The game isn't even released and three professions are already meta'd.
I think you answered your own problem. If they actually tried balancing the game before it's even finished, I would completely lose confidence in gw2 since they clearly don't know how to program.
You don't need counter builds to easily take on a mob of 30 Oni.
You must either purely run counter builds or use so many consumables that your screen is filled with effects.
It's pretty near impossible to run through The Deep with just a balanced build, because with your 2-3 monks, you can't heal or prot anyone when you come up against those insane Oni mobs. Every single party member has Shadow Shroud chained on them and they deal 80-100 damage per attack.
Also, there's that one quest in EotN where the only objective is to stand in one spot and kill 200+ of those Modniir centaur things. How is that good game design?
I think they're doing well with GW1 support now. However, the fact is that much of what is currently/has recently been done, should have been taken care of long ago.
The fact that it took nearly 6 years after the game's inception to get support forms is ridiculous.
The fact that it took nearly three years after the Dervish/NF release to get the class to play smoothly is ridiculous
The fact that it took nearly 3 years for Razah's changeable primary to finally match the NF manuscripts is ridiculous
And on and on. And there's still a lot to do.
Yes they're doing a good job now, mostly because if things were absolute garbage and took forever, if ever completed, previously.
Well as for pop-culture references, I wish they just stuck to keeping them in shouts like they mainly used to. When they're all bundled in one place they don't break immersion and you're actually curious what they'll come up with.
This word has lost all meaning and needs to be locked up tighter than the Claw of the Khan-Ur, only to be used again if it's worth losing your hand. A game is about fun and that includes it being able to poke fun at itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckles79
...I'm already worried and hopeful about GW2 from the little that I've heard.
Maybe reserve judgment until we're no longer ignorant, rather than cast it early based on little information? We've only heard some examples that prove combat is reactionary (being able to force a reaction from your opponent) rather than build wars countering everything.
You must either purely run counter builds or use so many consumables that your screen is filled with effects.
It's pretty near impossible to run through The Deep with just a balanced build, because with your 2-3 monks, you can't heal or prot anyone when you come up against those insane Oni mobs. Every single party member has Shadow Shroud chained on them and they deal 80-100 damage per attack.
Also, there's that one quest in EotN where the only objective is to stand in one spot and kill 200+ of those Modniir centaur things. How is that good game design?
Ward against melee, SY!, Ineptitude, Shadowsong, and Epidemic aren't enough to counter an oni mob? I'm not a Deep expert, but I don't think they remove blind and even if they do you still have the ward up and SY! plus you can add in weakness just in case, which should be brought on any Necro bar in high-end PvE.
Balanced groups have too many builds and skills available to struggle badly with those Oni of the Deep mobs. Some are mentioned above Ximvotn's post, but then there's even knock downs, Aegis, spirits, and various shutdown builds that are in no way a specific counter and are frequently used in general PvE.
I think A-Net is doing an average job with the number of people they are working with. How many people are on the live team now? FIVE!?!?!?
I mean, there are things I think they could do a lot better but with all that which is on their plate, I understand that everything comes with an opportunity cost and it is impossible to fulfill every gamer's wants/needs. Really I just wish the live team would take some time to actually sit down and play GvG a couple hours per week with the test crew guys. At least that would grant them some understanding of where they are coming from. I'm not on the test crew so if they are already doing this then I apologize... and I would also have to downgrade my opinion of "how A-Net is doing"... lol
Some of the balance issues in GvG are blatantly obvious to anybody who actually plays the format so that is the perspective I am coming from. I have heard from the test crew guys that they inform the devs of these issues but A-Net often ignores/disagrees with them and refuses to do anything about it.
I think they did a good job introducing the "Complaining on the Internet" title that everyone seems to be working on these days.
A lot of people care about this game a lot, and want it to be as fun as it used to be before A-Net systematically ran it into the ground. This is the only forum (no pun intended) that they can use to try and have their voice heard. People don't post things on guildwarsguru to vent their feelings. People post things here in hopes to enact change that will benefit themselves and others. It's called "constructive" criticism.
Complaining is a vital role in making all of our lives better. It is what people do to say, "hey... there is a better way to do this".
Given amount of resources they have, live team is doing awesome "I would like employees like that" job.
Speking from experience, they are most likely working way more than 40hour week. "I am kinda worried about their wellbeing" more.
There is no doubt they are doing best possible at current setup.
Are there issues that beg for addressing? Yes. Is it possible for them to do that? No. Do we actually care about those issues anymore? I don't and I doubt many others really do.
I mean, there are things I think they could do a lot better but with all that which is on their plate
This is where one of their problems appears.They have many things on their plate and they have very often chosen the wrong thing to work on before others things.
Like was said in this thread before, its much cheaper to keep older players in a game, then it is to get new ones into the game (not a exact quote, but gets the message across).
I mean seriously whats wrong with fixing existing problems and improving existing gameplay that they constantly just choose to add more (problems) and more eyecandy.
Things like War In Kryta only matter for people that are already playing the game or ones that have left, but its not going to add new people in the game,I don't think I'll ever hear anyone say they want to play GW because it has WiK, whereas I might very likely hear someone say they they want to play GW because it's balanced ( that's if it was)
Yes there should've been more than one balance guy.
Yes some skills were broken (every game is like that).
No they didn't do a bad job.
Think about it in terms of the big picture. Remember that GW was Anet's first MMO, using a completely unique system for everything compared to all other MMOs (combat, mechanics, gear, business model etc.) and they were successful, unlike the countless others who fell within a few years. You can't blame them for getting some things wrong trying to keep the game alive for 6 years!
That being said, I think they lost their focus when they realised that they couldn't continue with their 6 month campaign model in a sustainable manner. EOTN seemed like rushed expansion patched together from the scraps of their next campaign. There was a painfully obvious decline in quality when they diverted their efforts to GW2.
In the end, though its like trying to squeeze blood from a rock. I think Anet have done pretty much all they could out of this game in 6 years.
Given amount of resources they have, live team is doing awesome.
I hear this ALL the time.
My counter argument is they could hire more people.
Instead of the 4-5 people they have working on the team at 40+ hours a week
maybe they should get more team players to ease the pressure and
get more work done? To me, the solution is simple. To them? I don't know.
The ONLY thing I can see that's preventing them from doing this is how much
it costs to pay each new person as opposed to making the current ones work overtime.
Last edited by ruk1a; Jun 17, 2011 at 03:48 AM // 03:48..
I hear this ALL the time.
My counter argument is they could hire more people.
Instead of the 4-5 people they have working on the team at 40+ hours a week
maybe they should get more team players to ease the pressure and
get more work done? To me, the solution is simple. To them? I don't know.
The ONLY thing I can see that's preventing them from doing this is how much
it costs to pay each new person as opposed to making the current ones work overtime.
Yup, you are one of the ones that realizes their excuses aren't all that great.
I mean seriously does GW2 really need all the money it is getting?Can't they split (a political favorite number) 1 pro-cent of 1 pro-cent of the budget GW2 currently has to give GW just a little more love?
That's why I'm saying GW2 better be the best damn game every beating all other games in all genres out there, otherwise all that has been said and done would be just stupid.
I hear this ALL the time.
My counter argument is they could hire more people.
Instead of the 4-5 people they have working on the team at 40+ hours a week
maybe they should get more team players to ease the pressure and
get more work done? To me, the solution is simple. To them? I don't know.
The ONLY thing I can see that's preventing them from doing this is how much
it costs to pay each new person as opposed to making the current ones work overtime.
It costs moey to either employ new people or to pay for overtime. Also, there are limits on how much overtime one can put in.
As for why not putting in more money, simple: because they don't get that much money out of it! People buy the main boxes, that's the main money source.
Really, the primary motivation to create the additional content is to keep custumers aware that they are a solid provider and that it's worth trusting them that the future content will be worth buying.
With all the whining and ingratitude we often see on the boards, hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they said to themselves "These ingrates won't be happy no matter what we do. Let's not bother any more. Stumme, cm'ere and start working on dynamic event no. 1501 instead, it's a better investment of money...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenex Xclame
Can't they split (a political favorite number) 1 pro-cent of 1 pro-cent of the budget GW2 currently has to give GW just a little more love?
Weeeelll, with about 250 employees total and live team of 1 permanent plus redirected specific resources... I'd say we're over 1% already.
I don't want redirected resources! Gods, no. Too many games have been rushed out, too many games hadn't had the time put into them needed, to be good. There's so many games that were either mediocre, and could've been good, or good, and could have been great/amazing. I'm sick of games that have resources redirected, and quality suffers. Sure, say 1% moved. There's gonna be something missing, and I don't want anything missing. I want GW2 to completely blow everyone away when it's released, not blow most people away because there's a bit of fine tuning missing.
I could put examples, but anyone who's tried to game in recent times on the PC should know what I'm talking about..
Redirected resources might have helped. I mean, there has to someone at ArenaNet who knows how much smegged up this "PvE rewards for abusing PvP" update was.
Sure, say 1% moved. There's gonna be something missing, and I don't want anything missing.
1% of 1% so if my brain is working correctly right now that is 0.001%.Sure something could be missing but they could easily just delay GW2 for another month, we don't know a release date so it's not like its going to affect us.
I understand your point I'm just saying out of that XX million dollar budget they could at least throw a hundred thousand or so GW 1's way, it doesn't need much for fixing/improving current content, there would be no new technology needed, the money would almost only be used for salary of the extra few people improving problems with GW1.I don't know exactly how much Game developers make but surely even 100.000 is enough for a few months of salary for improvements?
Edit: Hmm my brain might be dead at this hour but I just counted basing the budget at 50 million and 1% of 1% of that doesn't seem all that much so just 1% might be more realistic, that is of course unless I calculated horribly wrong.
Last edited by Xenex Xclame; Jun 17, 2011 at 07:17 AM // 07:17..
Problem is; NCSoft is giving them time to develop, but there's only so much time and money they'll be willing to give. Up front in public, sure they'll go on about how it's gonna be a great game, but they are pretty assuredly going to be pushing for a release at some point. Regardless, I would rather see the game remain the same than GW2 be lessened in any way. The live team is doing a reasonable job, an amazing job considering what they have, and I do think they can keep going with it just fine. I understand why they wouldn't bring in more people, either - they want GW2 to be big, and GW1 changes aren't going to bring in significant amounts of money, either, compared to what a stellar game could.
I would say Guild Wars has been a complete SUCCESS, look at all the media attention and players it has!. It is simply amazing, and GW 2 is almost guaranteed to be even better, in fact it has good chances of becoming the best MMO so far.