Hey balance team, do you even know what to address?

[Varis.5467]

Seriously, balance team, do you guys even look at what our feedbacks point to? 

You might not address our concern the way many of us suggest but you don't even seem to be addressing the issues raised by the players. 

It is as of we called in someone to replace a broken window but they show up only to replace the toilet. 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Varis.5467

[Sandzibar.5134]

The beatings will continue until morale improves

[Gendalfs.7521]

I have impression that info from forums go nowhere. Feedback is meme.

[Infinity.2876]

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

[Lily.1935]

33 minutes ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

9.5 out of the 10 necro players were telling them the 8 second shade duration was a bad idea.

[Narrenwinter.2637]

Devs don't read, Devs don't care.

If it's not about their personal Raid preferences, that is. 

[psizone.8437]

51 minutes ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

They have the ability to run polls to find out which issues for each class to address. They can also message people in game to ask them to participate in those polls if you're worried about the silent majority that don't use the forums.

Their current method for balancing, whatever it might be, doesn't seem to be very popular - especially when they completely change how some classes play.

They really need a proper forum manager(s) who can liaise with the devs and the forum commenters properly for balancing.

[Echostorm.9143]

1 hour ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

Found another CmC alt account!

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Infinity.2876 said:

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

Is that a rhetorical question?

If you know your stuff, you will quickly recognize which arguments are well founded and which are not.

Bonus answer: If more than usual many people agree and tell you together that something is broken/faulty, then there is a high probability that it is.

[Raarsi.6798]

56 minutes ago, Narrenwinter.2637 said:

Devs don't read, Devs don't care.

If it's not about their personal Raid preferences, that is. 

And that's how we know that all the devs are guardian mains.

[Gendalfs.7521]

2 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

If more than usual many people agree and tell you together that something is broken/faulty, then there is a high probability that it is

If its looks like kitten, smells like kitten, tastes like kitten, its probably kitten 😄 

[Voyant.1327]

They do, they see players having fun and decide they need to reign that in.

Literally the entire balance philosophy is "lets upset our players, make the game significantly worse every June, & then do absolutely nothing substantial but post a "band-aid" patch without actually addressing the complaints."

It is blatantly obvious what the players want  & just looking at the official responses the developers are doing the exact opposite. 

Players want to have fun enjoying their class, not constantly feel like they're less then what they were two years ago.

Everyone: End the boon plague, give back fun.

Developers: More Boons! Lets change all of these skills randomly, lets add another f skill, then nerf the other f skill to oblivion...

Essentially to me it starts looking like:

oh wait lets add .02 coefficient to offset the rabbits foot charm we added because we nerfed rabbits... But squirrels get .04 to the identical skill because they're not rabbits & we hate rabbits. 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Voyant.1327

[Hotride.2187]

But instead of replacing the toilet, they broke the fridge and the table, for good measure.

[Kaizz.7306]

5 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

I have impression that info from forums go nowhere. Feedback is meme.

What's sad is at some point, it did seem to make a difference. Engis were in an uproar about some of the changes proposed last year, and it worked. The changes were reverted. AFter that, just seems like they stopped listening.

[Zephire.8049]

5 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

That's not it, though. It's a whole team—CMC and Roy are just the heads/faces of it—who is being paid for it.

If a team of researchers asked a group of, say, 100 people, there's the expectation that since they're doing their job and being paid for it while the volunteers are not that they would at the very least compare notes and pick common and/or serious concerns to look into further. If said team decided to blow off everyone and go with their initial gut feelings, it would be shoddy research. A farce that goes through the motions to look legit and caring but has all the validity of a corporation which already planned an outcome and paid people to write something so it looks like the proper steps were followed and it's not at all biased.

Except it wasn't 100 or even 10 people they asked, it was an open platform where hundreds of people responded, if not thousands. It's already the minority of players who check official forums of any video game and it's even a smaller group who posts so the responses they got were by people with more investment in the game than a lot of players even if it was only to complain.

And once again, it is literally their job to do what you say is too much/too hard for them. There's plenty of people who would have been happy to sort out the complaints in all 75+ pages (at the very least, there's also the individual profession subforums) to compile in a bite-size way if they had been paid for it if the entire balance team was too busy to look at feedback they solicited themself, too.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

It's called basic job competence.

[Mnemesis.8257]

6 hours ago, psizone.8437 said:

They have the ability to run polls to find out which issues for each class to address. They can also message people in game to ask them to participate in those polls if you're worried about the silent majority that don't use the forums.

Their current method for balancing, whatever it might be, doesn't seem to be very popular - especially when they completely change how some classes play.

They really need a proper forum manager(s) who can liaise with the devs and the forum commenters properly for balancing.

All of this was done at the start of the game, and shocker, the only opinions they valued were those of the top 1% from PvP because they doubled as advertising during competitive gaming events. The end result were decisions made in a vacuum, that for obvious reason, only appealed to a select group of individuals and were not logically sound performance alterations based upon serious and objective observation.

There was one point at which they realized the above methodology was a problem and had to back track to undo the damage that had been wrought. This was the introduction of a poll to determine which classes the COMMUNITY felt were seriously underperforming at the time. The end results of this scenario, in my opinion, were generally productive. There was obvious overcompensation performed and adjustments to be expected, as well as time for 'the dust to settle' if you will. It is one of the only times in my memory that the game's quality of life improved positively for a majority of users and not just the Dev's flavor of the month. I'm sure there are those that disagree with me on that front, but I wouldn't be opposed to them sending out the community feelers again IF it generates productive results. The current policy of radio silence meets Zuckerberg trying to mimic pleasant human expressions is just disorienting and insultingly creepy.

[Acheron.1580]

1 hour ago, Zephire.8049 said:

That's not it, though. It's a whole team—CMC and Roy are just the heads/faces of it—who is being paid for it.

If a team of researchers asked a group of, say, 100 people, there's the expectation that since they're doing their job and being paid for it while the volunteers are not that they would at the very least compare notes and pick common and/or serious concerns to look into further. If said team decided to blow off everyone and go with their initial gut feelings, it would be shoddy research. A farce that goes through the motions to look legit and caring but has all the validity of a corporation which already planned an outcome and paid people to write something so it looks like the proper steps were followed and it's not at all biased.

Except it wasn't 100 or even 10 people they asked, it was an open platform where hundreds of people responded, if not thousands. It's already the minority of players who check official forums of any video game and it's even a smaller group who posts so the responses they got were by people with more investment in the game than a lot of players even if it was only to complain.

And once again, it is literally their job to do what you say is too much/too hard for them. There's plenty of people who would have been happy to sort out the complaints in all 75+ pages (at the very least, there's also the individual profession subforums) to compile in a bite-size way if they had been paid for it if the entire balance team was too busy to look at feedback they solicited themself, too.

If I could super duper like this I would. It is exactly the crux of it, these people are being PAID to do this work, and I see no evidence that they are. There is no way some of these changes would have come through if there had even been a single days worth of internal testing, and we got saddled with it for 3 weeks. There is no indication or communication that suggests they even read ANY of the issues people had with the patches. It takes so little time to comb through these forums for relevant information and even if you don't agree with it, if something pops up frequently then statistically it should maybe be something you at least address instead of just ignore because "you know best".

When people are demonstrating that they aren't doing their job, or aren't doing it well, or their decisions are costing the company money (ie voiced opinions on not pre-ordering the expansion because the balance team has done such a horrendous job), maybe it's time to find people who are passionate about their work instead of proud, stubborn and lazy.

[Borked.6824]

21 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's called basic job competence.

Couldn't be any clearer.  I work as a licensed creative professional, and I learned really fast that almost creative tasks are not about means, methods, beauty, passion, or the cool thing.  They're about muddy problem solving.  I spend 90% of my week sitting in calls and on spreadsheets trying to figure out which of the dozen options causes the least friction at the expense of what I really wanna do.  And I'm kitten good at it because if I don't I get loaded with 3 dozen more problems at best.  And I don't get an angry scowl and fowl words from clients like we have here if I veer off into neverland. I get fired.  Imagine if that's what was at stake here...Anet would perish in 2 weeks.

Developers need to make ample use of the tools and data available to them and not sit in the clouds fabricating alternate realities.  Trust me, I try it all the time with ideas and they literally never work.

[Varis.5467]

8 hours ago, Infinity.2876 said:

with all the class bias out there can you blame them?

for example: If you go into a room and 10 people are telling you different things how do you know which one is right?

Yes, yes we can. 

It is literally part of their job to figure out which issue to prioritise.

The feedbacks pertaining to the June 27 balance preview AND the patch were demonstrably clear about the most glaring issues - none of which were addressed in the so called "Follow-up" patch that was "ment to address these concerns". 

[Varis.5467]

4 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

But instead of replacing the toilet, they broke the fridge and the table, for good measure.

Hey what are they gonna fill their timesheets with if they fixed all the actual problems. 🤔 /s

Edited July 19, 2023 by Varis.5467

[Matoro.9708]

11 hours ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

Found another CmC alt account!

They'd bother?

Imagine if this game were like OSRS and players voted on updates LOL

[Zok.4956]

15 hours ago, Voyant.1327 said:

They do, they see players having fun and decide they need to reign that in.

With 1-2 devs (see the chat leaks from a year ago), I'm not sure about that, but I don't think Anet, as a company, makes changes just to take away the fun of the game for the players. While it can often be the result of changes, it is certainly not the goal of the changes.

Players who don't enjoy the game stop playing or spend less or no money on the game and Anet earns less. While this can be "collateral damage" from changes, it will never be Anet's goal.

[Mic.1897]

On 7/19/2023 at 8:21 AM, Gendalfs.7521 said:

I have impression that info from forums go nowhere. Feedback is meme.

To be fair, doomers on video game forums are a meme

[Carnifex.3275]

It feels like that scene from walking dead where Negan is counting out whom to pick and kill. You are never safe. Maybe you are happy for now but who knows whats around the corner. Maybe the bat is coming for you next. And that's the main issue i have. No matter what you do you are always at the mercy of devs and they can literally destroy all the fun you have with the game very quickly. So let's say they "fix" my class by some miracle next time after i patiently wait for it. I won't even care at that point anymore cuz i know it's a matter of time until it gets hammered again. They need to achieve actual balance. Not just kill some revive some and shuffle it endlessly.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Carnifex.3275