Jon Peters - Forum post about class balance

[rigoremortis]

Presumably because of the fairly hard limit of there only being 24 hours in a day (or 40 hours in a week that you can reasonably expect a person to be productive).

HAH! if you only knew! those of us that do work in the industry (i have been for almost 9 years now), generally work between 60-90hrs a week, particularly when it comes to "crunch time" and a game is getting ready to be released. I now work for a f2p mmo company that doesn't get nearly as many players, and I average 50-60 hrs a week programming fixes, additions, etc. i can only imagine what the guys on the larger mmo's put in every week, since they need round the clock bug fixes, balancing, monitoring, etc, etc.

those of us that work on these games, are just as much "no lifers" as those of us/you that play these games. simply because theres not enough hours in the week to set aside for a social/normal life, lol hence the reason why Jon Peters is "going crazy" over all the forum talk; anyone that works in this industry that truely cares about their product and how its perceived by the community of gamer's goes through this....constantly, lol but we love it, for some odd reason!

[Lucky_]

Who the fuck is this Izzy guy you're constantly bringing up? I have never seen nor heard from him, anywhere, in any kind of interview or statement or anything in regards to GW2. According to the GW2 wiki, he's simply a "game designer" which is very non-specific - the guy that's constantly posting and communicating and being brought up in regards to profession balance is Jon Peters, who is ostensibly a "game systems designer" (more specific, though still very general). He's the one that, it is said, is basically "going crazy" over everything being posted in the profession sub-forums, taking in feedback and whatnot.

Last I checked, every time you've brought up Izzy, you complained about him, and think he's terrible at balance.

Peters, afaik is basically some sort of a design crew manager and PR mouthpiece giving roundabout PR template answers to stuff related to the game.

Izzy (Isaiah Cartwright) is the "balance guy", essentially the face and the main person involved in balancing the classes and their skills. He's done that ever since GW1. If mr. Peters had something concrete to say about balance, he'd be quoting Izzy. In this case, he didn't, instead going for usual roundabout "as much text as possible without saying anything concrete" PR bullshit.

While Izzy may be fairly terrible at not fixing glaring OPness at reasonable speed, which is a fairly known fact since GW1 with many obviously overpowered skills and builds remaining overpowered for months even when abused to hell and back, he's still the authority on the issue because he's the one working on the subject. Peters is just a middle manager/mouthpiece. So a PR mouthpiece regurgitating PR bullshit is quite low on my "interesting to know" scale. Now if Izzy actually came to talk about balance, that would make for interesting reading, because between the current "lol mesmers and guardians" sPvP, "melee sucks, your zerg is your God" WvW and "we take weeks to notice that one of the classes doesn't even have an underwater elite in spite of one being in the game in sPvP" PvE, he must be working hard on something. And it would be really interesting if he told us what's to come. Or at least told people like myself if we should be rerolling instead of sticking with elementalists because baseline balance fixes taking the class out of the chasm will take over a month. Hell, we didn't even have a PvE/WvW underwater elite until a couple of days ago, so the speed of even very basic fixes isn't exactly encouraging at this point.

[Sylvanie]

HAH! if you only knew! those of us that do work in the industry (i have been for almost 9 years now), generally work between 60-90hrs a week, particularly when it comes to "crunch time" and a game is getting ready to be released. I now work for a f2p mmo company that doesn't get nearly as many players, and I average 50-60 hrs a week programming fixes, additions, etc. i can only imagine what the guys on the larger mmo's put in every week, since they need round the clock bug fixes, balancing, monitoring, etc, etc.

I wasn't talking about a 40 hour workweek, but 40 hours a week that you can be productive. Companies that overwork their employees in such a fashion do not generally get increased productivity out of it. Even if you work longer, your per hour output generally suffers as a result (there are some "savant" types that can actually be productive around the clock, for weeks on end, but not the average person).

Oh, and there's a good reason why, as a computer scientist, I've always kept a distance from the gaming industry.

[Lucky_]

If you just wanna make things up, that's cool. I sure don't see teams running comps like that.

Yes, it takes more then five to run low end sPvP so you probably don't see them.

Get in (talk with) a serious sPvP guild and ask them what they're running when they don't pubstomp and do organised play, which is pretty limited at the moment due to lack of organised tournament system, so as I understood, about the only way they set it up was to have a rep from every sPvP team join a certain guild and set matches within this guild between reps.

Organised glory farming pubstomps, sure, you could probably try 5 elementalists for lulz and it would probably work. I actually killed some mesmers solo today on ele. Most people playing in pubs are hilariously bad. Currently seriously considering "/y you've been killed by elementalist, trololol" macro for such kills.

But if you want to win, you pick the current flavour. At this point, that's mesmer, guardian and to lesser degree thief with some niche uses left for ranger and warrior.

[DrakeWurrum]

I suppose 3 weeks in, all the serious sPvP guilds have fully mastered the game. Kay!

[Fenlnir]

Peters, afaik is basically some sort of a design crew manager and PR mouthpiece giving roundabout PR template answers to stuff related to the game.

Izzy (Isaiah Cartwright) is the "balance guy", essentially the face and the main person involved in balancing the classes and their skills. He's done that ever since GW1. If mr. Peters had something concrete to say about balance, he'd be quoting Izzy. In this case, he didn't, instead going for usual roundabout "as much text as possible without saying anything concrete" PR bullshit.

So you obviously chose to ignore where he said to try and find counters to stuff before you get mad and post about it being OP. You're basically choosing to not read anything that doesn't come from the guy, THAT YOU SAID doesn't get around to fixing things in a timely manner. Any dev post should be taken pretty seriously, it's not like this Izzy guy is the only person at the company concerned with balance at any level, so choosing to only listen to him means that you won't ever see the full picture.

[Rukh]

just as an aside: it's people like drakewuurm who cause haters. People get so fed up with people like him appearing out of nowhere to defend literally any perceived flaw. he drives people away from the game.

As another aside: Don't call out others in the forums. That kind of behavior is not acceptable. -Edge

[Lucky_]

So you obviously chose to ignore where he said to try and find counters to stuff before you get mad and post about it being OP. You're basically choosing to not read anything that doesn't come from the guy, THAT YOU SAID doesn't get around to fixing things in a timely manner. Any dev post should be taken pretty seriously, it's not like this Izzy guy is the only person at the company concerned with balance at any level, so choosing to only listen to him means that you won't ever see the full picture.

Kindly explain how PR mouthpiece is able to provide additional information on the subject then person who's essentially the "head" of the subject in the company. Your hypothesis on being able to gather extra information on the subject through second party that can only gain information from first party rather then directly from first party sounds intriguing, if somewhat confusing, illogical and even absurd.

To emphasize, look up the old videos of arenanet dev panels. Pay attention on who gets the balancing questions when Izzy is on the board, and who person who answers references when he's not.

[rigoremortis]

I wasn't talking about a 40 hour workweek, but 40 hours a week that you can be productive. Companies that overwork their employees in such a fashion do not generally get increased productivity out of it. Even if you work longer, your per hour output generally suffers as a result (there are some "savant" types that can actually be productive around the clock, for weeks on end, but not the average person).

Oh, and there's a good reason why, as a computer scientist, I've always kept a distance from the gaming industry.

well, theres the idea that most human beings can only work and be productive 40 hrs a week, then there's the actual reality that 50+ hr work weeks are extremely commonplace in the gaming industry. its the nature of the beast, and one of the reasons why blizzard is constantly hiring, because a lot of young people go to college to get their degree's, thinking it will be "super fun" all the time to work in the industry, then reality sets in, and companies have high turnarounds because people weren't prepared for meeting deadlines; which is what keeps us employed, keeps the community/customers happy, and most importantly, keeps the shareholders happy.

edit: my 80-90 hr weeks were for EA, working on the madden series. i will agree they are a shitty, very corporate company to work for, but not all gaming companies are like them. still doesnt change the fact that most of us work more than 40hrs a week.

[Lucky_]

I suppose 3 weeks in, all the serious sPvP guilds have fully mastered the game. Kay!

When game has such glaring issues, they certainly mastered it sufficiently to understand which classes are worth playing when playing to win.

---------- Post added 2012-09-15 at 05:32 PM ----------

well, theres the idea that most human beings can only work and be productive 40 hrs a week, then there's the actual reality that 50+ hr work weeks are extremely commonplace in the gaming industry. its the nature of the beast, and one of the reasons why blizzard is constantly hiring, because a lot of young people go to college to get their degree's, thinking it will be "super fun" all the time to work in the industry, then reality sets in, and companies have high turnarounds because people weren't prepared for meeting deadlines; which is what keeps us employed, keeps the community/customers happy, and most importantly, keeps the shareholders happy.

I wanted to point out that this is a product of bad management rather then good one. Countries with greatest work efficiencies world wide tend to have short work weeks, because while doing mundane "exel tables" or "stuffing shelves" can be done for longer periods, the actual creative work suffers from significant quality degradation when forced for too long, even with extremely motivated worker.

Even in countries like Japan and South Korea, where work days are often over 14 hours, this is understood to the point of where "workday" counts everything from actually working to eating, socializing, and even going out to get drunk with fellow colleagues (on company's money no less - boss pays for everyone). The difference in the end is typically not in the length of time spent doing actual work (which gets massively skewed due to this) but in the counted workday.

The other way is the "crunch time" way. That is essentially the other end of the stick of overwork, burnout. You simply cannot perform creative work with long work hours for a sustained period of time. You burn yourself out in a matter of years and find employment with better terms. You still need to have several decades worth of a career, so "crunch time" work flow is obviously not going to be the kind of work you'll be doing long term.

[rigoremortis]

When game has such glaring issues, they certainly mastered it sufficiently to understand which classes are worth playing when playing to win.

---------- Post added 2012-09-15 at 05:32 PM ----------



I wanted to point out that this is a product of bad management rather then good one. Countries with greatest work efficiencies world wide tend to have short work weeks, because while doing mundane "exel tables" or "stuffing shelves" can be done for longer periods, the actual creative work suffers from significant quality degradation when forced for too long, even with extremely motivated worker.

Even in countries like Japan and South Korea, where work days are often over 14 hours, this is understood to the point of where "workday" counts everything from actually working to eating, socializing, and even going out to get drunk with fellow colleagues (on company's money no less - boss pays for everyone). The difference in the end is typically not in the length of time spent doing actual work (which gets massively skewed due to this) but in the counted workday.

The other way is the "crunch time" way. That is essentially the other end of the stick of overwork, burnout. You simply cannot perform creative work with long work hours for a sustained period of time. You burn yourself out in a matter of years and find employment with better terms. You still need to have several decades worth of a career, so "crunch time" work flow is obviously not going to be the kind of work you'll be doing long term.

well, i wanted to point out this has been the design of the gaming industry for about 2 decades now. its literally the reason why companies have high turnarounds, because people arent prepared to dedicate their lives to it. when a company is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a game, they're not going to let you be "lax" about your workflow, they will expect and do expect you to be working around the clock, those that cant, find employment in entirely different fields. im not going to argue with you whether or not its a good or bad management move, and i can say that in most every other industry, it would be bad management, but unfortunately customers want their games, and want them now! like i said, its the nature of the beast; the 2+ years i spent on the Madden series, as soon as i finished one years version, id be already working on the following year's version, its not like being a teacher where you get summer off, lol they're paying you a good salary, and you either perform or gtfo. its really that simple in the gaming industry, you're either prepared to put in the hours, or you find employment in another field. its the cultural "norm" in the industry to constantly work a lot of hours, because these companies shell out some serious money, and the shareholders want their investment returned as a profit, as quickly as possible. hence the reason games are released with a lot of bugs these days, because its better to get the product out and selling, as you're going to be constantly working on it anyhow. even moreso on an MMO.

the shitty part is, they'll put you on salary, then they can dictate however many hours you work....take it from me kids reading this forum wanting to work in the industry, dont take the salary position, it will always f*** you in the end, lol

[rigoremortis]

The gaming industry always seemed like the most awful industry to work in, judging by all the horror stories I heard from people I knew that tried their luck at it. Just a huge amount of non-stop high-pressure work coupled with horrible treatment because management knows there's 500 more kids just like you that think their dream job is, "Making a living playing games".

LOL, bingo!

the thing is, american corporations have some pretty shistey business practices, and because they donate so much money to politicians, they can get away with working people to death, hah. you get used to it after a while, and as long as you dont go in with the childlike mindset of "making a living playing games", you'll do just fine and find some enjoyment in it. i know for as much stress and anguish it has caused, i do greatly enjoy what i do for a living, even if it has messed up/ruined relationships with friends, family, gf's....the latter seems to like the money im making and being able to spend it, just not the time i invest into my work and not them, lol.

[Fenlnir]

Kindly explain how PR mouthpiece is able to provide additional information on the subject then person who's essentially the "head" of the subject in the company. Your hypothesis on being able to gather extra information on the subject through second party that can only gain information from first party rather then directly from first party sounds intriguing, if somewhat confusing, illogical and even absurd.

To emphasize, look up the old videos of arenanet dev panels. Pay attention on who gets the balancing questions when Izzy is on the board, and who person who answers references when he's not.

I fail to see how a developer is "third party" when no single person is responsible for balance in a game. I suppose I have to reiterate since you seem to keep ignoring it that he asked that people look for counters to certain builds. I don't see how he's a PR mouthpiece either, but I guess you would call any dev a mouthpiece because they say something that isn't a direct quote. Does that mean the devs aren't allowed to have thoughts on their own game now? Because that's essentially what I'm taking from your posts.

[DrakeWurrum]

I fail to see how a developer is "third party" when no single person is responsible for balance in a game. I suppose I have to reiterate since you seem to keep ignoring it that he asked that people look for counters to certain builds. I don't see how he's a PR mouthpiece either, but I guess you would call any dev a mouthpiece because they say something that isn't a direct quote. Does that mean the devs aren't allowed to have thoughts on their own game now? Because that's essentially what I'm taking from your posts.

^this

Jon Peters is basically the guy in charge for class balance. He's officially a "Game systems designer" but he's always the guy talking openly about class balance. Just because he's the one talking about it doesn't mean he's a PR mouthpiece - he's just one of the guys in charge of the group of people that handles it. Pretty sure in the closed beta he was also the guy directly communicating with people in the closed beta about balance issues.

But it would appear Lucky is convinced it's some other random guy that does it all.

He's also apparently convinced that, just because constant changes aren't being made on more than a daily basis (btw, there are daily game updates right now), that they're just sitting on their asses and watching the forums explode over the balance. No, they're collecting data, looking over the metrics they can now collect, discussing as a group what solutions could work to current issues, testing solutions they think could work on their internal builds, etc etc.

[Lucky_]

I fail to see how a developer is "third party" when no single person is responsible for balance in a game. I suppose I have to reiterate since you seem to keep ignoring it that he asked that people look for counters to certain builds. I don't see how he's a PR mouthpiece either, but I guess you would call any dev a mouthpiece because they say something that isn't a direct quote. Does that mean the devs aren't allowed to have thoughts on their own game now? Because that's essentially what I'm taking from your posts.

Nice collection of strawmen. I'm talking about the balance "head", and in your hands, it suddenly becomes "the only person responsible for balance in game".

Also, I wouldn't call "any dev a mouthpiece", which is very clear when I give examples of devs that are not in fact mouthpieces. All found above. Intriguing how you ignored it.


For the last time, hoping that you're not someone with an axe to grind like drakewurrum and can actually listen to arguments rather then having a clearly set end point and doing whatever is necessary to silence any opposition: This particular dev is a PR mouthpiece when it comes to balance issues. He has little to no contact with the actual balance work. About the only person of interest that does have significant say on the topic AND is known to give statements on the issue AND is the person to whom other devs direct any balance questions is Izzy.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[rigoremortis]

Nice collection of strawmen. I'm talking about the balance "head", and in your hands, it suddenly becomes "the only person responsible for balance in game".

Also, I wouldn't call "any dev a mouthpiece", which is very clear when I give examples of devs that are not in fact mouthpieces. All found above. Intriguing how you ignored it.


For the last time, hoping that you're not someone with an axe to grind like drakewurrum and can actually listen to arguments rather then having a clearly set end point and doing whatever is necessary to silence any opposition: This particular dev is a PR mouthpiece when it comes to balance issues. He has little to no contact with the actual balance work. About the only person of interest that does have significant say on the topic AND is known to give statements on the issue AND is the person to whom other devs direct any balance questions is Izzy.

Nothing more, nothing less.

do you work for Anet? because you seem to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the innerworkings of the company, without having any effin clue how the industry actually even works, rofl

im going to clue you in, so listen real close.......balancing issues on an MMO are literally done by dozens if not hundreds of people, so to say this "Izzy" character is the only go to guy that knows anything is well.......for lack of better terms, retarded

[Deleted]

I'm not for knee jerk reactions.....but 13k hits from warriors to allow them to kill people within a stun need looking at.
As is the unkillable theif, stealth and ability to run like hell is not fair, they attack and fail and then get to run with impunity.......

[Fenlnir]

Kindly explain how PR mouthpiece is able to provide additional information on the subject then person who's essentially the "head" of the subject in the company.

Also, I wouldn't call "any dev a mouthpiece"

Except that's what you did. Literally, the first quote was EXACTLY what you said. But... you don't seem to want to accept any argument that isn't "He's not Izzy, therefore the hundreds of devs don't matter", I'll just kindly leave you to be terribly terribly wrong. But again, for the sake of argument, let's just argue that Jon is in fact a game designer http://www.arena.net/blog/author/jpeters which he is, so he would indeed be concerned with balance, and not a

Peters, afaik is basically some sort of a design crew manager and PR mouthpiece giving roundabout PR template answers to stuff related to the game.

In the future, it helps to have facts to back up what you say if you want to have a meaningful discussion. http://www.arena.net/blog/author/izzy
is also a game designer. Weird that game devs talk about the same thing....

[Lucky_]

do you work for Anet? because you seem to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the innerworkings of the company, without having any effin clue how the industry actually even works, rofl

No, but I've been in the circles who had close contact with Izzy during GW1's prime time. I'm quite familiar with how balancing in that company works. It's not really all that complex.

im going to clue you in, so listen real close.......balancing issues on an MMO are literally done by dozens if not hundreds of people, so to say this "Izzy" character is the only go to guy that knows anything is well.......for lack of better terms, retarded

I have bad news for you. That is not how it's done in arenanet. In fact, such numbers are probably an anomaly that only exists at blizzard team working on WoW. Pretty much everywhere else, it's just a small handful of people, usually in low single digit. Most designers work in far more work-intensive environments, ranging from character design to environment design. That is why the "generalist" people who essentially just collect all the mess together are nowadays called "game systems designers". Because there's a lot of the "systems" involved. Balancing is in fact one of the least work-intensive of these, hence low demand for people. And then there's of course the problem that the more people you have working on balancing the actual numbers, the more problems you have with "left hand didn't know what right hand did" issues.

---------- Post added 2012-09-16 at 08:57 PM ----------

Except that's what you did. Literally, the first quote was EXACTLY what you said.

I quoted you. Should've quoted the entire sentence, but I figured you wouldn't bother to try to strawman your own words, since your entire sentence made the issue painfully clear. Your wordings indicated that I was calling ALL devs "mouthpieces", when I was in fact calling one a mouthpiece, and other the actual source of information, and presenting clear facts, such as panels attended by these people and direction of balance questions at these panels.

As a result, I present that no, I in fact did not and that you actually tried to second-hand strawman based on your own mistake here. Sorry, but just no. And doing this in a debate is considered to be in VERY bad taste on most live debating panels.

In the future, it helps to have facts to back up what you say if you want to have a meaningful discussion. http://www.arena.net/blog/author/izzy
is also a game designer. Weird that game devs talk about the same thing....

Indeed. Izzy is known as the balance guy at arenanet (words of one of the heads of the studio I believe), is the one who even studio heads defer balance questions to at panels. Do you seriously want to argue against this? Or are you just another astroturfer like drakewurrum, aiming to use as much misdirection and blatant misinterpretation to promote your own goals?

Fact is, Izzy really doesn't like to talk about his future actions because of how it got misrepresented and misquoted wildly back in the GW1 days when he tried it a few times. We users aren't really known as nice people when balance is at stake. On the other hand, what we have here in the OP is roundabout, zero information PR mumbo jumbo that says absolutely nothing. Only an astroturfer would bother to post something like this into the forums.

Consider that the entire quoted text says absolutely nothing concrete about balance, other then "we're not making any significant balance changes any time soon". Which to anyone that has more then touched sPvP at the moment should be like waving a red cloth in front of a bull - mesmers and guardians are utterly broken OP right now for their respective roles of point attacker and point defender, while some others like elementalists are utterly broken UP. This is visible to anyone who tried these classes in sPvP, and more or less becoming visible in PuG tourney recruiters who already came to mostly recruit these two OP classes and shun everyone else.

So yes, I and many others would be very interested in hearing what Izzy wants to say about this. Some random mouthpiece who isn't leading the balance team and has nothing to say except that "we're not likely to make changes any time soon" is very a uninteresting source of information.

---------- Post added 2012-09-16 at 09:02 PM ----------

I'm not for knee jerk reactions.....but 13k hits from warriors to allow them to kill people within a stun need looking at.
As is the unkillable theif, stealth and ability to run like hell is not fair, they attack and fail and then get to run with impunity.......

Try sword+pistol/GS phantasm build mesmer. It breaks these two in half. You let them come and start their combo while stacking your three phantasms on them, then when they reach you and start to unload you just use sword two. Their uber damage goes into your invincibility while you destroy them.

Or if you are feeling lazy, you stick phantasms, let them commit and them moa them. It's an IWIN button at this moment in any 1v1, and generally available when you need it because you just don't need it for most fights - they're winnable without it.

[Cobaltius]

I have a level 49 Ranger and so far judging from the skills I have unlocked "build" balance is a non issue, as any skills you unlock past the weapon skills you initially get they are pretty much all useless. For crap sake the elite skill I got for purchasing the game is better than any elite I have unlocked thus far and I would not call those elite at all. In fact the only skill that I have unlocked that use and rarely is a flame trap because when I kill stuff it is at range.

It is like they are so paranoid of a super monk or super necro build like those in the early days of GW1 that they just gave us a boat load of crap that will have virtually zero impact in game, truly pathetic and the only major flaw in an otherwise perfect game.