Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone.
Since most of the spammers seem to have vanished to where they came from I want to grab this opportunity to (partially) take side with Jon Peters, who is getting blamed for comparing GW2 development to rocket science – which he did literally, but let’s take a look at that statement again:

1) details. It is easy to say to fix all this stuff but the devil is in the details. There are lots of problems with how these details need to be addressed so saying “solve difficult situation X” is essentially like saying, “solve long distance manned space flight” to NASA.

Basically, what most of you (the community) are reading is: Solving a Guild Wars 2 Problem is like solving long distance manned space flight. That is not the correct conclusion.

The important part is the rest: What Jon is essentially saying is that it is pointless to list all those problems (like Xeph did) over and over again. ArenaNet knows about these problems already. What ArenaNet actually needs are not lists of existing problems, they need solutions – or, in Jon’s words, details. The game needs solutions or at least suggestions, not “I quit”-posts that don’t have any productive content. Therefore, I fully understand the removal of Xeph’s thread.
Have fun,

Addi

djaddi.2780:

Hey everyone.
Since most of the spammers seem to have vanished to where they came from I want to grab this opportunity to (partially) take side with Jon Peters, who is getting blamed for comparing GW2 development to rocket science – which he did literally, but let’s take a look at that statement again:

1) details. It is easy to say to fix all this stuff but the devil is in the details. There are lots of problems with how these details need to be addressed so saying “solve difficult situation X” is essentially like saying, “solve long distance manned space flight” to NASA.

Basically, what most of you (the community) are reading is: Solving a Guild Wars 2 Problem is like solving long distance manned space flight. That is not the correct conclusion.

The important part is the rest: What Jon is essentially saying is that it is pointless to list all those problems (like Xeph did) over and over again. ArenaNet knows about these problems already. What ArenaNet actually needs are not lists of existing problems, they need solutions – or, in Jon’s words, details. The game needs solutions or at least suggestions, not “I quit”-posts that don’t have any productive content. Therefore, I fully agree with the removal of Xeph’s thread.
Have fun,

Addi

Its up to the players to find the problem and find a solution to fix this crap, we are not going to anything but coding which is another team’s job, that’s what you are saying?

I thought there have been plenty of solutions posted?

I thought the issue was that they don’t listen or acknowledge them at all.

Lighter.5631:

Its up to the players to find the problem and find a solution to fix this crap, we are not going to anything but coding which is another team’s job, that’s what you are saying?

Not at all. It is not up to the player to find and implement solutions, but it is pointless to post lists of existing problems again and again and again. Instead, try thinking of ways how to solve those problems, because that would actually help.

We’ve listed solutions to the problems over and over for months now. The problem seems to be that Anet is unwilling to allocate anywhere near the design resources to SOLVE those problems. This situation is particularly frustrating for us since PvE gets enough design resources to run FOUR full development team and push an update every 2 weeks while WvW has Devon constantly on the forums asnwering questions and outlining their plans for WvW.

We don’t hear anything about a long-term vision from PvP designers, let alone how that vision would be implemented. We get platitudes and excuses about how little information they’re allowed to give us for our own good.

Don’t be a sycophant, stand up and demand a response with the rest of us.

You are correct, it is a problem that ArenaNet is not allocating nearly enough resources for sPvP and is not communicating with the sPvP community at all. However, pointing out that problem is not the purpose of this thread as it has been done countless times already.

People have offered solutions. People do understand it’s difficult.

Now if you are expecting customers to tell them exactly how to code and/or work around every problem point by point then that seems somewhat odd quite frankly.

If they cannot resolve the fundamental issues this section of the game has, then perhaps it would be advisable not to big up the esport credentials and make utterly ridiculous comments about it being the pvp game to go to.

As for reading a dev post wrong, i’m pretty sure he himself commented upon the fact that he could not see why the post was removed. So not entirely sure how you can fully agree with the removal of Xeph’s thread.

djaddi.2780:

Lighter.5631:

Its up to the players to find the problem and find a solution to fix this crap, we are not going to anything but coding which is another team’s job, that’s what you are saying?

Not at all. It is not up to the player to find and implement solutions, but it is pointless to post lists of existing problems again and again and again. Instead, try thinking of ways how to solve those problems, because that would actually help.

thats what i said, instead of telling devs the problem and keep telling them to fix it, we have to find the solution ourselves and they just put the code.

not to mention that they never listened us.
players ?Necro need sustain! sustain!
Anet : heres your condi burst buffed to the sky.

It’s the responsibility of the speaker to make sure his audience understands his points. If players have issue with Jon it’s because he either didn’t communicate his point well enough or that the players just flat out disagree with him.

I wish they would just get ONE guy to do what that guy in WvW forums does, there’s red posts everywhere in there, spvp needs that SO badly.

Hell I’m on the forum a ton, I’d volunteer to do the messy job of wading through the BS and being flamed all day, I can take it. Come at me spvp bros, gimme yo feedback and hate, it fuels me.

djaddi.2780:

You are correct, it is a problem that ArenaNet is not allocating nearly enough resources for sPvP and is not communicating with the sPvP community at all. However, pointing out that problem is not the purpose of this thread as it has been done countless times already.

That is the problem, and solution wrapped up with a nice bow. The PvP community has outlined the problems and how to fix them:

Stop rewarding easy-to-play builds that cash in on the effectiveness of AI
Reduce screen pollution and particle effects
Dedicate developers to a pvp balance team separate from the existing balance team publish a PvP-split balance tweak every 2 weeks
Start working on additional game types that emphasize multiple complex mechanics and large complex maps
Support automated tournament feature and tournament seasons a la GW1
Finally, publish the exact mechanisms by which the leaderboards work so that the players can actually understand what the leaderboards and MMR MEAN

The solutions are there, what we don’t have are Dev acknowledgements of those solutions and a commitment to putting appropriate designer resources into resolving these issues.

Ok, got me there. Maybe “agreeing” was not the right word – “understanding” would have been better. I personally wouldn’t have removed Xeph’s post, but I understand why it was removed.

Also, yes, the community did post solutions about almost everything and I never said that ArenaNet is doing everything right and the community is doing everything wrong. My initial post of this thread is for those who kept spamming that Jon Peters is comparing game development to rocket science (in very negative ways).

I got a solution for you. Merge PvP into the PvE. Sure it might be less competitive, but at least there would be updates

People have literally been spamming solutions for 8 months now.
A lot of detailed feedback has even been said in Helseth’s rants, and a lot of people have kept posting them over and over because they agreed.
Without any responds to those threads there can really only be two conclusions.

1. ArenaNet does not want to change how the game is played (spam, too much dmg, too many dodges, tide-changing elite skills) or more correctly, does not want to use ressources for that purpose. They ignore all those posts because they are simply not relevant to ArenaNet’s own goals.
2. ArenaNet wants to keep PvP as a secondary activity to PvE, and will therefore continue to support it with features that draw more PvE players into PvP. They will not make any major changes to how the game is played, and only make slight balance changes to adjust the meta once in a while.

ArenaNet are not transparent in what they want to achieve with PvP in this game, and the only feedback we get from them is “We are listening”, and then suddenly a patch drops that nobody would have ever accepted.
They advertised this game as a potential e-sport, and the core mechanics really support it, but without a gameplay that rewards skilled play it will NEVER be an e-sport.

So basically… they should drop the forums all together ’cus they know the problems.

That’s why we have been satisfied by all those previous implemented features?

KrisHQ.4719:

People have literally been spamming solutions for 8 months now.
A lot of detailed feedback has even been said in Helseth’s rants, and a lot of people have kept posting them over and over because they agreed.
Without any responds to those threads there can really only be two conclusions.

1. ArenaNet does not want to change how the game is played (spam, too much dmg, too many dodges, tide-changing elite skills) or more correctly, does not want to use ressources for that purpose. They ignore all those posts because they are simply not relevant to ArenaNet’s own goals.
2. ArenaNet wants to keep PvP as a secondary activity to PvE, and will therefore continue to support it with features that draw more PvE players into PvP. They will not make any major changes to how the game is played, and only make slight balance changes to adjust the meta once in a while.

ArenaNet are not transparent in what they want to achieve with PvP in this game, and the only feedback we get from them is “We are listening”, and then suddenly a patch drops that nobody would have ever accepted.
They advertised this game as a potential e-sport, and the core mechanics really support it, but without a gameplay that rewards skilled play it will NEVER be an e-sport.

Yes. But again, that is not the topic here. We all know that, there is no need to post it again.

Are you serious? I bet you are just a troll. Bad decisions made Guild Wars 2 pvp not fun at all, not players.

Jon Peters
In the last 8 months we have seen Leaderboards(we need to be hipsters, so no ELO ranking), Matchmaking(doesn’t work properly), Custom Arenas, Spectator mode(who care), Solo Arena(Solo Temple), and permanent finishers added to just to PvP(WHOOOAAH CUSTOM FINISHERS WHOOAH).

What about well telegraphed skills because ANet won’t add cast bars, what about an enormous amount of instant skills, what about too fast pace in pvp, what about petting zoo, what about condition damage, what about insane burst damage which every class have(smash keyboard – win), what about most of pvp players left, what about 17 000 players na+eu(i am so sad) in solo arena?

Do you want more? No chance to REVIVE this game. Guild Wars 2 PVP is dying. Hype gone.

Now they can focus all their resources to PVE because it is the only source they can get money.

djaddi.2780:

KrisHQ.4719:

People have literally been spamming solutions for 8 months now.
A lot of detailed feedback has even been said in Helseth’s rants, and a lot of people have kept posting them over and over because they agreed.
Without any responds to those threads there can really only be two conclusions.

1. ArenaNet does not want to change how the game is played (spam, too much dmg, too many dodges, tide-changing elite skills) or more correctly, does not want to use ressources for that purpose. They ignore all those posts because they are simply not relevant to ArenaNet’s own goals.
2. ArenaNet wants to keep PvP as a secondary activity to PvE, and will therefore continue to support it with features that draw more PvE players into PvP. They will not make any major changes to how the game is played, and only make slight balance changes to adjust the meta once in a while.

ArenaNet are not transparent in what they want to achieve with PvP in this game, and the only feedback we get from them is “We are listening”, and then suddenly a patch drops that nobody would have ever accepted.
They advertised this game as a potential e-sport, and the core mechanics really support it, but without a gameplay that rewards skilled play it will NEVER be an e-sport.

Yes. But again, that is not the topic here. We all know that, there is no need to post it again.

because they are not going to implant/ improve it anyway?

Lighter.5631:

because they are not going to implant/ improve it anyway?

Propably. They know the problems, they have tons of solutions posted by the community (although most of those are very basic and need more details). If ArenaNet doesn’t want to spend time and resources on implementing them we can’t change it by spamming the forums.

€dit: Just skimmed the whole page again and I want to clear one thing up: There seems to be a problem with the definition of solutions and details here. Let me give you an example:
Bad:

PvP needs PvE rewards.

Good:

PvP needs rewards that are worth playing for. Those could come in the form of X and/or Y, which would have these advantages and/or disadvantages.

djaddi.2780:

Lighter.5631:

because they are not going to implant/ improve it anyway?

Propably. They know the problems, they have tons of solutions posted by the community (although most of those are very basic and need more details). If ArenaNet doesn’t want to spend time and resources on implementing them we can’t change it by spamming the forums.

one man can dream

djaddi.2780:

Lighter.5631:

because they are not going to implant/ improve it anyway?

Propably. They know the problems, they have tons of solutions posted by the community (although most of those are very basic and need more details). If ArenaNet doesn’t want to spend time and resources on implementing them we can’t change it by spamming the forums.

What other options do we have though? We’ve been constructive for months and month, and what did we get? A single comment at the PAX panel about PvP and their opinion that PvP is in a good state and doesn’t need exciting changes. A failed tournament in which the devs joke about their “petting zoo” meta, because they say anything GOOD about their game.

A spam war is about the only way to get the designer’s attention anymore. And if it works, if we stir up enough trouble to get some REAL attention, then are the means we used such a bad thing?

DO YOU KNOW…

That sometimes restating a problem can increase its priority?

That we as the consumers do not have the burden of creation?

That perhaps it is the job of the creators to solve the problems inherent in their own designs, the problems that they, BY DEFINITION, made.

errant.9843:

A spam war is about the only way to get the designer’s attention anymore. And if it works, if we stir up enough trouble to get some REAL attention, then are the means we used such a bad thing?

I disagree. You are right that we need to get some real attention, but a spam war will only bring us the attention of the moderators, not the developers.
Take a look at this for example. This is a good initiative and will propably get the developers attention while still having the potential to bring up solutions for important problems.

I forgot about lags and unstable ping on EU servers. Fix it, please.

Thanks to the brilliant light of OP’s whiteknighting, I have come to see the error of my ways. I realize that I haven’t been actively reacting to the passive effects in John Peter’s post, thus failing to grasp its glorious gospel. We ESports now, so the meta must be good.

Amirite, guys?
.
.
.
Guys?

Imo, the mists should just be transfered to the minigame rotation, and call it a day.

Here is a brief image of 8 months of pvp evolution.

Everybody seems to think that the problems in Pvp are a result of a lack of resources being given to the balance team. I think this gives the balance team too much credit.

The problems in pvp are due to the balance team being completely incompetent, from the top to the bottom. I honestly don’t see any hope for this changing, as any change would require the removal of the Jon’s and co. from balance entirely, and I can’t see Anet actually doing that.

^ Balance team is a different team than the Pvp team. As stated by one of the devs.
If you realise that, you know that Pvp team lacks resources.

And even worse, Pvp needs a one-time solid implementation of a good scalable infrastructure then it just needs support. We don’t need 4 living world teams to provide us of content. We need a one time full investment in Pvp to get things right.

But no…..

@butch: PvP team is responsible for the lack of updates.

Balance team is responsible for the miserable meta, 0 build diversity, absolute lack of balance, complete lack of counter play potential, petting zoos, evade spam, condition spam…

Pyroatheist.9031:

Everybody seems to think that the problems in Pvp are a result of a lack of resources being given to the balance team. I think this gives the balance team too much credit.

The problems in pvp are due to the balance team being completely incompetent, from the top to the bottom. I honestly don’t see any hope for this changing, as any change would require the removal of the Jon’s and co. from balance entirely, and I can’t see Anet actually doing that.

It’s hard to deny any of this! Jon’s commentary at PAX was almost reminiscent of Karl’s first appearance on State of the Game when it comes to understanding the gameplay they are balancing.

The balance team needs to balance more insightfully in terms of the current SPvP meta, more efficiently in terms of their future goals and more frequently to accomodate player wellbeing!

From my point of view:
- They have no idea what is played because it is powerful compared to what players actually want to play.
- There are no plans. None for specific classes (bugged traits, unused weaponsets or overall viable builds). None for a balanced meta in terms of their ideals for the conquest gametype (power or condition heavy? bunkers or roamers? high skillcap or low skillfloor?) None for anything beyond what the community repeatedly throws in their faces and what they are assigned through management.
- They are unwilling to adapt their philosophy of a slow and steady balancing and fail to see where this has gone wrong in the past. The meta is entirely dictated by their “non-whack-a-mole” balancing, but they still insist players can afford to build independently of the flavour of the month and be viable in their skewed matchmaking system.

Honestly, I would use the massive amounts of data they could potentially accumulate to and put it through some graph theory algorithms to obtain an approximate snapshot of the health of their balance. Then proceed to do updates to the balance and observer how that alters their snapshot. With this sort of thing they could do balances relatively often just for initial data collection on how they change from state to state.

After observing and analyzing, they could figure out how to properly balance their game.

Of course, this stuff only works with mass amounts of data, I am not sure if the PvP population counts as massive =P

Stof.9584:

- They are unwilling to adapt their philosophy of a slow and steady balancing and fail to see where this has gone wrong in the past. The meta is entirely dictated by their “non-whack-a-mole” balancing, but they still insist players can afford to build independently of the flavour of the month and be viable in their skewed matchmaking system.

I don’t think they stand by their philosophies because they say they don’t want whack-a-mole balancing but prepare a huge nerf for kit refinement over a photo shopped image. The build was destroyed not toned down.

They want things out when they are ready but they released PvP when it clearly wasn’t and they made a tournament for the game when it wasn’t ready to be shown. I doubt any more people will play because of what they watched and many people who did watch it are leaving.

Regardless of whether the reason was PAX or not, balancing shouldn’t have been delayed for 2 months because it wasn’t in a state where it would be ok to leave alone for 2 months. The tournament did not have to be on the anniversary and could have been saved for a time when the game was more enticing. This might have led to a tournament that brought new players in rather than a sign thakittens-’ current player base should quit.

They don’t want gems/gold in PvP because it will cause inflation but release champion loot bags which they were aware would cause inflation.

The only part they have adhered to is being slow

More suggestion/solution threads won’t help if they still move with the pace of a 2 person team. PvP doesn’t need more suggestion threads, it needs an actual team.

djaddi.2780:

The important part is the rest: What Jon is essentially saying is that it is pointless to list all those problems (like Xeph did) over and over again. ArenaNet knows about these problems already. What ArenaNet actually needs are not lists of existing problems, they need solutions – or, in Jon’s words, details.

Sorry. The job of the developers is to come up with the solutions to the problems.

Players are notoriously bad at identifying what to change to fix a problem, nor do they have the tools and most don’t have the skill to adequately test it. In addition to that, developers often have a design philosophy that players may not follow or agree with.

Using spirit rangers as an example, players hate them. They’ve listed the survivability (particularly evades), NPC clutter, damage procs, the Rabid stat combo and other things as the problem. The developer needs to figure out which, if any, are the true cause and address it properly. One of the developers said that spirit ranger does require skill, which is true to an extent. But on the other hand, it’s too easy for someone to set up the spec, know next to nothing about how to play it, and do well at most levels of play.

djaddi.2780:

ArenaNet knows about these problems already. What ArenaNet actually needs are not lists of existing problems, they need solutions – or, in Jon’s words, details. The game needs solutions or at least suggestions, not “I quit”-posts that don’t have any productive content. Therefore, I fully understand the removal of Xeph’s thread.
Have fun,

Addi

He’s right that knowing ‘a problem’ verse ‘its solution’ is vastly different.
He’s right that people saying ‘heres a bunch of issues, solve them’ isnt always possible.
But to an extent, it should be.
Especially when that is your job and your job alone.

Every game needs solutions to its problems, It is what devs exist for. If a group of people aren’t fit for that job…. that’s not the forums place to take over, that’s the manager’s as he searches for a new dev team that actually can do the job, the only job, a dev team exists to do…

That’s kind of the conundrum it seems the forums are running into. The forumers expect pointing out an issue along with occasional well thought out solutions to the devs to be ample work on their side to fix the game, as it should be. The GW2 devs seem to need their hand held from problem to solution in every instance, completely cutting out any work on their side, short of through coding…

I’ll take John’s side as well, at least in regards to the comment he posted.

I haven’t noticed very many specific solutions being recommended. Mostly the suggestions made are quite vague. “Animations are a problem”. “There is too much ai”. Well great, that is about a C- level of answer.

Here is a brief example of what I would call decent feedback for animations for the warrior and mesmer, though still quite lazy.

Warrior:
Skull crack – Difficult visibility + effect vs reaction time
Pin down – Difficult visibility + effect vs reaction time
Hammer – aftershock and backbreaker have the same starting animation just at different speeds.
Flurry – initial immobilize activates too quickly.

Mesmer:
Signet of domination – effect vs reaction time
Magic bullet – effect vs reaction time
Into the void – effect vs reaction time
Mirror blade + illusionary wave – early animation unclear, weapon glow should be consistent with #3
Phantasmal warlock – Uses similar projectile to staff autoattack

The two big principles here to follow are skills need to be immediately distinguishable and the cast time needs to be proportional to the effect of the skill. There is no cast bars so even if a skill is 3/4s cast time if the skill isn’t obvious until after 1/2s people still will have difficulty with it. Immediate.

Then there is another category of animations that I would call ‘obstructive’ which limit the visibility of other skills. The biggest factor is obviously asura. Seriously can we get a toggle to change everyone to human? Too many particle effects linger a bit too long after being used. Others are just too large.

Mesmer and warrior are actually both quite fine in this regard aside from the whole clone thing but that is in part the intention. One thing I have noticed is the mesmer gs autoattack can continue into other animations which can be obstructive. Now other classes have much more widespread issues in this regard.

Now honestly this isn’t difficult. I think the devs should be more self sufficient in identifying solutions as they better understand the limitations imposed on them by the company. Now balance on the other hand, requires player input.

I like how posts that reference devs in positive lights aren’t deleted. Double standards?