Why not creating a poll about balancing?

[Daishi.6027]

Appeal to Popularity is a fallacy.

Being right isn't a democracy.

 

Balance should be made on objective truths.

 

If something is strong but can easily be dodging, or read to lead to a downhill fight for it, having it die or run away; that is more or less fine in conquest.

 

If something can live forever on a point, and everything else slowly die to it; that is imbalanced.

If something can troll a point safely and win every fight from saftey even if temporarily losing the point; that is imbalanced.

 

 

[Nuka Cola.8520]

The game is beyond saving. Its time for GW3.

[phokus.8934]

I like Blizzard's approach with OW when they make changes to heroes they have a "Developer's response" as to why they're making the changes.

 

For example, what's the reasoning behind this for Guardian:

Shield of Wrath: Reduced the cooldown of this skill from 36 seconds to 35 seconds.

 

Why one second? What is this balance pass? The lack of details on these changes is what's frustrating.

[bennypig.6428]

If there is polling, only top 250 or even top 100 on leaderboard should be allowed to vote. Because you have to ensure the ppl who give suggestions know how to utilize the most potential of their classes. You can see ppl on the forum complaining some meme build like p/p thief or condi thief before the recent nerf but those builds were not seen much in high end pug PvP as they are not really that great when the opponents know how to PvP.

[Blackari.2051]

NO, just NO .... so many noobs who do not even understand how spec they are playing works should never be allowed to vote on balance .... just look at how many ppl are QQing about SB gimmick or DE gimmick while it is so easily dealt with .... so to think those players would be able to understand how every spec/ trait is working is just a big joke, not to mention synergies you have to take into consideration since sPvP is team based mode....

[Mr Godlike.6098]

It's possible to make poll about balance but it's horrible task to make one that reliably answers anything balance related:

 

1. First you have to define WHAT IS balance in this game:

-effort vs reward?

-broken stuff/fair mechanics?

-everything is killable in 1v1 by everything?

-whatever dev's balance definition is?

-class is meta or not?

 

2. WHO should be asked:

- ATm/torunaments pro's?

- ranked players (depending on rank or not)?

- everyone?

- forum members or somehow reach out to all players in-game?

 

3. You can't do it right now with tools that forum offers. Let's say I ask if ele is good/bad. Whatever answer would be it doesn't explain WHY is good or bad. Asking about ele means I should ask about weaver, core and tempest and all their weapons, traits and utilities. To have proper picture you would have to make a poll that you would have to spend 30 min's to answer all questions...oh already I can see people hyped about that.

 

4. How many people we would we need make results viable? I would say ,,probably" 1k but I have no idea what actual gw 2 population is and forum is just vocal minority. To be honest even with poll's that we have right now people are not really interested in voting. There is poll now on ele sub-forum with 3k+ view's and only 200+voted.

 

 

[Legatus.3608]

Because people don't know what the hell they're talking about generally

Case in point: saying deadeye is op, factually incorrect and yet still happens daily

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Average rank according to one of the Devs ( forget which one ) I believe is 1200. This means the average player likely doesn't know what they are talking about in terms of balance. They definitely should NOT make balance decisions based on mob rule. There are also a lot of class-biases from people who only play one class and can't accept when it is OP.

 

The thing that annoys people is Anets balance team also ignores advice from top 100 players even when that advice is unanimous and, usually, extremely spot-on. What would be really nice is if they made a compromise on this situation: Send out a simple questionnaire to everyone who ranks top 250 each season with something like:

 

1. A poll option for which classes are OP

2. 500 word max open ended question to state which specific traits/skills are OP in those classes

3. A poll option for which classes are considered most balanced

4. A poll option for which classes are under-perfoming

5. 500 word max open ended question to state what specifically the under performing classes need to be viable.

 

Another problem is that Arenanet seems to often nerf things based on statistics, which is severely flawed and often commits an ecological fallacy between skill levels, leading to very bad balance decisions.

[Rym.1469]

> @"Master Ketsu.4569" said:

> Average rank according to one of the Devs ( forget which one ) I believe is 1200. This means the average player likely doesn't know what they are talking about in terms of balance. They definitely should NOT make balance decisions based on mob rule. There are also a lot of class-biases from people who only play one class and can't accept when it is OP.

>

> The thing that annoys people is Anets balance team also ignores advice from top 100 players even when that advice is unanimous and, usually, extremely spot-on. What would be really nice is if they made a compromise on this situation: Send out a simple questionnaire to everyone who ranks top 250 each season with something like:

>

> 1. A poll option for which classes are OP

> 2. 500 word max open ended question to state which specific traits/skills are OP in those classes

> 3. A poll option for which classes are considered most balanced

> 4. A poll option for which classes are under-perfoming

> 5. 500 word max open ended question to state what specifically the under performing classes need to be viable.

>

> Another problem is that Arenanet seems to often nerf things based on statistics, which is severely flawed and often commits an ecological fallacy between skill levels, leading to very bad balance decisions.

 

As funny as it might sound, if such poll was to happen after season ends and it was announced beforehand, I could see a big influx of players into the gamemode and especially vicious fight for the right to be in top 250 ?.

 

Not a bad idea per se.

[Vague Memory.2817]

Worse idea I've heard in a while. People were screaming that Chronomancer was OP, which is a joke. But because enough people don't like fighting Mes they nerfed chrono anyway, despite it already have been weakened by previous nerfs for no good reason at all. Now it is a an unplayable dead spec. So more mes are playing the OP spec of Mirage that people should have been complaining about in the first place, because it is the sole viable spec left. My point is I've been playing PvP and visiting these forums long enough to know that a lot of people don't necessary criticise the most OP specs. Either because they play that spec and are quite happy to have an advantage in PvP, or because they simply hate the mechanics of another class, despite it ot being OP.

 

Basically a signifiant number of people will vote out pure self interest rather than what is good for balanced PvP matches. Look how many people are using broken spec-builds right now just so that they can get a few more wins. A poll is the worst way to determine balance in this environment and would be a total disaster, so no difference from what it is now. Most of the balance changes necessary are common sense things that serious people have been saying for years, and if ANET can't even figure that out they should just get out of the sPvP business and stick to WvW and PvE because they are just wasting resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

[Ayrilana.1396]

I don’t believe a poll would be helpful as the majority of players likely don’t know enough to really weigh in on balance. Many don’t play every class and only know their class so far as what a couple guilds have listed as the meta build along with its rotation.

[Etheri.5406]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> I don’t believe a poll would be helpful as the majority of players likely don’t know enough to really weigh in on balance. Many don’t play every class and only know their class so far as what a couple guilds have listed as the meta build along with its rotation.

 

Exactly this.

The vast majority of the players in this game are casuals. Most of them don't have the time nor are willing to put in the effort to play a meta they can copy; much less understand the aspects of this meta and why it exists. Balancing that in a larger, complex system is way beyond their scope.

 

One of the main issues with GW2 is that many "popular" opinions and ideas are often quite bad ideas; and the negative effects are rather obvious and should be forseen but aren't. If balance becomes a democracy I'll uninstall. I have absolutely 0 doubt that the population balancing as democracy would be worse than anet doing it. In fact; I think it'd be worse than pure RNG deciding what gets buffed and what gets nerfed...

 

I think anet could do a lot better job at balancing; particularly at doing it faster so problematic things don't exist for weeks to months (is there a daily "hey meteor is still oneshotting zergs thread yet?). But truthfully, balance directions aren't awful. DPS meta is decent. WvW is slowly moving in a better direction. PvP too. A bit unfortunate about the insane powercreep each expansion, and that it takes literally a year to reach a somewhat even playing field with the new specs - but hey.

 

This might be elitist, but low-level players don't need balance. They don't have balance issues - they have LEARN TO PLAY issues.

Balance is determined by high-end play where some things might not have a place at all; or some builds might not have appropriate counters. These overwhelming and underwhelming builds should be removed. That said - I think there is some merit to builds which are oppresive because they're "easy, low risk, high reward".

 

For example, PVP during HoT had many full trap DH's because it was quite low risk high reward. New players would quite literally walk into the traps and lose; without the DH actually fighting them. Same goes for reaper during HoT and scourge during PoF in pvp. These specs were OP on release; but not after the series of nerfs they received. The playerbase still struggled with them because they perform very well for players who don't fully know what they're doing. Rev on the other hand is probably stronger than scourge at the moment; but I think very few playres will say that rev is overpowered.

 

It's also obvious that players hate the stuff that kills them. Not a person in the world grasps how OP firebrand is in PvP - because they can't kill you. Instead they complain about the scourge standing next to the firebrand. The FB can res the scourge 5 times; but the moment the scourge kills an enemy player they tilt about how "OP" scourge is. :trollface:

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

> @"Nuka Cola.8520" said:

> The game is beyond saving. Its time for GW3.

 

If they can't fix Gw2 due to lack of understanding of balance by skill devs, lack of manpower, apathy or some combination of the three, why in Dhuum's name do you think a new game would magically resolve those issues?

 

An rotten apple is still rotten even if you candy it. There's nothing wrong with the mechanics of the game, changes just come too infrequently and without apparent vetting or playtesting. Even if you start from scratch, that approach will rot any foundation you build on, no matter how pristine it starts out.

[Nuka Cola.8520]

> @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > @"Nuka Cola.8520" said:

> > The game is beyond saving. Its time for GW3.

>

> If they can't fix Gw2 due to lack of understanding of balance by skill devs, lack of manpower, apathy or some combination of the three, why in Dhuum's name do you think a new game would magically resolve those issues?

>

> An rotten apple is still rotten even if you candy it. There's nothing wrong with the mechanics of the game, changes just come too infrequently and without apparent vetting or playtesting. Even if you start from scratch, that approach will rot any foundation you build on, no matter how pristine it starts out.

 

Because its better having a new messy game than an old, stale messy game. I want to learn new classes, rotations, etc. Its time.

[witcher.3197]

Last time Anet did polls they killed PvP so no thanks :)