Blizzard is absolutely terrible at balancing: point of a PTR?

[jaber2]

Haha, this is too fucking funny

[Deleted]

There are private servers with better balance than live. It can't be THAT difficult for a professional team to balance, if they cared. None of this makes any sense!

Maybe it's like there's 3 developers working on the balance team that get reports from upstairs: "Overrall Mage play time is looking a little low, incorporate buffs. BM Hunter play numbers getting too bloated, womp 'em with Ol' Nerfy." So they change the numbers because it's what they're getting paid to do then turn around and just play Overwatch all day in their office.

Maybe that's why developers were jumping ship they past couple of years, they didn't like being a part of a game that was bound to nothing but profits with no say in designing much of the flow of the game at all.

Maybe UFO's are a human time travelers from the future.

Remember when the 7.1.5 Fire Mages PTR changes came out and in the Bluepost it was stated that they are doing them because people in the trade or guild chat are often speaking about Fire Mages being so strong? Welp...

[HeroicMythic]

yeah, worst balancing ever. buffing/nerfig speccs and spells by 30% 3 days after patch RNG decisions ftw!

[Lorkin]

Yeah, that's one.

That hardly justifies saying that WoW is being developed by the former D3 team. Which frankly is a endlessly stupid thing to say.

A team that numbers well into the hundreds and I'm guessing that no one is going to be able to come up with more than maybe two or three.

That's one? John Yang was one of the LEAD Diablo 3 developers. When you have a lead developer move to a different project, they generally are moved to lead said new project. Enough of the lead D3 development team got transferred to the WoW side and they have now taken over the development team since a good portion of the WoW development team left.

You asked for proof, got presented proof, and still not enough huh? Just check around the General WoW forums, this is common knowledge.

[Charge me Doctor]

PTR doesn't guarantee the balance, since, well, almost no one actually tests things on PTR, they just play the game. Which is fine, but not enough people playing (and raiding), for example, shadow priest, because too many players were busy rolling other class to test if these changes are cool, will result in skewed statistic. You seriously think that PTR provided us with ~1k mythic ToV parses with balanced team setup so blizzard can make proper adjustments? Nope. It happened when people logged on on patch release, started playing their main class and realized that it comparison - they are shit

[Qck]

Balance in this game has been horrendous for a while now, scaling is out of control, some of the more ridiculous things I've seen in WoW(SPriests, Arcane at end of WoD, Affliction at end of MoP) have all come under Celestalon and his teams watch.

I'm not sure that guy can balance on his own two feet, let alone a game like this. I'm almost certain neither he nor Holinka are qualified for the positions they hold, the games general balance - and gameplay as a whole to be fair - have been on a decline since they took the reins as leads of their respective teams.

[Echo of Soul]

I don't see the point of a PTR really if they need live data in order to properly balance the specs.

[rda]

They stopped paying attention to reports from anywhere a long time ago. That includes PTR and beta servers.

They don't do that because they are intent on ignoring players. They just have too many bugs known even without extra reports, so they never get to the stage where they are clean enough to maybe accept reports from the outside. At least in the areas related to balance that happens because they are hell-bent on having a damn f***ng revolution every expansion (seemingly just so that they have an excuse for balance to be terrible all the way to the next expansion).

[Deleted]

I think Main reason for PTR is to find bugs etc. They will balance numbers little but nothing special

[melodramocracy]

Look at the announced nerfs and buffs.

We are talking about +40 or -40% buff/nerf to several classes. That is so severe i can not see how this was not tested on THE PTR WHO WAS ONLINE FOR MORE THAN 2 MONTHS??? What is the point of a ptr? Basicly nothing.

Patch is live for 4 days and now this. It makes me /facepalm and laugh at the same time this incompetance of Blizzard.
It was the same at launch of Legion. Some specs so low they got buffed by 20-30%. A year in beta had no use it seems....

They need to stop hiding behind "at launch we have more data" Take blooddrinker nerf of dk. Even a monkey could see that a skill that can crit for 2,5mil was ALOT for a tank. But noooo, let it launch and then shit on the dk's by nerfing it hard instead of actually testing it on ptr

My guess is that PTR testing is mostly focused on dealing with bugs (both for players and new content) rather than balance. They're likely getting too few players who actively use PTR to make finalized balance decisions.

[Chaelexi]

The biggest issue with PTR is that it is only a small sample size and balancing solely off PTR would likely lead to more imbalance because you usually only get the cream of the crop doing testing with a couple of others mixed in. The first week of raiding gives a better lay of the land for numbers as you get everyone from normal clearing guilds to world first raiders testing everything.

[Dangg]

"Nobody will complain" hahaa nice one. I'm not saying this changes are good or awful..i'm saying no matter what the fuck blizz do...everyone will still complain.

Bollocks. It's not impossible to make changes which are almost universally applauded.

[Swizzington]

So a billion dollar company that has been running the top MMO for over 12 years isnt capable of balancing classes? Are u really that naive?
Everything blizzard does has its purpose. And what lies behind every purpose of a billion dollar company? U are right, its the billions of dollars!

So the question should not be, why cant they balance the classes - the question should be, why do they want one or two classes/speccs to be OP over the others with EVERY patch they release?

Possibilities:
- maybe so people often switch classes = keeps a diversity = keeps them playing = keeps them subbed = billions of dollars

- gets people involved in the game / forums = keep people active = keeps them playing = keeps them subbed = billions of dollars

- creates discussions/QQs (such as this thread) = people stay interested = keeps them playing = keeps them subbed = billions of dollars

- so people play until next patch, when their class gets buffed again = keeps them playing = keeps them subbed = billions of dollars

- u name it

Precisely. I really have to question the thinking skills of people who say "its impossible to balanced this many class combinations. Like really?

[Daffan]

If you look at it from an economic standpoint, it makes sense. They don't want the game to be (fully) balanced. The FotM rerollers keep the game populated, and they'll get bored if the meta becomes stale - thus, constant rollercoaster in the top tier DPS.

The point of the PTR also makes sense if you look at it the same way. It's not there to ensure balance, it's there to ensure hype for the upcoming patch.

Not really

because people getting mad = leaving.

[Yuyn]

We are talking about +40 or -40% buff/nerf to several classes.

???????

What specs are getting adjusted by 40%? There are some individual abilities that are adjusted by that much (i.e., Cobra Shot), but they're not a primary damage source for those specs.

Survival Hunters and Shadow Priests were the two outliers during EN/ToV - they should have stepped in much earlier to fix those.

Survival is so underplayed that there just isn't a very accurate representation of the spec's performance in high-end content available -- a lot of the graphs posted are based on roughly 1/100th the number of SV parses as, say, MM or Shadow. You can certainly say this is a problem in itself, but it doesn't necessarily mean numbers buffs is the answer. (I'd argue that it's less numbers and more about being a melee spec on a formerly-ranged class in an expansion that added only melee specs, combined with mediocre-to-poor utility/defenses for most raid encounters.)

[Grimlokh]

Bollocks. It's not impossible to make changes which are almost universally applauded.

I want to believe you. Have any examples in those shiny pockets of yours?

[Segus1992]

Not really

because people getting mad = leaving.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was that simple?

[Daan]

People only go PTR because they want to play new content or see the new raid encounters to have it easier on live patch then. They don't play PTR so that Blizzard can make class balancing etc.

[Deleted]

Lets be honest guys. If you had no unbalanced and bad/worse than before WoW you can rant about all day long on the forums your life would be just plain empty, boring and miserable. Just be thankful Blizz constantly creates RL content for you!

[xanzul]

Yes. That's what it has morphed into. And it isn't okay. This is the only thing I complain about with WoW because it effects the future of it immensely. They've made their record breaking sales, it's time to reward their decade old loyal player base with an actually decently balanced and logical game.

If Blizzard doesn't address class balance due to greed how does this explain the lack of balance from day 1 of vanilla? Was it greed then too or are you just talking out of your ass?

- - - Updated - - -

There are private servers with better balance than live. It can't be THAT difficult for a professional team to balance, if they cared. None of this makes any sense!

Maybe it's like there's 3 developers working on the balance team that get reports from upstairs: "Overrall Mage play time is looking a little low, incorporate buffs. BM Hunter play numbers getting too bloated, womp 'em with Ol' Nerfy." So they change the numbers because it's what they're getting paid to do then turn around and just play Overwatch all day in their office.

Maybe that's why developers were jumping ship they past couple of years, they didn't like being a part of a game that was bound to nothing but profits with no say in designing much of the flow of the game at all.

Maybe UFO's are a human time travelers from the future.

There is no profit without subscribers. Or are you saying purposely designing bad products and pissing off customers is an effective business model?

- - - Updated - - -

At this point the PTR is only there to test the mechanics and they balance once it hits live. This sucks major ass.

so basically it is what Blizzard has been doing with wow since vanilla launched? Why is it an issue now but it wasn't then?