No feedback on the community's feedback

[Hot Boy.7138]

Would have been nice to hear from the devs about how they felt about our thoughts on mirage, our suggestions, and if they would take any of our suggestions. And to hear their own ideas for the direction they want mirage to go in after reading our feedback.

 

Feels like we're gonna be in for one big surprise on sept. 22nd.

 

I'm hoping they took the advice to add clone death traits to the spec. Whoever suggested that is a genius. I just want cripple and weakness. Slow would be nice too tho.

[Esplen.3940]

I'm going to say this here again since the old forums is basically gone:

Suggestions relating to class balance aren't typically considered. There's too many voices to be able to sift through and find the gold, and it's better to avoid getting dirt and trash than hoping you've hit gold.

The stress tests and preview weekend were more to find bugs than class balance, and if you consider everything Mirage has in terms of damage output to be balanced (because numbers can be adjusted later), you can still see issues with the design (traits) and mechanics (skills + some traits + dodge).

 

They have made changes to the elite spec but haven't posted about them because people are just going to tear it apart before release. Sure, the elite spec probably won't be in a perfect spot on release, but they will be able to make adjustments at their own pace instead of trying to appease a community where someone will be upset no matter what happens. I'm not saying that Mirage is or will be good, but I am saying that offering suggestions to what the devs should implement is not always helpful (sometimes a dev could gain inspiration from suggestions, but that's pretty rare, as far as I know).

 

Let them fix and change things at their own pace. As a user, focus on what doesn't work and why, not how you think it should.

[Carighan.6758]

Now, first of all I should preface this by saying that comparing other MMORPGs I've played (Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, briefly Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy 14 RR and Meridian 59), GW2 has pretty bad balancing all around.

 

There are a few core issues. One is how rarely balance patches come out. MMOs which had great balance usually didn't refrain from changing balance every 2-4 weeks, using the raw speed of changes to slowly home in on a balanced spot, just trying all combinations basically. Another big problem is the size or scope of the patches we get. They seem impressive with their endless pages of changes, but again, comparing other MMORPGs they seem to want to change very little. Because other games did things such as ripping out entire *skills* (or even skill types) when they didn't work or just couldn't be buffed to a level where players would want to use them. Comparing things now from the perspective of a game which doesn't do it... it should do it, really. More daring, bolder, balance moves. Small nudges didn't help, now bring out the big guns.

 

That being said, as @"Esplen.3940" said it's **highly unlikely** devs will comment much, for a few reasons:

* It generally just incites more complaints. Rarely is it seen as a positive source of information. Players like to think they'd rather be part of the dev process, but I doubt you may want to read that on internal test builds, Mesmers just lost the ability to summon illusions without recompense. (these things **do** happen, and for sensible reasons, they're just not really easy to explain)

* Negative press would be terrible right before release of a new expansion. Hence, rather no communication than negative feedback driving communication.

* Players are usually good at telling you (as a dev) what they **don't** want, but rarely the opposite. Hence us saying "Wow, Mirage is a terrible spec" (I'm understating it on purpose :tongue: ) is useful feedback, but "I think we should have Ambush skills trigger when we shatter, too!" isn't. The latter is way too much of a personal-preference thing, ask 1000 players and you'll get 1003 different opinions.

[Menaka.5092]

> That being said, as @"Esplen.3940" said it's **highly unlikely** devs will comment much, for a few reasons:

 

they don't have the time.

 

[OriOri.8724]

@"Carighan.6758" nailed a big point in his comment. A large problem with balance overall in this game is the two fold problem of Anet rarely releasing balance patches (seriously, it should be happening montly at least, if not bi-weekly), and when they do, a lot of the balance patches rarely change anything at all. When we get 3 or 4 balance patches a year maximum, each balance patch needs to bring significant changes. I don't necessarily mean huge number changes, but a significant amount of things need to be changed. Not a few skills and traits for __most__ classes. Not a 5 sec CD on a few skills, but reworks, weapon redesigns, skill type redesigns etc....

 

The dev's have shown they __can__ do this, but they don't seem to have the time since they are constantly developing new elite specs as well. What we really need is to double or triple the size of the skills and balance team. And then the next priority should be full skill splitting (PvE, WvW, and PvP each having their own balance).

[zealex.9410]

> @OriOri.8724 said:

> @"Carighan.6758" nailed a big point in his comment. A large problem with balance overall in this game is the two fold problem of Anet rarely releasing balance patches (seriously, it should be happening montly at least, if not bi-weekly), and when they do, a lot of the balance patches rarely change anything at all. When we get 3 or 4 balance patches a year maximum, each balance patch needs to bring significant changes. I don't necessarily mean huge number changes, but a significant amount of things need to be changed. Not a few skills and traits for __most__ classes. Not a 5 sec CD on a few skills, but reworks, weapon redesigns, skill type redesigns etc....

>

> The dev's have shown they __can__ do this, but they don't seem to have the time since they are constantly developing new elite specs as well. What we really need is to double or triple the size of the skills and balance team. And then the next priority should be full skill splitting (PvE, WvW, and PvP each having their own balance).

 

Idealy id like a balance patch every month or so or at least a balance patch every 1 and a half month 1 balance patch every 2-3+ months is really holding the game back in all gamemodes.

[Xstein.2187]

They also aren't going to reveal anything until it is ready. I think we just have to wait and see. There will always be latter balance patches as well, there just won't be major changes.

[Dahkeus.8243]

Mesmer definitely isn't my main class, but even if it was, I don't think I'd care to bother with feedback since there's nothing realistic that I would expect devs could do to make it perform even remotely close to Chrono.

[mortrialus.3062]

> @Carighan.6758 said:

> Now, first of all I should preface this by saying that comparing other MMORPGs I've played (Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, briefly Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy 14 RR and Meridian 59), GW2 has pretty bad balancing all around.

>

> There are a few core issues. One is how rarely balance patches come out. MMOs which had great balance usually didn't refrain from changing balance every 2-4 weeks, using the raw speed of changes to slowly home in on a balanced spot, just trying all combinations basically. Another big problem is the size or scope of the patches we get. They seem impressive with their endless pages of changes, but again, comparing other MMORPGs they seem to want to change very little. Because other games did things such as ripping out entire *skills* (or even skill types) when they didn't work or just couldn't be buffed to a level where players would want to use them. Comparing things now from the perspective of a game which doesn't do it... it should do it, really. More daring, bolder, balance moves. Small nudges didn't help, now bring out the big guns.

>

> That being said, as @"Esplen.3940" said it's **highly unlikely** devs will comment much, for a few reasons:

> * It generally just incites more complaints. Rarely is it seen as a positive source of information. Players like to think they'd rather be part of the dev process, but I doubt you may want to read that on internal test builds, Mesmers just lost the ability to summon illusions without recompense. (these things **do** happen, and for sensible reasons, they're just not really easy to explain)

> * Negative press would be terrible right before release of a new expansion. Hence, rather no communication than negative feedback driving communication.

> * Players are usually good at telling you (as a dev) what they **don't** want, but rarely the opposite. Hence us saying "Wow, Mirage is a terrible spec" (I'm understating it on purpose :tongue: ) is useful feedback, but "I think we should have Ambush skills trigger when we shatter, too!" isn't. The latter is way too much of a personal-preference thing, ask 1000 players and you'll get 1003 different opinions.

 

I don't know when you played World of Warcraft, but back in my day from Vanilla to Lich King balance was a hot mess across all game modes. Sometimes a very fun chaotic mess, but still a mess. That every class has at least one viable PvP spec is already doing far better than WoW's balance team ever did. Vanilla PvE raiding was like the old Four Ele's raid meta on steroids. Warlocks, Hunters, Rogues were joke dps in comparison to Mages. The only reason raids didn't just stack warriors, healers, and mages was primarily just because 40 man raids were such a huge personnel requirement that it was super freaking hard to stack a raid that precisely and intensely when you need so many people. There were also far less people that multiclassed in WoW because leveling and alts were very time intensive. Plus you needed someone had to be there to get the rogue loot and there occasionally was something like the suppression room that required Rogues, or a boss where a Warlock had to banish. And that isn't even touching PvP where a properly geared warrior was god.

 

BC and WotLK fared far better in balance than vanilla. BC made sure most classes had at least one viable role/build in PvE and Wotlk expanded that to hybrid classes maybe having two. Maybe. But I'd still put GW2's balance ahead of WotLk in PvE and PvP.

 

The rest of your post is fine, it's just this part in particular was like "Whaaaa?"

 

Arenanet doesn't balance for PvE anywhere near as frequently as they should. When balance patches come around, it's almost exclusively for PvP. Arenanet have always been far too eager to take extreme measures when something is overperforming, but are hesitant to do anything when something has 0 place in the game.

[Carighan.6758]

> @Menaka.5092 said:

> The rest of your post is fine, it's just this part in particular was like "Whaaaa?"

>

> Arenanet doesn't balance for PvE anywhere near as frequently as they should. When balance patches come around, it's almost exclusively for PvP. Arenanet have always been far too eager to take extreme measures when something is overperforming, but are hesitant to do anything when something has 0 place in the game.

 

Yeah sorry, I should have worded that better. I mean I played WoW from day 1, I know how weird balance was (but to be fair, WoW vanilla was done with pre-WoW balance goals, meaning feel and design over balance and numbers). I was a Warlock back in the early raiding days! (it worked, they needed me for CoE)

 

Anyhow, what I meant though was that even as back as EQ1, devs weren't afraid to tear things out of the game if they're not working, or throw entire designs over for re-trying. WoW did this more than anything else, usually completely toppling existent class design when an expansion rolled around, changing massive amounts of how the class works (for example, Shamans more or less lost their totems by now, at least the way they were once intended to work as group buffs).

 

Give it a few years, and this makes you home in on quite decent balance.

 

By comparison, GW2's balance patches are:

 

* Quite rare.

* Feel as if they do a lot (lots of pages).

* But actually all they do is nudge things around a bit.

 

Now ofc, you might say this is because balance is so good already, there's little to do. But frankly, how come there are **so many** skills, weapons, traits and gear types **entirely** unused in any optimized build then? And usually not even in a spot-based manner?

 

If anything, balance now is shameful. Yes it's better than at release (assuming you ignore Gen 1 elite specs which are still a hot mess and totally ruined vanilla PvE), but for 5 years down the line... yeah. Not good. At all. Comparing DAoC, by now at least 2 classes would be entirely unlike they were at release, probably including all of their skills. Comparing WoW, 1-3 would have a new or different resource to work with and there'd be extensive reworks or even an abolishment of the current gear stat setup entirely. And so on.

 

GW2 could be balanced neatly. But someone has to make an effort for that, and it seems management is unwilling to pay for someone to do it :dissapointed:

[glenndevis.8327]

Would be nice to get more feedback on our feedback but I think that at this point Anet is afraid of making promises they might not be able to keep in the end.

 

I also want some sort of clone death trait back though. Mirage would be the perfect spec to put it on.

I love the idea of punishing people for not figuring out which the real mesmer is and also punish mindlessly hacking down clones without any thought behind it. It would also make clones more useful in WvW.

 

A cripple & maybe confusion would make more sense imo though (being confused about where the real mesmer is and such.)

[mortrialus.3062]

> @Carighan.6758 said:

> > @Menaka.5092 said:

> > The rest of your post is fine, it's just this part in particular was like "Whaaaa?"

> >

> > Arenanet doesn't balance for PvE anywhere near as frequently as they should. When balance patches come around, it's almost exclusively for PvP. Arenanet have always been far too eager to take extreme measures when something is overperforming, but are hesitant to do anything when something has 0 place in the game.

>

> Yeah sorry, I should have worded that better. I mean I played WoW from day 1, I know how weird balance was (but to be fair, WoW vanilla was done with pre-WoW balance goals, meaning feel and design over balance and numbers). I was a Warlock back in the early raiding days! (it worked, they needed me for CoE)

>

> Anyhow, what I meant though was that even as back as EQ1, devs weren't afraid to tear things out of the game if they're not working, or throw entire designs over for re-trying. WoW did this more than anything else, usually completely toppling existent class design when an expansion rolled around, changing massive amounts of how the class works (for example, Shamans more or less lost their totems by now, at least the way they were once intended to work as group buffs).

>

> Give it a few years, and this makes you home in on quite decent balance.

>

> By comparison, GW2's balance patches are:

>

> * Quite rare.

> * Feel as if they do a lot (lots of pages).

> * But actually all they do is nudge things around a bit.

>

> Now ofc, you might say this is because balance is so good already, there's little to do. But frankly, how come there are **so many** skills, weapons, traits and gear types **entirely** unused in any optimized build then? And usually not even in a spot-based manner?

>

> If anything, balance now is shameful. Yes it's better than at release (assuming you ignore Gen 1 elite specs which are still a hot mess and totally ruined vanilla PvE), but for 5 years down the line... yeah. Not good. At all. Comparing DAoC, by now at least 2 classes would be entirely unlike they were at release, probably including all of their skills. Comparing WoW, 1-3 would have a new or different resource to work with and there'd be extensive reworks or even an abolishment of the current gear stat setup entirely. And so on.

>

> GW2 could be balanced neatly. But someone has to make an effort for that, and it seems management is unwilling to pay for someone to do it :dissapointed:

 

Ah yeah. You're right I see what you mean. Not only did every expansion basically completely rework the classes, but there were often huge overhauls. I remember a few months in vanilla WoW where there were a few months where basically every class got radically reworked that happened pretty soon post launch. Arenanet has never done this except maybe the switch to the specialization system.