Test Weekend Wrap-up in 4000 Words

Part of the implicit agreement of the PvP Test Weekend just held was that those who took part would be giving feedback on various and sundry forums. Well, screw 'em, I'm posting mine here. Part of the reason I started this blog, after all, was to avoid having to remember to post on half a dozen boards (Out of who knows how many boards I'm registered at) on any given day. Forums represent the top-down organization which is a relic of the past, I've cast off those shackles and embraced this new medium. Imagine my eyes rotating counter-clockwise and some blather about the hive, the wisdom of the commons, and the future about getting smaller not larger at this point if you want but I'm moving on.

Now, at the start of the weekend I set out to play as much as I could in the Halls – because that's where the biggest changes were happening, of course. Didn't quite work out so well and I spent most of my time in the Arenas because, as usual, it's really hard to find group if you're a casual player (which, sad to say, at this point is what I am. I'd like to be more but I don't have the time and energy to expend on making that happen. Not if, you know, I want to have food and shelter.) - and relying on PuGs in the Tombs had me looking for a door to slam my head into just to relieve the pain. It's an endemic, structural problem that in-game tools for communication and grouping are weak but it's one that really needs to be solved. I've been meaning to talk about it but the Party Search just isn't working. Perhaps I'm in the wrong areas or something but in PvE I hardly see it used except for trading. And in PvP zones it gets used by a fraction of people to say they're looking for a group – not by groups looking for members, usually. Most damningly, it hasn't done anything to cut down on the number of people who simply shout such things over and over (Which, stones in a glass house and all, but I did my fair share of it as well over the weekend. But it's the most efficient way of getting things done.) and filling up the Local channel with information that poisons the well and drives out other conversations. Look, I could have found a group (Maybe. I, you know, suck at the moment and aren't likely to get much better in a hurry without a lot more of said time and effort involved.) by crashing voicechat servers, IMing contacts, or by hanging out in the IRC channels I still know about. That I didn't is my choice (Hell, if I can do all that I'm going to go play GvG which is a lot more rewarding on any number of levels.) but my point would be that the average player shouldn't have to carry around such a complex web of metastructural information to play a few rounds. I'm lucky I already have some fame ranks or I might not even have found any groups at all.

It's hard for new and casual players to get drawn into the game. Even when you've advertised and promoted this whole PvP free-for-all weekend. It might just be me but I think this isn't a good thing.

I know it's been said before and by others and, you know, probably a whole lot better than that but until it gets fixed then it's a message that bears repeating into the ground.

As for what actually happened during the weekend I think it was marred by any number of bugs and missteps. The late start to the event which still hasn't been acknowledged on the official site was a problem. And to avoid it all it would have taken was a few well placed words of contrition. Yes it was a big update. Yes there was bad weather in Seattle during the week that disrupted things. But ANet's a professional game development company, aren't they? They promised the event would start at a certain time and failed to deliver. And failed to explain why they hadn't delivered. And I'm presuming they knew in advance they were going to be a bit late so explain to me why they couldn't have slapped a little message on the client or the official site (Same difference, really) the same way they slapped up the message that the weekend was going to take place. If they want to be taken seriously then they can't act like it's alright to half-ass these things.

Even the weekend itself was marred by bugs. I noticed two myself. First was the fact that the patch notes said Resilient Weapon would have an altered cost – it didn't. The second, of course, was Glaive – the same one almost everyone caught. I'm sure there were others. These sort of things happen and it's not to say every patch has to be perfect but the important thing is what the response is made. The developers caught Glaive and fixed it satisfactorily quickly (Although, I'll note that they didn't bother to let anyone know – via a patch note – that they'd fixed it until much later because the “web team” was out of the office for the weekend. There was a big in-game event and the potential for patches to be flying if things were broken and they let the people who update their site, in effect, knock off to the pub? For that matter, just how hard is it to update the website? What was I saying about this being a professional company? Just, argh, sloppy.) but my biggest problem is that these temporary changes that brought such a breath of fresh air are now gone and we're back to the old, evidently imbalanced skills. I mean, I just got handed a bunch of new toys to play with and now they've been yanked away and replaced with my old broken ones? Yeah, thanks.

Which means, of course, that Guild Wars is really just sitting around doing nothing while WoW's just released its new expansion with improved PvP options that's no doubt draining away players (Which I find believable just based on anecdotal evidence. I mean, really, this is the time when the game needs to be rolling out something, anything, just to prove it can. A new dungeon, a new format, whatever it is. Just something. Something I can throw in the faces of all my friends who are telling me to quit and play WoW with them. Please.). Some of the skill changes made were interesting experiments, sure, but some of them were necessary ones that have been waiting in the wings for months while the last PvP season played itself out. The game languishes while everyone's waiting for those kind of changes to be made. Which, again, points out the importance of making these kind of changes much more often. And, of course, for greater transparency in the process – as I said on Sunday, I wouldn't mind these patch notes being posted well before they go live just to get a chance to plan. Not such a problem when the changes are permanent but when there's a ticking clock then I either get to pour over the list and figure out what might be good to play or I get to head in game and tinker around with actually using them. Put it up a week or a day in advance, though, and I'll be spending all that time looking at the possibilities and potentials and getting excited about the upcoming event – it's much better advertising than a blurb promising change is coming. If such a test event is going to take place in the future, and I think it should, then that's something that should be taken into account.

As for the actual changes some were interesting to see and probably needed to be tried but weren't exactly going to fly. I gather there was a lot of gnashing of teeth once people saw the change to Divert Hexes, for one, but I was pretty happy. Divert Hexes is unarguably grossly overpowered compared to other hex removal options so I, for one, wanted to see what happens when it gets nerfed out of the game. The answer? Bad things. Because, of course, the problem isn't that Divert Hexes is too good it's that compared with, say, condition removal the ability of teams to fight through hex stacks is extremely limited. And hexes are pretty nasty right now when you get right down to it. They rolled that change back when they fixed Glaive (Which, let's face it, even if it hadn't been bugged would have been extremely powerful doing something like 180 raw damage when fueling the improved Channeling Strike. It's an elite Cruel Was Daoshen. That sucks but some skills get crazy when they're anywhere resembling good. Not just because they're good but because they make already good skills into imbalanced nightmares. I think Glaive is one of those skills that needs to be in the game and needs to be weak.) and that, in and of itself is illustrative.

I was initially in favor of the change to Weakness but, in practice, it's too hard to tell who's riding the breakpoint on their attributes and will be really hurt by it. I like the mechanic but I think it would be best split off into a new condition with perhaps a harder hit to attributes – say a -2 or -3 drop. Weakness, to be better, I think, should also include a decrease to attack speed. That way not only do you attack for less, you attack sower, too, making it harder to gain adrenaline or spike out targets. That, I'd think, would put it on par with Blind as something you don't want to land on your physical attackers but don't care about hitting anyone else with. Hurting the melee characters is its role, this whole attribute idea is nice and spreads it out to other characters but the effect just isn't strong enough (And would be pretty imbalanced if it got stronger) and is too difficult to see the impact of.

Getting rid of “evade”, I'm in favor of. It does bring up some challenges in fixing all the skills that had been relying on the difference between ways of avoiding attacks but unifying them makes things simpler and easier – while the complexity wasn't really adding much to the game (Which is backed up by the large number of skills that simply avoided the issue and couldn't be stopped by either “block” or “evade”. It could have been interesting if it was really developed but, as it was, certain professions specialized in one or the other meaning if you were going to be fighting against more than one of them – like in any PvP environment ever - you wanted something that would cut through both. Interesting quirks like Swift Chop just weren't enough. If the two concepts were going to be anything other than just two ways of doing the same thing they needed a lot more to distinguish them from one another. It wasn't there and this way the “evade” mechanic can be shelved until it can be better developed and reimplemented, perhaps, in name or spirit down the line.).

The alterations to Tombs were a mixed bag. As I said, any group I joined seemed destined for a round-way trip back to the lobby so I didn't get a lot of first hand experience but, hey, that's what observer mode is for. They did shake up the status quo and I like the idea of the Hall being an actual contest of skill rather than who can outgank who the best. As I've said, the random way the rules were picked is troublesome, though, as are some of the formats themselves. I'd rather that the Hall was always played under the point control shrine capturing ruleset – that seemed to lead to the most interesting matches as well as create the most intriguing design concerns (Do you split? Do you stick together? Take the Hero? Leave the Hero defending a point? Is it better to be highly mobile or to pack a big punch?). And it meshes best with earlier maps too being similar yet something special at the end of that climb up the ladder – scoreboard kills works, too, but it turns the game into a 3-way scrum that I don't like while point control places a lot more emphasis on being able to out-think as well as outfight your opponent. Supper Happy Fun Ball while being, well, a lot of fun (At least on observer mode. “3....2...1...Yes!” “Relic go boom!” "Did you see him 'splode!” “Yowtch!”) but really needs some serious tweaking before it would be ready for prime-time.

Anyhow, I'd rather the rules for the Hall were the same. But if the devs wanted to have different formats there they could switch them daily or weekly – just rotate them in and out every so often.

Overall, most of the skill changes were positive. The vast majority of tweaks were spot on (Or near enough the spot that I can't tell the difference). Spiritual Pain, for instance, got toned down enough to make it sensible without making it completely unplayable. Beguiling Haze was a nice change that opened up some possibilities for non-Shadow Prison users. Although it was very strong when you're competing with Shadow Prison, it pretty much needs to be. Down through the list there were just a bunch of nice, sensible changes that turn marginal skills solid or underplayed skills into playable status. Mark of Rodgort, say, I was looking at as being surprisingly useful for my PvE ele now that its cost actually makes sense (Having recently gotten Searing Flames I'm looking for nice ways of causing Burning and a long-lasting hex like that with a huge area could be a good one.) the increased area of effect only made it better. Not sure if it's worth anything in PvP but some skills just are never going to be because of their mechanics.

It's the nonsensical changes that stand out, of course. Like Searing Flames – if you're trying to tone that skill down it's not the Burning that does it, it's the fact that you can get three or four people to benefit from that Burning and wreck one target in rapid fashion. In other words, it's the additive effect that's the problem (As it so often is with Ele skills) but I actually thought it was in a pretty good spot for the individual SF caster. So just chopping a second off the Burning left me scratching my head about what the point was. And Reaper's Mark – the energy's not the problem there. It's the extremely low-cost, relatively high degen that lasts forever and can nearly kill someone on its own unless its dealt with (And, of course, that hex removal, in general, is wretched. Cover that baby up and apply some pressure and you've got a kill or a Monk running on fumes. If they haven't brought one of a few elite hex removal options then they're screwed.). The energy's an extremely conditional bonus that, while nice, doesn't really matter. I mean, take off that energy gain and I'd still use the skill as is.

There's also the fact that things like Power Attack, Flare, Stone Daggers and the like were improved. Sure, those skills are underpowered compared to some others but, really, that's the whole point of them. They're the baseline that other skills are bounced off of. Of course they don't get used much because other skills do more. They're just bland and uninteresting and that's their whole reason for existing. Once players get into the game they're going to gravitate away from them and towards skills with more intricate effects that can be combined in interesting ways – all those sorts of skills can do is deal damage and that's important but not sexy when you only have 8 slots to play with. Unless, of course, they're broken. They've definitely been trending upwards but I'm not sure I want to play a game where the best thing for an Elementalist, say, to do is to chaincast Flare (I've, you know, played it and the answers to it aren't very interesting. “Hmm...Backfire? Well, I'll just keep casting Flare through it and it'll disappear eventually. Oh noes, I died! Backfire is totally imba!”.).

But what really bothered me were the changes that weren't made. Granted, the changes were temporary and only for the weekend but I'm working under the assumption that these were a preview of the next permanent skill rebalancing with the odd curveball thrown in. Shadow Prison, for example, is just crying out for a nerf. It's the gold standard of elites amongst melee characters now and just makes things far too simple – a skill that transports you into range and keeps them from getting away solves too many problems for melee characters. And it's grossly underpriced. By way of contrast, Aura of Displacement – which the enemy can strip to send you bamfing back to wherever you came from – has the same recharge and casting but lacks a snare and it still costs 10 energy with upkeep to boot. Me, I'd kick the price up – one way or another. A bigger energy tag is necessary so that it's harder to unload afterwards. A longer recharge keeps teams from respiking with it too quickly. And a longer casting time gives room for people to react and get their protection up. Just pick one or more and figure out where to run with it.

Wearying Strike needs a big hit. There's not so much a problem with the Avatar of Melandru as there is an incredibly cheap way for them to spam an effective Eviscerate without penalty every four seconds. Throw in the added health so you can't spike them down and immunity to conditions so several methods of shutting down melee goes out the window and you've got a monster. Rather than fiddle with the Avatars as with the increase to their recharge times – which, I think, misses the point – you want to hit the skills that make them so overpowered. Because, I think they're actually a good thing for the game. Having played around with a Grenth's Dervish a bit I can see why they're so strong - easily as threatening if not more so than the Melandru's Dervs around and yet costing far less to set up. They, like Shadow Prison, solve a lot of problems that melee characters have. But, I'm pretty much okay with that because those are problesm that can already be solved if, of course, you've got a lot of experience – having a cheap way of keeping your melee characters clean or busting through prot Monks levels that playing field a bit and gives less experienced teams a bit of a leg up into what the better teams have been doing all along (Which, yes, doesn't quite josh with what I'm saying about Flare earlier but there's a delicate line to balance here between getting new players involved, not discouraged by dauntingly complex and arcane techniques that seem natural to the “pros” and in eliminating the complexity that makes the game interesting and not a button mashing fest. And, for me, that involves making an alternative to the complex stuff – with the appropriate trade-off, of course. Not dumbing down the easy stuff.). As long as it comes with a cost – and, I think, with the Dervishes lower armor and all, it does, I'm fine with opening up the game like that. It's just I don't think the god forms are costing enough. That and the current condition/enchantment heavy metagame is why people play with Grenth and Melandru to the expense of Dwayna and Lyssa (Balthazar, I think, is a PvE gem but not all that useful in PvP compared to the others. You want to buff an avatar, buff that one.) not any deficiencies in those skills. So why they got a boost, I have no idea. It's the overpowered nature of what comes out of Grenth's and Melandru's that's the problem not that those two are underpar – because, you know, they're really not.

Beyond the skill changes there are also some structural problems. Assassins, for one, do way too much damage far too cheaply. I know that's their whole deal, of course, but when they have things like Shadow Prison and can spike someone down in seconds that's not doing anything good. If a skill like Blades of Steel is going to deal 2x80+ then it needs to be priced through the roof. Otherwise the turnover is just too rapid and people die too quickly. I'm not necessarily talking about energy costs here, although that's certainly one way to go but it concerns me how quickly they can unload and then do it again.

Probably the biggest structural problem, though, is Soul Reaping. While trawling around various resources I read, somewhere (Though damned if I can find it at the moment.), that Soul Reaping originally didn't have any skills attached to it because the developers thought it was stronger compared to other primary attributes – that it, in so many words, was so good it didn't need any skills to make it better. Well, it has a few skills linked to it now but that doesn't mean it's not still relatively stronger than others. Or, to put it another way, overpowered. Perhaps it took until Ritualists were around for people to realize it but Soul Reaping gets crazy good when things are dying (I gather that there's been a change in my absence that halves the energy gained on spirits . Which, you know, good. But not minions. Enter, of course, Jagged Bones.) and that fact that when things aren't dying it doesn't do anything doesn't change that. If you can guarantee things dying – which you can with minions and spirits and such (Look, I mean, when I was playing around with my Hero Necros my first thought was to give them Animate Bone Minions at very low levels of Death Magic. Just for the energy management. That's not a trick that should be working.) – then you can have skill bars that you shouldn't be able to support otherwise. It really needs a change, I think, so if you'll permit me to step into the way back machine and resurrect an old idea (Not sure whose it was but I still like it), I think Soul Reaping should work on energy regeneration not flat energy. Everything you kill gives you a few seconds of additional energy regeneration. The more you kill and the higher the rank, the longer that lasts. But that slow, gradual process prevents a lot of the abuses that backing up the Brink's Truck with bags of energy cause. I'd favor having it so that there's just a bonus psuedo-enchantment applied to a character that gives them a set number of pips of regen whenever something dies – it lasts for a number of seconds equal to their Soul Reaping length, of course – and when something else dies, it's reapplied and its duration is refreshed (Opposed, to say, just simply tacking that duration on the end of the first dead creature's regen boost.). The other way to go is to have each dead creature provide a boost of +1 regen and allow the effects to stack so that when a lot of things are dying you get more energy faster. But, for me, the whole point here would be to nuke the whole Minion Master idea into the ground. Necromancers have enough to recommend them that they don't need it and making things that simple hurt the game.

I've been a bit negative so far so let me close on a positive note. The flawed implementation and all, this PvP test weekend was a great idea. And one that I hope is followed through on. Inviting the whole community into the process of rebalancing things is wonderful and can hopefullydrive a lot of interest. What I quibble with is how it was done, not that it should be done, and that only so that it goes better the next time. The developers wanted criticism thought they called it feedback and I only hope that mine is the constructive sort of criticism; the kind that can be built upon into something better. This sort of rigorous PvP testing is best done with a lot of hands in as competitive an environment as you can get. There's no more people and no more competition out there than the people who're already playing the game. You can't duplicate that in any sort of closed testing environment. And if people feel the developers are responding to their concerns or even if they learn to think a little more critically about skills and how they're balanced (I'm avoiding the boards in no large part because I fully expect to see people talking about these things from only their limited perspective and complaining that their favorite character or class was nerfed or wasn't buffed enough. That has its place, sure, and more power to them. But following that kind of advice isn't going to lead the developers anywhere. It's the same kind of thinking that gives Blood Elves a bodybuilder's physique.) then no matter what kind of feedback comes out, it's been a worthy endeavor. And if it happens to get some people's blood pumping about PvP who might not have been interested before, then, well, what more can you ask for?

In the end, I had fun this weekend. And I don't think I was the only one. GG and all but let's definitely have a rematch on this one.