Are content creators healthy for the game?

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

2 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Well, Teapot talked a lot about things that deserve nerf and other thing that deserve buff, and a lot of those things never happened.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, at least when it comes to streamers in general. They talk a lot, sharing their opinions to an audience constantly. Statistically, they are at some point likely to make a statement like "X should be nerfed" and have it play out exactly like that in an upcoming balance patch. However, one can't just assume that this means the developers are using these opinions to directly inform balance changes.

I don't think the comment the OP mentions about Mighty Teapot is necessarily true, not without further evidence at least.

As for the general concept (o7) of the developers listening to content creators, I don't see it being a problem if they are transparent about it. Prominent community members can in theory be a great source of free aggregated opinions, but it should go without saying that you can't just let them balance your game for you. Everything needs to be carefully considered.

The same goes for the secret chat logs fiasco. It would be less of an issue if the members of the group and the conversations were public. The members could even be community elected representatives. What the developers then do with all this information to make actual changes is ultimately up to them, but they should be open about what information they do or do not consider. It would at least reduce the number of tin foil hat parties being had about it in the forums.

It shouldn't need saying that blindly using content creators personal opinions and secret conversations with favoured players to directly inform your balance is bad. Those players only stake in the game is entirely selfish, regardless of any good intentions. They aren't on the payroll, and the fact that there is no transparency does nothing to quell the temptation to make self serving recommendations.

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

27 minutes ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

I think you hit the nail on the head here, at least when it comes to streamers in general. They talk a lot, sharing their opinions to an audience constantly. Statistically, they are at some point likely to make a statement like "X should be nerfed" and have it play out exactly like that in an upcoming balance patch. However, one can't just assume that this means the developers are using these opinions to directly inform balance changes.

I don't think the comment the OP mentions about Mighty Teapot is necessarily true, not without further evidence at least.

As for the general concept (o7) of the developers listening to content creators, I don't see it being a problem if they are transparent about it. Prominent community members can in theory be a great source of free aggregated opinions, but it should go without saying that you can't just let them balance your game for you. Everything needs to be carefully considered.

The same goes for the secret chat logs fiasco. It would be less of an issue if the members of the group and the conversations were public. The members could even be community elected representatives. What the developers then do with all this information to make actual changes is ultimately up to them, but they should be open about what information they do or do not consider. It would at least reduce the number of tin foil hat parties being had about it in the forums.

It shouldn't need saying that blindly using content creators personal opinions and secret conversations with favoured players to directly inform your balance is bad. Those players only stake in the game is entirely selfish, regardless of any good intentions. They aren't on the payroll, and the fact that there is no transparency does nothing to quell the temptation to make self serving recommendations.

Few things. Think you had a pretty great level-headed post here that's really shooting for critical thinking over emotion, which is great. I don't feel like you see a lot of that because it gets chased out of forums pretty fast usually. Think the big thing I find myself disagreeing with in your post is that idea that we should just assume everything's hunky-dory and there's nothing funky happening behind the curtains. 

Exhibit A: GS power mirage being hit with a 25-30% nerf when almost no one was playing it, no one was complaining about it, and it was an off-meta pick even when played well. And most people didn't play it well. The other restriction is that it was pretty situational and only really performed fine in open field. It wasn't in the preview either and the general feedback from the wvw crowd has been one big headscratch. You have so many things out-performing power GS mirage, and yet it gets the nerf bat. It was kinda like a worse staff weaver but now it's kinda just.... much worse. 

Like if you know WvW or power GS mirage numbers, the fact it got nerfed is hilarious and really should bring into question what exactly is going on in balance land. It shows that you can be playing an off-meta build or enjoy something not as good as meta specs and still have it thoroughly gutted. 

Edited October 10 by Bach From The Brink.2715

[Noidea Incognito.9607]

At the Ash Legion we learn to gather a lot information from various sources, filter that, and then use own common sense/insight/perception to take/make the proper action/judgement call/to form an own opinion then call it a day and move on to next step of the mission objective.

If 1 Acolyte speaks; do not automatically accept it straight as the "only truth".

The world of Tyria vast indeed; there is room for content creators ofcourse and good for open debate.

Edited October 10 by Noidea Incognito.9607

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

Just now, Noidea Incognito.9607 said:

At the Ash Legion we learn to gather a lot information from various sources, filter that, and then use own common sense/insight/perception to take/make the proper action/judgement call/to form an own opinion then call it a day and move on to next step of the mission objective.

If 1 Acolyte speaks; do not automatically accept it straight as the "only truth".

The world of Tyria vast indeed; there is room for content creators ofcourse.

You are the Charr. The one and only. The legend, the goat, 

THE CHARR. 

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

2 minutes ago, Bach From The Brink.2715 said:

Think the big thing I find myself disagreeing with in your post is that idea that we should just assume everything's hunky-dory and there's nothing funky happening behind the curtains.

I intentionally didn't want to make an assumption either way as I don't actually know what is or isn't happening behind the curtains. I can only offer what I think is a perfectly rational explanation for why it might sometimes look like the developers lift opinions from a stream when you look at it in isolation.

 

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

13 minutes ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

I intentionally didn't want to make an assumption either way as I don't actually know what is or isn't happening behind the curtains. I can only offer what I think is a perfectly rational explanation for why it might sometimes look like the developers lift opinions from a stream when you look at it in isolation.

 

I'd really like a peak behind the curtain but the only time we got that was when someone finally decided to leak the logs, which took years from what I recall. It's pretty unfortunate and destroyed some of the faith I had in THE NET. 

Seeing this power mirage nerf now and wondering if funky stuff is happening again. When an off-meta build gets blown to pieces out of the blue, it's kinda hard not to imagine something is going wrong over there. All a question of what though, of course. Could be content creators, could be what had happened in the past (think the fact the dude only got the boot when he started getting public attention says a lot about integrity), could be someone providing poor feedback, could be an honest to God mistake that's getting reverted in a future patch. 

That was my thought process. But then I look at that 25% nerf and it really, really gets me scratching my head. Like it's personal, whoever typed up that and made it happen really thought power GS mirage was bonkers.

Probably far more likely they were on the receiving end of a good power mirage a few times and it made them hate the spec vs them actually playing it and thinking its broke. It's also pretty noticeable since it's several big purple beams and like 2-3 people play it. It's a lot harder to notice other classes dumping oodles of dps in boonballs or even small-scale fights because... they just don't have a massive visual indicator for it. 

Edited October 10 by Bach From The Brink.2715

[Danikat.8537]

I think streamers are one of their sources of info, but I don't think they're the only one or even the most important. There's been plenty of times changes have been suggested on this forum, or reddit, and ended up in the game without requiring a streamer to get the idea attention. 

We also know Anet have sometimes organised playtests where people go to their studio to try things before they're released (mainly for new player changes I think, where they need people with no experience playing GW2), and of course they do beta tests for various things, including new skills.

The one time I remember a streamer having a direct influence is when one (I don't remember who) accidentally clicked the 'compact' option live on stream, and I think that got the message across because it showed more effectively than written feedback how annoying it was and how long it took to put everything back where it was supposed to be. It wasn't long after that the two options were seperated (this was before they were made into buttons). 

I don't watch streamers, but I've seen enough topics here where someone is insisting Anet MUST listen to their ideas (which usually amount to "turn it into WoW because I'm more familiar with playing that game) and nothing happens with it that I don't believe they make changes just because a streamer says so. 

[Dean Calaway.9718]

5 hours ago, Bach From The Brink.2715 said:

What are your thoughts? Is this true?

Look at this, and tell me what you think...

If anyone was complaining Warrior was over performing, it wasn't out of a vacuum, was it really over performing, or was it just being memed, I'm sure you can have different people here supporting both claims.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Bach From The Brink.2715 said:

What are your thoughts? Is this true?

Yes and no. Yes, they do listen to content creators, and often take feedback from them. No, because they do not actually listen to them. In reality they listen (and follow) only to those parts that already agree with their existing preconceptions and ideas. All the rest of the feedback, from those very same sources, gets thrown in the trashcan.

So, if warrior got nerfed, it wasn't really because Teapot said anything about it. It was because some dev already wanted to nerf warrior even before that.

[yoni.7015]

16 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes and no. Yes, they do listen to content creators, and often take feedback from them. No, because they do not actually listen to them. In reality they listen (and follow) only to those parts that already agree with their existing preconceptions and ideas. All the rest of the feedback, from those very same sources, gets thrown in the trashcan.

So, if warrior got nerfed, it wasn't really because Teapot said anything about it. It was because some dev already wanted to nerf warrior even before that.

You have a source for that? I would be interested to read more about it. 

[Shuzuru.3651]

3 hours ago, Bach From The Brink.2715 said:

I think the main issue was that there's a few other specs that were already outperforming warrior that didn't get touched at all this patch. Someone wrote a post about how the warrior nerf would be good since DPS can trivialize fights / boss mechanics, but they also said it was very weird that other specs, which ANET has data on, aren't getting touched. 

 

Well, from what i understand, condi ren was nerfed too. It's one of the few spec that is overperforming too

[Mungrul.9358]

It's the age-old story:

People who only play squishies act shocked and surprised when they get squashed by professions designed to be squishy squashers.
Squishy squashers then get nerfed so hard that they have to become significantly better squishy squashers in order to squash squishies.
So when squishy squashers finally catch a break and get a new toy that in the hands of squishies would merely be "adequate", they once again start squashing squishies hard.
Thus the cycle of squishy squashers being aggressively nerfed due to the influence of whiny squishies continues.

Edited October 10 by Mungrul.9358
Formatting.

[Ashantara.8731]

...now say "squishy squashers" three times fast. 😂

[Mortime.1359]

I am mildly amazed that there are people complaining about content creators here. GW2 has no twitch nor youtube presence, its biggest content creators would be considered small in a lot of other popular titles. Honestly the game has a number of issues but content creators are not them considering that there are barely any of them in this game.

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

4 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Well, from what i understand, condi ren was nerfed too. It's one of the few spec that is overperforming too

Yeah, I think the issue people were upset about is that they had an entire month to bring DPS down on multiple specs to a respectable level but only chose to select... warrior for some reason. It's pretty oddly focused, just like the split surge nerfs in WvW.

Except in the case of split surge, it was never meta to begin with. 

Edited October 10 by Bach From The Brink.2715

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

5 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Look at this, and tell me what you think...

If anyone was complaining Warrior was over performing, it wasn't out of a vacuum, was it really over performing, or was it just being memed, I'm sure you can have different people here supporting both claims.

I think warrior in PvE was more the topic people were complaining about, to be fair. I don't know how warrior is in PvE because I just don't see any and when I do, they're usually pretty bad. 

And the issue in PvE isn't that it's bad per say, it's that there's several specs ahead of warrior that aren't getting touched. I think the reasoning I've been seeing is that if the things above warrior was brought down to a more respectable level, it'd be good for game health. High DPS can trivialize some bosses. 

But they didn't do that, they kinda hard committed to nerfing just warrior instead. 

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

2 hours ago, Mortime.1359 said:

I am mildly amazed that there are people complaining about content creators here. GW2 has no twitch nor youtube presence, its biggest content creators would be considered small in a lot of other popular titles. Honestly the game has a number of issues but content creators are not them considering that there are barely any of them in this game.

I've seen like half the gw2 content creators engage in some pretty cringe flame so not surprised this game has almost no twitch / youtube presence. 

[Aphandra.9672]

Depends a bit on what kind of creator.

Since I mostly just dabbled with the game, my knowledge is a bit shallow. Hence I appreciate certain creators explaining their opinion on what to focus on, what are professions good at, how important each element happens to be. Without those, I'd be almost entirely lost.

In other words, the game doesn't really explain its systems much.

Other types of creators, well... I never really enjoyed watching raids or roaming, roughly 98% of my watch time is MOBA and the other 2% is RTS. Apart from show-off-for-newbies days, like Grubby did, most such streams are just noise to me. There is so much knowledge behind that it's not getting processed, it's simply too fast zoom-zoom.

[Juan.6124]

If teapot had any influence on balance then 40k dps would be the absolute max and boon dps would be 28k. And it would be better for the game.

Edited October 10 by Juan.6124

[Rocker.2906]

If you watched the most recent tournaments in sPvP you'd have seen that SPB was kinda the only viable DPS being run there, along with 2 support chronos in every team, which are the specs that got nerfed the hardest. Now, I'm not saying these were good nerfs, just disagreeing that it would need some streamer opinion to influentiate the balance team. 

If anything I find it easier to believe that streamers are mindlessly agreeing with the take on balance by ANet in hopes of keeping their partnerships and irl gold income 

[Cameirus.8407]

they are 99.999999999999999999% irrelevant to the game and pretty much 99.9% of the playerbase has never heard of any of them.

 

If teapot had any actual influence on the game, most of the playerbase would abandon it as he seems to think games should be designed along the same lines the wildstar devs took...and it would have similar results here.

Edited October 10 by Cameirus.8407

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, yoni.7015 said:

You have a source for that? I would be interested to read more about it. 

Just look up the whole "secret discord" affair. The weird duality of feedback, where it was often quite surprising which part of the feedback will be acted upon, and which will be completely ignored (and how it also often went in line with stated dev likes and dislikes) was quite apparent then.

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Juan.6124 said:

If teapot had any influence on balance then 40k dps would be the absolute max and boon dps would be 28k. And it would be better for the game.

I was about to say: that actually sounds right about how it should be.

Edited October 10 by Sobx.1758

[Shuzuru.3651]

14 hours ago, Bach From The Brink.2715 said:

Yeah, I think the issue people were upset about is that they had an entire month to bring DPS down on multiple specs to a respectable level but only chose to select... warrior for some reason. It's pretty oddly focused, just like the split surge nerfs in WvW.

Except in the case of split surge, it was never meta to begin with. 

Are you even reading what you quoted?

[Bach From The Brink.2715]

26 minutes ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Are you even reading what you quoted?

I think Virtuoso is now 6k ahead of warrior. I think that's what they were upset about.