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

[willtron]

You're a fool for thinking they want to balance the game.

This. You really think after 12 years of Warcraft they wouldn't learn how to balance it all equally? Of course they do. There's a financial incentive not to.

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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.

I do it so I can get a small, quick wow fix without putting money down, hah!

[Deleted]

The point of a PTR is to get a mass to play and test and REPORT those things. There is the problem. The mass is sadly not reporting things. Top players keep their numbers secret sometimes. And the playerbase all alone is not that big on the PTR that the actual numbers on live with a real amount of parses could change.

Of course you could blame Blizzard (heck, the retarded community blames Blizzard for everything, probably even for things happening in real life), but a PTR does not show the whole numbers.

[xanzul]

Then why is the game not balanced? WoW only has 12 classes, you seriously think they aren't capable of balancing them? Use common sense...

So go apply for a job at blizzard and show them how its done. You people keep spamming this stupid bullshit and yet none of you have ever offered up any viable solution for any of it and just hurl insults at developers instead.

[rda]

This. You really think after 12 years of Warcraft they wouldn't learn how to balance it all equally? Of course they do. There's a financial incentive not to.

There's a problem with the success criteria. The proverbial "the balance can never be perfect". Now, it seems that since there is no *easily defined* success criteria, they stopped trying to define it and in general adopted the "anything goes" attitude. Because, hey, "it can never be perfect" anyway.

Sum total, they didn't learn. Really. But most of that is because they didn't even try. They managed to convince themselves that no matter what they do it won't be perfect and nobody told them that they are going for good, not perfect, and that "good" ALSO needs a strict, elaborate criteria.

[xanzul]

Yes, you got that right. If Blizzard makes changes which are awful they are awful. If they would make changes which are good, nobody would complain.

Honestly I have no idea how delusional someone can be to defend what they did to Hunter, with the reasoning 'Well at least they made changes!!!'.

Or maybe just maybe not everyone has the same issues with class balance or think there are other ways to fix them. It isn't a defense it is called having a differing opinion.

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In my mind balancing is so easy..
look at wowlogs, look the averenge data for any fight ( eg. add heavy fights like helya/eye .. ST like ursoc guarm )
Look at 75 parses which is quite fair because its not influated by lucky rolls.

If there is a class doing too well on ST just nerf ONE singletarget skill by a certain % which brings it a bit more to the middle.
Do the same for AoE fights, nerf or buff a aoe skill by a certain amount.

Cant be that hard or am i wrong?

So why aren't classes balanced then? This has been an issue since launch even during the golden era that haters and whiners are always prattling on about when Blizzard devs were "passionate gamers making games for other gamers" and didn't care about profit.

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I love this game but Blizzard is notoriously bad at balancing in general.

Look at Overwatch for example.

They clearly use a 'dancing chairs' type of system for WoW though and it's godawful.

I don't play Hearthstone but I imagine it's not very balanced either.

I remember a time when gamers just played the god damn game and left the design theory to the people whose job it was to develop games.

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Again for another absurdly anal poster - it was already tested on beta and was scheduled to be released independent from any patch release.

Blizzard devs said from the getgo that Nighthold wouldn't be out at release. if you have proof otherwise then show it otherwise just shut it already.

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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.

And how exactly is Wow like Diablo again? Most of the new mechanics for wow that have been introduced in Legion have been used in many, many, many, many other rpgs and mmos. Either provide a list of d3 devs on the wow team or just shut the fuck up about it.

[rda]

And how exactly is Wow like Diablo again? Most of the new mechanics for wow that have been introduced in Legion have been used in many, many, many, many other rpgs and mmos. Either provide a list of d3 devs on the wow team or just shut the fuck up about it.

I know it's pointless to reply to you, but for others:

RNG loot with tons of +ilvl-type upgrades, tons of bland grind with many levels only differing in some small number in artifact, tons of difficulties in mythic+, keystones. The overarching theme is a lot of levels or things like levels with no differentiation between them apart from a couple of numeric values.

Legion PVE does indeed look more like D3 than like WoW.

[xanzul]

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).

How many more times does it need to be explained to you that they aren't ignoring anything because they just simply disagree with it? There is more than one way to resolve class balance issues and I guarantee you the solutions offered by players would cause significantly more problems than Blizzard could ever create on their own.

[rda]

How many more times does it need to be explained to you that they aren't ignoring anything because they just simply disagree with it? There is more than one way to resolve class balance issues and I guarantee you the solutions offered by players would cause significantly more problems than Blizzard could ever create on their own.

How many times does it need to be said that the proof is in the pudding? Can you articulate what it is they disagree with specifically? Go ahead, I'll wait. (They don't disagree with anything here, they just think they can't do shit and so they don't even try. Yes, they are wrong to do that.)

[xanzul]

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

Just because you dislike a change doesn't make it bad nor does it mean everyone else agrees with you. Perhaps if players would frame their criticism of class balance as opinion rather than objective fact it would go a long way towards getting Blizzard to make certain changes in a way more acceptable by players. All the shitposting and nonsense like this just drowns out the very feedback needed to fix class balance issues.

[lightofdawn]

100% balance makes for a mighty homogenized and very boring game. it's foolish to think that's the goal

i think the goal is to make it balanced enough to give the illusion of balance, while still keeping things interesting.

if there were no surprises, it wouldn't be any fun

[xanzul]

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

Not one single person has said this. What they have said however is that due to all the specs and classes and how they differ from each other not to mention how gear can affect it means that it isn't something that can be solved with the flick of a switch.

[cFortyfive]

Blizzard devs said from the getgo that Nighthold wouldn't be out at release. if you have proof otherwise then show it otherwise just shut it already.

You seemingly are retarded - it was still considered the first tier and a lot of the testing was already done on beta so your blizzcuck narrative of them having to work so hard on nighthold and didn't have time for balancing on the ptr doesn't hold much ground.

[Kuntantee]

Public *test* realm. The point is software testing as much as balancing the game.

[rda]

Public *test* realm. The point is software testing as much as balancing the game.

They don't fix reported bugs either.

Example: as of 7.1.5, putting a pet onto a rogue in an arena makes you go into combat denying the rogue the ability to sap. The pet does not have to hit the rogue, it just has to be directed to hit him (that's the entire difference, and let me tell you, it's a world of difference). Moreover, if you put a pet onto a rogue in this way and I heal you, I am put into combat as well and the rogue can not sap me either.

Sum total - they don't use PTR for fixing bugs either. (It looks like they have their hands busy even without PTR.)

[Kuntantee]

They don't fix reported bugs either.

Example: as of 7.1.5, putting a pet onto a rogue in an arena makes you go into combat denying the rogue the ability to sap. The pet does not have to hit the rogue, it just has to be directed to hit him (that's the entire difference, and let me tell you, it's a world of difference). Moreover, if you put a pet onto a rogue in this way and I heal you, I am put into combat as well and the rogue can not sap me either.

Sum total - they don't use PTR for fixing bugs either. (It looks like they have their hands busy even without PTR.)

I am pretty sure they fix bugs in PTR. The point of PTR is to test and testing does not always correspond to fixing, especially if you have a priority list. The identification of bug is perhaps good enough for them and they will get back to fixing once they have more important things done.

[rda]

I am pretty sure they fix bugs in PTR. The point of PTR is to test and testing does not always correspond to fixing, especially if you have a priority list. The identification of bug is perhaps good enough for them and they will get back to fixing once they have more important things done.

If they do, they hide it well, because bugs that are reported aren't fixed, and the above bug is pretty damn big. There are even bigger bugs that they didn't fix either. There are even MANY of them.

One more example as a proof: 7.1.5 monks could bug their talents so that they can do cocoons without a cooldown. GGWP. That's completely broken. If you PVP, you know that this is pretty damn close to the "I win" button - "I never lose" in this case.

I get that "the point of PTR is to test and bla bla bla", but that's theory, not practice. In practice, reporting anything on PTR is mostly a waste of time.

[Swizzington]

Not one single person has said this. What they have said however is that due to all the specs and classes and how they differ from each other not to mention how gear can affect it means that it isn't something that can be solved with the flick of a switch.

Someone earlier in this thread said precisely that. And it gets consistently said in a lot of similar threads.

[Kuntantee]

If they do, they hide it well, because bugs that are reported aren't fixed, and the above bug is pretty damn big. There are even bigger bugs that they didn't fix either. There are even MANY of them.

One more example as a proof: 7.1.5 monks could bug their talents so that they can do cocoons without a cooldown. GGWP. That's completely broken. If you PVP, you know that this is pretty damn close to the "I win" button - "I never lose" in this case.

I get that "the point of PTR is to test and bla bla bla", but that's theory, not practice. In practice, reporting anything on PTR is mostly a waste of time.

You also have to consider the possibility that maybe they *couldn't* fix the problem in code and are still working on it.

[Zantos]

There is no point in a PTR or Beta. They don't listen to feedback from either test phase. They wait until the populace gets the game to balance because that is the only way they will get a Real idea of how anything works of performs.

[stigz]

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

Come on. You me Blizzard and my dog's chew toy know whatever Blizzard does short of completely breaking the game they'll maintain plenty of subscribers to make profit.

It only has to be effective in that it keeps players subscribed with the back and forth of "fine tuning" classes. For every one person who quits because of changes like these an equal or more resub to take part. Why should they care about pissing anyone off with how many people are subscribed?

And that's the point. They don't care. A company that can totally dismiss striving for quality from lack of close competition with any other game can literally do whatever they want for profit. That is literally all they care about now. I don't know where this game is going to end up like that.