Guild Wars 2

Thanks so much for providing so much information and openness about what you guys are doing with the game and what to expect in the future. I think this aspect of your company makes a great player base and keeps us interested in the game.

I understand that this interview was mostly sPvP centric (it was obvious when a couple of the guys said that they are pigeon holed in their utilities and trait lines with mesmers and warriors, etc.), but there are a few things that I heard that gives me great concern. The largest is the nerfing of AoE. While you did mention that you have to be very careful with this as it will effect all of the game, I feel that the 5 player limit was a huge, and somewhat necessary nerf. To take this even further may be too much.

Basically, don’t pay so much attention to your sPvP community when making huge changes. I’m sure you don’t already, but as someone who is primarily a WvWer, this sometimes seems like the case. Lessening AoE would drastically change many classes who already have a rough time in WvW.

Also, I have great concern with the idea of doing more damage to people who have boons. I feel that this is primarily with regards to DD eles, but again, sometimes it seems you listen to all the qqers. DD eles may sometimes be a problem to kill, it just takes longer or maybe just your build just can’t do it. Players need to understand that there isn’t one build that exits that can kill everything. Fore example, my condition mesmer can kill a DD ele in maybe 10 seconds if they’re stupid, my raw damage mesmer may have a rougher time of it, but perhaps a bunker guardian may never be able to. I personally have a very hard time, with a few classes, killing a guardian with a certain type of build, but I have never, ever gone onto the forums to complain about it or ask that it be nerfed.

A lot of play is also about skill. I’ve seen a lot of qqers complain about things when the keys to success are timing your abilities just right, knowing when to counter, knowing when to dodge, knowing when to apply a boon or condition. I’ve seen many people enter a fight just doing the exact same thing. It may have succeeded with that guy, but it won’t against this guy, and then they go on the forums and complain that this needs to be nerfed or this needs to be buffed.

I think the vast majority of players don’t come to the forums and complain. We’d rather just play the game, or are completely un-aware of what might be coming in the future. I’m a bit in-between. But as an example of your track record, I know from experience that you guys did lots of changes with portals. First increasing the cooldown, then limiting them to 20 players. I think these changes were from all the people kittening about portals on the forums when they just didn’t know how to counter them, no matter how many people came through. (one of my characters is a mesmer, so I’m still hoping you guys increase it to 25 (the number of a squad) and prioritize squad members. That only makes sense, right? More than an arbitrary number of 20) I don’t know if you guys noticed, but there are almost never portals used in WvW anymore except in specific or extreme circumstances, like to transport golems, or to run a suicide mission onto siege. I also play an elementalist. It’s damage is good, but not game breaking awesome. Remember that AoE damage can be completely avoided with just a dodge, or simply change directions of where you are running if you see a red aoe circle ahead of you.

Perhaps there are things I haven’t thought about regarding aoe because I’m not in your shoes and don’t understand very legitimate concerns and issues that truly are not fair. Just, please hear me when I ask, please don’t listen so much to unskilled players and people who don’t try to play their class to their best ability and cry on the forums wanting you to change the game to fit their playstyle. I think it’s great that you guys do listen to the players in the forums, I just feel that there are many players, perhaps most players, who just don’t take the time to come here and complain about something, or say, this is working great, don’t change it, or this skill is awesome, I love it!

Along that line, you guys have listened to some very legitimate complaints about WvW that were nearly game breaking, like removing the PvE consumable items, like peg legs, sprockets, scale venom, etc. from WvW. Thank you for finally getting around to that.

If you respond to this tread, please don’t turn this into a discussion of DD eles, portals, I’m dumb, your dumb. There are already tons of thread about how AoE needs to be nerfed. The topic of this thread would be on how much Anet listens to the complainers on the forums, or if you insist on digressing, make it a topic of something new.

Keep up the great work Anet

AoE needs to be nerfed and buffed at the same time. Increase how many people it can hit but have a fall of on damage. The farther from the middle you are the less you take. They may also need to limit the radius a bit. This is more of a wvw change thou.

I think that AoE nerds are fundamentally bad.

AoE discourages zergs and tight grouping. 50 players on top of another suffer greatly when you AoE them if there’s no target limit. Everyone gets hurt.

The 5 target limit encourages huge zergs, which hurts WvW in my opinion. I can stack with 49 other people, and AoE damage and arrow carts become virtually worthless. Someone does an AoE on us, I have a 10% chance to take damage.

Is this a recent interview or the one from a a few weeks ago?

There should simply be some WvW-only skills (something like a “Shields up!” shout) that make you immune to AoE damage for 10s.

Any other change would damage PvE or sPvP or both.
WvW has an issue? Make a WvW-only fix. Anything else is flawed.

morrolan.9608:

Is this a recent interview or the one from a a few weeks ago?

From yesterday.

bumping to see if there is still any interest to my topic.

y aoe? coz targeting suck, way too suck, and suck even more with stealth and blink.

I haven’t had time to sit down and watch the entire video yet. Are they essentially going to nerf AoE in general without any consideration for the effects it might have on PvE?

I would like to say portals are still used often, and you can still portal 40-60 allies if you allow other mesmers to go through the portal first.

Neural.1824:

I haven’t had time to sit down and watch the entire video yet. Are they essentially going to nerf AoE in general without any consideration for the effects it might have on PvE?

From what i remembered from the video about it, they are still looking into changing aoes, but they understand they need to be careful, and it won’t be a easy, so it’s going to take some time. (watched it a few days ago)