Guild Wars 2

1. Balance
2. Leaderboards
3. Rewards and Progression

1 – Depth of Game Play and ANet’s vision for PvP: on a scale of [Tic-tac-toe <—→ Chess] how complex is the ideal game play for GW2 PvP?

2 – Player Incentives: Leader boards, Seasons, Rewards, etc. What exactly is the progression for GW2 PvP?

For me there’s not much point adding anything else until those two are answered in full.

1. Matchmaking
2. Rewards
3. Accessibility/tutorials

1. Philosophy of programming and improving PvP.. as Example: why big long steps and no small steps like putting PvP-Eventskins in Tourneychest
2. Future Philosophy of Balancesteps.. Whats more important 50 ppl playing a Hosted Tourney or the rest of the player? Frequency of Balance and how much.
3. Plans to bring PvP on par with PvE regarding Rewards, Contentupdate and Progression and the Bonding between PvE, PvP and WvW. As Example Gift of Fight should only be possible in PvP.

guess before u post think about that u only create topics u want discuss. balance is a topic what can be discussed always so be clearer what u mean with balance.

1. Increase Player Motivation with Short and Long Term Goals
2. Meaningful Player Ranking/Progression
3. Improvement of sPvP Infrastructure (eg. Automated Tournaments, Leagues/Divisions)

Thanks for this initiative.

1. Rewards and Progression
2. sPvP game modes
3. Attracting + maintaining new players

Also taking this opportunity to encourage posters to prioritize subjects suitable for discussion. For example, while matchmaking problems are definitely an issue, what is there to talk about? A fix is a fix, so prefer something like “Rewards for winning” over “matchmaking”.

My opinion.

1: Balance Philosophy – big one, since I can’t fathom some things you do and it would be nice to get some perspective.

2: Game Modes – obviously this is important.

3: Rewards and Progression – anything short of gold or gems is meaningless to me but I can’t think of anything else.

1. Class Balance. Why do things move so slowly and why do things never seem to change for the better? Each patch we move more and more into a condition dominated meta with fewer and fewer classes capable of doing anything.

2. Game Modes. A lot of players don’t enjoy the take and hold style of map play. We’ve heard repeatedly why you’ve chosen this and we’ve mentioned repeatedly that we still don’t care and want more game modes. Ranked or not… we need CTF and DM.

3. Why is leveling so incredibly slow? While it’s great to pretend that a high rank player got there because of skill and effort, the reality is they got there through mind numbing grinding. It’s worse for people who don’t enjoy take and hold style maps. For many players they want only the finishers and there’s no way to get them other than eye bleeding torture right now.

PvP
1. Game modes
2. Rewards/progression
3. Matchmaking

For PvP
1. New Rewards, better feel of progression. Why bother with PvP if you can just farm gold in an hour pve. This ties in with the achievements as well. You get +10 AP for one tier in Marauder, comparing this timeframe for an achievement in PvE that gives you +10AP …
2. New game modes.
3. The current balance of the professions. The balance patch that didnt balance.

1. Game Modes
2. Class Balance
3. More Accurate Matchmaking

1. Balance
2. Rewards
3. Game Mods / Making SPvP more atractive

Tks Chris!

-Balance: specifically build diversity and also how stats are allocated, and their scaling in PvP compared to WvW and how this affects build diversity. Role of classes as opposed to role of “archetypes” (like ranged damage dealers, melee damage dealer, support, tank, etc)

-Ways to “show off” PvP content in PvE, and viceversa. Basically Im working really hard for armors and skins in PvE, going inot PvP makes me feel poor and a newcomer. Playing too much in PvP and when I go out to PvE I missed gold, experience, no skins, no chance to catch up.

- Underwater Balance and more interesting mechanics, specifically classes which are too strong there and others which are non existent.

-Writing a longer version on Balance-

Done, 2 posts long, worth the reading I assure you

1. Game Modes
2. Attract people from other game modes, possibly related to #1
3. Balance

1: Skill Balance (specifically on spamming skills/conditions)
2: Rewards (to bring PvE-ers like me into PvP more often)
3: New game modes

PvP:
1. Class-Balance (mainly spells/traits/skills but also base-stats!)
2. Game Modes
3. Stat-Variation / more gear-options

1. Game Modes. Specifically, will there be significant team and map size variation in the forthcoming modes and would you consider an Arena Mode (especially with a 1v1 bracket with Elites turned off).
2. Depth. Do you believe the game is too easy or too hard? If it’s the former, what game mechanics would you like to introduce to raise the skill cap?
3. PvP Art Direction. None of the PvP maps reflect the incredible art that is in some portions of the game, primarily the PvE portion. WoW maps like Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch are frequently brought up in this forum as examples of game design that facilitates incredibly fun, memorable gameplay, but they’re also fan favorites as they’re beautiful places to play in. Does ANet believe their PvP maps reflect the artistic talent seen in places like Lion’s Arch and Black Citadel and is the art team for the PvP maps the same as the one for the rest of the game?

Thanks.

1. Game modes – Conquest is really boring to play and to watch. I want to PvP.
2. Balance – Takes way too long to see balance changes. We’ve been discussing necro and warrior on the forums for a couple of months at least.
3. Solo Queue – Completely broken. Most battles are unbalanced, either in skill or in numbers.

1. Game modes
2. Leaderboards
3. Rewards

Balance:

I will try to be as unbiased as possible, and I mean it:

Overall I think we have been power creeping too much, some classes need some adjustements and others need some tuning up, but mostly tuning down.

Warriors; Overall skill cap is really low, offers great deal to the team. Great damage and CC, quite sturdy, comparable to a guardian, evne if not traited for it (unlike a guardian) given the passive of Healing Signet. On the flip side, they tend to be very kitable, their gap closers are liner and predictable. They either kill you or they dont, at which point they just run away, given their unmatched mobility. This was ground for nerfing on D/D ele which had insane mobility, insane healing and insane damage. Either 1 of those 3 needs to go, or they need to make a window for counterattack, because they are a solid wall as compared to others. Overall I believe every class should be brought to about their level, or guardian.

Guardian; Really tanky if built right, but their damage tend to go down the drain. Generally speaking they are pidgeon holed into support roles in PvP given the nature of sharing boons and converting conditions. On the flip side their DPS builds have suffered a bit, though the introduction of fury was a great start, now they can get access to some crit chance without having to go into Zeal. Their main issue isnt damage or surviving, but rather their ability to efficiently close gap or finish off targets., most of the time is either or. Burst guard is quite potent in WvW given Traveler runes and the stats scaling in PvE, this is not the case for PvP, and this should be taken into consideration, specially the mobility part. Either they need swiftness or cripples. Overall they are solid as far as supports go.

Ranger; My experience with them goes as follows; only tried power rangers, but I have had plenty of matches agaisnt them. Their class mechanic is almost totally negated in PvP, pets arent very useful, but at the same time Im glad of that,. Mindless Ai shouldnt dominate, more power to the ranger. I would say do like you said in the last SoTG, add a F2 skill, given them active powers, but make the AI less powerful. This is a trend that will follow my next cover of the classes; AI should not be beating players, players using skills should. I say we ignore those who want their pet to do 2-3k hit on each attack, but rather support those who want to use the wolf leap at a moment needed rather than whenever the wolf pleases, of course, have some DPS, but just minimal, and by minimal I mean REALLY minimal.

Continued [1/2]

Incentives is always the key! its a motivating factor that all human understands.

1. reward and progression
2. balance
3. game modes

now why did i choose that order, very simple even if your game is not that perfect with good enough incentives to play, players will still play it. when you have lots of players playing thats when you rolled out the balances because by this time your getting all the feedback from all your players new and old. then you add game modes to spice thing up or change a bit. still i want to say and please take a consideration.

1. remove hotjoin spvp for it award bad gameplay.

2. give solo and team arena the spectator just like the gw1 days where we can watch the gvg or in this case arena match.

3. removed current glory rank attain through spvp and award arena players rank base on their wins or their champion title.

[2/2]

Necros: Same as ranger, less power to pets, more to player. Less to conditions, more to mindful skills and careful positioning rather than spamming and overunning enemy cleanses’ CD. Buff their power speccs, redirect some of power of even condition speccs to abilities that involve more than spam conditions and hope he doesnt have any condition cleansing up. Usually it ends up in a paper/rock/scisso, in which the one with more turns wins (conditions have much lower CD than most condition cleansing, 10 secs average as opposed to 30-50 secs average).

Condtition stats in the game as general usaully come with toughness or vitality, so the way these character work is; really beefy and at the same time spammy and bursty thanks to bleed and burn.

Engis; Very potent bunkers, capable of defending very well, but outside of that very little variations. They suffer from the condition problem too. Not that they cant survive it, but conditions are currently flawed, condi engi is very potent and once conditions are tunned down that specc will be acceptable. Overall I would say give them more power builds, things that dont involve kits so much. Overall a strong class, once others get tunned down, specifically the way conditions work. Turret changes were a great start!

Thieves; The mechancis of the class allow for indiscriminate abuse of it, talking about stealth, evades and blinds. Stealth is still too strong, even with the reveal debuff. The ability to instantly burst down without counterplay is really strong, Im talking about 12k backstabs, (16 k in WvW without might stacks and only food) which can instantly drop a guardian, ele or another thief who happened to have revealed. Risk is non existant , yet stealth still punishes the ally team of the thief, a stealth thieves wont be contributing much to the score. Though their ability to secure kills is too strong, even for an assassin. Sw/D is the bigger offender. The ability to completely ignore any disengage of any class and engage and disengage at will is too strong of a mechanic. They need ways to punish careless usage of initiation, evades, blind, stealth or any combination of those. Overall I would say buff them for their lost power, they need to bring something else than killing potential to the team, they barely have any utility other than killing, at which warriors make a better job. They need better defense, without stealth/evade spam they blow too fast, but if I have to choose, keep the evades, tune down stealth and teleports, will make for timely use of skills and make the encounter more fun for both sides rather than just the thief side.

Mesmers; Strong duelists, weak everywhere else, specially tagging in fights and chasing opponents. Their utility is only matched by guardians, but damage wise they are lacking outside skirmishes. More AoE options could solve this. The way their stealth works is beautiful; small tactical stealth which have long CD, this concept should also be applied to thieves. overall they are really strong in organized teams, provide lot of good things, they just need minor fixes to make them be one of the strongest classes around.

Elementalist; left them for last, because these are the ones I have the most experience with, and the one that, in my opinion, need the most help. Though the staff changes were great, I believe we are going in the wrong direction with the class. Conjures isnt something many players desire to use in PvP given how the drawbacks greatly overweight the goods. The fact that they dont allow flexibility, they are limited and many other issues exposed before make them very undesirable. That aside, I would love to make them another option in PvP, I find flame axe and ice bow quite fun in concept. As for their support; staff has gotten some nice changes, specifically to its healing, but they pale next to engis and guardians, which is why you wont see them all that often, if ever, and I will explain why;

the core problem of eles have not being addressed yet; their lack of survavility and dependance of water/arcane. Most speccs have to run at least 20 in arcane and minimun 15 in water, that 35 trait points which are near mandatory for any respectable level play. Support eles usually specc into these so they dont have much issues, the rest cant afford this and thus we have things like what happened at MLG, were there were 0 ele given how they dont bring anything unique to the team and have more drawbacks than strenghts (I hate bringing it up, but it is a very important point and the trend wil continue unless something is done about it!).

Overall the game is really close of adquiring balance, only fixes and tunning up/down of certain mechanics. Nothing drastic should be made, but many considerations should.

First of all, considering that we had no pvp balance/content patches for about half of a year, i kind of expected the following in this patch as the highest priority:
- New gamemodes
- Templates

This is something our pvp guild noticed 2 months after launch, but it still hadnt been adressed. Talked to some of the members recently and nobody is even considering comming back until these basic features are implemented.

Also, there are way too long pauses betwen balance changes. I know its a part of your policy to try and let a meta develop, but its not working as you anticipated.
When you dont do pvp patches for a long time, while doing constant pve updates, i personaly feel like you have 1 developer working on pvp content at a time.
Remember how long it took to nerf mesmers?

TLDR:
1. New gamemodes
2. Templates
3. “Shave” more often, your hair is getting too long.
9999. ESPATHS! (After the game is fun to play)

1)Rewards
2) Game modes
3)Trait variation/New skills

And it looks like you guys actually listened to my last thread. I am pleased

1. Rewards – not much to say about that, I have over 250 of any PvP-craft-Material (except rank tokens) and nothing achieved by that.
2. Map-Art – the maps are cool and nice to play on but compared to some other places in Tyria they lack a certain degree of epicness.
3. Diversity – it’s kinda boring to see most players play just the very same builds over and over again. It’s really hard to both balance a game properly and get diversity in the process, but I really think that it’s possible by collaborating with the players. Especially those playing high ranked tPvP.

• gamemodes (GvG, capture the flag, King of the hill, payload/dolyak (TF2), 5v5v5v5, Moba,….)
• Matchmaking
• class balance and build variaty (not only buff everthing, also nerf some builds)

1. Game modes -Game modes that allow for a wider variety team other than Bunker focused gameplay. (Examp. Mobas allow for solo fights and eventually team fights requiring 5 completely different styles of players for a balanced team. Point holding maps really just need bunkers and a couple roamers. Making new game modes would allow more play style/specs to immediately be viable.

2. Reward/progression – Current reward system is obviously not very functional, as it only rewards time spent…and after awhile takes too much time between rewards. A better reward system preferably that rewards some skill play, would allow more incentive and enjoyment to log on and compete. Also, more pvp purchasable finishers/skins would increase revenue from spvp.

3. Invisible Numbers/RNG – Guild wars 2 is designed to be a competitive esport (as the company is clearly advertising and trying to develop it into). Yet the game was designed heavily with RNG (even rng upon rng examp “if you crit, you have a chance to ____” ) It also is filled with invisible numbers. When i’m watching two players compete or when i’m playing I have no idea what stats they have, what amulet, what runes, what sigils…and by the time the fight is over I still may not know. This is harmful to a competitive game because there is a lot that is not being translated. Random invisible procs also are not often translated.

RNG and Invisible stats/numbers/procs are all things that would better suite a NON competitive game that adds these sort of things to smooth out the skill curve allowing new players to have a fighting chance against much more skilled players. So a discussion on your continued efforts to change/remove these would be insightful as I’ve seen you take a number of steps already towards this goal.

1. Balance and build diversity
2. Motivation to play (that includes rewards and proper leaderboards)
3. Faster updates (we can’t have a “balance” every 4 months because “the meta has to settle”)

1. Game modes
2. Balance philosophy
3. Rewards and progression

1. Balance and Diversity of Builds
2. Rewards and Progression
3. Game Modes

1) make spvp more of a part of the game and less of a subset or mini game

2) different game modes other then conquest+

3) see number 1

1. Fun
2. Balance
3. Fun

Fun as in, just…. fun skills, fun traits, more skills, more traits, more options in general. The stranglehold “balance” this game has kills a lot of the actual fun of the game.

4 Months and barely anything changed, in a game that’s already lacking skill variety on top of that a lot of skills are still just outright terrible/bad and have been for a year.

This affects all parts of the game, even esports.

1. Balance and diversity
2. Attracting AND teaching new players effectively (nice beginner stream btw!)
3. Game-modes

Edit: Also, thanks for doing this!

1- Balance. By far.

Rewards that don’t affect gameplay? Don’t care.

A potentialy unbalanced new game mode? See point 1- above.

1. Game modes
2. Incorporate more seasonal PvP into rotation during off season
3. Split PvP Skills from PvE

1. Balance
2. Rewards/Progession Tree
3. Game modes

1. Rewards
2. Balance
3. QoL improvments – for example in game spec mode for tourneys, template saving etc

1. Game modes. (GvG, Alliance Battles)
2. Class balance.
3. Transition between PvE and PvP.

1: Rewards and Progression
2: Game Modes

1. sPvP variety (gamemodes)
2. Rewards/progression
3. Balance

-Rewards/Incentives
-Balance
-Game Modes

1. Game modes
2. Rewards/Progression
3. Depth of play (risk/reward ratios)

1. Developer patch notes (why changes were made).

1. Rewards/Progression
2. Balance
3. Making PvP more part of the game

1. Actual SKILL BASED play…
2. Balance.
3. Meaningful PvP rewards/progression.

Seriously though, if you fail to establish the first point, you’re just wasting your time doing anything else. Passive play like condition-spam is bad. Low risk/high reward mechanics are bad. Evade spam however achieved resulting is stupid RNG is bad.

You can dress up a kitten all you want and it’ll still be a kitten .

I mean stuff like the Immobilise change as an example is absolutely mind-boggling… Literally the only good condition in game was turned to trash in an instant, with a change anyone who even hot-joins there way through the game could have told you was misguided.

It essentially turned a fun, highly skilful, high risk/high reward mechanic into something as degenerate as stealth.

1. Rewards. — Being mostly a PVE player, who does like to PVP, I’d like better rewards like gold, karma, stuff that I can use in PVE. All the rewards for PVP are PVP only, and makes it seem a waste of time on my character progression.
2. Ways to get PVE armor/weapons, without doing the PVE content.

1. Rewards & Progression
2. eSports Tournament play (INCLUDING Qualifier points, 8-team tournaments, etc)
3. Balance

1) Rewards and the lack thereof
2) The lack of rewards
3) Where are the rewards