When reading skill suggestions, how does it affect change?

[LUST.7241]

For example, Charr wants his Charrzooka to do 50k damage and it's almost unarguable (complete community agreement, marches in Lion's Arch, etc.)

 

Which choice does the team make:

1) Implement the changes exactly - Charr knows best.

2) Implement the changes differently due to possible copyright - Can't use Charr's ideas in Asura's world.

3) Tweak the numbers, but implement them - Charr went overboard, but provides an acceptable solution that can work.

4) Implement the change in a different way - Charr inspired something better, lets make it unique.

5) Ignore it completely - Charr doesn't exist.

[Irenio CalmonHuang.2048]

I won't address the likelihood of complete community agreement with regards to a numeric change for a single profession. ;)

 

I'd like to speak to how we'd approach what to do:

If Charr is saying he wants 'zooka to do 50k and everyone wants that, well. We ask ourselves *why*. What is the issue that Charr is trying to address by making that suggestion?

 

* Is it because Charr doesn't do enough damage?

* Is it because the 'zooka looks so powerful and the damage doesn't line up with it?

* Does Charr feel they've been neglected for a long time so this is adequate compensation to make up for that?

 

These are some of the things we have to consider. Then we look at what we can do to address the underlying issue, because those are usually present.

 

We seldom implement changes exactly as is suggested... though sometimes we will if they're good suggestions that address the issues at hand.

[Gambit.9501]

i just wanted to drop in to say this thread is fucking adorable

[Tails.9372]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> If Charr is saying he wants 'zooka to do 50k and everyone wants that, well. **We ask ourselves *why*.** What is the issue that Charr is trying to address by making that suggestion? ... Then we look at what we can do to address the underlying issue, because those are usually present.

But would you ever going to to ask these players what the "underlying issue" for them is or would you just going to make assumptions and hope that the solution you came up with is hitting the nail on its head?

 

[Klypto.1703]

I have a Rev Charr that demands his own air ship after so many years of oppression.

[Justine.6351]

I've seen some interesting ideas used in different ways but are still recognizeable.

[Ghotistyx.6942]

> @"Tails.9372" said:

> But would you ever going to to ask these players what the "underlying issue" for them is or would you just going to make assumptions and hope that the solution you came up with is hitting the nail on its head?

 

Players almost never understand the underlying issue compared to designers. Just look at all the bad feedback you see on the forums. Do you think these people can honestly give a coherent explanation to why they think their proposals will work? If even just for the fact that players don't have access to the same information that designers have.

 

There was a game design talk about a likely dead FPS. Players at the time were complaining about a particular rifle not dealing enough damage and being ineffective. Players were whining about upping it's damage or rate of fire. Instead of doing anything the community asked, the designers upped the volume on the rifle's SFX. The feedback that poured in was that the gun was amazing, super strong, probably one of the best guns in the game. They did such a great job fixing the weapon by bass-boosting the gunshot. Perception of balance is more important that actual balance, and perception is vulnerable to all sorts of misinformation.

 

[Tails.9372]

> @"Ghotistyx.6942" said:

> > @"Tails.9372" said:

> > But would you ever going to to ask these players what the "underlying issue" for them is or would you just going to make assumptions and hope that the solution you came up with is hitting the nail on its head?

>

> Players almost never understand the underlying issue compared to designers.

Given their track record this couldn't be any further from the truth. If you have players on the forum bring up an issue and someone is talking complete nonsense he usually gets called out for it and you do have a general consent on various issues, it's not perfect because you often times have people trying to participate which don't even understand the position they're trying to argue against but it sure beats the "let's default to the nerf bat and beat down everything what we perceive to be the issue" A-Net constantly goes back to creating a lot of collateral damage in the process. Having access to statistics by itself isn't necessarily much of a help either since it gives you the "what" but not the "why". I've seen more than enough balance changes which completely miss the mark and show a deep lack of basic understanding of the issue. There's a lot of stuff which probably could have been prevented if they actually asked for some feedback on that matter.

 

Wat they would end up doing with the feedback is of course another thing but there's no point for them not to say "Ok this is what we perceive to be an issue because [insert reasoning here] and this is what we want to do about it, what are your thoughts?".

 

 

[Etheri.5406]

> @"Tails.9372" said:

> > @"Ghotistyx.6942" said:

> > > @"Tails.9372" said:

> > > But would you ever going to to ask these players what the "underlying issue" for them is or would you just going to make assumptions and hope that the solution you came up with is hitting the nail on its head?

> >

> > Players almost never understand the underlying issue compared to designers.

> Given their track record this couldn't be any further from the truth. If you have players on the forum bring up an issue and someone is talking complete nonsense he usually gets called out for it and you do have a general consent on various issues, it's not perfect because you often times have people trying to participate which don't even understand the position they're trying to argue against but it sure beats the "let's default to the nerf bat and beat down everything what we perceive to be the issue" creating a lot of collateral damage in the process. Having access to statistics by itself isn't necessarily much of a help either since it gives you the "what" but not the "why". I've seen more than enough balance changes which completely miss the mark and show a deep lack of basic understanding of the issue. There's a lot of stuff which probably could have been prevented if they actually asked for some feedback on that matter.

>

> Wat they would end up doing with the feedback is of course another thing but there's no point for them not to say "Ok this is what we perceive to be an issue because [insert reasoning here] and this is what we want to do about it, what are your thoughts?".

>

>

 

Having a majority of players agree with a surface-oriented "obvious" solution doesn't mean it's actually a good idea.

 

Typical consensus already includes "ignore wvw and pvp because I only care about PvE - yet you can still find consensus among most players as it's a more popular gamemode. Should we ignore pvp and wvw completely?" I agree they should ask feedback... but these forums aren't a good place for it. The amount of knowledgable players is frankly very very very low. Half the posts I read show a deep lack of basic understanding of the game and the concept of balance.

 

I agree about statistics, when it comes to balancing they're relatively useless. But the same is true for players, especially casual ones or mediocre ones with limited insight into the overall game. They want to help but they're not in a position to do so. Balancing needs to be done by capable people - and while I think anet is slow and sometimes makes some pretty hefty blunders I also think their overall direction for balancing has drastically improved the last years. Statistics and player complaints help you FIND issues, but they do not help you FIX issues.

 

Most players are NOT capable of improving GW2 in the long term. Their complaints tell you where the game struggles and points to problems, and feedback from players can be very helpful as they do know the game (in the case of WvW often better than the devs... sorry devs ;) ) but most of them still wouldn't be good devs.

[Senteliks.2360]

Pain of being designer is watching players telling you how to do your job( reminds of managers talking about unicorns and rainbows, while you are suppose to do job as software engineer) , and the fact is they only focus one aspect and fooled themselves they see whole picture. As player you think you are always right and developer is not listening, ignoring and bla bla. Let me see you, try to develop anything and then allow community to dictate what's right and what's wrong. That's just one way ticket for disaster.

 

There should healthy communication between dev team and community and the way I see it, Anet has that right. I didn't see anywhere else devs themselves getting involved in discussions or even justify why they do certain things heck I don't even see in them keeping community in loop what is going on most of the time with the game, until it doesn't matter anymore.

 

[Mikau.6920]

Several suggestions that I gave got implemented, but most of them took a bit too long, one to two years. I not even sure if they based on my suggestions or had the same ideas by themselves to solve the problems.

 

The thing is, they listen, but the solution take too long to come over.

[Ghotistyx.6942]

> @"Mikau.6920" said:

> Several suggestions that I gave got implemented, but most of them took a bit too long, one to two years. I not even sure if they based on my suggestions or had the same ideas by themselves to solve the problems.

>

> The thing is, they listen, but the solution take too long to come over.

 

It's going to take a long time. Just testing the change is going to be 66%-100%+ the time it takes to create the change. 3 months of development is often 1 month of testing. There goes 1/3 of your year. And then you have priority. Maybe you have to do other things first. There goes even more time. It's always longer than people think.