Secrets of the Obscure Balance Follow-Ups

[soulknight.9620]

@Anet Im not here to whine or anything, but its 6 days till balance patch and we still havent got a patch preview. Are you guys changing your policy on communicating changes again?

Edited September 20, 2023 by soulknight.9620

[Matoro.9708]

On 9/18/2023 at 11:32 PM, Thorus.9518 said:

First of all, great job with the expansion! 

The DPS meter in pvp is right now incredible high. It feels to me, that every class in pvp needs to be dmg reduced. It is not that one class is incredible overperforming, it is more that each and every class is able to oneshot. 

Every class? Please go try core engi.

On 9/19/2023 at 8:45 AM, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

But how does buffing core skill even remotely fixes both the homogenization and powercreep issue? In fact, how do you even buff the core skills anyway? What's the plan there? Because you can't just randomly start buffing and nerfing stuff retroactively. It's what happening now, and Anet's balancing team just can't handle it.

The core skill isn't the problem, nor is the Meta builds you keep seeing. The problem is Anet's vision of giving everyone every tool in the game for the sake of diversity and variety. Every class now has access to quickness and alacrity, Each class now have access to their elite weapon spec. They make huge changes like these, and then they act surprised when every profession across the board can achieve 42k dps or higher.

I didn't touch core skills because it's irreverent. They have nothing to do as to why the balance is so kittened. It's Anet vision. It's not working. At all. Their vision only causes problems.

It works because the skills that are the problem aren't core skills, lmao. I agree that quickness and alacrity are awful. I definitely want a more conservative approach.

I see people complaining about scourge, I doubt it's using shadow fiend for example in its meta build. Or mechanist using rocket boots. The elite utilities and weapons are wack compared to core. This is my issue. The core experience is relatively unusable and I guess my stance is this should be fixed first compared to the boon problem.

[illuminati.8453]

On 9/11/2023 at 3:24 PM, Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Hi everyone,

 

Just a heads up that our next round of balance adjustments will be coming on September 26. This will include changes to address some overperforming builds in PvE (on top of a few small adjustments going out in tomorrow’s build to address some outliers in competitive modes). We’ll continue to keep a close eye on things after that update and may make additional tuning adjustments as needed outside of our regular balance cycle.

And....?  Why did you post this?  

Let me put this another way.

"Hey there, fellow gamers!

I hope this message finds you in a state of blissful apathy, just like us here at ANet. We're thrilled to announce that we've got an update coming your way! Or so I'm told.

What's in the update, you ask? Well, we've thrown together a bunch of random balance changes that may or may not improve your gaming experience. Who knows.

So, keep gaming with ANet, where mediocrity meets indifference. Stay unenthusiastic and game on... or not. Whatever floats your boat."

Edited September 20, 2023 by illuminati.8453

[doc.9162]

gonna be a real bear to balance everything.. gl devs 🙂

[Thorus.9518]

15 hours ago, Matoro.9708 said:

Every class? Please go try core engi.

 

@Matoro.9708

Yes every class in pvp has to high Damage. The DPS meter is just crazy and allows plenty of oneshots.

To your question about core engi: You can do massive burst damage even with core grenadier. But this doesn't mean that the build is overpowered (actually core engi grenadier is not a good build at all). It just means that the DPS meter in total in pvp is just to high.

 

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

18 hours ago, Matoro.9708 said:

It works because the skills that are the problem aren't core skills, lmao. I agree that quickness and alacrity are awful. I definitely want a more conservative approach.

I see people complaining about scourge, I doubt it's using shadow fiend for example in its meta build. Or mechanist using rocket boots. The elite utilities and weapons are wack compared to core. This is my issue. The core experience is relatively unusable and I guess my stance is this should be fixed first compared to the boon problem.

The only reason people are using Elite weapon now is because Anet axed the restriction in place that prevented players from using said weapon outside of specs like renegade or bladesworn. That's why everything is so grossly overpowered now, because Guild wars 2 never intended the player to use Pistol and torch on a scourge. That's not even mentioning all the buff Scourge got.

It's not that core skills are too weak, because lets be honest, People still use some core weapon and utility skills even after SOTO patch. It's everything else. We're too juiced, Because of all the previous patches up to this point. If anything, Anet should address the power creep. They need a solid plan, Not randomly buff or nerf things and hoping it would appease folks.

[Matoro.9708]

48 minutes ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

The only reason people are using Elite weapon now is because Anet axed the restriction in place that prevented players from using said weapon outside of specs like renegade or bladesworn. That's why everything is so grossly overpowered now, because Guild wars 2 never intended the player to use Pistol and torch on a scourge. That's not even mentioning all the buff Scourge got.

It's not that core skills are too weak, because lets be honest, People still use some core weapon and utility skills even after SOTO patch. It's everything else. We're too juiced, Because of all the previous patches up to this point. If anything, Anet should address the power creep. They need a solid plan, Not randomly buff or nerf things and hoping it would appease folks.

Here's an idea... nerf the pistol and torch, or scourge, or a bit of both? It seems simple enough to me. I don't understand the doom and gloom.

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

2 hours ago, Matoro.9708 said:

Here's an idea... nerf the pistol and torch, or scourge, or a bit of both? It seems simple enough to me. I don't understand the doom and gloom.

Lmao, if you think the solution is as simple as nerfing pistol, torch and even scourage, you're in for a rude awakening lol.

If you start nerfing everything that synergies with these two weapons, What ends up happening is that you start to indirectly nerf the tools Necromancy has for no reason, and as a result, you start nerfing builds that has nothing to do with today meta, and make them even weaker.

That's the reality Anet created. There are too many variables to consider now, and it resulted in everything getting tangled. You can't change something without affecting something completely unrelated, and that goes for other classes too, not just necromancy. So no, it's not simple. It's more complex than you realize. I know because this is exactly How Zenimax balance Elder scrolls online. I know where this direction is heading too, and it's nothing good.

And No, I don't have faith in the balance team, and if you look at this thread, not many folks here have faith either. When you have patches like june 2022, and the it's latest cousin, how can you?

When you post a balance follow up with nothing to show? They're either hiding something, or have absolutely no idea how they're going to fix this mess.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267

[VictorLeal.4102]

It seems that the balance philosophy has once again been forgotten... Are you going to ignore the previews again or just post something on the Friday before the patch? How do you want feedback if the changes are ready to go live?

I want a job like that even a monkey can do without worrying about the players

Bonus Event: Forum Moderator, if you are reading this, go do something more useful like answering players' questions, just deleting criticism saying that it is not constructive and does not make this game better.

Edited September 22, 2023 by VictorLeal.4102

[zeyeti.8347]

Plz anet don't just look at benchmarks , i barely see any ele in instanced content , it may be a bit overperforming with sword and warhorn but it's still a high difficulty curve to pull the bench , so maybe buff the other weapons...

Scourge and herald are indeed overperforming but don't destroy those builds to oblivion , just force the herald to play a bit with diviner stats and reduce the base concentration it has because 40% boon duration without any concentration gear ... hell thats a lot , also i think a new stats combination for power support would be great , something like concentration/precision maxed and power/ferocity min max. , diviner is not likable cause you have to invest in high crit. chance from sigils , runes or assassin stats , while condi support loose barely any damage with some ritualist gear.

Also i agree with everyone ... you told you ll show the pre released patch ... i just hope to not see a remake off the famous "banner patch" , i understand you don't like backlash (nobody likes to be backlashed) but this is part of the game , many players here have played the game so much they know better , they told you the banner rework was a joke , they told you putting +5% crit. chance in a condi traitline has no purpose , so the backlash , even if it is painfull to read , has some constructive part , tell yourself it's because we love the game we act so.

And don't forget we still have purtid tier traits like Deadly Aim , Conjurer , ... who needs a purpose in the game , cause actually their sole prupose is to exist ... and to be useless. A lot of the trait who gave -20% cd reduction to X or Y still need an overhaul too.

Edited September 22, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Gendalfs.7521]

Last feedback thread had 1.5k responses and guess what? They changed nothing. 

[thief.7429]

2 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Last feedback thread had 1.5k responses and guess what? They changed nothing. 

that's basically how it went 

[VictorLeal.4102]

Yea no preview, ArenaNet always surprises me negatively... Anyway, even if there was one it would be ready to be released, nothing will change that.

Let's wait for Tuesday xD

[Kuma.1503]

Delete Mechanical Genius. 

[Loke.1429]

WvW balance when? Cornerstone?

To be honest you are wasting too much balance changes on PVE. Balance there doesnt have a real consequence, outside of elitist preferences and trivializing content when you made ridiculous changes ofc. Real consequence for WvW and PVP is that people stop playing, since balance is everything for those modes.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Loke.1429

[zeyeti.8347]

18 hours ago, Loke.1429 said:

WvW balance when? Cornerstone?

To be honest you are wasting too much balance changes on PVE. Balance there doesnt have a real consequence, outside of elitist preferences and trivializing content when you made ridiculous changes ofc. Real consequence for WvW and PVP is that people stop playing, since balance is everything for those modes.

It has , we clear content in 5 minutes instead of 8 now with the powercreep , the healers have become so strong you can carry out a lot of new players with ease on certain content . It's not because you don't like a content you can pretend nothing affects it , it's like i say wvw is just a big bubble of people pressing buttons smashing against each other and pvp is full of bots anyway ...

Also i know you don't like to hear that but wvw and pvp seems to not have enough success for anet to spend time on it , just look at raids in pve , anet has the numbers and it seems things ppl don't play as content are leftover , last pvp big added content ? stronghold (from 2019) last wvw big added content ? warclaw (2019 too) , last raid added ? adashim (2019 too) seems 2019 was a really sad year for gw , they left over all content they feel had not enough success , meanwhile look at pve open world who is blossoming and will , from anet words , have 3 new maps each year , i know it's casual stuff , it's easy , blablabla ... but thats what the meanstream gw 2 players wants , ppl on this forum , like you and me , represent a very little percentage of the kind of ppl playing the game ,.

Edited September 24, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Angesombre.4630]

The patch I already feared before the release of SotO

[GamerToad.9248]

Place your bets here on how warrior is getting murdered next balance patch.

[Loke.1429]

12 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

It has , we clear content in 5 minutes instead of 8 now with the powercreep , the healers have become so strong you can carry out a lot of new players with ease on certain content . It's not because you don't like a content you can pretend nothing affects it , it's like i say wvw is just a big bubble of people pressing buttons smashing against each other and pvp is full of bots anyway ...

Also i know you don't like to hear that but wvw and pvp seems to not have enough success for anet to spend time on it , just look at raids in pve , anet has the numbers and it seems things ppl don't play as content are leftover , last pvp big added content ? stronghold (from 2019) last wvw big added content ? warclaw (2019 too) , last raid added ? adashim (2019 too) seems 2019 was a really sad year for gw , they left over all content they feel had not enough success , meanwhile look at pve open world who is blossoming and will , from anet words , have 3 new maps each year , i know it's casual stuff , it's easy , blablabla ... but thats what the meanstream gw 2 players wants , ppl on this forum , like you and me , represent a very little percentage of the kind of ppl playing the game ,.

You got your strikes, fractals and what not, we wvw'ers get nothing

Edited September 24, 2023 by Loke.1429

[Loke.1429]

On 9/23/2023 at 1:39 PM, Loke.1429 said:

WvW balance when? Cornerstone?

To be honest you are wasting too much balance changes on PVE. Balance there doesnt have a real consequence, outside of elitist preferences and trivializing content when you made ridiculous changes ofc. Real consequence for WvW and PVP is that people stop playing, since balance is everything for those modes.

"Ranger

Untamed

• Neurotoxin Burst: Reduced the bleeding and poison stacks from 3 to 2 and the duration of each from 8 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP only.
• Solar Brilliance: Reduced the base heal per pulse from 298 to 170 in PvP only.

"
I fought this build in a 2v2 in wvw, still a problem there. It seems so brainless to not fix this stuff in wvw.

[zeyeti.8347]

21 hours ago, Loke.1429 said:

You got your strikes, fractals and what not, we wvw'ers get nothing

Thats what i just told you , wvw and pvp have not enough success for Anet to take care off , it's sad and i wish they could do an amazing job on every side of the game but thats just not their goal. I just mentionned raids because it's in the same state as pvp and wvw , just barely chnages from balance patches

[Zily.3152]

Im excited to see the questionable fixes anet does this time. Also won't be surprised if they delete scourge again just to "fix" it again just to make it broken again xD

[XenesisII.1540]

1 hour ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Thats what i just told you , wvw and pvp have not enough success for Anet to take care off , it's sad and i wish they could do an amazing job on every side of the game but thats just not their goal. I just mentionned raids because it's in the same state as pvp and wvw , just barely chnages from balance patches

At one point in the past around hot, wvw had 30-40% player participation rates. I'm sure much more than what raids ever did and probably even strikes.

People keep claiming wvw was never a success, it sells nothing, but if you don't provide products/content what do you expect to sell? It was also stated the reward changes this year promoted players to join wvw again, something that has been stagnant in wvw for 5 years, see what happens when you do an update? Never mind that players in wvw are just as likely to buy account upgrades, and all the other cosmetic fluff from the gem store other than multiple mounts and chair skins, and never mind that server transfer fees are still required for wvw since 2014 after megaservers were introduced.

Content development shouldn't be 100% on one thing, it should be spread around, obviously there's a pecking order and pve will always be on top for mmos, that doesn't mean you take 5 years to update something, it should at the very least be once a year doing a systems check to see if everything is keeping up with the main section. 🤷‍♂️

Players buy stuff when they are happy, shouldn't matter what section they play in, if they're happy they're more willing to buy something, period. If they only put out content for one section of the game, then you really can't expect the other sections to be happy to continue purchasing stuff. 🤷‍♂️

[zeyeti.8347]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

At one point in the past around hot, wvw had 30-40% player participation rates. I'm sure much more than what raids ever did and probably even strikes.

People keep claiming wvw was never a success, it sells nothing, but if you don't provide products/content what do you expect to sell? It was also stated the reward changes this year promoted players to join wvw again, something that has been stagnant in wvw for 5 years, see what happens when you do an update? Never mind that players in wvw are just as likely to buy account upgrades, and all the other cosmetic fluff from the gem store other than multiple mounts and chair skins, and never mind that server transfer fees are still required for wvw since 2014 after megaservers were introduced.

Content development shouldn't be 100% on one thing, it should be spread around, obviously there's a pecking order and pve will always be on top for mmos, that doesn't mean you take 5 years to update something, it should at the very least be once a year doing a systems check to see if everything is keeping up with the main section. 🤷‍♂️

Players buy stuff when they are happy, shouldn't matter what section they play in, if they're happy they're more willing to buy something, period. If they only put out content for one section of the game, then you really can't expect the other sections to be happy to continue purchasing stuff. 🤷‍♂️

And i agree with you i am just pointing out facts , the mainstream player of gw 2 is an open world player either we like it or not. And if wvw had such a great success they would have updated it , thats basic marketing , you do not invest in something you know not much ppl will  buy.

[XenesisII.1540]

26 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

And i agree with you i am just pointing out facts , the mainstream player of gw 2 is an open world player either we like it or not. And if wvw had such a great success they would have updated it , thats basic marketing , you do not invest in something you know not much ppl will  buy.

If you want to follow that line of "basic marketing" to cater to open casuals only, they shouldn't bother investing in raids, strikes, or fractals either right?

So what exactly is considered a "great success"? What line does it need to cross? 60/70/80% of the players in there? I'm saying 1/3 of customers were in wvw and you're still telling me it's not enough for anymore other than $0 investment. Players in wvw buy the expansions, they buy account upgrades, they buy cosmetics, regardless of how much or whatever content they play, they are customers too. The content is in the game, it should be kept updated, that's all I'm saying and asking for, not for some expansion dedicated to one mode, not constant system changes.

I don't think it's too much to ask for some new rewards to earn every year, or updated the current rewards structure(which they finally did this year), or update the maps give them a fresh look, like they can't take the trees in auric basin and stick them in alpines and give it a forest look? small changes to the game system so players aren't steam rolling weaker sides? population bandwagons happens so fix the transfer cost? Throw in the 100%wxp event once a month like they did the months leading up to EoD, oh look they going to do special events again, why the kitten did that fall off their radar in the first place?

It wouldn't take much to maintain the mode. Anet is so busy constantly looking for new customers they forget they have current ones that want to stay happy to also reinvest into the game too. This game is full of mismanagement.

Edited September 25, 2023 by XenesisII.1540