4.7 Update (Patch Notes)

[Samyaza]

@Saltypatra

As said earlier, even though at some point we were planning on very slightly changing the gold payout for the easiest battle as it crept up slightly, the amount that it has been reduced in conjunction with our fixing the exploit is unintentional

The amount of times something slips off the patch notes is absurd.
The amount of times a (supposed) small change affected another (sometimes unrelated) feature is absurd.
Letting a patch to beta tester and THEN add in more fix/content is absurd (I would use another word here but don’t want to be too rude).
The amount of times that a change’s reason is presented to the community and the suddenly change completely after a tenth of posts is absurd (and quite insulting, at least to me).

I don’t like the way @Slypenslyde presented it but it was YOU that take him (and some part of the community) down that conspiracy road, with ACTIONS in the past.
Too much content aren’t clear on WHY and HOW and transparency lacks with this patch way more than before. If you don’t have the time/possibility to explain, maybe it’s better to not say nothing at all instead of “it’s for the better” or the classic “we’re looking into”.
Sorry but won’t take no more words, I’m waiting for some real act

[Fourdottwoone]

@Saltypatra

However, this unintentionally did alter the gold scores of PVP (ranked and casual) that have significantly lower team scores.

Just throwing this in here to share my latest Ranked PvP experience:

These “altered gold scores” that affect “significantly lower team scores” seem to be pretty much the norm for me. In case this isn’t clear, left and center battle used to give more than 1000 gold. I couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to check in detail how hard the rightmost battle got hit.

[awryan]

@Fourdottwoone

These “altered gold scores” that affect “significantly lower team scores” seem to be pretty much the norm for me. In case this isn’t clear, left and center battle used to give more than 1000 gold. I couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to check in detail how hard the rightmost battle got hit.

The right is due to them not knowing what they are doing.
I’m guessing your team score is around 15k now
… So you are penalized for facing foes 2k points lower than you.

Basically it’s your fault you updated early, have played the game for years, and are in a player pool with folks at a much lower level than you.

Devs seriously, how many times can you screw up PvP before you bother to actually test your changes yourself since you don’t give your beta members the ability to test for you… Prior to you pushing the changes out. Your live users shouldn’t be your PvP testers. Which evidently has been your strategy got years now.

[Grundulum]

Yeah, it sounds like balance changes need to be included in the beta. That would have caught a few surprises in the past/present and given the devs time to address them.

[Fern]

Last 30 3t pvp i have play vs 4 different players. Teamscore +15k ps4

[Fourdottwoone]

@Fern

Last 30 3t pvp i have play vs 4 different players. Teamscore +15k ps4

Sounds like you got very lucky, all four players in your personal matchmaker pool were high reward targets.

[Slypenslyde]

I sure am glad they managed to slip in and document that achievement to try and get the Achievement Hunters guy to advertise the game, tho!

[Slypenslyde]

I lost my patience for politeness somewhere around the third or fourth time this happened with the same kind of excuses.

RE: your status, we both know that while it is your job to foster goodfeels in the community, there is also a line in the sand and there are things you cannot be honest about. Some of those obligations are “general professionalism” and others are just dictated by your corporate culture. You are a company rep, you have to tow their line, but that status can be abused.

Since you guys are looking for a process, I’mma help you out.

First, I assume you have an issue tracker like Jira. It might not specifically be Jira, but you can probably customize it. You should have one that allows this. “A whiteboard with post-its” is OK.

Next, you add a “release notes” field to every. Single. Issue. It doesn’t have to be big.

Next, you probably have a series of statuses like “Open”, “In Progress”, “Ready for Test”, and “Done”, with rules in place about when and how issues move between states. Put “Documentation” between “Ready for Test” and “Done”. The rules:

• After an issue is tested, it moves to “Documentation”.
• Now it is “who does the release notes?” person’s responsibility to check Known Issues, Help, and the Release Notes to make sure they reflect this issue’s completion.
• When that person is satisfied it moves to “Done”.
• Code CANNOT BE SUBMITTED OR RELEASED unless it is “Done”.
• The person responsible for this state is reviewed on how well they maintain it. The person responsible for the release notes should know any promotions or bonuses they expect are conditional and tied to their ability to maintain the process.
• If a person different than that one moves it beyond the state to Done, that person has to discuss it in their review meeting re: their expected promotions and bonuses, particularly if it had a large negative impact on player sentiment. This is akin to intentionally releasing bugs and an offense that can lead to discipline.

I’ve never worked anywhere that didn’t use this process, and I’ve also never worked anywhere that forgot to put things in the release notes. Sometimes we had conscious discussions about if something qualified for the release notes, but isn’t that the aim? “If something isn’t in the release notes it’s because so and so agreed it wasn’t relevant, signed and dated in our issue tracking system next to the documentation of the fix.”

If you do not have or want to adopt processes like that, it is not mean-spirited for me to note your team is not behaving professionally. Part of being professional is having processes that make you accountable. This isn’t secret sauce in the industry, it was laid out in a Project Management 101 class I was forced to take in college.

[Time2die]

If feels like you guys wanted to kill PVP your most played game mode . I’d be curious to know if PVP is still considered most played . Myself for one loved ranked PVP but I’m certainly not going to grind it now after the gold reduction which seems around 40 percent . If you didn’t want players in the game mode just delete the whole thing and add something new

[Magnusimus]

I’ve hopped aboard the easy-defense-team train, too (using L+D to get it nerfed didn’t work besides a slight change to Orbweaver, so might as well!):

Baby Dragon
Orb of Winter (sorry for that part)
Orion’s Herald
Bombot

By the way, @UKresistance, been to your tavern and loved the experience

EDIT: Please note that during Guild Wars my team(s) will be fluctuating as I practice against my opponents’ setups

[ClaudiKruemel]

@Kafka

We fixed a Casual PVP exploit - it somehow got dropped from the patch notes, we’re copy pasting it over now and checking to make sure nothing else is missing/out of date in the notes we published.

But why did you cut it that much down? So casual players will be faced either very hard opponents and lose their fights or get just 300-400 gold a fight, this cant be true, I hope this was a big mistake @Kafka and you will fix it very quick. Are you trying to push the veteran players out of the game? For me at least it feels like it. I am absolutely not happy anymore what you are doing with the game, you give us harder tasks and nerf the gold income. What if we dont want to change our gameplay and dont want to farm explore (what I dont like btw.) instead of pvp?

[ClaudiKruemel]

@Saltypatra

This was not an intentional nerf, as we fixed a part of Casual PVP that was exploitable. Some may see it as a nerf, but if it is, it is not an intentional one. It is us fixing something that was never working the way we intended it too in the first place.

@Saltypatra But why do we have these low offers in ranked pvp, I rarely played casual pvp in the past and now I am getting not enough gold anymore to fulfill the gold requirements of my own guild and we are not even very high. So we wont be able to finish the normal tasks anymore if you keep it with that nerf - yes I call it nerf because this was the way I made the last years most of my gold. And as I said before I dont like explore and wont play it as often. The nerf of the gold for weaker opponents in ranked pvp means also that I will have to play even more than I do already - and I am not willing to do that.

[Micio]

Agree, about using L&D trying to get it changed i mean, swapped aswell to some lame def (that still got around 152xx score so prize should be high).

As a good side of the patch noticed that the 70 points are back (and also highest gold prize i’ve ever seen i think :P).

[awryan]

@Micio

As a good side of the patch noticed that the 70 points are back (and also highest gold prize i’ve ever seen i think :P).

Don’t fight and win against teams 2k points more than you. The devs may consider it an Exploit and therefore you are subject to possible bans.

Where as players like me aren’t able to possibly face opponents stronger than us. So we get reduced gold. After they finally made it fair for everyone 3-4 patches ago.

[Sheffield]

Now we have a Pet nerf.
All by us playing Explore 0 Pets Today.
Can we not have Pet gnome in Explore?

[LirioDelAgua]

It is still not clear to me how the exploit worked. I think it’d be important to know to better judge how to fix it and if it really required fixing. Because, like awryan said, knowing how to play is part of the game! Look at all the knowledge players apply to the game! People created guides on how to use your deeds. How to level up hoards, recommended levels, which delves to farm, which to level up. Efficiency, in a word. So if there is a weakness somewhere, people are going to find and it and use it to the fullest potential. Happens in every game.
The problem with your fix is that it feels like you weren’t trying to improve your game. It’s like you took a look at the best gold farming players and wondered how to slow them down. And you realized that they were sandbagging somehow so you decided to carpet bomb the whole system.
Again, from my end it looks like you’re not working on improving the game, just slowly building a paywall.

[Dust_Angel]

One more thing I forgot to mention, most likely because I’m neither competitively inclined enough myself nor circle in that much competitively poised environment, but I already hear the inevitable drama that will follow when two full gilds go for top spot in B1 and it just happens that Guild A scores more overall (30/30) yet finishes second because Guild B had better 27/30 score.

[awryan]

@Dust_Angel

but I already hear the inevitable drama that will follow when two full gilds go for top spot in B1 and it just happens that Guild A scores more overall (30/30) yet finishes second because Guild B had better 27/30 score.

Guild wars your best 27 against my best 27.
It’s better that way. In that case, it’s a simple you can’t please everyone deal.

[Chalky123]

@awryan

I’m a lot of things, but passive aggressive is unfortunately not one of them.

You are sometimes. But so is everybody else sometimes as well . We’ve been passively aggressive to each other before, but hey, now our new targets on 505 for this Quality update.

@Tabu

You beta testers sat there for days telling us how this update was great, etc. now we see it…

Look at this:

@Lyrian

In the last dev Q&A or the one before it, they mentioned they were looking at changing how guild seals worked, potentially removing the cap and making it more intuitive, like how clan orbs work.

I wonder if that’s a change coming with 4.7?

/muffled noises

Shimrra:

as per the patch notes, the good stuff in the update actually far outnumbers the bad.

Clearly lyrian loved the beta version of the update.

[awryan]

@skb31

I’ll repeat again. People are either ignorant to the actual exploit being addressed or they are purposely playing dumb.

Educate us all on what the Exploit was then.
I did a thread dedicated to what it sounds like the Exploit was. Taking advantage of bad match making by hitting the refresh button.

@skb31

Does anyone here believe that only 5% or less (my numbers) should have access to a process that 95% can’t use?

So it didn’t work for you… Therefore it shouldn’t work for anyone?

How about instead, the devs fix it so that it does work for you. Still an Exploit?