The Guild Wars 2 team is planning a new balance update for August 23rd. The last time that the team published notes, but not reasons and justifications in line with goals, for a major updates to professions, they admittedly dropped the ball on communication and promised better. Now, there is a community conversation happening regarding the August 23rd update (which also falls on the Steam release date), and ArenaNet has already promised several changes to its plans and added new team members.
Josh Davis, after reviewing much of the already very intense and spirited (to say the least) community feedback thread on their original plans for August 23rd, announced some changes. With community feedback, ANet will be able to reassess its goals and how the team plans changes, and with this in mind, Davis announced what they were scrapping.
“As we’ve been reading through your feedback on the August 23 preview, it became clear to us that one aspect of the previous balance approach was especially problematic. Specifically, making balance adjustments to PvE builds based on their potential under unrealistic, ideal conditions – conditions that are unlikely to be met unless you’re testing against a golem, or the player is extremely skilled.”
With this, several planned changes to mirage were scrapped, but Davis also noted something important that the team will be considering going forward when it comes to planning balance changes and their goals.
“This change in approach raises questions about previous changes that were made with a build’s ‘potential’ in mind, rather than the realistic output. We’ll be evaluating those prior changes on a case-by-case basis in future releases. This isn’t to say that we won’t address overperforming builds in the future, but we will focus more on builds that are dominating the meta, rather than builds that could theoretically dominate.”
For more on the update, and the ongoing discussion, which will likely change how Guild Wars 2’s team approaches future similar updates, head over to the ongoing discussion and feedback thread.
