Game balance changes feel AI generated

[Player.2475]

For clarity I play pretty much every type of content in the game, from open world, fractals (+CMs), raids, PvP and WvW. I have 2 of every class and I play 4 classes regularly in each of these game modes. With these, I alternate between different specializations and builds.

The last 3 balance updates basically made no sense to me. Nerfs to underperforming weapons and builds, buffs to overperforming weapons and builds, or changing build-defining traits in a way that makes certain specs completely unable to perform the role they were trying to allow with that sort of change. Claims that certain builds are overpowered in PvE and need to be scaled down when their benchmark damage is lower than the alternative builds for the same class. Increasing damage one patch, then reducing it below the initial value in the next...

There are very few meaningful changes that actually make sense, but most of the time they boil down to: "We didn't expect a class to bench 100k dps with this one synergy we never expected to work."

I am just confused.

[Gehenna.3625]

You know, I never even considered this. AI could be part of it. What if they AI looks for overperforming weapons/professions but the reason they're overperforming is simply because more skilled players play those? So then it's not actually overperforming because of it being out of whack with other weapons/professions but because of who plays them.

[Player.2475]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

You know, I never even considered this. AI could be part of it. What if they AI looks for overperforming weapons/professions but the reason they're overperforming is simply because more skilled players play those? So then it's not actually overperforming because of it being out of whack with other weapons/professions but because of who plays them.

That was my suspicion with some of the changes, like Revenant Scepter's damage being nerfed and their pulsing effects getting delayed. I figured  there was just some amazing Ultimate Dominator V Baron of the Arena Top 10 player that dominated enough that they nerfed the weapon across the board even if the average player doesn't get the same use out of it. I know that in MOBAs it's not uncommon that some characters get nerfed to the ground because world championship level teams capitalize on them well, even if the average player barely breaks a 30% winrate on them.

Of course you might imagine how weird it feels when you spend weeks struggling to make a weapon or build work -- a build you do not see anyone else trying because of how bad it is --only to find that the developers found it too strong and decided to nerf it even more.
Or when you consistently see Willbenders faceroll 1v1 or 1v2 fights in PvP and WvW only to receive buff after buff...

Edited April 5 by Player.2475

[Edibleghost.5631]

I'm gonna have to hard disagree OP. I think they throw chicken bones into a bowl and read the omens on what to buff/nerf instead. I'm honestly confident I could come up with a better template for logical balance changes in an afternoon, I have 0 faith in its current management.

[Fueki.4753]

Even if they are bad, I don't think we should associate them with AI.

Humans can - and often do - perform less than ideal as well.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

11 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

For clarity I play pretty much every type of content in the game, from open world, fractals (+CMs), raids, PvP and WvW. I have 2 of every class and I play 4 classes regularly in each of these game modes. With these, I alternate between different specializations and builds.

The last 3 balance updates basically made no sense to me. Nerfs to underperforming weapons and builds, buffs to overperforming weapons and builds, or changing build-defining traits in a way that makes certain specs completely unable to perform the role they were trying to allow with that sort of change. Claims that certain builds are overpowered in PvE and need to be scaled down when their benchmark damage is lower than the alternative builds for the same class. Increasing damage one patch, then reducing it below the initial value in the next...

There are very few meaningful changes that actually make sense, but most of the time they boil down to: "We didn't expect a class to bench 100k dps with this one synergy we never expected to work."

I am just confused.

Someone asked an AI not too long ago about reworks to Warrior and Berserker and posted it in that section of the forums and it actually came out with some fairly decent looking stuff. So I'll be honest...if the balance changes were AI generated, if anything, they would probably be better...

ANet does consistently confuse me with their approach to numerous things, balance being a huge one. I know they have metrics and data internally that they go off of...but truthfully if that is the only thing they are measuring their balance changes by then that is by far a massive mistake.

Note their initial rework to Warrior Banners and how poorly that went and what they came out with in the aftermath due to the, for lack of better wording, absolute blunder that it was. There is very clearly a disconnect in how they approach balance and class changes and how it actually may need to be done. Note their balance philosophy post a while back, outlining counterplay as an important aspect...and yet one huge thing we have seen them consistently do is strip away the boon strip in the game all while adding more boons which is just making boonballing stronger and stronger and much tougher to crack. Quite literally removing counterplay. It makes no sense.

Edited April 5 by KryTiKaL.3125

[Player.2475]

8 minutes ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Someone asked an AI not too long ago about reworks to Warrior and Berserker and posted it in that section of the forums and it actually came out with some fairly decent looking stuff. So I'll be honest...if the balance changes were AI generated, if anything, they would probably be better...

ANet does consistently confuse me with their approach to numerous things, balance being a huge one. I know they have metrics and data internally that they go off of...but truthfully if that is the only thing they are measuring their balance changes by then that is by far a massive mistake.

Note their initial rework to Warrior Banners and how poorly that went and what they came out with in the aftermath due to the, for lack of better wording, absolute blunder that it was. There is very clearly a disconnect in how they approach balance and class changes and how it actually may need to be done. Note their balance philosophy post a while back, outlining counterplay as an important aspect...and yet one huge thing we have seen them consistently do is strip away the boon strip in the game all while adding more boons which is just making boonballing stronger and stronger and much tougher to crack. Quite literally removing counterplay. It makes no sense.

That's something I also wanted to mention. They keep adding more boons to abilities that did not previously have them, while increasing the costs, cooldowns of boon strips/corrupts and lowering the amount of boons they strip... where's the counterplay they talk about? Just spamming more boons?

[Fueki.4753]

5 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

That's something I also wanted to mention. They keep adding more boons to abilities that did not previously have them, while increasing the costs, cooldowns of boon strips/corrupts and lowering the amount of boons they strip... where's the counterplay they talk about? Just spamming more boons?

Obviously, the counterplay to boons is to have even more boons than your opponent.

Boon strips and corrupts barely are welcome these days.

Edited April 6 by Fueki.4753

[SeTect.5918]

"kitten, too many play class x so we need to nerf skill y"

3-4 months later...

"kitten, nobody plays class x so we need to buff skill y back"

3-4 months later...

"kitten, too many play class x so we need to nerf skill y again"

 

For Real tho, just look at the version history of the weaver trait: Elements of Rage

2018, they nerfed the strike damage bonus this trait gives by decreasing the power into ferocity converted by making it convert 13% of Vita into fero instead of 14% of power into fero.

Later 2018 they changed it again by making it give precision instead of fero.

2021 they nerfed the strike damage percentage given by this trait by 5%.

2022 they gave these 5%, taken away the year before, back to it.

2023 they nerfed the percentage strike damage bonus again.

I wouldnt wonder if they nerf or buff it again this year.

 

Its like buff, nerf, buff, nerf, nerf, buff, nerf, buff, buff, nerf...again and again on the same traits and weapons for years without an end in Sight. Never Ending balance. It is how it is. I dont think it will get better anytime soon tho. 

Edited April 6 by SeTect.5918

[Dadnir.5038]

Come on... You're looking down on AI.

Joke aside, the balance team is halfassedly trying to reach everchanging objectives while keeping an illusion of balance, creating some room for new game elements base on a "power budget theory" and keeping player interested in the game. At the end of the day, none of the objectives are ever fully reached while the "power budget theory" is used poorly resulting in imbalance and incomprehension from the player base.

 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

I'm pretty sure they're using darts for balancing, did they switch to AI darts?

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

The balance lost my respect the moment they said they were giving buffs to “underutilized skills” and the top of the list was Guardian’s Feel My Wrath. In what world is this skill even “underutilized”? It should have been Receive The Light, that’s a real underutilized skill.

Edited April 7 by ZephidelGRS.9520

[Gaiawolf.8261]

2 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

The balance lost my respect the moment they said they were giving buffs to “underutilized skills” and the top of the list was Guardian’s Feel My Wrath. In what world is this skill even “underutilized”? It should have been Receive The Light, that’s a real underutilized skill.

In both competitive worlds actually. SPVP and WVW guards never took it. We only used Renewed Focus, leaving all other elites except Mantra of Liberation underutilized. They buffed Feel My Wrath and Heaven's Palm so someone might actually pick anything besides RF once in a while. RF is still superior to FMW, though. 

[Arheundel.6451]

Here are the facts:

1. Everyone in the office can chime in during the balance process, this will result in over-representation for some classes and almost non-existent content for others: a negative change is most likely to be removed from the expected list if the class is over-represented and positive changes are more likely to happen
2. Playing rate is strongly considered during balance patch, simplistic but effective gameplay options are popular and tend to be left alone for the greatest amount of time
3. They favour simplicity over complexity, tending to punish complexity if reaching the same results as simplicity

[Gendalfs.7521]

22 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Everyone in the office can chime in during the balance process, this will result in over-representation for some classes and almost non-existent content for others: a negative change is most likely to be removed from the expected list if the class is over-represented and positive changes are more likely to happen

Wait a minute, is this real?

[Player.2475]

31 minutes ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Wait a minute, is this real?

I'm pretty sure it's a joke but it definitely feels like it. sPvP and WvW balance changes read more like a disgruntled Anet employee got salty over his overpowered Willbender fantasy being ruined by someone boon stripping and locking him down, than people genuinely trying to create a fair and balanced competitive game mode.

[Leo G.4501]

On 4/6/2024 at 7:04 AM, SeTect.5918 said:

Its like buff, nerf, buff, nerf, nerf, buff, nerf, buff, buff, nerf...again and again on the same traits and weapons for years without an end in Sight. Never Ending balance. It is how it is. I dont think it will get better anytime soon tho. 

That's not true. Sometimes they put in innocuous/irrelevant changes that don't do anything like adding a '+' to numbers that buff (so swiftness goes from looking like 33% speed to +33% speed). 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Atleast you guy get changes. 

Signed: A Warrior. 

[Richard Marcinko.5132]

They told us 3 years ago exactly how they balance the game.  Their friends and a chosen few complain that "X" class is unfair.  They Nerf the hell out of whatever class/skill caused them distress.  Buff what makes them happy. Then laugh at us on the forums complaining that the changes make no sense.  

[Dawdler.8521]

Anet made random, illogical changes no one requested or wanted loooooong before the rise of AI.

My favourite remains orchestrating the rise of the condi meta in WvW by a single unnecessary change, ignoring the outrage for almost a year, releasing an expansion that replaced the meta with an even better meta and then a couple weeks after that they finally nerfed the skill on a build nobody played anymore to the ground.

The question should instead be whether AI has learned by looking at Anet.

[jason.1083]

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Anet made random, illogical changes no one requested or wanted loooooong before the rise of AI.

My favourite remains orchestrating the rise of the condi meta in WvW by a single unnecessary change, ignoring the outrage for almost a year, releasing an expansion that replaced the meta with an even better meta and then a couple weeks after that they finally nerfed the skill on a build nobody played anymore to the ground.

The question should instead be whether AI has learned by looking at Anet.

It probably learned that the meta should be as defined as possible to make sure that people have to migrate to different professions and builds, even if that often butchers fun/suboptimal builds with no excuse.

Instead of looking at the fundamentals of what makes a particular build outperform they hit the most obvious part of it at a first glance.

I feel like even AI would understand that if you have something that's meta and you want to nerf it you first target the stuff that's exclusive to that builds' disposal before moving on to hit skills/traits that are shared with other builds.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

16 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Anet made random, illogical changes no one requested or wanted loooooong before the rise of AI.

My favourite remains orchestrating the rise of the condi meta in WvW by a single unnecessary change, ignoring the outrage for almost a year, releasing an expansion that replaced the meta with an even better meta and then a couple weeks after that they finally nerfed the skill on a build nobody played anymore to the ground.

The question should instead be whether AI has learned by looking at Anet.

Hey Anet. Condi is out of control in Wvw and the only counter is resistance. 

Anet: We heard you, we hard nerf resistance access. 

Edited April 12 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Dawdler.8521]

7 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Hey Anet. Condi is out of control in Wvw and the only counter is resistance. 

Anet: We heard you, we hard nerf resistance access. 

Nothing to do with resistance. I was talking about Deathly Chill.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

On 4/12/2024 at 3:45 AM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Hey Anet. Condi is out of control in Wvw and the only counter is resistance. 

Anet: We heard you, we hard nerf resistance access. 

Condi in wvw? It's practically worthless with the massive amount of cleanses that get spammed every second. Power is the way to go in wvw.

[Strider.7849]

1 hour ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Condi in wvw? It's practically worthless with the massive amount of cleanses that get spammed every second. Power is the way to go in wvw.

Depends whether you are playing large or small scale. Large scale condi is worthless because of the high amounts of cleansing. Smallscale it still has incredible value.