Video explanation for the creation of Scourge and the likes

[Arheundel.6451]

A detailed video explaining literally why elite specs are designed the way they are now.......kind of obvious really but..still sad in the end, also it explains :

-why nothing will ever change-why nerfing one spec will simply introduce another spec doing the same thing but with a different skin-why the whole leaderboard/matchmaking is a complete waste of your time-why we'll keep living off our own delusions

-enjoy-

The values of the past generation of players are gone and will never come back, MMOs will become more and more casual friendly, frustrating to play for the dedicated and the truly competitive individuals

We have been at it for 9 seasons now....we started with condi bunker chronos and tempests...then dragonhunters and bersekers ..then dragonhunters and reapers...now scourges and firebrand.......every season is filled to the brink with a couple of heavy aoe spammers , used by casuals to climb a pointless leaderboard

You see the same arguments...: " nerf this and that" during every season and people who still fail to realise that Anet won't ever nerf scourge/firebrand the way they want....no before 4-5 months close to next expansion

[Jacobin.8509]

That video is about competitive games not MMORPGs that balance 10 different game types.

[Arheundel.6451]

@Jacobin.8509 said:That video is about competitive games not MMORPGs that balance 10 different game types.

The video is about the watering down of a game for the sake of sales...something that can be applied to any game, it specifically explains why

[jihm.2315]

i found more enjoyment in wvw and high lvl fractals than spvp and the reason is mentioned in that videoalso its laughable move from capcom trying to adapt a colossus like street fighter to fit to the scrubby esport scene

[Razor.6392]

Surprising to see an FGC video over here but yes, that IS the direction that most games are taking these days, and by most I mean 99.9% of them. Reward the casual, unskilled player with easy mechanics, often revolving around guessing / RNG, minimize as much skill (such as reactions, physical dexterity, game knowledge) as possible so that anyone can win! Yay!

Who cares if you upset the low % that enjoyed a skillful match? The hordes of casuals will be thrilled at the thought of finally winning in a match against a real human for the first time. Screw practicing, training, learning matchups or honing your skills. This is the instant gratification era. We want everything and we want it NOW!

[Nimrud.5642]

I dont think we can get away with not getting a little sociology in here...

So... I was born in 1983 and remember that up until around the age of 12 it was quite OK to not be 100% alpha at living life in general. Having some speech defect, ugly ears or skin were still seen and you still got labeled for them. But they were considered as secondary attributes to a man or a woman. So even if you had certain things in your life that were not 'top tier'm you still had a basic respect from fellow human beings.

But after that - as the effects of this over-hyped consumer society kicked in - everyone had an increasing urge to be perfect and live a perfect life. 'Buy this hair-dye and you will be like Cindy Crawford!' or 'Drink this beer, because the uber-alpha model guy drinks it too and get chicks by the dozen!' or 'Do your Christmas cooking like this and you'll be done with a 4-course meal for 25 ppl in 40 minutes! (And they will like you even more if you have some nice breast implants too.)'. You get it by now I guess...

So ppl buy stuff, because they wanna be cool. This includes video games as well. And if success in a video game depends on personal skill, and dedicated effort then there will be a lot of people who fall behind. So the game basically becomes a hair-dye that tells you: 'Buy me, but you will still look ugly!' :) And the developers dont want that. You buy a video game to be good at it, to be a hero, be respected, get titles, look good, etc. And egos are not that picky when they get praised in any way. So a developer's best interest is to sell the 'i'm cool' feeling to as many players as possible.

How can it be done? By dumbing down, simplifying everything, putting low skill players together with much higher skill level players so they may get carried, etc. Any product ever made in this new era is meant to give you the feeling 'I rock', because in the past 2 decades not being 100% perfect in all areas of your life somehow got equated with 'You are a miserable stupid retard, who needs to die for the sake of humanity.' And all the ppl in the world are running from this feeling of insufficiency.

I guess...

So this isnt just 'stupid Anet' or 'stupid noobs' or anything like that... look for an other planet if you want change. :)

[Apolo.5942]

I dont think the game suffers from "BAD" balancing, but rather "COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF IT". They just dont want to make the game we want. Might not have started that way, but that is where we are now, SPVP is just simply not profitable for them to care.

[Arheundel.6451]

@"Nimrud.5642" said:I dont think we can get away with not getting a little sociology in here...

So... I was born in 1983 and remember that up until around the age of 12 it was quite OK to not be 100% alpha at living life in general. Having some speech defect, ugly ears or skin were still seen and you still got labeled for them. But they were considered as secondary attributes to a man or a woman. So even if you had certain things in your life that were not 'top tier'm you still had a basic respect from fellow human beings.

But after that - as the effects of this over-hyped consumer society kicked in - everyone had an increasing urge to be perfect and live a perfect life. 'Buy this hair-dye and you will be like Cindy Crawford!' or 'Drink this beer, because the uber-alpha model guy drinks it too and get chicks by the dozen!' or 'Do your Christmas cooking like this and you'll be done with a 4-course meal for 25 ppl in 40 minutes! (And they will like you even more if you have some nice breast implants too.)'. You get it by now I guess...

So ppl buy stuff, because they wanna be cool. This includes video games as well. And if success in a video game depends on personal skill, and dedicated effort then there will be a lot of people who fall behind. So the game basically becomes a hair-dye that tells you: 'Buy me, but you will still look ugly!' :) And the developers dont want that. You buy a video game to be good at it, to be a hero, be respected, get titles, look good, etc. And egos are not that picky when they get praised in any way. So a developer's best interest is to sell the 'i'm cool' feeling to as many players as possible.

How can it be done? By dumbing down, simplifying everything, putting low skill players together with much higher skill level players so they may get carried, etc. Any product ever made in this new era is meant to give you the feeling 'I rock', because in the past 2 decades not being 100% perfect in all areas of your life somehow got equated with 'You are a miserable stupid kitten, who needs to die for the sake of humanity.' And all the ppl in the world are running from this feeling of insufficiency.

I guess...

So this isnt just 'stupid Anet' or 'stupid noobs' or anything like that... look for an other planet if you want change. :)

So everything must be done to please the shareholders....games used to be done by nerds for nerds...now they're made by greedy corporations to suck dry as much cash as possible from the ever growing number of super casual players who use gaming as a cheap way to forget about their "work to pay bills" existence ...brilliant

[Nimrud.5642]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@"Nimrud.5642" said:I dont think we can get away with not getting a little sociology in here...

So... I was born in 1983 and remember that up until around the age of 12 it was quite OK to not be 100% alpha at living life in general. Having some speech defect, ugly ears or skin were still seen and you still got labeled for them. But they were considered as secondary attributes to a man or a woman. So even if you had certain things in your life that were not 'top tier'm you still had a basic respect from fellow human beings.

But after that - as the effects of this over-hyped consumer society kicked in - everyone had an increasing urge to be perfect and live a perfect life. 'Buy this hair-dye and you will be like Cindy Crawford!' or 'Drink this beer, because the uber-alpha model guy drinks it too and get chicks by the dozen!' or 'Do your Christmas cooking like this and you'll be done with a 4-course meal for 25 ppl in 40 minutes! (And they will like you even more if you have some nice breast implants too.)'. You get it by now I guess...

So ppl buy stuff, because they wanna be cool. This includes video games as well. And if success in a video game depends on personal skill, and dedicated effort then there will be a lot of people who fall behind. So the game basically becomes a hair-dye that tells you: 'Buy me, but you will still look ugly!' :) And the developers dont want that. You buy a video game to be good at it, to be a hero, be respected, get titles, look good, etc. And egos are not that picky when they get praised in any way. So a developer's best interest is to sell the 'i'm cool' feeling to as many players as possible.

How can it be done? By dumbing down, simplifying everything, putting low skill players together with much higher skill level players so they may get carried, etc. Any product ever made in this new era is meant to give you the feeling 'I rock', because in the past 2 decades not being 100% perfect in all areas of your life somehow got equated with 'You are a miserable stupid kitten, who needs to die for the sake of humanity.' And all the ppl in the world are running from this feeling of insufficiency.

I guess...

So this isnt just 'stupid Anet' or 'stupid noobs' or anything like that... look for an other planet if you want change. :)

So everything must be done to please the shareholders....games used to be done by nerds for nerds...now they're made by greedy corporations to suck dry as much cash as possible from the ever growing number of super casual players who use gaming as a cheap way to forget about their "work to pay bills" existence ...brilliant

Welcome on planet Earth!

[Master Ketsu.4569]

I don't believe this is exactly what Anet is doing. They may be intentionally "noobifying" to a degree, but the bigger thing that the past couple balance updates show is intentionally overbuffing PoF specs so that they are always superior to HoT/Core specs.

The December patch we saw most recently was especially shameless and made little attempt to mask the P2W.-Buffs to mirage-Buffs to scourge-Buffs to firebrand-nerfs to Rev-nerfs to core War-nerfs to core Ele

GW2 balance team has an interesting position for their job because the community already maintains a fairly accurate state of the meta on metabattle.comAnd yet they buffed the builds that were meta ( and PoF ) while nerfing builds that were off-meta. Like Warrior strength line, which has not been used in a metabuild for a long time. When you see a blatant failure like this there are only two real possibilities:

Possibility 1) The poor balance decisions are unintentional. In which case this means that the balance team is so colossally incompetent they can't even implement work that the community has already done for them.Possibility 2) The poor balance decisions are intentional and thus come with an ulterior motive.

I for one, do not believe the balance team to be stupid. It takes skill and effort to work in the games industry. My bets are strongly on the second choice. The balance is being intentionally skewed in favor of PoF to encourage more PoF sales and basically force players who prefer the mists to purchase the expansion. It simply makes the most sense from a business standpoint to do this.

We will know for 100% that this is right if they do the same thing next patch. Just watch them buff deadeye and nerf Marauder S/D in some way. Calling it now.

[Jacobin.8509]

Its because they balance around the whole game which mostly revolves around PVE. Scourge is mediocre there so they can't nerf the condi output or it will be considered trash. Same thing with druid support and mirage.

[Aza.2105]

@jihm.2315 said:i found more enjoyment in wvw and high lvl fractals than spvp and the reason is mentioned in that videoalso its laughable move from capcom trying to adapt a colossus like street fighter to fit to the scrubby esport scene

Street Fighter has always been a esport pretty much.

[Ara.4569]

@Master Ketsu.4569:

You're probably right. But I like Possiblity 1 a lot. :) So just for the sake of arguing I want to say that balance team is first and foremost a design team. That design and balance requires 2 completely different skills set and mindset. And that not a lot of people can be both highly analytical and highly creative. In psychology these are opposite personality fields (sensing/intuition, judging/perceiving, thinking/feeling). They also proved multiple times that they don't know how to play, even though they design gameplay.

[Razor.6392]

@Aza.2105 said:

@jihm.2315 said:i found more enjoyment in wvw and high lvl fractals than spvp and the reason is mentioned in that videoalso its laughable move from capcom trying to adapt a colossus like street fighter to fit to the scrubby esport scene

Street Fighter has always been a esport pretty much.

Fighting games have been the OG competitive game experience, sadly they've been pushed away by mobasLUL and FPS.

People love their team games, it's nice to have someone to blame for your shortcomings, because how else would you deal with a resounding loss if it's a 1v1?

[Aza.2105]

@Razor.6392 said:

@Aza.2105 said:

@jihm.2315 said:i found more enjoyment in wvw and high lvl fractals than spvp and the reason is mentioned in that videoalso its laughable move from capcom trying to adapt a colossus like street fighter to fit to the scrubby esport scene

Street Fighter has always been a esport pretty much.

Fighting games have been the OG competitive game experience, sadly they've been pushed away by mobasLUL and FPS.

People love their team games, it's nice to have someone to blame for your shortcomings, because how else would you deal with a resounding loss if it's a 1v1?

Yea I remember people playing sf for money down at the arcades in my town. It was a big thing. I think the biggest barrier to fighting games is that they are difficult to get into. They have a very high learning curve. Mobas and FPS aren't hard to get into but to play competitively you have to be very good of course.

[JayAction.9056]

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:I don't believe this is exactly what Anet is doing. They may be intentionally "noobifying" to a degree, but the bigger thing that the past couple balance updates show is intentionally overbuffing PoF specs so that they are always superior to HoT/Core specs.

The December patch we saw most recently was especially shameless and made little attempt to mask the P2W.-Buffs to mirage-Buffs to scourge-Buffs to firebrand-nerfs to Rev-nerfs to core War-nerfs to core Ele

GW2 balance team has an interesting position for their job because the community already maintains a fairly accurate state of the meta on metabattle.comAnd yet they buffed the builds that were meta ( and PoF ) while nerfing builds that were off-meta. Like Warrior strength line, which has not been used in a metabuild for a long time. When you see a blatant failure like this there are only two real possibilities:

Possibility 1) The poor balance decisions are unintentional. In which case this means that the balance team is so colossally incompetent they can't even implement work that the community has already done for them.Possibility 2) The poor balance decisions are intentional and thus come with an ulterior motive.

I for one, do not believe the balance team to be stupid. It takes skill and effort to work in the games industry. My bets are strongly on the second choice. The balance is being intentionally skewed in favor of PoF to encourage more PoF sales and basically force players who prefer the mists to purchase the expansion. It simply makes the most sense from a business standpoint to do this.

We will know for 100% that this is right if they do the same thing next patch. Just watch them buff deadeye and nerf Marauder S/D in some way. Calling it now.

You farmed too many people on rev in earlier seasons and they are mad at you. There, I said it.

Give the WvW player group an apology and maybe things will get better.

[Ithilwen.1529]

@"Nimrud.5642" said:I dont think we can get away with not getting a little sociology in here...

So... I was born in 1983 and remember that up until around the age of 12 it was quite OK to not be 100% alpha at living life in general. Having some speech defect, ugly ears or skin were still seen and you still got labeled for them. But they were considered as secondary attributes to a man or a woman. So even if you had certain things in your life that were not 'top tier'm you still had a basic respect from fellow human beings.

But after that - as the effects of this over-hyped consumer society kicked in - everyone had an increasing urge to be perfect and live a perfect life. 'Buy this hair-dye and you will be like Cindy Crawford!' or 'Drink this beer, because the uber-alpha model guy drinks it too and get chicks by the dozen!' or 'Do your Christmas cooking like this and you'll be done with a 4-course meal for 25 ppl in 40 minutes! (And they will like you even more if you have some nice breast implants too.)'. You get it by now I guess...

So ppl buy stuff, because they wanna be cool. This includes video games as well. And if success in a video game depends on personal skill, and dedicated effort then there will be a lot of people who fall behind. So the game basically becomes a hair-dye that tells you: 'Buy me, but you will still look ugly!' :) And the developers dont want that. You buy a video game to be good at it, to be a hero, be respected, get titles, look good, etc. And egos are not that picky when they get praised in any way. So a developer's best interest is to sell the 'i'm cool' feeling to as many players as possible.

How can it be done? By dumbing down, simplifying everything, putting low skill players together with much higher skill level players so they may get carried, etc. Any product ever made in this new era is meant to give you the feeling 'I rock', because in the past 2 decades not being 100% perfect in all areas of your life somehow got equated with 'You are a miserable stupid kitten, who needs to die for the sake of humanity.' And all the ppl in the world are running from this feeling of insufficiency.

I guess...

So this isnt just 'stupid Anet' or 'stupid noobs' or anything like that... look for an other planet if you want change. :)

You could have said that a bit more concisely, but you're largely right.

I was born and grew up before cellphones and the internet, when BBS was the hot new thing and we scripted our own games in BASIC. The reality tv generation has reversed a lot of things and not for the better in my opinion.

The fact is that players get sick of being stomped into the ground for the pleasure of others. The high ranked matches have been fed with low ranked players. By doing so, match times are kept down for the "1 percent." The downside is that it's given PvP it's current reputation and population.

The top ranked players are paid to play... the lower ranked players pay for things like gem store items. Which is more important to a business?