Introducing the Systems Team

[Gaile Gray.6029]

'allo, Tyrians,

There's a new team in town with a lot of old faces: the Systems team. The team was forged in the fires of Mount Maelstrom and tempered in the depths of the Frostgorge Sound.

The Systems team mashes together the Skills and Balance, Player versus Player, World versus World, and Rewards Teams. Combining these teams will help to us create more cohesive content and make the most logical changes to Guild Wars 2 while reducing the chances that any particular part of the game will be negatively impacted when there are game-wide changes. The members of the old teams are now sitting in the same area with one another, like one big family composed of gleeful charr, modest sylvari, bashful norn, ornery humans, and whimsical asura.

This means that there is greater communication and sharing of knowledge between everyone involved.

If a particular profession or elite specialization is out of tune in one game mode, there will be greater communication about it and more traction on changes suited to that mode. If some rewards are unbalanced and could use a little fine-tuning, it will be much easier for a team member to bring up the need and work with others to discover the best solution.

With these changes, we'd like to invite you to join us in the August ArenaNet Forum Chat, which will start later today. You can post your questions about the team there. We won't be discussing a specific skill or a particular reward, but we're happy to answer questions about the team's foci, objectives, and how it is working together for a better future for all Tyria. The AFC can be found here.

Sincerely,

Your New Systems Team

[Gaile Gray.6029]

AFC open now! :)

[AllNightPlayer.1286]

Question: Why create such an important workgroup, where different specialists are talking with each other about the game they are working on/for, only after six years? Did everyone work on his/her own before? Game balance would prove me right.

[Loosmaster.8263]

Sounds kinda wishy washy to me. Can you show me the exact spot in Frostgorge? Anyway, sounds like a good plan to me...

[Randulf.7614]

fyi for those posting questions here.....

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/categories/august-2018%3A-introducing-the-systems-team

[ReaverKane.7598]

Thank the 6! A change! Hopefully for the better!

[Vissarion.6509]

Things like this make me think that we have a lot of future with this game.

Let's hope for the best for you as devs and us players, there's a lot of work to be done ;)

This can only mean fot the better!

[MithranArkanere.8957]

I'm cautiously optimistic about this.
Many players have been complaining that sometimes it feels like "The left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" when it comes to all these systems mentioned.
For example, after a long time of underwhelming rewards, sometimes an event, a map or a festival get really nice and well balanced rewards that weren't too easy to get not too grindy, with different ways to get stuff and reasons to do several different things, and it felt like they our feedback was finally counting for something, then later content went back to really bad designs from the past that were not enjoyed by most people.
When things like that happened, it is puzzling. Why going back to this dated and disliked design or moving away from a new cool design, after finally getting the 'sweet spot'? What could have happened?

Now we need something like a "Refurbishing team" remaking old content with the new cool designs like mid-story checkpoints, and it's all smooth sailing towards the brightest future.Maybe it could include paid Interns lead by a veteran training themselves in the process. I bet there has to be some schools that would be interested in a training program like that.

[Substance E.4852]

Not exactly sure what the PvWvP people will contribute to the rewards team, and vice versa, but it sounds like a positive step forward to get everyone working together regarding the areas where balance matters most.

[ButterPeanut.9746]

Not sure if you can comment on specific numbers, but if so, is this restructure a consolidation as well? Or will it appear as such? A recent restructure that was commented on was the raids/fractals team being combined. It gave the appearance of a restructure for the sake of consolidation (i.e. 5 people on each team previously turns into 6-8 total now).

[Jski.6180]

I am not sure where to start to talk about things with out falling into my own ele trap.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Thanks for the effort to create a more cohesive balance team, guys and girls. I'm sure the wailing souls in the Heart of the Mists will be eager to try them by fire.

[MedievalThings.5417]

Maybe it's just me, but I read this post as basically "we have compressed the few people still working on GW2 into one room, because we have decided to change course and make a GW3 after the next expansion after all".

[ShadowVisions.8193]

I've enjoyed playing a lot of engineer over the course of the games life. While I love the recent addition of the Holosmith elite specialization, I'm hoping good ol' Scrapper will get some love. The changes it got with barrier and what-not were great, but I'm curious if there's anything else on the table for our hammer-wielding hero.

[Bast.7253]

Thanks for sharing some behind the scenes info with us. Not really sure what to make of it but I hope it works out better. On a side note, with this change are there still 3 living world teams? Or have they gone through a similar structure change?

[Edelweiss.4261]

This sounds like a fairly positive change. Thanks for keeping us in the know! ;)

[KGS.9842]

Could you confirm whether it is still the same number of people working in this team as there was before when they were separate?

[Loosmaster.8263]

@Substance E.4852 said:Not exactly sure what the PvWvP people will contribute to the rewards team, and vice versa, but it sounds like a positive step forward to get everyone working together regarding the areas where balance matters most.

Rewards in WvW have been a very contentious subject. There is one there now being debated on how and how much.

[Substance E.4852]

@Loosmaster.8263 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:Not exactly sure what the PvWvP people will contribute to the rewards team, and vice versa, but it sounds like a positive step forward to get everyone working together regarding the areas where balance matters most.

Rewards in WvW have been a very contentious subject. There is one there now being debated on how and how much.

It's in a pretty solid spot now. They could swap out the massive amount of level tomes for something else but the rest is pretty on point.

I mostly meant it in a sense that each team has a very different school of thought when it comes to game design they employ. The reward team is there to get you to play the content, the balance team is there to make sure it's an enjoyable experience (as best they can for what it's worth).

Melding them into one team feels odd but it may just be a formality more than they all sit around a big table every day for 3 hours.

[Irenio CalmonHuang.2048]

@AllNightPlayer.1286 said:Question: Why create such an important workgroup, where different specialists are talking with each other about the game they are working on/for, only after six years? Did everyone work on his/her own before? Game balance would prove me right.

Different teams have different priorities and are often heads-down focused on one niche.

Teams talk with each other, but it is different when someone walks over to your team's area to talk to you than when you're seated beside each other.

When you sit next to each other you get agood sense of what people are working on and can offer feedback to each other much more easily.

[Irenio CalmonHuang.2048]

@ButterPeanut.9746 said:Not sure if you can comment on specific numbers, but if so, is this restructure a consolidation as well? Or will it appear as such? A recent restructure that was commented on was the raids/fractals team being combined. It gave the appearance of a restructure for the sake of consolidation (i.e. 5 people on each team previously turns into 6-8 total now).

This isn't a consolidation; everyone that was on each of the previous teams is on the Systems team.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Substance E.4852 said:Not exactly sure what the PvWvP people will contribute to the rewards team, and vice versa, but it sounds like a positive step forward to get everyone working together regarding the areas where balance matters most.

Well more heads to solve issues... Also, rewards are very disparate between PvP modes where you can get incredibly rare and expensive items just from playing (like Mystic clovers for example) and PvE where you have to spend a lot of time and currency to obtain them.IMO that's also one of the things that lowered the quality of the PvP community overall. Too many people started PvPing simply to farm rewards, not caring about the competitive aspect, which creates more openings for people afking, throwing matches and win trading.

[Sai Locke.7193]

Does this mean there is hope that we will get a rework of the pets and the pet system on Ranger?

[Irenio CalmonHuang.2048]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:Thanks for sharing some behind the scenes info with us. Not really sure what to make of it but I hope it works out better. On a side note, with this change are there still 3 living world teams? Or have they gone through a similar structure change?

Confirm; there are 3 living world teams churning on episodes. :)

[Delweyn.1309]

It's maybe good because like this, dev. will maybe create content that will please/attract more players.

I think about the actual unique pvp mode that reward players who are experienced and make run away pvers. So a big part of the playerbase is not doing pvp at all.

As a pvp et pve player, I do all content and it's nice. But it's obvious that the pvp part of the game is sadly abandoned.

If they could bring a pvp friendly mode (+10v10 with less tactic needed & teamplay than conquest), I'm sure more pvers will spend time in pvp (like in wow before their 2 last expansions).

Same for WvW. Numerous maps open 24/24 scatter people.I think about a unique map with the 3 factions, with quests/objectives and interesting things like in the pve world, but more suited for solo players who will do quests and pvp. I think the WvW could attract more players if it was a determined hour castle capture, that guild could take (with alliance of their faction).