User talk:Soldier198

Balance update

The category Balance updates says "This category is intended to contain skill and trait balance patches, particularly those with developer feedback on why they're making their changes."

Follow-up game updates with the heading "Bug Fixes" or game updates with three skill changes are clearly not matching this category description. Furthermore, this category also orientates on ArenaNets game update wording, for example see Guild Wars 2 Fall and Winter 2022 Roadmap refering to

• October 4—Competitive Profession Balance Update
• November 29—Profession Balance Update

--Tolkyria (talk) 15:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes I see that the page desires updates with developer feedback. I am going to make the case that balance changes which do not feature developer feedback should be documented so long as they are notable changes. Case in point, Vindicator in PvP and WvW has been nerfed significantly since the October 4th update. It has gone from being massively overpowered to, as of yesterday, a third tier supporter compared to Druid, Tempest, or Scrapper. None of the changes that were made to the Vindicator which progressively nerfed it would fit in the "balance updates" pages criteria of "developer feedback", yet clearly these adjustments have a significant effect on game balance.

Since a wiki is supposed to document game information and make it presentable and easily accessible to readers, I think it is only sensible to also include updates that have effects on game balance which may not fit the criteria presented on that balance changes page. Also, the criteria of what defines a "balance update" can also be changed since this is a wiki afterall. Soldier198 (talk) 15:10, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Also, I come here after primarily using the Guild Wars 1 wiki for years. They categorize any change that has any number of skill changes (non-bug fixes) as being a balance update (see here https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Balance_updates). So I am used to that type of categorization; I didn't know that it was different here. Soldier198 (talk) 15:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) For completeness, going through your "balance update = y" edits and marking what in my opinion can be labelled as such:

• 0Game updates/2017-10-17: mostly bug fixes
• 0Game updates/2017-12-15: follow-up game update, original isn't labelled as balance patch
• 0Game updates/2018-02-08: follow-up game update
• 0Game updates/2018-05-22: bug fixes, minor pvp/wvW adjustments
• 0Game updates/2019-05-14: bug fixes, minor pvp adjustments
• 0Game updates/2018-10-16: three changes cannot be considered as balance update
• 1Game updates/2019-10-01: some changes
• 0Game updates/2020-03-17‎: mostly bug fixes
• 1Game updates/2021-08-17: finisher, boon changes
• 1Game updates/2022-02-28: eod release
• 1Game updates/2022-05-10: states "Competitive Balance", wide range of pvp/wvw changes
• 0Game updates/2022-07-19: not labelled as balance update by ArenaNet
• 0Game updates/2022-10-05: follow-up game update labelled as "Bug fixes"
• 0Game updates/2022-10-06: follow-up game update labelled as "Bug fixes"
• 0Game updates/2022-10-18: not labelled as balance update by ArenaNet, see "October 4—Competitive Profession Balance Update" and "November 29—Profession Balance Update"

Sure, that's a valid way to categorize it, but it also completely annihilates the category that is related to ArenaNet's balance updates. And I think it's interesting to know what ArenaNet considers as balance update and in which time period these are released. Cluttering this category with minor game updates totally removes the purpose of this category.

So why not add another category called something like "Significant skill and trait changes" which would allow any game update, including follow-up bug fixes? Preferable doing this again with an infobox parameter. --Tolkyria (talk) 15:33, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok that's a good compromise. I'm gonna make a category page that'll document all updates with non-bug changes to skills/traits. Soldier198 (talk) 15:40, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Wait a minute, you're adding the category in the wrong place. You need to add the category inside the noinclude tags. -Chieftain Alex 15:56, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, the entire point of locking the template namespace was to minimise widespread editing of large numbers of pages. Going through every single skill and trait update meets exactly that criteria. Can I suggest we compile the list of what pages we want to add it to, note that down somewhere, then stick a bot request in later after the SMW bugs are ironed out? (we could implement this through the infobox template). -Chieftain Alex 15:58, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok that sounds like less work. I will compile a list of pages and put it on the talk page for that category I just made. Soldier198 (talk) 16:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I changed the balance update categorization according to my list above.

So now we are at ~120 skill/trait related game update pages out of ~760 updates, with 41 balance game updates, sounds good, I like it.

Alex, in my opinion there's a difference between editing 120 pages per hand (and probably purge them afterwards) or editing large-scale templates (e.g. sold by with 20,000 occurences or an infobox with 17,000 occurences). With no estimation on how long it takes to fix this bug, a temporary solution like adding the category by hand, and then afterwards turning it into an infobox parameter with a bot, could be considered as acceptable, at least from my humble editor-point-of-view.

Offtopic: We could use the more complete skill/trait category in Template:Balance patch profession query; although we would have to find a way to deal with all instances of "Bug Fix", "Bug fixes", "Bug Fixes:" etc... that actually contain skill/trait changes.

--Tolkyria (talk) 17:40, 19 October 2022 (UTC)