Guild Wars 2

Nice to hear, thx for sharing Rubi !

Q: Are you going to develop a game mode which involves different maps with different modes just like Heroes Ascent was in Guild Wars 1? That means also having a Hall of Heroes (Pve Lore) that if your team wins there is a worldwide text for every player?
(Rather than worldwide Scarlett invasion text) Thanks!

Yes please

any plans to release a custom map editor so we can build our own sPvP maps?

even a basic one that allows us to choose an area from the existing PvE / WvW maps and then cut out a part to be use in the home made custom sPvP map.

for example,
i can make a simple free for all death match sPvP map base on the upper city in divinity’s reach. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/7d/The_Upper_City.jpg

i could also make covington keep in laughing gull island, bloodtide coast, into a death match arena. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/a5/Covington_Keep.jpg

custom arenas would truly be custom then.

to make it connect with PvE, players who pass by those areas in their respective PvE counter parts will see a dimensional breach in the space, investigating that dimensional breach would allow them to enter the said custom arena.

Are there any plans to make 2v2/3v3 arena type map for fights? Talking gladiator/ last team alive type arena, not conquest that is called “arena”.

This is going to be a good one.

Make a zoo where one team has to cage the animals, and the other tries to release them all. Call the map: Forums.

Please, for the love of Dwayna, start making new game types other than conquest. I was an avid BG PvPer in Swtor when it launched because they had several different interesting game types. I was one of the first War Heroes on my server, back when that meant something. I love GW2, and it’s clearly a much better game all around than Swtor could ever dream of being, but sPvP’s lack of diversity is a problem. Instead of making more maps for conquest style matches, start making new modes, like attack and defend an objective, capture the flag, a huttball type game, team deathmatch, etc. There are so many possibilities.

New game modes please. This is what is really needed even more so than balance. You may even consider providing some creative players the tools to create one.

In anycase…..We, the players, appreciate your time and effort at development.

I’ll look forward to watching this.

Why would you showcase the worst map in the game?

Will we get a CDI on the new game modes?

keywords: game-mode prototypes.

Sounds good to me.

Any chance that we’ll see multiple win-conditions in a single map?

Good thing anet is discussing this, so everyone requesting new game modes will understand that something is being done about it, and you will just have to be patient.
Cheers Anet for discussing this on the live stream

Spvp makes me want to uninstall.

Wraith.9426:

Please, for the love of Dwayna, start making new game types other than conquest. I was an avid BG PvPer in Swtor when it launched because they had several different interesting game types. I was one of the first War Heroes on my server, back when that meant something. I love GW2, and it’s clearly a much better game all around than Swtor could ever dream of being, but sPvP’s lack of diversity is a problem. Instead of making more maps for conquest style matches, start making new modes, like attack and defend an objective, capture the flag, a huttball type game, team deathmatch, etc. There are so many possibilities.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Can-we-take-anything-from-SWTOR/first#post3210136

We didn’t get a comment on this though

If you are considering a huttball-esk game type, then I made a post there about incorporating the jump mechanic worth a look!

im looking forward to the new WvW map, and the new modes (hopefully DM of some kind). current pvp is dead to me.

You wasted some time and resources on a map that mostly everyone loathes.

This sounds like an interested live stream and one I will definitely tune in for.

My question for the team would be;
What is the biggest challenge you currently face (or have recently overcome) in converting existing maps and systems into new PvP game modes?

this is NOT about what you want and this is NOT about Skyhammer – this is about the process to create map, the work they have to do for a mapand Skyhammer is only a example (they could use every other map too)

so when you care bout than ask question for it – when not than ignore it

so some questions^^
1. how many people work on a map
2. how long for this?
3. how you decide the map is good to go public? when no bugs on map? when deisgner think they are happy how it looks? when your pvp testers sys wow this map is good? fun? – all of this?
4. on how many projects you work at same time? on how many maps^^

I cant wait :D

Btw, I really love skyhammer, its my favourite mal by far :/. Not sure why people hate it D;

I guess lagg is extra annoying because you vant jump properly, but thats ok, i dont lagg all that much :p

Pls bring GvG back to biss like it was in gw1! Best pvp content worldwide, you don’t have to re-invent all over again, cause the formula have been delivered back then.

Remember the title of the stream..
It’s an “how we did it” no new content going in..
I do think it’s a bit late for a stream like this.. (unless this is another buying time / we are working on it.. thing..)

Also since we are on the subject.. And since i am banned from twitch gw2 stream for selling gold ^^ (true story)
Can someone ask if the design of Skyhammer bring forth the DS overflow nerf?
(we know it did) but want to hear it from the developers…

Good news)) Old maps are good, but a little tired, more new and good cards!)

Please highlight which of the devs or whoever, had the brilliant idea to push this map straight into the “competitive” queues. So we can all curse him live in the stream.

Thanks.

1) How long did it take to create Skyhammer compared
to Spirit watch and Temple of the silent storm?

2) How long did it take to create the initial maps that were ready at release
and which one do you think is the best/most fun to play?

3)Are there any plans to release more maps
that feature underwater combat or do you think it is neccessary
to overhaul UW combat first to make it worthwhile for PvP?

Hi,
I have questions regarding the teleport skills.

1.) How do they influence the design of the map? Do you build the map with different possible teleport spots in mind?

2.) Does every possible teleport spot exist per design, or are you often surprised where players figured out a new teleport spot f.e. like how to ‘Phase Retreat’ to the inside of the clock tower in Kyhlo?

3.) Skills like ‘Illusionary Leap’ are often bugged due to uneven ground. Does this influence the design process to create more even than uneven ground?

4.) With teleport skills I know a lot of walls/stones from the inside. Do you know the possible spots and are you working on a fix, or should we report them? (f.e. on Foefire when you teleport from the middle spot to the northern high-ground where you are facing to the waterfall)

And a question regarding the equality of both sides:
1.) Some maps especially Kyhlo are subjective preferring one side. F.e. when you compare the path you have to take to get up to the clock tower by jumping over the roofs I find the path from the side of the mansion still doable, but way harder. Do you also think this discrepancy is too big?

2.) Lately I have tested around with the utility ‘Shadow Trap’ but unfortunately I had find out, that the skill often prefers one side. F.e. If you are trying to teleport back to the windmill, the skill will not work, but with mansion there are no problems at all. Are you planing to adjust the maps accordingly or is this task for another team to fix the ‘Shadow Trap’ skill?

with best wishes
Teutos

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think it should be a current concern of the PvP team to be creating more maps. A new game-mode (Deathmatch) should be far simpler to accomplish.

With so many unbalanced features in the current SPvP system, I don’t understand why you devote so much of your time to new maps when the current ones are not in a good state.

Forest of Niflhel is probably the most balanced, and it still has its own issues.
Legacy of Foefire is just a complete snowbally mess of a map.
Battle of Khylo would probably be the 2nd most balanced, but there is still the question of how to balance Trebuchet, when some classes clearly have an impossibly ridiculous advantage just by being given the high-ground so simply.
Temple of the Silent Storm has the potential to be the best tournament map but there are too many problems inherently wrong with its design. Snowbally buffs, uneven side obstacles, and ridges overlooking middle point that give certain classes a huge advantage over others—to name a few.
Spirit Watch can be fun, but mobile classes/builds have too much of an advantage and can just cheese their way to victory.
Skyhammer. l0l

So please, for the love of all that is holy, stop devoting the few resources that you have in the wrong projects.

How long does it takes for what number of developers to create a single PvP map in average?

What is the biggest problem/challange in the developement process?

Do you take inspiration from other games, when you create a new pvp map?

Are there any plans to involve the comunity in an mapmaking process, for example by doing a design contest?

Are there plans for bigger and more epic pvp maps? For example a castle within the mountains, with secret passages and gates that can be opend by capturing a controll point, which highly focusses on small splits rather than larger team fights (for that we already got wvw).

EDIT:
What where you intensions when you where creating skyhammer? Expecially when you made the design decision, that skyhammer cant be doged?

You think skyhammer is a good pvp map?

What you think is your best pvp map so far?

Could you please remove skyhammer from the tournament rotation?

1) This time , the team tournament will get the boost up ? (new modes)
So when the new maps are tranfaired to HJ after a month , ppl that <<collected>> tha majority of <<new rewards>> , they wont give up team tournament but rather continue and gather the rest of them ?

2) We will see new <<modes>> every 6 months , rather than more flashier maps ? So we can attract a variety of players , even if the modes fails so that we first increase the HJ population = more stream viewers and find a way to push them to Team tournament laster on ? (i dont care about solo que)
Or you will create limited modes that have the highter e-sport chance to succed ?

3) Can we sue LoL for using the <<tip of the iceberg>> moto (in the <<Preseason Rundown>> video)? :P

Acandis.3250:

With so many unbalanced features in the current SPvP system, I don’t understand why you devote so much of your time to new maps when the current ones are not in a good state.

I totally agree with this statement.

Before considering the conception of new PvP maps, it is imperative to know the general public feedback from the previous installed maps.

Skyhammer: The general reception of this map is very negative. Skyhammer is a fun map to play but not in a competitive setting.
Problems:

• It greatly favors builds that do not focus on actual PvP combat. People take advantage of the map layout to win fights through Crowd Control utilities and skills, which to many, do not consider being skillful play.
• Players can take great advantage of line of sight to avoid many offensive abilities and again shows little skillful play as compared to open field combat of other maps.
• Secondary mechanic is not balanced. Cannon room fights favor classes with CC utilities over classes that focus on actual combat. The Skyhammer cannot be dodged and thus requires you to run away from combat rather than engaging it.
• And personally, I do not enjoy secondary mechanics that can determine PvP fights (trebuchet, Skyhammer)

Spirit Watch: The general reception of this map is pretty negative. Many consider this map to be “the tunnel vision” map as teammates would rather fight over the secondary objective rather than the primary one. But this is a circumstantial point of view. The main issue on this map is a question of balance.

• The secondary objective favors classes with many defensive utilities (guardian) or with many leap skills (warrior) as they can reliably carry the orb for a good distance. Classes that depend on teleports/stealth/invulnerabilities to travel long distances safely are denied of this opportunity by restrictions laid out by carrying the orb. I understand that this was made to be balanced but it is not. A suggestion: Upon picking up the orb, replace everyone’s HP and toughness with a flat value, remove all traits, and replace all their skills with something like an attack, a short leap, an evade, and a heal to normalize the orb carrier’s ability, so that some classes aren’t blatantly better at it.

The main issue with these maps it that they cater to specific classes, traits and builds as compared to Forest of Nifhel or Legacy of the Foefire, where every class can equally participate in team fights and in secondary mechanics. With this in mind, the suggestions I can put forth for creating new maps are:

• Map layout should not entice players to play specific builds to gain advantage; builds should be focused for combat and combat only.
• Map layout should mainly be open field where players cannot gain significant advantage of line of sight.
• Secondary mechanic should not be a weapon or a tool that helps teams win PvP fights, but rather help them get total points (Chieftain, Svanir, Lord, Tranquility, Stillness)

Question:
Was within your intentions the way WvW is being played now? (giant single zergs, no base defended by players, pointless base upgrades)

Tranassa.4968:

How long does it takes for what number of developers to create a single PvP map in average?

What is the biggest problem/challange in the developement process?

Do you take inspiration from other games, when you create a new pvp map?

Are there any plans to involve the comunity in an mapmaking process, for example by doing a design contest?

Are there plans for bigger and more epic pvp maps? For example a castle within the mountains, with secret passages and gates that can be opend by capturing a controll point, which highly focusses on small splits rather than larger team fights (for that we already got wvw).

^This

I think it would be beneficial for Anet and the dev team to be entirely open on how much work actually goes into building a map. I’m not a programmer, but I know how much work can go into designing anything, whether it be a car or a game map. I think it would keep a lot complaints to a minimum.

With that said, seeing as how the dev team is pretty limited on resources but have a lot to potentially work on, what map/mode would they want to work on first?

Would they prioritize and easier built game mode that can be release sooner like TDM and CTF? Or would they want to take on a big project like a moba style map and hold off on the other things?

Q: Is a single objective mode off the table? A death match with unstructured environmental objectives in place of structured ones needed to win the match.

Tranassa.4968:

Are there any plans to involve the comunity in an mapmaking process, for example by doing a design contest?

Set to a 3v3 death match scale. It leaves room for the teams to fight or flight while making effectiveness of fall damage traits which would probably turn into its own meta apart from conquest and would be best paired with templates.

Q: What are some examples of the factors that need to be weighed before implementing a new game mode for sPvP?

Example Answer: We want to implement team death matches, but there are a few factors we need to consider. We feel that the current games in conquest mode are of an adequate length in time yielding an amount of glory and rank at an acceptable rate. We want TDMs to give glory and rank at about the same pace as conquest maps so that the TDM maps don’t become abused. On top of that, in conquest mode if one team is continually overpowering the other team, natural splits occur as people move about to the capture points giving the underdogs a chance to come back. We’ve seen on average that a conquest match takes about eight (8) minutes in tournaments. We don’t want a TDM with a dominating team to continually slaughter the other for eight (8) minutes so we are talking about reducing the match lengths. We don’t yet know how this will affect the pace at which people complete the Daily PvP Achievement.

Something along those lines would be great!

~ Uni

Will this livestream include WvW map development? I have no interest in sPvP other than as a tool to tests team builds for WvW.

Fury of Balthazar.2694:

Acandis.3250:

With so many unbalanced features in the current SPvP system, I don’t understand why you devote so much of your time to new maps when the current ones are not in a good state.

I totally agree with this statement.

Before considering the conception of new PvP maps, it is imperative to know the general public feedback from the previous installed maps.

Skyhammer: The general reception of this map is very negative. Skyhammer is a fun map to play but not in a competitive setting.
Problems:

• It greatly favors builds that do not focus on actual PvP combat. People take advantage of the map layout to win fights through Crowd Control utilities and skills, which to many, do not consider being skillful play.
• Players can take great advantage of line of sight to avoid many offensive abilities and again shows little skillful play as compared to open field combat of other maps.
• Secondary mechanic is not balanced. Cannon room fights favor classes with CC utilities over classes that focus on actual combat. The Skyhammer cannot be dodged and thus requires you to run away from combat rather than engaging it.
• And personally, I do not enjoy secondary mechanics that can determine PvP fights (trebuchet, Skyhammer)

Spirit Watch: The general reception of this map is pretty negative. Many consider this map to be “the tunnel vision” map as teammates would rather fight over the secondary objective rather than the primary one. But this is a circumstantial point of view. The main issue on this map is a question of balance.

• The secondary objective favors classes with many defensive utilities (guardian) or with many leap skills (warrior) as they can reliably carry the orb for a good distance. Classes that depend on teleports/stealth/invulnerabilities to travel long distances safely are denied of this opportunity by restrictions laid out by carrying the orb. I understand that this was made to be balanced but it is not. A suggestion: Upon picking up the orb, replace everyone’s HP and toughness with a flat value, remove all traits, and replace all their skills with something like an attack, a short leap, an evade, and a heal to normalize the orb carrier’s ability, so that some classes aren’t blatantly better at it.

The main issue with these maps it that they cater to specific classes, traits and builds as compared to Forest of Nifhel or Legacy of the Foefire, where every class can equally participate in team fights and in secondary mechanics. With this in mind, the suggestions I can put forth for creating new maps are:

• Map layout should not entice players to play specific builds to gain advantage; builds should be focused for combat and combat only.
• Map layout should mainly be open field where players cannot gain significant advantage of line of sight.
• Secondary mechanic should not be a weapon or a tool that helps teams win PvP fights, but rather help them get total points (Chieftain, Svanir, Lord, Tranquility, Stillness)

Very well said! If Skyhammer is the kind of map that ArenaNet believes should be more commonplace, they need to rebalance the professions such that all professions have relatively equal access to knockbacks/fears/pulls and stability. Otherwise, it’s simply a poorly designed map.

I have a question:
Was the team that designed Skyhammer and/or Spirit Watch the same team that designed Foefire or Niflhel?

Skyhammer is mirrored in that red and blue sides are identical. As was mentioned above obstacles on maps like Khylo and Temple are NOT mirrored and give some material advantage to one side (i.e. viability from Alter is way better than from Temple).

How do you intend to balance future maps to ensure that neither side gets an advantage due to map layout?

I am also really interested in the question above about teleport locations

How about you do a stream of your balancing process or preview the changes for december 10?

One question:

When does the stream begin? (european time)

when does the stream begin in gmt time ?

Where can I find the transcript for this and other livestreams?

Great stream, thanks Anet. Your work ethics are unquestionable, keep up the awesome work Looking forward to the new spvp maps coming soon along with its new mechanics that do not revolve around capping points x) Cheers!

After my message was deleted I wanna change my opinion:

The stream was awesome. Thanks!

EDIT: Just like Fenríswulf.

Noc.2459:

After my message was deleted I wanna change my opinion:

The stream was awesome. Thanks!

LOL

Noc.2459:

After my message was deleted I wanna change my opinion:

The stream was awesome. Thanks!

Nice new info. Motivates even more to play.

Cliffnotes-style new maps portion of stream, courtesy of Dulfy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1r8prs/new_game_mode_prototypes_from_livestream/

Probably the best livestream i have seen so far including, pve and wvwvw streams. Simply awesome.