Guild Wars 2

I’m surprised i see the 59% Elementalist, when good teams know how to kill an elementalist nowadays.
I’m surprised that mesmer has only 19%, forgetting the fact that it is the ONLY class that is a MUST for a team comp, coz of the great map ports and mass quickness and aoe fields.!

wow..

p.s. Nice survey

Necro and engi all the way:p

Fun survey btw. Not too sure how relevant but fun to do anyway. Thanks for putting that one up.

The only surprising thing to me is that more ppl want a Ladder than Custom Games, just imagine what Custom Games could entail:

1) Community run Tournaments with Ladders, Prizes
2) Showmatches to hype up the Game
3) Bring back the most competetive Players that could now train on a high level with just a few Top-Teams —> This would also lead to better Streams, more Viewers etc.
4) With 2v2 up to 8v8 already Confirmed (afaik), ppl that have begged for sth. like an Arena would get closer to it and if you could set the Point-gain to only kills giving Points and fiddle around with the Respawn-timer, you’d have a decent Arena.
5) Depending on how customizable they really are (but with structured 2v2 up to 8v8, even this would be beneficial) it could give us insight into how the game plays and the balance looks like when exploring possible future game-modes.
6) With PW-Protection, ppl could even Set up decent 1v1-Tournaments without the fear of others joining and disrupting the game.

—> Yes, a lot of work to make Custom Games exciting would fall into the Hands of the Community (make own Tournaments, Ladders etc.), but with the Pace that ANet currently puts out features, I’d rather have the Community in charge of PvP than ANet and Custom Arenas is simply a necessary feature to even give the Community a chance to do so.

The Ladder is just something to make the grinding a bit more rewarding; neat, but not as important as Custom Games. I mean, we already have PvP ranks, stats for how many wins/losses you have in PvP, we had a QP-Ladder etc. Good Players know they are good, does little Timmy with his PvP-Rank 11 really need to know if he’s on rank 5002 or 4998 in the World?…..

What would the top teams train for exactly? theres nothing. We need all of this stuf + some competitive tournaments with prizes, until then its pointless.
I have very little faith Anet will do custom servers right, i expect an unfinished lackluster customservers which will take another 6 months or more to polish out.

PowerBottom.5796:

Mrbig.8019:

Eremus.4506:

Done. But I’m pretty sure Anet has a lots of data actually from ingame that they are looking at a lot. By having the the numbers how many eles are running around and how much they are winning/loosing (and when) gives a much better idea on balance compared to a"feeling class x is better than y".

But thanks for the survey, since Anet will not share their data

Cheers.

Numbers regarding classes are not really relevant.

People play a class according to their tastes, i may play ranger and enge, but my main ( and the class i’m spending most time with) will still be the thief.

@OP

Very good work.

But having people saying thief & mesmer are strongest class ( they are following the ele in those results) is very, VERY misleading.

I fear that regarding class balance, this survey won’t be very representative of the actual SotG.

Being scared of unfavourable Balance-changes (be it for the Metagame or for your favourite Class) would mean ANet would actually have to make significant changes, which hasn’t happened yet and shouldn’t be the main Focus of ANet IMHO.

I’d actually be pretty annoyed if we get like 20 changes to underwater-combat and 20 other pretty useless ones in the next Patch, because thats time and ressources better spent on new Features. We even see it in the Survey; even though Warrior seems to be clearly thought of as the weakest and Ele as the strongest class, Players don’t seem to be too unhappy with the current Balance.

People are not too unhappy with current balance simply because this game lacks so many features to be even PLAYABLE it’s not even funny.

Balance is terribad when you think for a moment they ( said they would) created a separeted template of equip/traits ( lol, it would be cool)/skill ( lol, yeah).

This game is so simple, you have 5 skills, some other skills according to your class and 5 u-skills, it should be A JOKE to balance it, yet they’re failing so hard, with ele being god for months and other classes ( ranger, necro, guardian and mesmer to a certain degree) being a STAPLE for months without devs even trying to change them.

The only thing they did was to fix ele/enge/ranger bugs and VOILA’, now they’re among the strongest class, when there are classes like the thief/war/mesmer with CLEAR imbalances/bad design issues, and only one decent build.

Not that other classes do not have any bad desing issue ( like necro minions, ranger spirits and guardian spirit weapons, am issue they created from nothing when they were perfectly fine , lol), but there’s indeed a problem with balance.

And as soon as devs start to fix the crap out of the features this game DESPERETELY needs, balance will be a really major problem: it already is ( the ele is really ruining the meta), but it’s obscured by other, more serious, issues.

PowerBottom.5796:

The only surprising thing to me is that more ppl want a Ladder than Custom Games, just imagine what Custom Games could entail:

1) Community run Tournaments with Ladders, Prizes
2) Showmatches to hype up the Game
3) Bring back the most competetive Players that could now train on a high level with just a few Top-Teams —> This would also lead to better Streams, more Viewers etc.
4) With 2v2 up to 8v8 already Confirmed (afaik), ppl that have begged for sth. like an Arena would get closer to it and if you could set the Point-gain to only kills giving Points and fiddle around with the Respawn-timer, you’d have a decent Arena.
5) Depending on how customizable they really are (but with structured 2v2 up to 8v8, even this would be beneficial) it could give us insight into how the game plays and the balance looks like when exploring possible future game-modes.
6) With PW-Protection, ppl could even Set up decent 1v1-Tournaments without the fear of others joining and disrupting the game.

—> Yes, a lot of work to make Custom Games exciting would fall into the Hands of the Community (make own Tournaments, Ladders etc.), but with the Pace that ANet currently puts out features, I’d rather have the Community in charge of PvP than ANet and Custom Arenas is simply a necessary feature to even give the Community a chance to do so.

The Ladder is just something to make the grinding a bit more rewarding; neat, but not as important as Custom Games. I mean, we already have PvP ranks, stats for how many wins/losses you have in PvP, we had a QP-Ladder etc. Good Players know they are good, does little Timmy with his PvP-Rank 11 really need to know if he’s on rank 5002 or 4998 in the World?…..

All of this would be good but it also assumes there will be people paying for the custom servers. sPvP is at its smallest size, there are no incentives for casual players, and no incentives for competitive players. Why pay for a custom server if your friends are not interested in sPvP or if your team has nothing to play/practice for?

In my opinion, I am not expecting a lot of custom servers. There will probably be a handful that appear and get used by those who are left. If Arenanet continues to develop at their snails pace then you see what few custom servers appear slowly disappear.

Interesting facts so far:

• 28% of the people that plays pvp have never been in a team. Maybe they didnt find any incentive to join one?
• Only a 12% of the people is in a team. Again, more incentives to join one or more content for solo players
• 44% of pvpers play less than they used to. 18% quit.
• The answer most people agree in the whole survey (59%) is the opness of ele. While the 2nd one (58%) is the weakness of warriors
• only 1 person thinks more conquest maps should come before other features (0,2%)
• Amount of trols is 2%, they picked “option 9” lmao

thanks to the 347 people that answered so far
you are awesome!

This sir is epic. I think numbers speak volumes here and hopefully ANET can see this.

Cool survey man.

On balance: It’s shaking out to indicate a general sub-par consensus. I think balance (or the lack there of) would be much clearer with duels or any game mode where people weren’t constantly running in and out of skirmishes. The thing is: pvp is now dead, and pve is the only real money maker. PvP is now fiscally worth more to Anet as a tack-on feature for PvE players than the eviscerated PvP community as a whole. This says to me they won’t be doing anything to alienate the pve base; neither by drastically changing balance, removing any ability, or separating pve and pvp skills.

On strongest class: These numbers are quite concise in my opinion, yet I voted mesmer just because it comes down to a build thing with ele’s. One factor I considered when polling was the ease at which you can jump in with a generic build and start to wreck kitten with little or no experience. The high 1v1 dps of thieves’ burst and mesmers’ hard-hitting A.I. combined with blinking and stealth for superior survivability and mobility make them strong in any duel, but even more so in a game (mode) where you just run around and control points on a huge map.

On 1st priority feature: I see ladders taking the number one spot here because there simply aren’t many nay-sayers or drawbacks to this idea. Too many fanboys and psy-op agents have confused people about the ideas of balance and conquest. Ladders on the other hand are a natural step on the way to a competitive scene, and can’t easily be argued against. The thing is, there aren’t enough people playing now for ladders to matter much, due to balance and lack of modes killing the fun/competition.

There are some good hard numbers here, but I’m also interested in the psychology behind them.

Thanks for your effort

Great idea! The Devs should take a look at this!

Citizens of Tyriaaaa! Participate in this surveeeey!! I command youuuu!

More people need to do this survey. Hopefully it can open some eyes on the devs…

Hawke.6943:

I’m surprised i see the 59% Elementalist, when good teams know how to kill an elementalist nowadays.

Said no non-elementalist ever.

PowerBottom.5796:

We even see it in the Survey; even though Warrior seems to be clearly thought of as the weakest and Ele as the strongest class, Players don’t seem to be too unhappy with the current Balance.

You need to have a deeper interpretation of these statistics. Although the happiness on game balance seems average, there is a higher percentage of players playing the more overpowered professions skewing the results towards happiness while people who stick to their beloved but underpowered profession get neglected. In reality balance is much better reflected by the questions on which profession is strongest/weakest. In my opinion, balance is more important than any new feature. Whether a player gets facerolled by an overpowered profession played by a bad player in the current game or in a future custom arena or whatever other feature, that player will still eventually just give up on the game because fights are simply too unfair.

Rerroll I’ve seen you around in the community some (I think on my stream a few times) but recently when I started watching the forums a little more, I realized how much you do for the community. Amazing job my friend.

shaolin.9716:

PowerBottom.5796:

We even see it in the Survey; even though Warrior seems to be clearly thought of as the weakest and Ele as the strongest class, Players don’t seem to be too unhappy with the current Balance.

You need to have a deeper interpretation of these statistics. Although the happiness on game balance seems average, there is a higher percentage of players playing the more overpowered professions skewing the results towards happiness while people who stick to their beloved but underpowered profession get neglected. In reality balance is much better reflected by the questions on which profession is strongest/weakest. In my opinion, balance is more important than any new feature. Whether a player gets facerolled by an overpowered profession played by a bad player in the current game or in a future custom arena or whatever other feature, that player will still eventually just give up on the game because fights are simply too unfair.

I’m currently studying Psychology and I have years of experience with statistical analysis, but if you want to apply the same rigorous standards of science in this Survey, you won’t get anything out of it.

Just look at who is answering to this Survey: Mostly People that are still playing the game or at least visit the Forums (I don’t think the Person that made this Survey sent out e-Mails to all the people that left GW2). There are tons of People that left the game for various reasons that aren’t included in this survey, so it surely isn’t representative for the whole GW2-Community and those that already left, but at some point, were a part of it.

Your interpretation is exactly that – an interpretation, and therefore not strictly scientific. You assume that People that play the stronger classes like the current state of the balance, because they are getting favoured (ruling out the possibility of those People being objective), yet, you assume that People playing those classes are highly objective when choosing which class they feel is the strongest (common psychological theories about protecting a persons self-worth would strongly assume that Players like that wouldn’t choose their class to be the strongest, because this would basically say that they are doing well in the game not because of their skill, but because they are favoured by external reasons and therefore diminish the amount of self-worth and the satisfaction of winning they get out of playing the game).

I think that those two factors kind balance each other out in this sample, so I think it’s of value to compare the results for which class is weakest/strongest and the happiness about the current balance in the Game. It’s logically possible that the Players that still play the game aren’t too unhappy with the balance (because that is one major reason why they haven’t left yet), but that there is a strong agreement towards which class is the strongest/weakest.

It’s entirely possible that the unhappiness about the game (in terms of balance, new maps etc.) would be higher if you’d ask all the players that left the game, but if ANet wants to gain anything out of this Survey, I think it’s that the People that are still involved in the Game clearly made their Mind up about the Strength of the classes, but aren’t too unhappy with it. This could be because of various reasons, like:

1) The balance is a bit skewed, but it isn’t a big imbalance
2) The balance is a bit skewed, but they feel that there are more pressing Issues to solve
3) They don’t really care about the game being balanced

I wish someone from Anet would read this and at least reply with something meaninful and not just:“Thanks for info… we’re working on it …”

matjazmuhic.1649:

I wish someone from Anet would read this and at least reply with something meaninful and not just:“Thanks for info… we’re working on it …”

Well, the fact that they aren’t doing that is why so many ppl are unhappy with the amount of Communication between ANet and the PvP-Players…. -.-°

But on the other hand. Is PvP really that bad or it’s just lacks some additional features. I didn’t play much pvp (only rank 11) but I felt like it was really well balanced (for such a new game – doesn’t mean there’s nothing more to do here) and mostly it was fun.

Does it only lack features like observer, ladders, custom games? Cause with all those whine qq posts you can’t be sure… O_ô

great idea the survey

Yiyojin.3241:

great idea the survey

Indeed. I hope Anet will look at it too.

Anet will look at this survey… soon.

Funny thing how more players think ranger is the weakest class than the strongest.

I think the survey really needed to have a question or 2 on downed state – should it exist in PVP, and something about build diversity.

Blackmoa.3186:

Funny thing how more players think ranger is the weakest class than the strongest.

Because there are not many good ranger players. So many people have not seen how strong that class can be.

Edit: About the post above this one. Keep Rally in, it adds depth to this game which it would lack for a good amount without it. Build diversity has to come sooner or later. :/

Ranger is whether the strongest nor the weakest class. Someone showed a class pyramid in another thread, which pretty much describes the position of a ranger (Rank 3 together with guard and thief).
Trapper build is pretty balanced in my opinion. BM ranger is very powerful in 1vs1 but gets weaker in teamfights since the group support is very limited (except heal skill).
Currently I would use BM ranger just to have my mesmer at team fights, without heaving to fear that close gets backcapped.
With the new builds for engineers I see ranger will maybe get replaced by them because there are also capable to kill a bunker ele but have more group support due to aoe damage.

BTT: Nice survey. You got my vote.

PowerBottom.5796:

The only surprising thing to me is that more ppl want a Ladder than Custom Games, just imagine what Custom Games could entail:

1) Community run Tournaments with Ladders, Prizes
2) Showmatches to hype up the Game
3) Bring back the most competetive Players that could now train on a high level with just a few Top-Teams —> This would also lead to better Streams, more Viewers etc.
4) With 2v2 up to 8v8 already Confirmed (afaik), ppl that have begged for sth. like an Arena would get closer to it and if you could set the Point-gain to only kills giving Points and fiddle around with the Respawn-timer, you’d have a decent Arena.
5) Depending on how customizable they really are (but with structured 2v2 up to 8v8, even this would be beneficial) it could give us insight into how the game plays and the balance looks like when exploring possible future game-modes.
6) With PW-Protection, ppl could even Set up decent 1v1-Tournaments without the fear of others joining and disrupting the game.

—> Yes, a lot of work to make Custom Games exciting would fall into the Hands of the Community (make own Tournaments, Ladders etc.), but with the Pace that ANet currently puts out features, I’d rather have the Community in charge of PvP than ANet and Custom Arenas is simply a necessary feature to even give the Community a chance to do so.

The Ladder is just something to make the grinding a bit more rewarding; neat, but not as important as Custom Games. I mean, we already have PvP ranks, stats for how many wins/losses you have in PvP, we had a QP-Ladder etc. Good Players know they are good, does little Timmy with his PvP-Rank 11 really need to know if he’s on rank 5002 or 4998 in the World?…..

This!
But i wasn’t really surprised seeing the votes, most people have no clue what would actually benefit the game, they just want to have personal incentive (which is also important but can wait).
+1 great post

done!! hope better

HPLT.7132:

Ranger is whether the strongest nor the weakest class. Someone showed a class pyramid in another thread, which pretty much describes the position of a ranger (Rank 3 together with guard and thief).
Trapper build is pretty balanced in my opinion. BM ranger is very powerful in 1vs1 but gets weaker in teamfights since the group support is very limited (except heal skill).
Currently I would use BM ranger just to have my mesmer at team fights, without heaving to fear that close gets backcapped.
With the new builds for engineers I see ranger will maybe get replaced by them because there are also capable to kill a bunker ele but have more group support due to aoe damage.

BTT: Nice survey. You got my vote.

ranger is one of the best classes. i know a rangerplayer who can play an imbalanced build (tanky healy for himself and mates, removing condis, doing damage ) which can beat my ele and all other classes 1v1. i think ranger is balanced on highest levels… people just need to figure out the opstuff (theorycrafting, timing, skill, experience, movement…) and make it shine….
ranger dont have rtl but they have also good movement skills

What I also like with this survey is thatit seems that people play the game and try to think and bring arguments (mentally speaking) while they choose, contrary to what we can see in profession sections.
I mean, most answers are well-thought and not only an angry reaction or “I want everything/I want my class to be OP”.
Seeing this, I would love to see Anet sometimes use this to have a feedback, in addition to their monitoring of figures data.
Of course, it must not be too often and it must not be the only way to study, but this could help sometimes, every 3-4 months for instance.
We could have some things like “we intend to revamp all dungeons like we did to AC : did you like new AC ? why ? if yes, do you want same changes ?” …

Ultima.8673:

ranger is one of the best classes. i know a rangerplayer who can play an imbalanced build (tanky healy for himself and mates, removing condis, doing damage ) which can beat my ele and all other classes 1v1. i think ranger is balanced on highest levels… people just need to figure out the opstuff (theorycrafting, timing, skill, experience, movement…) and make it shine….
ranger dont have rtl but they have also good movement skills

Don’t let this discuss in this thread. However I said that ranger is probably the best 1on1 class when using BM build but lack in team fights. Condi remove is done with healing skill and maybe the renewal signet (which should be used only in critical cases). Ranger is not able to heal teammates on its own…he just provides the water field(+regeneration). Mobility is good as it is.
And as i said BM is probably a little bit unbalanced but trapper is ok for know. If you fight against a skilled elementalist he will just stay out the traps and you cant stand a change. I did not say rangers are weak but they are not at top of the food chain :-).

shaolin.9716:

Although the happiness on game balance seems average

Speaking for myself; I think game balance doesn’t matter right now, and as such I’m neither =D or >=( about it. For the most part I die because someone came at me when my buttons were on recharge or I made some kind of mistake (maybe wrong place wrong time or maybe just pressing bad buttons at bad times).

Can we reach the 500 participants? (actually, do we have so much people pvping?)

If only Anet gave a survey ingame. Imagine:

Something like this pops up for everyone when going to the heart of the mists for the first time after patch. Then they could disregard the surveys that were completed too fast, so they only get serious opinions and not the ones of PvEers who are just clicking through it.

It would be quite accurate way to see players opinion I think, at least way more accurate than judging by forums, “top players” or whatever the way is that they currently collect player opinions.

Rerroll.9083:

Can we reach the 500 participants? (actually, do we have so much people pvping?)

Possibly yes, if you sum up all the NA and EU pvpers which is very few ppl anyway.

Imo there should be more active pvp players in EU than in NA but still if it is about 500 its way to low. This means that most of the PvP comunity has jumped ship.

The great majority of my friends are playing LoL, Dota and PS2 atm, the sad thing is that from all of us I’m the only one left playing GW2 just because I don’t like Dota nor LoL… I do play PS2 with them though…

(btw this next weekend is Neverwinter Beta Weekend and i got a key on my mail yesterday xD )

Surprised so many people voted for new gamemodes as the top priority… Sure they’d be fun, but you’d think people would want all the main features like proper matchmaking, soloQ and ladders first. I mean, what would be the point of new gamemodes when the majority of your matches are still going to be 4v5’s or against premades?

That aside, great thread. Let’s hope Anet learn a thing or two from this.

^ Copy and paste on Thief Forum, Feedback thread lol. Not even one response since Dinosaurs ruled the earth.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to say this was awesome! We’ve seen this and we think it’s pretty cool to see some of your opinions on the current state of the game. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Thanks for taking the time to show us you read it.

Hope it was helpful in some way.

Strongest class = mesmer.

Eles only achieved ‘op’ status because of that one build. Before everyone found out about it, what was said about eles? what was it? underpowered, useless, trash tier?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to say this was awesome! We’ve seen this and we think it’s pretty cool to see some of your opinions on the current state of the game. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Simple question:

why don’t YOU do something similar, instead of relying on player-created content ?

If you create something similar, we’ll ALL give you our best support in order to help you fixing stuff.

Really, WHY ?

By even devs saying this was kind a helpfull, why they can’t do these kind of things too?

I’m quite sure that much more people would take part on these once they would be well advertised and officially announced. These seems atleast for me quite helpfull and this way they would really see what people want.

The questions could be as easy as; what people would like to see in future updates. (new contect, fixes, skill balance, performance increase)

Why not ask the players who actually play this rather than making what is easiest to code/write…

Timze.7980:

By even devs saying this was kind a helpfull, why they can’t do these kind of things too?

I’m quite sure that much more people would take part on these once they would be well advertised and officially announced. These seems atleast for me quite helpfull and this way they would really see what people want.

The questions could be as easy as; what people would like to see in future updates. (new contect, fixes, skill balance, performance increase)

Why not ask the players who actually play this rather than making what is easiest to code/write…

I think that’s done on our part like give the company our feedback customer review reports. They probably could of done it themselves, but not like this so hopefully this helps out

well this is nice maybe they gona put something else accepth taht stupud STUPID conqest arenas PLSs for rank and leader

JonathanSharp.7094:

Zinwrath.2049:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to say this was awesome! We’ve seen this and we think it’s pretty cool to see some of your opinions on the current state of the game. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Thanks for taking the time to show us you read it.

Hope it was helpful in some way.

Ya! It really was helpful. The survey mirrored a lot of things we’ve seen on the forums – but had it all in one spot.

It was also nice to see we have a good “read” on the playerbase – some of the things you guys rated as big issues are things we also consider to be our top priorities!

Are you going to do anything about this?
This been said for months and months and as a developer all you came up with was a another node capping map. WoW had 3-4 major PvP updates you guys did not do a jack especially for a new game. Little slap here and there and we still people howling with furry about certain brocken mechanics / professions.

You guys are absolutely clueless based on what I have seen in a video about state of the game. You are trying to buff already too powerful class (mesmer) based on what? So mesmer will have an easier time killing Minion Master Necro – spec that nobody uses at high level.

PvP in this game is dieing if not dead and unless you take some initiative in your hands or listen to feedback you will lose little bits of community that is left.

For the love of god do something about this game. If spells / skills are too cheesy you need to rework it. Make that all professions will take skill to play instead of a huge disparity.

You did not need a survey to hear the community. This post will probably fall on deaf ears like hundred did whatever. Keep butchering PvP in this game. This is by far one of the worst PvP experiences I had in years from the company that claimed that they are thinking of supporting ESports and the ones who will try to balance this game around “SKILL” yet you did all you possibly could to destroy PvP community and make people rage with a skill and strength disparity on professions.

Here is the idea. Bring back Guild Wars 1. Make it look a lot better than what it is now and remove PvP from Guild Wars 2.

Beautiful game went down the pooper.

60 percent who took survey play mes and thief

Brutalistik.6473:

Timze.7980:

By even devs saying this was kind a helpfull, why they can’t do these kind of things too?

I’m quite sure that much more people would take part on these once they would be well advertised and officially announced. These seems atleast for me quite helpfull and this way they would really see what people want.

The questions could be as easy as; what people would like to see in future updates. (new contect, fixes, skill balance, performance increase)

Why not ask the players who actually play this rather than making what is easiest to code/write…

I think that’s done on our part like give the company our feedback customer review reports. They probably could of done it themselves, but not like this so hopefully this helps out

I believe by just adding the option to be able to vote on poll like this at forums front page would gather much more information on one place and if adverticed well enought and kept short enought people would be happy to take part on these.

Just saying to make " Monthly Polls" about thoughts or future plans. Similar to what they just added minutes ago. They added sub-forum called “Living World”. This is exactly what I like to hear from them but just to keep it as easy and least time taking for all they could add just poll…

In my opinion the biggest problem PvP in GW2 is combat system. Casual as hell. Its imposibble how great AN kill all ideas form GW1.

gwawer.9805:

60 percent who took survey play mes and thief

lmao are u talking about class balance yeah…