 2019/2020.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Astralporing.1957]

15 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

I mean, over the year they’ve been in place they’ve had more hits than misses and balance has generally been better than under the previous teams. Not to mention actual communication, goal posting, etc. and actual balance patches more than once a year. 

Notice, that most of the "hits" are just barely fixing the results of previous misses

[Rdm.3186]

6 hours ago, 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.

Sry but Mukluk, as nice as he is as a person, is not good enough at the game nor has enough knowledge/ understanding of the game and the classes. Its just a Roy in green and a CmC in pleasant. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Rdm.3186

[Gesbo.6420]

I suggest a community quarter - changes solely made from community suggestions. Changes that the community wants for their classes. 

 

Like make a post like the feedback, let's agree to be civil and not tell the developers how horrible their ideas are and just give constructive criticism about the game. The rest of the year tween all the changes that the community has suggested so its balanced and then bring another community balance even. 

 

Either that or I want explanation from the designers as to where exactly bladesong requiem is a useful skill...

[kawaiiboy.2685]

CMC impeachment 2023

 

Bye lol

[Mazinger.1084]

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.