What should Anet focus on?

[Dreadshow.9320]

They should retrain everybody to make more content.

Even Gary from the mail room should start making more content.

Everyone stop what you are doing and make more content right now.

[Henry.5713]

A focus on balance already doesn't make sense from a business point of view alone. The vast majority of players wouldn't even notice the difference but they'd certainly be disappointed about the lack of new content if this was to happen.

Hardcore PvP might care but they are a tiny minority here while PvE class balance mostly comes down to a few players wanting to play their one favorite class and build no matter what. WvW is an interesting case with many casual not unlike PvE but I hardly doubt people would trade actual content updates (something they haven't seen in years) even amongst the more hardcore players for a more balanced game after half of their friend list quit already quit due to said lack of content.

[Asum.4960]

As a mechanically focused player, balance is content for me.

 

Having a different group composition to do all Raids and Fractals with trumps one new playground with the same old setup, doing the same thing as always, surrounded by a different coat of paint.

 

Chrono is making the game incredibly stale for me lately. Every group feels the same, every encounter is handled the same.

Playing as, as well as with, different kind's of supports alone (in an effective manner) would bring me back to try so many pieces of content just for the hell of it, theorycrafting on what to run where, which support can help bypass which mechanic etc.

 

Obviously we are talking about unrelated teams here, regardless of that, company resources are limited, and I do think more of them should go towards improving the foundation of the game, instead of providing new shinies that distract from the underlying issues for a short time at best.

[Zok.4956]

Content is king. And better than content is even more content. :)

 

[Dami.5046]

yes there should be a both option. I play both but don't Align to being PvE or PvP only player. I'm just a player.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Since I rarely play PvP - well actually almost never - I don't care about it. So that's why I vote for content.

[LuckySpells.6278]

Balance is an elusive ever-changing shadow that can never be perfected.. So I would say content since it's a measurable goal.

Personally, would like to simply be able to swap out upgrades in Legendary Weapons and have officially integrated Build Templates... Then we could better adapt to balance changes.

[Ardid.7203]

I want they to fix everything that is not working right first.

[particlepinata.9865]

What is it with polls and missing more than a binary choice?

[Lorienys.5407]

since I don't bother too hard with builds, or play pvp, I just want them to keep doing what they do and release living world and cosmetic stuff and other new content like the novelties. That stuff is great and keeps me playing

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I want the dev team that works on balance to keep doing that and make fun improvements. I also want the LW team to work on LW chapters and the Expansion team work on the expansion.

 

What I REALLY want is the Current Events team to grow so we have more stuff to do in the down time!

[Ashantara.8731]

Where is the third option, "I want both"?

[EpicName.4523]

The third option will remove the need of a poll. You can't have the cake and eat it too. It is about priorities and what is more important.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

By content do you mean new pvp game modes? Cuz it feels like the 1st option is pve and the 2nd option is for pvp..but pvp isnt just balance it can be content to like new game modes and maps cant it.

[Majic.4801]

As others have pointed out, this seems like a false dichotomy.

 

The people who design content have a very different skill set from those who design and balance the professions, and ArenaNet already employs both.

 

While there can be some crossover, it would probably not be a good idea to assign artists and writers to work on profession balance, nor have profession designers producing art and story lines.

 

Another key difference is that adding more people to content creation can increase the rate of content development, since their work can be parallelized.

 

On the other hand, adding more people to balance professions would likely slow things down, since balance requires that decisions be made regarding limited and specific domains where more opinions don't equate to more progress.

 

Indeed, the focus of this question is clearly on profession balance, but it's not really a matter of insufficient resources.

 

Rather, it's a matter of differing opinions as to what constitutes "balance", and regardless of the resources involved, that's a debate which will never end.

 

 

[Rasimir.6239]

> @"EpicName.4523" said:

> The third option will remove the need of a poll. You can't have the cake and eat it too. It is about priorities and what is more important.

Actually you can in this case, or more to the point, you've got to. Balance without content won't do any good, as ever the most perfect balance will eventually get stale. On the other hand, all the new content doesn't help if they don't continuously adjust the balance, too.

 

Like many things in life, the question between balance and content isn't black or white, but many shades inbetween. Only the team that pays a good amount of attention to all parts of the game and finds the right balance to the focus on all parts of the game will end up with a game people find worthy of their entertainment time.

 

As such it is irrelevenat what you or I would want them to focus on. Personally I hope they'll continue to keep a good balance between all parts and aspects of the game, so that a lot of people will enjoy playing it in the future.

[Kaynide.5387]

> @"EpicName.4523" said:

> Well, with this poll I wanted to promote the idea that this game needs more balancing./reworks. Core professions are, with few exceptions, useless after you get your elite specs.

> Out of those elite specs often only one is actually good for something - again, with few exceptions like Mesmer. This leaves very little gameplay variation. Very little.

>

 

Honestly, I think this is not a very accurate statement. I have been through HoT and PoF on several different classes without ever touching the elite specs, so you can't call them useless. Mostly because I’m too lazy to get the hero points on so many characters...

 

Moreover, for a player like me who is 99% solo PvE, balance is nice, but not really that important.

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Didn't see WvW on the option list.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @"Majic.4801" said:

>

> Another key difference is that adding more people to content creation can increase the rate of content development, since their work can be parallelized.

>

> On the other hand, adding more people to balance professions would likely slow things down, since balance requires that decisions be made regarding limited and specific domains where more opinions don't equate to more progress.

>

> Indeed, the focus of this question is clearly on profession balance, but it's not really a matter of insufficient resources.

>

> Rather, it's a matter of differing opinions as to what constitutes "balance", and regardless of the resources involved, that's a debate which will never end.

 

And, we have a winner!

 

The only way around a holistic approach to balance is a micro-approach, wherein a subset of the team works on specific professions while others work on different professions. Without collaboration, the odds that the different people would work at cross purposes would increase. Don't believe us? Try doing any detailed task by committee. The time involved increases based on the number of stakeholders.

[Headcase.4618]

I didn't vote on this poll cuz what I would like to see is more optimization/maintenance for older content (dungeons in particular). I know we have gotten that in the past with chairs and the recent update to the herald spec, and the upcoming revamp of WvW, I just wish there could be more time and resources spent on that, you know?

[HardRider.2980]

Lmao 2 questions aimed at two different teams.

 

Like the balance team and map creation teams aren't the same

[Zoid.2568]

I think classes are balanced for being a mmorpg. Much depends on how good you are with the class and in which situation you are in, against which enemy etc. Nothing is beating weaver in damage in PvE. PvP is another thing where other things than damage is important.

[SirPuddlesworth.6783]

I think Anet should focus on giving out free codes for all of those people who wasted almost half a week spamming refresh on a half-working app. Great promotion, changing terms mid-event to lock it down to the USA only, rest of the world left in dust! Maybe they'll open it up to the rest of us after they test the waters in the US first, who knows. Who knows....

[Ephemiel.5694]

> @"Zoid.2568" said:

> I think classes are balanced for being a mmorpg. Much depends on how good you are with the class and in which situation you are in, against which enemy etc. Nothing is beating weaver in damage in PvE. PvP is another thing where other things than damage is important.

 

We spent YEARS with both Necromancer and Ranger being KICKED OUT OF GROUPS because of how weak they are and Elementalists topping DPS charts by a huge amount till very recently, but yeah, they're balanced for being an MMO.

[googel.3278]

they should make less skins for role players and focus more on story, right now the lore is absolutely barbaric