What is happening to Wynncraft?

Bro what
Do you not remember the horror that was pre-IM item balancing
Like I don't disagree that the constant item changes get annoying-The IMs have a bad habit of underbaking their balance passes and the market tends to be way too volatile because of it- but the system we have is still way better than back when the item balancing was done by Salted in his basement and the meta was pretty much just the Hive weapons and as many hive items as would fit into your build, and would take a year to put out patches that people still complained about. Like we had items balanced by one guy before; that's how we got the level 60 weapon meta with Roulette and Pure. The item team was created specifically because item balancing was so bad that Salted couldn't fix it alone.

Hell, do you have like, any examples of successful balancing done by one person, especially for an MMO? The only example I can really think of is Slay the Spire, but that was two guys working with the community at large, in an early access title with a way smaller scope than this one.

 

The good ole days when almost every single build had two prisms, every spell build used third eye + aquarius + crystal + memento, and every single melee build used chestplate of ineptitude plus a ton of builds having vaward slapped in.

 

I feel like the decisions should be more open to everyone

 

I don't know what exactly the direction of Wynncraft's balancing is and frankly I'm too busy and lazy to start researching it. But I will say this: Wynncraft is an EXCLUSIVELY PvE-focused game so having any sort of obsession over balance can and will drop players infinitely faster than letting the balance be "unhealthy". Absolutely nobody likes their favorite feature being nerfed, whether it's an archetype, class, or item. And being an MMO, the only people whatsoever who care about the "balance" of Wynncraft are usually super hardcore tryhard elitists (who are often very toxic players) that make up less than 1% of the community. This being the case, catering to those elitists means you're alienating everyone else. Who cares if something is overpowered? Toxic elitists? What does that matter?
Naturally I can understand if something is, like, Meta Knight levels of game-breakingly overpowered and needs to be nerfed but that's not what I'm talking about.

If the game is catered towards elitists and an over-obsession on equipment balance, that's when it becomes another Destiny 2, which if you don't know is a PvE focused MMO game that is such a monumental failure from their obsession of balance that even when they had a multibillion dollar plan specifically designed to keep their employees from being laid off, within a year they burned through it entirely and had to lay off hundreds of employees anyways just to keep the game afloat... twice. Another example is Helldivers 2, which lost 90% of its playerbase by, once again, focusing heavily on balance and nerfing things people liked despite the game being exclusively PvE, and only got some of its playerbase back by un-nerfing everything and giving a great new update for players.

Don't misunderstand me though: I am not in any way saying that Wynncraft is doing these things, I'm just giving a cautionary tale that being focused on balance in a PvE game can and will kill that game.

 

I've noticed that issue, of the game catering more and more to tryhards, but I don't know how much of that can be blamed(?) on the item team. Wynncraft is trying to perfectly balance things in a system that doesn't allow for perfect balance. The irony is that even though it's done in the name of variety, I've noticed a massive drop in build variety over the last few years. Now that's not entirely on them, it's largely, maybe even mostly on the community, but it doesn't help that they've removed the ability to make quirky, fun builds that are still functional in favor of having a perfectly balanced meta. It's no longer a case of "any endgame weapon works well" for most content. Content feels balanced around the strongest builds (not the item team's fault), and consequently using anything but that meta isn't just not optimal; it's actively creating an extra challenge for yourself on top of what is intended by the game.
The latest few patches honestly feel like they were designed to help fix that, though I think they went about it wrong, but that's another discussion. The point I'm trying to make is that there's several systems in place that are doing exactly what you're saying. Annihilation is evidence of this; look at party finder, and half of the parties listed insist "mythic builds only" or "build check" or some other way of saying non-meta builds aren't welcome. And I'm not blaming the people making those parties either, Annie was absolutely balanced around the idea of a team of people with the very best builds. That isn't to say that it's not a community problem; running anything even slightly outside of that meta gets you snide comments or straight up insults sometimes, but the community issue arises because of game design issues.
Now, I'm going to say that challenging content is bad; I quite like it really. It also isn't to say that having balance is bad. This is where the item team comes into this discussion in my opinion. When you have challenging content that requires a good build, and good builds have been regulated and balanced so heavily that there simply isn't much variety between them, it feels like the player is railroaded into a specific handful of builds, and when those builds change. You want to use epoch? There's a best build to use. Even if you find a better build, it will be nerfed to fall into line. Knowing that it will eventually be nerfed if it's even a bit better than the meta really discourages experimentation. Likewise, knowing that any build I make is going to be changed really kills my desire to make new builds that take advantage of any fun gimmick; I know I'll have to change it within a few patches. People gravitate towards the same meta builds, not just because they're the strongest, but also because creativity is discouraged. You can't make a really good build that will last any length of time, so why bother? I used to really enjoy making fun, mildly cursed builds that misused items because that's what I enjoyed running. Now those builds are really hard to make, are guaranteed to be nerfed quickly, and fall so much below the meta in terms of functionality that I feel bad using them in team content and have even been outright insulted for using them when I do. Again, I'm not against the idea of meta builds existing, but one of Wynncraft's greatest strengths was being able to make all kinds of weird builds and run them. It had some of the best theorycrafting of any game I've played. Now it feels tiring and like I just end up coming back to the same handful of builds if I want to make something even vaguely viable. I don't mean to complain about this so much ,but it really feels like fun has been optimized out of the game, and it wasn't entirely the players who did it this time.

 

The simplest way to express the problem is that of rarity, function, and gimmickiness. Mythics have to be strictly better than almost every alternative to justify their rarity. Therefore, anything less than a mythic is going to stink badly as a general rule. Then, there's the part where certain build styles (dps, healer, tank) are better than one another in certain types of content, and since partyfinder does not let you specify your party role, dps is always going to be favored in raids. Annihilation will 75% of the time have poor party balance because of the spur-of-the-moment nature of the event and the panic of the final few minutes. The next problem, gimmickiness, does not apply to the meta player, but for those who start maniacally laughing after firing homing arrows from Hesperium while wearing Scarlet Veil (me) or enjoy blasting mage melee pyrokinesis (and me again), the issue is that since, like Melkor said, the endgame content is designed to be challenging for the most crazily efficient builds in existence, we don't stand a chance. Add that to the fact that innate damage buffs got wrecked by 2.1 (tomes. High tides raise all ships, and low tide does its own in turn.) but aspects just make certain abilities more powerful, and usually not through raw damage. Now, sure, an aspect that makes your totem last longer will allow you to build with less mana IF you were using lots of mana before and IF you are not just shatter-spamming or smash-bombing.

So, we have a game where all party roles HAVE to be boiled down to damage, healing, and tank, and tank is pretty worthless anyway. Otherwise, too many weird builds that don't fall under a category would cause party imbalance. Then, everyone's using mythic aspects, weapons, and armor because the alternative is objectively worse and infeasible. These hyper-optimized builds have to be challenged in some way, and so everything that is not meta, that doesn't have all the aspects and the mythics, and uses Fierce Stomp for damage are left in the literal dust.

While I generally agree that there should BE a difference between what a "meme" build can do and what a meta build can do, I ultimately think that meta builds, not existing, but existing so, so, so far away from everything that is not meta is the core of the issue. If it's meta, it might work. If not, there's no chance.

but yeah, basically this

 

I have pointed out quite a few times that the way raids are balanced is so bad that if you're not using a strictly meta build then you're straightup worthless to the team because it is physically impossible for you to deal any real damage to the boss, and that's the problem. Making pure unadulterated damage the only viable build for any sort of endgame content is inherently flawed because so much else of the game tricks you into thinking other builds are useful. If I were a new player looking at Paladin's ability tree, the most obvious build path I would choose for it is full tank; something that makes you nothing short of a complete detriment to your team in any sort of endgame content (especially raids).
Frankly the elitists make this even worse.

The main point here is that Wynncraft is a game entirely designed around making any build you possibly can, and then once you unlock raids proceeds to disregard every build you possibly can in favor of full damage, something that is not only antithetical to the entire archetype system, but to the entire game as a whole including equipment and skill points. The team has openly admitted to intentionally making poison completely unviable and that illustrates my point perfectly.
And of course, I can go on to point out how horribly designed the skill point system is in that it tricks players into thinking that the skills themselves are useful past the early and mid-game when in reality once you hit endgame they are almost nothing more than a requirement for wearing equipment, made even further pointless by the aforementioned endgame balance.

 

The big thing I didn't really talk about is archetypes, but it's absurd how every archetype is primarily valuable based on the dps. Lightbender is meant as the healer, and yet what are seen as the best builds for it often are purely built for dps and forego good heals, because that's more valuable in endgame content. You could argue that's the players saying that, not the design team, but the design of the game is why damage is massively more valuable than heals in the first place. Paladin used to be garbage because the damage was poor. Rather than working to make tanking actually a valuable ability, it was redesigned to do more damage, and that made it good. The ability to tank and heal others is a nice bonus, but it's the damage buff that ultimately made it useful; it's better to have a bad tank who can deal damage than a good tank who can't. That's also why some classes have a "best" and "worst" archetype; they're all good at different things, but whichever one is best at outputting big honkin' damage numbers is generally the best. Riftwalker is considered borderline useless for most players, purely because the damage output is not as good as the other two. Same with Battlemonk, despite both being the most fun to play imo.

And yeah, skill points are a mess. The real problem with builds imo arose when they changed the dexterity/strength interaction, which automatically made nearly every build that didn't use both at a severe disadvantage. I like the anime anima infused chestplate from the hive, and have been told off by people for using it because you can't use strength with it, making your damage output so much worse than a build that can that it's basically not even considered viable in the meta. Same goes for nearly all of the other ones that don't have both damage stats. It's still fine for most solo content, but if you bring it into a raid you either aren't contributing much or are actively told to leave because of how bad it is considered. Again, a community problem that stems from a game design problem. I have a whole tangent on most of the hive master armours being absolutely obliterated by power creep, but that's a topic for another thread. Again, I'm not here because I just want to complain about the game or hate on the teams behind this, but I think it needs to be said so that the various teams involved can address it. They certainly are capable of doing so, and I think they're usually fairly good at it. But due to years of design choices by several different teams, I think ultimately any one team is currently powerless to fix these issues alone.

 

THIS! (and everything that I liked. It's all so true.)
All of my fav archetypes are considered useless by the meta: Mage - Support Full Lightbender. Example: When I played my 20k dps Lament build, I was told it was useless because I 1) didn't have any Dexterity (Gaia-Hewn Boots) and even though I could practically regenerate everyone to max, ACOLYTE ALREADY DOES THAT AND ALL THE DAMAGE. The person who told me this was playing Trance Riftbender, and said that their heals were not garbage. Lies.
Assassin - idk anymore (haven't played acro since it changed). However, I'm pretty sure that anything that isn't trickshade is non-meta right now, and so even though the Inferno Hmelee shade build I run is by no means cursed, it certainly isn't viable.
Archer - Sharpslinger. It's the Epoch meta, but I run Hesperium usually and that... uh... gives me looks from certain players.
Warrior - Pala-Monk or Fall-Adin. Back when I played Pala-Monk, Paladin was useless, and now BMonk is useless. And, well, Guardian Fall-Adin was never going to be good, but I do wish it was better.
Shaman - Ritualist. Acolyte started being meta and never stopped. Summoner got revamped and is now an option. Ritualist, though? The only updates Ritualist was gotten made it more sensical, and it can only be good in team content when the rest of the team dies because it is all the niches. There will always be something better (Whatever the highest damage or highest healing), or something that does both anyway without switching (Acolyte). This makes it virtually comparably worthless, even if I find it more fun.

 

Okay so after doing research I had an experiment recently where for a while I put my posts on both the forums and the discord to see the difference in reactions, and it was absolutely night and day. I am now convinced that most of any catering to elitists is due in part to the discord. One thing I noticed almost immediately from this experiment about the Wynncraft discord is how absolutely infested it is with tryhards and elitists, a large amount of them being outstandingly toxic. I mean, these elitists are heavily against things that are even just basic-level quality of life improvements for literally no reason and the problem with this is that these elitists and otherwise toxic players are a thousand times more vocal about the game than the actual 95% of normal players.

Speaking from personal experience, I didn't even have a forum account (or at least never once posted on it) until like 250 hours of playtime so I can only assume a large amount of people that play Wynncraft are the same; most people who play Wynncraft normally don't take to the forums and especially don't take to the discord to give feedback simply because they don't care to. People like that, aka most of the playerbase, simply vote with their wallets and/or playtime without saying anything. Now, it's not all bad though, there are obviously still lots of normal players I've seen giving their opinions on the discord, but the issue there is that they get downvoted into oblivion by the massive amount of toxic people that are there. And that is just... insane honestly. It doesn't always happen of course but the amount of times that it does is cause for alarm. The terrifying part of this is that the forums are being slowly phased out in favor of the discord. So these forums, the one last place where most normal players actually post on to give their opinions without being downvoted, is not only being drowned out by the discord but also slowly being replaced by it as well. Heck, when I made a player report on the forums back in May, it took a literal entire 40 days for a response, which basically started with "for future reference, use the discord for reports, we don't really check the forums anymore"...

Anyways, as for specific discussions I've had with people on the discord, without giving any names I got into an entire argument with someone there about poison being unviable, with their argument exclusively being "well it's easy to proc so it should be completely worthless as a stat!" And I'm like... why does it matter? This is an exclusively PvE game. Regardless, that wouldn't even be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the CT specifically echoed this exact mentality in their own response.
Another time on a different thread I pointed out that one of the problems with raids was how outdated Skill Points' mechanics currently are, and the very first response I got was some guy starting off by calling me a "braindead individual", and it started an argument that derailed the entire thread. And when I decided to take it to DMs so we wouldn't be derailing the thread, the first thing he said in DMs was that he was going to use my post as a meme for his guild to start a harassment campaign against me and then he started stalking my profile. The most embarrassing part about that was the fact that his bio was something like "DM me for help :)"
Yikes.

Also apparently Deusphage (allegedly) left the discord specifically because of rampant toxicity which echoes my sentiment pretty well.

 

Mostly because I couldn't handle the stress it brought on. I would respond with frustration and it'd just make the situation worse. I am not fit enough to be in that space.
Being there just made me anxious. I never checked any of the channels because I wanted to see what players had to say, it was always because I felt like I had to be on high alert and defensive.
I probably won't be coming back— and I have no interest in considering it for a year or two. I'm content taking smaller bites and interacting with more niche parts of Wynncraft's community.

________________________________

I always tote this fact around as an example of how bad things can get, but I got death threats. There were people who pulled me aside out of nowhere and talked about finding where I lived and how they would firebomb my house.

 

Damn, even I didn't think it was that bad. Worst I had was some guy stalking my profile and trying to start a harassment campaign over a simple skill point rework idea, but I can't say I'm terribly surprised given what little I've seen already.

 

okay what the actual fuck
i did not know it was that bad.
what the fuck.

my own wynncord experience was joining for the changelogs (thank the gods for the gln discord having a changelog copier) and then finding out that i'd literally been @-ed. i'd been @-ed at someone else's post that ridiculed 'general forum stupidity' or something because I made a post a few months back after they changed out the ATree textures asking "But why? Why were the colors shifted." As it turns out, everything is color-coded by the same system except aspects, everything in lootruns, and tomes, but ya know! I'm obviously an idiot for not immediately seeing color changes that don't even remotely match the shades of rarity colors and not immediately assuming that abilities were about rarity. I left a few days after because I didn't want to A. have access to a community that openly mocks people because they have nothing else to do with their lives and B. be seen as part of that toxic cesspool.

what the fuck
what the fuck

________________________________

what the fuck

 

Hard agree on meta builds being boring. The best part of wynn is being able to experiment and make weird stuff work even if it’s a bit scuffed sometimes, it’s part of the fun making your own class build and facing the game in your own style.

I guess going back to the OP however it would still be immensely annoying to have grinded for a “meta”
build only for it to be constantly being nerfed and whatnot,
I think it’s one of those situations that’s just hard to find a right way to approach, a “dictator” would as you said definitely mean consistent decisions (in theory) but then again as also mentioned mean potentially less community input through the team.
Hard to approach no matter what but I can sympathise with the OP to an extent but also think that a changing meta to some degree is always good for the game

 

Don't worry I'll do it

 

Only thing I want is gimmicky fabled weapons actually having fabled-worthy base damage so they don't get outclassed by everything

 

Jesus Christ, this sure aged well.
Man, Wynncraft, you just know you made the worst update of all time when both your Discord and Forums both agree on how utterly contemptable it is.

 

Sadly more common then you think it is.

 

which part?

 

Harassment from people in the community.