What has Anet been doing with its time?

This is half a rant, but i would really like answers. Just focusing on the PvE skills with this. According to Gaile the reason why we've been waiting on these skills for the last few months is that they've been in development. They've been getting 'balanced'.

3 days after the skills were implemented. The quite obviously overpowered Intensity was nerfed into Ether Renewal land and There's Nothing to Fear was hit hard for secondaries.

So in the several months of development and testing it never once occured to them that maybe, just maybe, TNTF would be extremely overpowered in its current state? You don't need to be a genius to of guessed that TNTF was going to be overpowered. But it seems to have gone completely unnoticed in the several months of 'development and balancing'.

Do you seriously expect people to believe these skills have been getting worked on for months? What exactly are they trying to hide? With this its quite obvious they haven't been working on these skills like they said they have.
We've heard nothing from Gaile at all about how these new PvE skills are going to scale with the Luxon/Kurzick Allegience title. Then suddenly we get them. Would've been nice to know several weeks ago that the title might've been useful in the future.
But no. Completely out of the blue, as if they started working on these titles last weekend and quickly implemented them. The months of balance isn't showing.

So just what has Anet been doing with there time? Because i really don't believe they've been working on these skills. Why have they been delayed for so long?

GW2

Because GW1 is obviously perfect so they can devote 80% of their time to GW2

Guess they got alot of things on their hands, Quite frankly I don't see why anyone should care since they are out now, Even if you got an answer does it really mean that much?

But personally i thought intensity should have a longer duration before, but then it got nerfed pretty bad so now I'm taking it off my bar and replacing it with good ol' fireball again. Oh wells.

Why do you think the game, which its skill system quite resembles Magic the Gathering's deck of cards system, need SO MANY balanced adjustments after released, while Magic (in the new era, like, past 5 years or so) rarely needs restriction/banning (since you can't change printed cards)?

Why do you think the Necro/Ritualist Spirit/Soul Reaping combo (which led to the adjustment to Soul Reaping afterward) was discovered to be overpowered AND readjusted A YEAR after Factions? (such combo can be made as soon as Factions came out.)

Why do you think there're bugs in nearly every single update we have up to now?

Why do you think Necrosis needed a quick adjustment only a few hours after it went live?

I'd say Anet doesn't have a beta-testing team or a quality assurance team AT ALL. Or maybe Anet does, but these teams SUCK.

Feel free to call me (an old fanboy) an Anet basher today, but only if you can prove me wrong on this.

You think its bad now? Just wait till after GW:EN is released. The gap between that and GW2 might be a long one...

I'm hoping for a surprise Sorrow's Furnace type update.

And maybe I'll buy GW:EN.

Probably with GW:EN and GW2. Seems like they are always busy with some sort of project. Be happy they are doing anything at all. Just from the screen shots and the video from GW:EN alone you can tell they have been busy. Ofcourse they probably got a good deal done before they announced it.

They show all the signs of being stretched way too thin. They obviously have a lot on their hands in development with GW2 and finishing GW:EN (which really ought to be done by now I imagine in terms of development anyway).

All that aside, I'll say 1 thing - they were setting themselves up with a no-win situation with these SS skills. When they were released, you had people whining that they were too powerful. Now they're being nerfed, and people are whining about that. You'll always have people complaining about something, but this one was double barreled. I think they would have been better served to release these skills, say "This is the way they're going to be for now, we'll consider feedback and make necessary changes in the future". That allows them some wiggle room to fix anything that may be dire in the future, while still standing firm on the boundaries of these skills. Let's be honest, alot of people playing this game are kids, and I think the lack of decisive decision making encourages them to see what more they can get out of it by complaining about anything they can think of.

Don't get your hopes up too high.

They are obviously doing something. They have said that their current projects include GW:EN and GW2. My guess is that they are in the final stages of ending GW:EN's production, and that GW2's main framework is being laid out, models, ideas, and realitive needs for GW2's servers are being accounted for. With information on how high server power/upkeep needs to be, they can create a game that is as cost effective as Guild Wars.

What are they doing currently? Well its known that Auction Houses will never be implemented. Keep in mind 1 new NPC in Lions, Kaineng, and Kamadan have come out of the blue, and they don't speak or do anything. These may serve for a new feature, update, event. Or maybe something we are not expecting!

I know Anet's doing something, its just very hard to see at the moment and I can see why people might get frustrated, or confused.

Was this said specifically? The last thing I heard about it was that it wasn't feasible in the near future. That gave me hope that they were suggesting they'd develop something better than the current system, but not to expect it in the immediate future.

yes, repeatedly

and also, yeah don't hold your breath for something akin to sf.....you can see how much they are struggling with what they have

I know.

I thought PvE skills would be the next amazing update.

But no, they screwed that up too.



I kinda feel bad for not having much faith in ANet, I mean, they supplied us with a great game, but about a week ago, I just started to hate it. I didn't play it for fun anymore, I played it for titles.

Its not the same.

I would pay an additional $100 for Factions/NF to get removed so I can enjoy the great game I fell in love with.

What NPC? Any link?

What has Anet been doing with its time?

Are you kidding me? Have you been living under a rock for the last 12 months? Anet has implimented countless, major updates and improvements over the last 6 months alone, and they are now currently working on an expansion and a whole new game.

How can you possible suggest they are just sitting, twiddling their thumbs?

2 new campaigns.
Constant skills changes.
Heroes.
AI improvement (whether it worked or not).
Storage increase.
All armors using insignias.
New sunspear, kuzack and luxon skills.
A new expansion in the works.
A new game in the works.
New warrior armor added.
Hard mode.
Tomes.
Lock picks and HM chests.
Loot scaling (whether liked or not).
New login system.
Special event weekends.
Festivals.
The current storage changes.
The list goes on and on and on.....

Anet has made countless updates (big and small, liked and unliked) over the last 12 months and you want to suggest their not doing anything. Sorry but grow up!

This is just a rant because what ever change you wanted, hasnt been done or some change they made annoyed you!

I noticed you 're focusing on skills and balancing as your arguement. Has it occured to you, that there is more then just skill balancing to worry about when trying to keep an online game working smoothly?

They have errors, bugs, server issues, lagg issues, bot detection, bans to inforce, tickets to read and repond to. They have alot of stuff to deal with, with a very small number of staff.

Honestly, grow up, and stop suggesting that a company like Anet does nothing but sit around on their hands all day. Do you want to try running a company and maintaining software that 1000s of people use?

And btw, your obviously not a programmer, so you wouldnt understand the concept of releasing any new updates in bulk. Yes they may have had these new skills lying around for months, all ready to release and put into the game. But its alot more efficient to release updates in bulk, to ensure they dont have knock-on-effects.

Anet have made alot of changes recently, and they had to ensure they didnt all effect one another. They would wait until all updates are ready and working, before they release them.

You cant just make an update and release it the second you have finished! You have to concider whether other updates are currently in development, and concider whether its worth releasing them all at once, or doing them seperately.

Do you think its cheaper and safer to update a server once, or multiple times in a few days?

Think about it, before you go ranting! Anet is a business and a company, so they have to do things in a profession way. They dont just throw updates out there the second they finish them.

Sorry I ranted there... I said more below....

freeked, I think you are getting a bit carried away. I'd like to know what they've been doing the last 2 months that the new SS skills were supposedly being fine tune. It really looks like the devs were putting it off all this time, and actually made them just a few days before they went live.

"I would pay an additional $100 for Factions/NF to get removed so I can enjoy the great game I fell in love with. "

I wouldn't go that far (cause I love Factions and NF, too), but I *would* pay them $100 to put SR back the way it was.

Sorry I know I did. It just annoys me to an extent when people try to suggest programming is a walk in the park! Its just never as simple as alot of people suggest it is.

You also have to appreciate there are times, when the programmers do (miss-guidingly) push out updates before their ready. Why? Because they want them out of the way to focus on bigger projects which their under pressure to complete.

They know they can return to those smaller updates and fix them later on. But aslong as their out there, the users are relatively happy. I do that myself at times, knowing I can fix them later. While I keep bigger changes until their perfect.

If you have ever done any programming, you'll notice that it's a very time consuming task. Making a game it one thing, but making it run stable with a balanced gameplay is as hard. It just takes much time.

I'm sure ANet is doing a LOT, like:
GW2
GW:EN
Preparing gamewide events
Looking after support requests that require developer action
Implementing some of the suggestions from forums like this one

Yes, I'm also frustrated by lack of fixing some issues, but I also understand ANet cannot do everything. I also praise ANet for creating this overall fantastic game. Don't let a few bad spots drive you mad.

Try WoW, try Everquest, try DAoC.
Then go back to GW.

You weren't the only one to notice this; There's a Ministry of Maintenance guy in KC that I almost made a wiki page on, but I couldn't find any sort of reference or function to him. What were the others?

If I'm Anet, I'll be doing this:

all day long, and move to Tahiti.

I think the new NPCs may be linked to the "gamble on ATS winners" feature promised in january, march, may, now august (check the new page on Tournament Rules on gw.com)

Christ we're not back to the Anet fanboys whining about how programming is hard are we... they're paid to do it! ITS THEIR JOB!

And yes, my question is what have they been doing with the last 2 months they've been 'balancing' these skills?
Nobody wanted an auto-targetting system... now its been implemented it still looks like nobody wants it.
They updated all the Xunlai Agents... why? We've had 1 single upgrade to them since the release of GW, now every single outpost has a dedicated upgrade agent? What the hell? Even if this means we have a few storage updates on the horizon i hardly see how giving every town a dedicated NPC for it should've been high on the priorities list.

These skills show a distinct lack of balance. It took the community a whole of 5 minutes to figure out that There's Nothing to Fear was extremely overpowered. There is no way in hell the team responsible for skill balancing could've been that oblivious...

As for the things that came out of the blue. I know Anet don't tell us everything... if you want to learn more, read the CR thread. But my point is why didn't Gaile mention to us that these PvE Sunspear skills maybe, just maybe... weren't all based on the Sunspear title?

Now it seems they're just panicing about it. These were meant to be PvE only skills. Skills that should be very good as normal skills but not completely stomp on elites. Intensity has gone from been powerful since its abused with the other PvE skills to been completely useless.

They seem to be winging these PvE skills now... they don't have a clue what they want from them.

A comment on programming/coding. Yes it's their job, but it's still not as simple as you all would like to believe. As a progammer you try and make a guess as to how long something will take and decide if it's worth working on. If you have 2 project and you determine that tehy might take 8 hours each. Well one might only take 4 hours as it was much simply than guess or it simply worked the 1st time. The other may take 40 hours due to any number issues that can arise.

And then there's the whole 10 hours invested and then being pulled off of that project only to be told to work on it again a couple weeks later and having to spend a couple hours to figure out where you were in the process.

Perhaps many of the crappy updates are things that were ideas or things they might want to implement in GW2 that were easy to code, where the things that people want may take much longer to implement successfully.

Who knows, but get off the programmers back, just because they get paid to do doesn't mean that it's the simple 'would you like fries with that?' type of job.

sorry, as an ex-programmer I had to comment.

Its a double edged sword for Anet though. If they had continued to pro-long the sunspear skills, then players would continue to winge...

"Where are our skills? you prommised us skills!"

...then they rush them together and bang them out to keep people happy, and they get...

"What are these? we dont like these!"

Anet cant win, what ever they do. It happened with hard mode! Players winged they wanted the game to be hard and heard about this hard mode option. They then winged about when is it being released! They wanted it now!! now!! NOW!!!

The minute they released it, the players all winged it was rubbish and refused to use it!

The same can be said for heroes! Players wanted better AI and the ability to control their henches. They wanted them and winged that Anet was doing nothing about it. Then we get NF and heroes and guess what!

"Heroes are ruining the game. Heroes are the end of PUGs!! Get rid of Heroes!!"

Players are like children. They want their changes NOW, but when Anet rushes them out and gives them these updates......they winge they dont like them.

Kids in a candy store:

"Mammy, I want those sweets!! NOW!! NOW!! NOW!!!!!"

Mother gives the kid the sweets!:

"I dont like them..... *cries*!!"

Sound familiar?

Actually I feel sorry for the Anet development team!

They must have got rather thirsty while the tea boy was making these PVE skills up

ANET failed because they never listened or only selectively.

People wanted skill balance, instead we get random buffs quarterly and nerfs. 20 or so skills changed every four months is not active balancing.

People wanted the NPC's to be smarter, but just attack and activate things faster, while being at higher levels.

As for the skills the gap from when they were announced, to now was a long time to make 20 PVE skills. Well only 10, but they went for 20, and even then some of the ten they said would appear were broken from the start.

Granted it may not be just ANET's fault as their are Alpha testers, but somewhere there is a breakdown. It could be the team basically abandoning the games as soon as they are released as was the split team policy. As soon as factions started, more and more problems came up than, and fixes were farther and farther away.

There is a design fault and a balance fault and everyone in the game knows that the design is just getting weird and random at this point, and balance is out of the question. Not to mention the game did a total 180 from what it is being projected as on even the official web page.

OH NOEZ! The PvE-only skills that are only usable on monsters were not perfect!!!!

Honestly I do feel that the skills were not very balanced at release, but as its been pointed out: would it have mattered? Seriously you can not appease a large portion of the community here, its not worth trying.

That all said, in response to the question. What have they been doing? Probably adding the skills. Not being sarcastic, but honestly think about it. The skills are tied to a title, not an attribute. That could have been really easy to do, or really hard. I get paid to write code as well, and I can say I would give my clients an atomic elbow if they treated me like garbage like 99% of the users on these boards have confused themselves into thinking they have the right to do.

Anyways...Then they had to update the Hero Skill trainers to provide the new skills. They also updated the Skill Trainers with the ability to turn Skill Points into Hero Skill points to get them.

They then, while abrupt and unknown, added in Faction PvE only skills and did what I think was the best part of the update in changing the blessing to give faction from kills.

All of these could have been trivial to do, or very hard depending on how they wrote the software in the first place. I would bet on a combination. Also remember that ANet already has our money. We paid for what came with the box and limitless access to their servers. 10% of the updates they release are fixing errors/bugs/exploits, which we also paid for. The other 90% is in large part free stuff that for the most part I am happy for.

Im not a fanboy for ANet, I could complain all day about their horrid "fix" to SR, or how I can no longer farm with my eyes closed using Stoneflesh Aura, how I 100% believe something is wrong with HM drops, how loot scaling is a flawed concept, and how I dont get the option to run a healer monk in RA/TA/AB/etc because its not feasable. BUT AS FOR THIS UPDATE....Im at a loss as to whats there to complain about.

Wow, I can't believe that there's actually a thread like this. A-net is currently working on an expansion AND a COMPLETELY NEW GAME. At the same time as this, they are still running the current GW with updates such as the large one that came last Friday. I think it's pretty obvious that A-net is very busy if not the busiest they've ever been.

Yes, the sunspear skills were delayed, but when they came out, we were given twice as many skills since we got Lux/Kurz skills also. Let me ask you, which should a-net delay, a full release of an expansion and/or new game or a few PvE skills???

As for the comparison of TNTF and Intensity, I think it's pretty obvious. Elementalists are already the kings of PvE and don't need any new uber skills to prove such. Seriously, when's the last time you saw an Ele have trouble finding a group? PvE Paragons on the other hand have been getting slapped around by the nerf bat as a result of PvP, so they get a better skill.



I have to admit that overall, I'm almost ashamed to consider myself part of the GW community. Lately there has been little but flames coming to A-net because some people feel that they know enough about the game to dictate what it should be like for EVERYONE else. Considering that the game is played on so many countries and by such a diverse group of people (yes there are actually people that play GW and don't post on GWGuru! *GASP* I know!!). The arrogance, immaturity, and downright disrespectfulness that the community has been showing in these forums over the past few months is really making me sick.


Being employed doesn't make you less than human. Since when did getting a paycheck make you any less deserving of common courtesy than anyone else? Should I show up at your work and take a piss on your face then tell you that it's ok because you're getting payed???

Hopefully when GWEN comes out, things will resume to some semblance of normalcy....

Come on Anet, you guys need to get more people.

What's with all the yabbering about programmers? Sure, programming takes time, duh. The question is, what have the game designers been doing? Not putting a lot of thought in these skills if you ask me. Some were so obviously out of whack on release, a blind bat could've spotted it. How long does it take to see that skills like "There's Nothing to Fear!" are rather incredible overpowered on practically any profession if it's based on a title?

Hey mods, can we get a /close on this bitchfest?

*notices the GW2/GWEN excuse card coming into play again*

Anet seem to have an infinite amount of those recently... if things suck or are too slow, blame GW2/GWEN! Its funny that Anet stretching themselves too thinly is actually becoming a valid excuse in the community.

I'm sure Anet would employ more staff if they could afford to and felt they needed to. But even they have to work to a budget and have to spend their time and money carefully.

Call me an AnetFanBoy, but I think they have done am amazing job in 2 years.

In terms of those new skills they added, I got "intensity" at the weekend and I thought it was great! I didnt get it and think "OMG, this is way too overpowered, Anet you idiots!" I just thought "cool.. this will come in handy!"

Some people take this game far tooo seriously! Just enjoy the new skills and stop being so childish.

In all my time playing games.. I have NEVER seen such a huge pack of whiners.

If you don't like the game stop playing it! God it's just that easy!

Didn't your parents ever tell you that if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all? Well I guess I'm breaking that rule but someone needs to say it!

I think we all ready have enough threads complaining about these issues. Closed.