Regarding the April 9 Game Update

Wow. Hi broken meta for another month kthx. Disappointment after disappointment.

I love how people whine when ArenaNet needs more time testing their updates. As Regina said, one updated value can result in unpredictable changes somewhere else in the game. Change the way one skill works, and you've altered all monsters in the PvE area of the game that use that skill. Change another skill - oops, now an originally and intentionally un-soloable area is now exploited by a new solo build. The whiners in this forum are so shortsighted. Especially when their complaint is:

"Why can't you just change the value in the skills database, it's so easy!"

It's because that change could have adverse effects on areas of the game you aren't even aware of. So, the pompous peanut gallery and wannabe game directors should probably think things through before making snap judgments about a project they know NOTHING about. Just because you play the game, doesn't mean you know what is going on under the hood folks.

It's possible, though, that something similar is the reason why. The human mind can also become excited about a particular task, increasing productivity on that task and decreasing it when forced to work on others that seem to be drudgework in comparison.

I suspect they have still been considering balance updates, they just haven't got them ready and aren't willing to force themselves to do so, possibly spending time that would be more efficiently spent working on what they want to work on.

well im quite disappointed. i could really care less about the tonic (very annoying for the most part, targetted at small kids if you ask me). as for storage and stuff, if you have that much stuff in storage its from a couple reasons, 1. skills are so broken that you can get more stuff before you figure what youre gonna do with the old stuff, 2. you keep too much junk that you never use, so no need to hang onto it. now with keeping skills how they are (roj with no scatter so v spear farming is dropping huge numbers of items into the market). this is the reason people need more storage. fix the skills and the rest will fix itself. i play mostly pvp so this will be another fail month of endurance spammers, lingering spam and pnh.

^^ this

i wish my necro wasn't better at being a rit :-(

Glad to see a proactive effort to inform us.

I have to agree here. The people who complain and say stuff like it's so easy to balance a skill and it only takes changing one value in a database...it just makes me want to facepalm because that opinion is so ignorant and just plain incorrect.

Balancing a game is difficult work. Making one single change will have a knock-on effect on so many other things, some of which can be predicted, some of which may not be noticed until later, and most of which the average person will never even realize.

If anything necro needs to be nerfed just as bad the jesus beam if not more, the amount of minions they can make and control in AB is insane. But then again it's fun to cut them down and watch the minions go wild and attack everything in sight.

more storage? yeah whatever
with all the accounts we have to exploit the xth
everyone has over 9000 mules
to store bat wings, wolf fangs, fungal wallows etc

Chthon is fine with this. In fact, Chthon would be fine with going regularly 2 months or even longer between skill updates if it meant more testing went into them.

Though Chthon would really like to see the AI bug for RoJ fixed sooner rather than later.

I don't mind waiting since WoW keeps me busy. Take yer time anet, don't need a update full of bugs anyway.
Although it really would be nice for it rits to get some love eventually :c

The big patch this month was set up as a deadline; by nature such things are inflexible. People don’t put out optimal work around deadlines. Deadlines force production, whether it is good production or not. Deadlines work best when structured away from thinking work. If you want to know something that thrives around deadlines, I would point you to look at the work of insects. Insects do not think about too much, nor do they face thinking problems that they don't deal with as a collective; they serve the colony. They follow the same fixed activity schedules to keep the colony surviving; these are activities that can be automated.

The way a thinking problem works is that when you first approach it, you do not already have the capabilities to solve it (this is highly unlike work that gets automated). If you try to approach the problem head on by thinking about it, guess what… you can’t do it because you don’t have the method of thinking to solve it. So the way to approach the problem is to learn a new method of thinking.

So if you want to talk about optimal methods for problem solving: you structure already learned activities around deadlines, because some types of people thrive around the structure of having things already planned out. But you do not structure thinking and learning based problem solving around deadlines. You get the solution to such things when you learn it. That is why you have to be learning and thinking 24/7. Time lost not learning can never be made up.

But the information that you are not including: the skill balance changes they did last month were relatively well received; considering there are plenty of threads indicating people have long-standing issues against things that has been done previously. You don’t win people over in a day. I would have called it momentum to build off of. I hope that momentum wasn’t lost by forced execution of another task.

Skill balances can wait, but I can't wait for this major upgrade. Finally maybe an armor storage that I have been waiting for?

Keep up the good work Regina & friends!

Edit: On a side note, will you guys stop complaining and bitching? Seriously, grow up and if you don't like the game, well just stop playing and complaining. I understand your disappointment sometimes but enough is enough!

Don't believe the hype.

Agreed, while I'm in no rush to hear about it myself, I'm very interested if/when I can organize my HoM how I want to.

Another day mate, another day.

And how would you know they are too lazy to do the balancing? Yes, they have the tools to balance, but not the time. Why? Because the storage update is getting a little bit more annoying it seems. I talked to Linsey a couple days ago and she didn't even like hearing about the April update preview notification.

Again, how do you know? And who the hell do you think you are to insult the people who made the game for you. You dislike Anet and GW that much? Go play another game! YOU should stop bullshitting on the forums.

They get excited not because it's going to be a good or big update. They get excited because it's their job. They should be excited. If you have someone who's not excited doing a job, it will be half-assed.



Seriously people, if you're going to complain about upcoming updates, complain about them after they come out. That way, you have something to complain about that won't become null and void.

In fact, don't complain, just have your fingers and tongue cut off for us so we don't have to listen.

The problem is that ANet’s reasoning is that they believe everybody cares about both the April PvE update and the PvP balance. That couldn’t be further from the truth. As a PvPer, I could care less about the April PvE update as it basically doesn’t affect me at all. The skill balance is what makes each month different and interesting and a lack of that severely detracts from my experience playing the game. However, PvErs could care less about the PvP update because it rarely affects them, and for some reason the prospect of more storage seems oddly attractive. One group of people doesn’t care about the other; ANet has assured that through their policies the last few years.

The pleas about ‘time’ are absolutely ridiculous as well, and despite criticisms from people who don’t know how skill balance works, I agree with most of what Protoss said. Tinkering with numbers on skills such as lingering, pnh, blood necro skills, mirror of ice, etc. do not take a lot of thought nor does it “affect other areas of the game, sometimes in unexpected ways.” Make it a PvP-only update and get over it. That’s why the division was created in the first place. Moreover, that there will be no skill balance at all this month only means one thing – you haven’t spent any time on it at all. If it was being slightly delayed because of the April PvE update, that would be reasonable. Waiting because skill changes also need to be fully tested adds a delay but does not cancel it. A cancellation occurs because you haven’t even started testing it – which leads back to the problem in the first paragraph.

This also particularly bothers me, although I can’t say its unexpected: “we risked releasing either the skill balance or the April update itself without the level of polish, consideration, and testing that it should have. “ As a PvP player, what do you think I would have rather had: a polished skill balance or a polished April PvE update? That’s not a very difficult question. As a company, with your limited resources you say you are forced to make a decision between the two and, although I think both could have easily been done, that you expect me to support your decision is ludicrous.

famous quote :P
"it will be ready when it is ready"

one thing for sure, Anet cannot use the "we don't have enough people working on Live Team" excuse since someone else listed a whole bunch of names earlier somewhere.

When will you be releasing Sorrow's Furnace? I remember reading about that years ago and seeing nothing.

Cool, thanks for the news! Would rather have a good update with new features other than an update with nerfs and complainers.

I guess the end has just started.

I would rather see another fail skill 'balance' then more storage.