Next Skill Balance

If there's no skill balance this Thursday, then it'll be next month. Which would put the skill update 5 months late on the "new" schedule.

This is getting rather bad. I understand that money/security/bugs are important, but so is a non-shitterific meta.

Hell, PvP isn't even fun to play anymore.

That is why I wish Anet would actually try to stick with their own program. Keep this game somewhat alive and fun to play. Tired of lame meta. :\

The idea that there will always be one dominant overpowered build no matter what Anet does in PvE and PvP is retarded.

I think a lot of people are just saying that here because they have never played a game with actual balance, they think Anet knows what they are doing (when they clearly don't), and they most likely have no idea what they are talking about.

Expecting GW ever to be balanced, when it's just one big sliding scale, is about as silly as petitioning Capcom to remove Ken and Ryu because they're clearly imba. Even Microsoft do better updates.

So I know some of you are waiting anxiously for the next skill balance. Let me just take a few moments to talk about the challenges we're facing with this particular skill balance. We are involving the Test Krewe in this balance. They've really been digging deep into skill discussions, and the involvement of the Test Krewe has added more cycles to the skill balance process. This is to be expected. When you invite a large group of people into the process and solicit and discuss their feedback, it will take more time. Secondly, skill balance (like many aspects of game design) is an iterative process, and one where both the Test Krewe and the Live Team are learning, streamlining, and improving on, in terms of how best to deliver and take in feedback. The winter holiday break hit, and there was some downtime for that. Finally, you all know that we do not change skills before the MAT. The Live Team and Test Krewe are working earnestly on this skill balance, and the Team knows that you've been waiting for it.

itt: February at the earliest.

OH REALLY? I BEG TO DIFFER.

For once I would like something to come at the time first designated.

Actually with the way GW was designed (PvE) this is a fact. There's a 5 year track record that proves there will always be "overpowered" builds.

Actually many of us on both sides of the nerf argument have said that anet is not addressing this issue correctly with the constant "rebalancing" of skills. The problem is that GW would need an overhaul of the core game mechanics to get away from the nerf/buff cycle, and with GW2 on the way, that's just not going to happen.

So anet does what they think is best, when they think it's needed, and we debate the logic. I expect GW2 will be a much more balanced game and will use a different system than found in the original. With all the moaning and complaining I do, GW has been an INCREDIBLE game! There are things they did well, which you will see continued in GW2. And there are things that need improvement, and you will see the results of those changes in GW2.

Maybe I'm hoping for too much, but I fully expect to be blown away by GW2.

It's the Test Krewe's fault. Burn them. Burn them with fire.



I didn't see any target date or indication of such a thing. Thanks for the explanation.

edit: Relax, Test Krewe people, I'm not really blaming you.

Who cares, please just change something up. I want to kill myself over this stale game. I love GW, but apparently you guys don't. 5 Months for a skill update is a bit of a joke.

This. I'd actually rather have extremely frequent updates that are done mostly at random rather than attempts to create balance. Just nerf some overpowered stuff, buff a bunch of other stuff, repeat the process a few days later.

Oh god, please don't.

Skill SHAKE-UP =/= Skill Balance

Doing things at random all you are going to get is just a totally unstable/unplayable game.

Don't quote me on this, but I thought that someone from the TC said they were planning a shake up with the next skill balance.

With a lot more people reviewing the proposed update, I'll have to save my opinion until the update actually comes.

You thick or something?

Anet fails at balance anyways so why don't they focus more on just helping keep the game fresh?

Is there a reason we can't have like half now and half when its "ready" at this point something is better than nothing. By next month we should've had like what, 3 skill balances?

I understand that the work is iterative and test crewe made it more complicated, but how about releasing a not fully perfected update this month and the complete one next month? Even if you won't get everything you wanted into it, it still won't be worse than most skill updates you did in the past. Unless for those 4+ months you've been doing nothing about it...

This is bull.

All of it.

Let me clarify; it's honest, but fails in almost every category of skill balance.

Let me also clarify my stance on the Live Team thus far: I believe they are doing a fine job. Adding in new content instead of simply adding a chapter in the series and calling it 'new' was a great strategy. The April update, the UW spice-up, even the costumes. They are also working more diligently on a short staff, which was not a problem in this case. Alot of small groups of people do great, even significantly better than larger groups. To quote someone from something: "People are stupid; a person is smart."

But the Test Krewe was a complete failure from the moment it was thought up. A dev team's job is to be involved with the community on a quality level. They feed off the community's reaction to content, figure out what needs to be improved, fixed, taken out, and added. They put their heart and soul into it, as well as the community's. Sad to say, however, it is the dev's job and their job only to decide what is to be altered, not the community's.

The community serves as a group of constantly unsatisfied customers. They want EVERYTHING handed to them in a silver platter in the hands of a god. But the dev team always knows better. Why? Because they made the game. They know its in's and out's. They fondled with it, shared with it, nurtured it, cheated on it, payed alimony to it, and reunited with it. Not the community. The community grabbed it, had a one night stand with it, and either tossed it aside without breakfast or kept it in their little black book for later. They treated it like a hooker, and thus cannot have an administrative power over it.

Guess what? Anet's Live Team gave in.

Instead of continuing to nerf the living daylights out of anything OP in this game, like they were beginning to do at the end of summer, they took a break and began to turn the job over to American Idol contestants (Test Krewe).

Is their intention pure? Do they want to revive the game to what it used to be while putting more into it? Yes! But involving a select group of players to basically do what they people in the balance forums did AND give them testing rights was not the right way to do this. Why? Because it sent the message to the whole community that they are only listening to a certain group of players instead of the rest of us.

In fact, the reason why preview weekends were succesful is because it involved the whole community in the testing process, who gave their input and abused the crap out of OP skills in obs mode. When Anet gave us a preview of the EotN skills, we instantly figured out what was bad and they updated it. Easy as pie.

Another thing I want to clear up is that the Live Team had 4 months to do an update. 4. Not counting the winter break. And Linsey told us she would give us a preview a month ahead of time, which was what made me believe in the bimonthly skill updates in the first place. But, instead of doing something constructive with that time, you decided to hold auditions for testers and make the community feel left out.

Oh, and by the way, I know that Anet isn't even working on the skill updates. Right now, they are working on how to get rid of the interrupt bots in PvP. And the security thing, too.

Not attacking you guys or anything, I just believe in everything you were doing before the Test Krewe (I mean, c'mon, even the name of the group sounds unprofessional). Linsey, you were doing a great job at cleaning up Izzy's mess!

Thanks for the info Regina! Its nice to know whats going on every now and then.

QFT I totally agree with Apok here.

I'm gonna be really disappointed if the update comes out and there are few random changes like we've seen in the past. The longer this gets dragged out, the higher people's expectations become and the more they will be disappointed when the update finally comes.

Uhh, you're speaking as if the Test Krewe has the final word or something.

The way I understand it, the Live team comes up with the skill balance ideas, bounces it off the Test Krewe, lets them tinker around with the skills in actual play, then give their feedback as to what could be better, what is potentially OP about the skills, ect.

In all, the Live Team still has the final say, and Frankly, with the amount of people on the team, and them working on an entirely new game along with security issues and regular stuff over the years, it's no surprise that the team has become detached from the current state of the game.

So naturally, since they aren't gods and can to 1000 things at once, they got a crew together that actually knows more about the current state of the game to help bounce advise.

Time can only tell how well the Test Krewe will effect balances, but I like the fact that Anet can admit their flaws and work around them.

That being said, I think there's been way more then enough time here with the skills. 5+ month gap between skill balances are absolutely ridiculous, and yet another delay (which is what I assume from Regina's post) is not a good sign.

The Guild Wars team =/= the GW2 team.

Anet has never admitted their mistakes, and they never will.

Ok, thx for the info, time to make a break again. Got bored of facing every night thoses dual rangers with insane middle-line damage.

PS : Nice idea to create the TK in order to get a new excuse for delaying updates

So when will it be released? Because reading this I get the feeling it won't come out THIS month either.

Sorry to say, but you have already RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up by not releasing it 5 months ago or whenever it was supposed to be released, and if you postpone it for yet ANOTHER month, then jesus christ you guys suck.

Too late for that.

>Quit playing Guild Wars over a year ago
>Quit posting on this forum for nearly a year
>Come back to check out the forums
>Nothing has changed.

haha, oh wow.

I think the hostility towards the GW team's development speed is unwarranted and childish.

I would like the updates to come out asap just like anyone else. But to whine and moan to the devs isn't going to make a difference about how fast it comes out. The devs are paid employees and are doing their job without making GW their life ~_~. So chill the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO out and let them do their job.

I think the devs are doing us a favor by letting us know what's on their mind and agenda. Anything beyond that will happen as it happens. In addition to the hostility, there's always the finite possibility that the devs will recognize the overwhelming hostility as more counterproductive, and decide to communicate less.

If anyone has ever worked on a large project, you should understand that delays delays delays and moar delays are always the issue. As long as they're not sitting around screwing each other or playing WoW or slacking off during the hours they should be working we shouldn't really have an issue. :/ Of course, if the delays become too long, there might have to be management change/more devs added, but I really doubt that's going to occur, especially since GW isn't the moneymaker it used to be (well, I doubt it is).

so, assuming the developers aren't fvkin around:
1) updates will happen as they happen
2) keeping us informed of what's going on is nice, but if people just take it as the word of God and spew invective and hostility maybe its not worth it so much..?
3) we'd like faster updates, but seeing as how GW is getting older, there's probably less of a chance of bringing in more programmers to deal with the issues
4) delays are part of any project ~_~

edit: regina isn't exactly the most interactive rep we've had so far, but honestly if you were the anet rep would you want to interact with these numbskulls? psh..

we are not attacking the rep. we are reacting to the turmoil that this insider information is having on the community.

She should have just said nothing and ran some community interactive activities. The ecto price has gone from 24-25/100K to a radical 7K/e that I saw last night

This drives the price up of everything.

They should remove the gold cap from the player and the chest. that would end the skills = ectos economy forever

Armbraces were 45e a few weeks ago and now they are 42e

That is worth complaing about all because someone confirmed that they are going to mess with our FUN

Honestly, at this point in the game(it's almost 5 years old) why are we waiting 5 months for a skill balance? Some people have logged so many hours of their lives playing this game, why change what they like to do so close to GW2 coming out? I don't have a perma, never have, but at this point in the life cycle of a 5 year old game, I can see how people who are waiting for a skill balance and people who like to solo can both have valid reason to be mad at the developers for changing the game so late! It's pretty pathetic all the way around.

This. Gogo SF farming!

I read that and all I see are excuses for the skill balance to be 5 months late.

Tbh, you guys set up the Test Krewe, you should have known these issues in advance and not told us this "new" schedule of skill updates every 2 months.

Do one of 2 things: 1) Quit lying to us. [*cough* the XTH *cough*]. 2) Get off your ass and actually get stuff done. We haven't seen progress in months (the costumes don't count).

I'm so tired of this bullshit. So. Very. Tired.

There's no need to make monumental balance updates that take 5 months to complete, expecially if you call some issues meant to be addressed "pressing issues".

Address them first, think about the rest in a subsequent update.

Cool Story Reg.

February: No skill balance. The Live Team has been extremely busy with new content for Canthan New Year and Dragon Arena skill balance.

March: Linsey got sick and we decided to merge the skill balance update with the implementation of the new Hall of Heroes map. Gonna take us some more time.

April: Skill balance is here! Oh wait. April Fools'. The Live Team has been extremely busy with new content for the Fifth Year Anniversary Celebration.

May: New costume! For a limited time you can buy Melandru's Regalia. Our designers were very brave. Oops. Uh...

June: The skill balance is going live the first week of June. Guild Wars is balanced. Not.

I am trying not to be offensive here but a monkey making random skill changes and one semi-idiot for reverting crap >>> LT+TK.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

What a joke.

lol if you think this is going to be monumental

They will nerf 3 skills, buff another 2 skills that will STILL be terrible, and call it a day

If it's to be expected, why are we so far past the original deadline?

Really, really poor choice of words there Regina.

*Thumbs down*

-ANoid

OMG we're going to get screwed out of nerfing SF and 600 smite for another MONTH? Man I'm sic n tired of all these lame excuses Regina is laying on us. Nothing more than a facade. Didn't this all start in Sept/Oct? They need 4 months to fricking nerf ONE lousy skill when they've been doing it to others in the twink of an eye for years now??

They are actually showing they are SCARED to nerf it. Wow and they didn't hesitate to nerf the hell out of Necros minions and energy?!! Nor did they hesitate to nerf the hell out of Ursans. They gave us Warriors Endurance for a very short period of time that wasn't a STANCE boy they didn't hesitate to nerf that one back to oblivion did they?? lmao

Seeing as how it took them 6 months to make factions and nightfall,anything less then 300/350 new skills will be junk.I say they just forget about the update,since its obvious that they are not even trying, and just go work on Utopia (the ideal game, get it?) and release it one year from the last time we got a update.


They cant do skill updates, they cant help people with support, what can this group do anymore?I say release the source code,bet the community can do a much better work then what you have or should i say, havent been doing for the last few months.

Well, to be fair, ArenaNet is not responsible for the support. NCSoft is.

Oh, and I don't think a lot of people can, actually.

I swear it does read like they want everyone to hate GW and hopefully buy into GW2 so they can shut GW1 down in a short period of time. You all do realize this is the same company (NCsoft) that shut down Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault both online games and both of those cost monthly fees at that. How long do you think they are going to be willing to support GW1 after GW2 comes out and there's no more income coming from GW1?

So true...

They could have made an entire campaign by this point.

Yet, we will get some halfass skill update to a half a dozen skills.

Two weeks.

Enough time for most to jump to gw2 but before enough of them can realize GW2 is junk and want to go back to gw1,but gw1 will be shut down, so it will be too late.