Breaking News From ArenaNet HQ - Public Skill Testing & New Event

I dont know why some of you panic whenever skill change is mentioned. It's been 3 months since the last non test skill changes. You'd think people would want change at this point...

Just to add my bit of negativity

It seems kind of pointless the prolonged skill change testing. Chapter 4 is due out in April (?) which will most likely have a new set of over-powered skills. By the time the Nightfall skill changes come in every1 will be talking about the next chapter and most likely trying it out in a WPE.

Thumbs up for the Canthan event though. New events are always fun.

wtb automated tournies, not another pve event. unless there are hats.

Why are there skill testing weekends at all? How about some permanent changes and make emergency tweaks when necessary?

But I'm amazed that even more thought is being put into the skill balance. This means that even more skills will be balanced, which is fantastic. I would have been content with the old patch being reapplied minus the nerfing-RaO-into-oblivion part.

They know how important it is to get things going - Izzy said the question comes up literally every day now. Since this is a long term change though I think it behooves them not to rush it if it is not ready. That is the same approach they are taking with HA as well. I suggested they test the HA mechanics this weekend with 8v8 since they saw 6v6 with similar ones last time, but I don't think that will happen.

Izzy is very anxious to get the HvH ladder going as well. I won't say why yet, but I think it will become evident soon after it opens . . .

They talked about this and it looks like they might be able to. It would really help the folks who need to translate the changes to other languages as well (so it can be done before the weekend starts), so my guess is that they'll push to get the proposed changes at least a day before.

I want to point out that Anet really seems to learn and adapt from their experiences. The reason why they are not just nerfing things right away when they think something is imbalanced is that they want to makes sure they accurately identify the root cause and then not overnerf things into unusability as has happened in the past. So the idea this time around is to get it right with the changed skills so that no further action on them will ever be needed, rather that to continuosly have to tweak them. It makes sense when you consider the time and effort that is required each go around for skill balances.

*sigh* Another teaser to make us all rip our hair out while waiting for something to happen.

Looking forward to the reports!

This thread is for posts relevant only to my trip to Anet. Any unconstructive rants are going to be deleted. There are already plenty of other places where posts like that are being made.

Billiard..did you feel they are out of staff ? and it looks like they have alot of tasks on the schedule to do but the lack of resources that designing events,new expansions,new ideas...etc. make them going slow ?

There were a ton of people there doing a lot of different things, and I thought Gaile said they were expanding even more. I was really surpised by how much staff they had actually.

They walked us through some simple steps in creating environments, monsters, players, and such. What became evident is that each is a multistep process in order to make things look polished and catch as many bugs as possible. But each step would take a week or more by one person, then be handed off to another for a week or more, and so on. So if something gets stuck early on, it can slow up the whole process for that particular part.

Cathan new year celebration and the triple drop week weekend is obviously a response because too many people have left Cantha for Elona. Many of you obviously seen the ghosttowns past cavalon or hzh.

OMG ANET DOESN'T LOVE TYRIA OR ELONA

/sarcasm


Sound vaguely familiar with every other event that's posted, ever?

Should this thread be temporarily stickied ?

Billard, what does Mike Gills do on a day to day basis when the world championships or other sanctioned tournaments aren't happening?

I will looking forward to pig head hat... or maybe not...

Cool! I will wait the skill updates! This is going to be very interesting! I hope they did some of the things many mentioned about several imba skills (and Ensing stated that in his big post).

We only met him briefly and he was busy working on something (hopefully the new automated tournaments!). So honestly I don't know what else he is busy with, but it does seem that a lot of the folks there are involved in multiple aspects of development since there is so much overlap between things.

Who's the ex-admin?

Spooky was one of orginal folks who helped start GWGuru. He left here to work for ANet and is now one of the folks developing the new Canthan New Year's event. I got a picture with him that I'll post with my trip report (coming soon). He left right around the time I joined GWGuru I think.

I'm curious as to see what this new "game" for the Canthan New Year will be like.

Winterfest had a snowball fight, but I'm curious to see what they have up there sleeves for this event.

I'm guessing fireworks will be involved. And lots of clothing and items of one color, probably red.

Also, perhaps special "luck" quests. If you perform a certain action you recive a blessing, but perform another one and you get hexed. You know, like if you eat candy while in a town that's celebrating, then you get increased drop rates for the next few minutes. But if you, say... kill a warthog, you get bad luck?

I think that would be interesting to see. So many possiblities for that.

Going around asking your relatives for money by saying, "Happy New Years!"
Now... we should get 7 days off starting from Feb 18.... some other countries do it =(