Guild Wars 2

Helseth has put up another Rant of the Week regarding the development of PvP.

These are not my words. Transcript as follows (Some errors will follow):

“Greetings. This is a demotivating Rant of the Week, to say the least. See, during the Rant of the Week, the last one, I told you guys that a lot of people are quitting/taking a break.
Despite us having played the game for forever, people are quitting, myself included.
A question should be asked, considering that we love this game so much.
The question which is obviously, “Why are we quitting or taking a break?”
Why are there so many people that are essentially saying, “I’m gone until the game gets good and [I] don’t think that’s happening – moving on out of the game”
It’s perplexing, isn’t it? Because considering the amount of time we play and considering that the problem at the moment that’s currently voiced the most is just – the metagame.

You’d wonder why people were quitting. And the problem is that the people that are quitting don’t feel as if the PvP is going to get good. But what I mean by “good” is that despite us loving the core of the game, this game has always had very, very big flaws. Blatant flaws.
For example, at the beginning of the game, there was nothing. Literally nothing – there was free tournaments [and] hotjoin. Nothing else. Yet we still stuck through. We continued to play.
When paid tournaments – a horrendous system, I might add – was out, we still continued to play. And we kept going, over and over. The entire PvP population kept going. And now we’re here and we’re leaving.

The reason for this is that people have realised something that have frankly should have been realised a long time ago. And that’s that this game just has very low – borderline non-existent priority for PvP.
What I mean by that is thakittens been shown time and time again that even if the PvP developers are not incompetent, they’re still not going to get this through – they’re still not going to fix this.
Because the resources are what seems to be less than a PvP indie game developer.
In fact, one would even say that considering that they perpetually mouth off on how many problems for them to do it (sic), even if they just wanna say, design a skill differently or even add a new skill you have to go through all sorts of hoops to deal with and such (sic) that they [might actually be more limited] than an indie game developer.

Obviously, I can’t really say exactly what’s happening. Nobody can. But I can say that the 3 problems that seem to happen with all the development updates.

• Number 1: is that the updates are insanely slow for PvP, while for PvE they’re obviously very very frequent, quick, of very high quality.

• Number 2: is that we have absolutely no idea what’s happening with the updates. Like, before they happen. Right now there’s a patch today I believe, might be the day after, I’m not sure – we don’t have any notes. We don’t even know what’s happening to PvP. We don’t know any of the details, and have no idea aside from some very very very vague posts. See, the developers might try seem as if they’re transparent with a post every now and then, but heres the deal. In the first beta of the game, they acknowledged that AoE was a problem. We’re not getting anywhere, are we? Because they said it’s a problem, that’s something we need to fix but evidently, it’s not happening. Or it might be happening, but I don’t know.

• And Number 3: is the quality of patches. Obviously there are problems with every patch that’s been put in. Every single time there’s been a PvP patch, there’s been some broken bug, there’s been some big problem. And the fixes and everything are insanely slow. There’s currently a Jumping on block bug that’s very well known, right now, that the developers have acknowledged that it existed on the GuildWars2PVPTV stream; and it’s been on the forums, people have posted about it, people talked about it [for] a long time but it’s still not been fixed. That’s when the Guardians are jumping and blocking and it increases the blocks. And that’s another example that’s not been fixed.

This is an unfortunate topic to talk about because it essentially means that we really don’t see any hope at all. See, when I did those Rants of the Week, I didn’t really expect them to be fixed. I honestly don’t. I’ve tried to be as optimistic as possible, but considering that I might not be here forever, I want to mention these grievances. To put an example of all of these 3 things (sic), I’m going to mention the leaderboards and the random map generator.

Now, leaderboards have been something that’s been expected for forever. In fact, I expected them upon release to be honest. But then when they included all sorts of things such as the Paid Tournament and such, everybody expected leaderboards to be in there.
They didn’t talk about it, but then it was pretty obvious, but then it didn’t happen. And there were no leaderboards. And when people actually started talking about them, they [Arenanet] acknowledged them but did not give us an update – no transparency? And eventually, they developed (sic). They gave us leaderboards.
Well, they said they would give us leaderboards. They gave us a date, to be specific. After a while. A long time, actually. And when we got the leaderboards, well, on the date of the leaderboards, there were actually no leaderboards. They had set – I think it was the 21st? And on the 22nd there was no notice of leaderboards, no notice of anything in fact.
And this is a basic feature. This is something that exists in everything. But here for the Guild Wars 2 PvP development team, even though they were super slow with this, they couldn’t even match the time (sic). Fine. If you miss out the time (sic) that’s understandable. I mean, anything can happen while developing.
But they didn’t say anything. Not at all. In fact the forums went into a complete riot which I guess I instigated and got permabanned for, but [omitted for repetition] eventually the leaderboards were released. And what do we have now? We have the exact same leaderboards as they were released.
The second they were released, people posted “these were (sic) broken”. Like, the matchmaking was a mess – the leaderboards were equally of a mess.

Everything was a complete mess. And what do we have? We had a horrible leaderboard. We still have a horrible leaderboard – which hardly factors in any decay at all, updates insanely slowly, only exists on a website! Like, it’s useless! You can’t even track yourself in there.
Or you can go to Guildwars2Shack for info, which is a fan-made website. Something a fan made like a week after the leaderboards – a week after! – with none of their [Arenanet’s] time! And it’s a much better website than the current one.
I hope you’re not using the current one because that one’s pretty much useless. Go to Guildwars2Shack instead. And it goes to show – I’m not doing it to bash on developers – how inefficient the development is for them. Now this doesn’t have to say (sic) that they’re incompetent developers. That doesn’t say anything at all.

It just means that their resources and priorities are so – they have so many things to work on, that they can’t pull the more basic things off.

If you can’t pull off a leaderboard, how about the random map generator? Now, paid tournaments were introduced – I have the exact date now – February 26th . When it was introduced, people were play a week of the same map. And that continued for months. The first day, people were like, “Um, Random Map generator? Can we get a random map generator? Basic thing? Accessible in all sorts of games, from Newgrounds games to Atari games, to everything”
Months, with little to no word. In fact the only word we really got was that they wanted to surveil the meta which sounds like an excuse. Whenever I read their posts nowadays all I see are excuses. Just excuses for slow development. I believe that they’ve worked hard into this. I mean, obviously, I believe that they’re trying. I don’t believe they’re just messing around. But I believe that they can’t do this. I believe that because of the development resources and whatever team they have, the fact they have to do multiple things – it becomes so split that it’s not working out.

Anyway, February 26th, the random map generator. It took months, several months. How many months? It’s 9 now. I believe it was like, correct me if I’m wrong – was it 5 months? For the random map generator? 6? Something like that?
Something like that for a random map generator and when it came out it – it had a bugged loading screen on Legacy [of the Foefire] which took forever to fix. They had to disable the map, and the map was just not in it at all, and now we have one which doesn’t work either. Rather, it’s putting massive priority on Temple of the Silent Storm. And yeah. Doesn’t work.

Very little transparency on how it’s going to work, and very little transparency on when it’s going to work. Same 3 things over and over: the speed, the efficiency, and the transparency. See, I personally believe that you can forgive 2 of these.

• You can forgive that they’re slow, if they’re open about how they’re slow.
• You can forgive that they screw up every now and then, if they’re really fast with the changes.
• And you can forgive that they’re slow and don’t talk to us if they make great patches.

But if you screw up all 3, then there’s something painfully wrong, right. And I mean, this is why the PvP [Competitive] Teams are leaving, because when things happen, I mean, when they’re finally implemented what we’re asking for (sic) we see the quality of what they put out. We see the quality of the leaderboards. We see the quality of the PAX tournament. We see the quality of the soloqueue. And we compare that quality to everything else. Every other game. 10 year old games. And the quality of those games, all surpass Guild Wars. By far. I know indie games that have a much better system for PvP than the Triple A, fastest selling MMO [in history]. How is that possible?

Obviously, it’s possible because [Arenanet] lack of resources. I’m not going to, I mean, I bash on the developers like the Karl and the others but the reason is I don’t think in particular they’re in the wrong here.
In fact, I think that they’re very much engaged into what they do. But in the end, how do we fix this PvP? And this is a concern that I’ve been trying to voice as much as possible. But I’m just going to say flat out that this is how to fix the PvP.
And I know a lot of people were very happy at this post Jonathan Sharp did but it’s the same thing as always. It’s a wonderful post from a guy who clearly cares about the game, but is anything going to change? Does the PvP department have any more priority within? Do they have any more resources? Do they have any more staff? Do they have any more anything? I mean, they still can’t split the game, even though splitting the game is obviously what we need.

I mean, we need a different game for PvE, WvW and PvP. You can’t have 50 vs 50 WvW in a castle having the same balance as a 5 on 5 Conquest Mode. But it’s still like this.
And while he makes out a wonderful excuse for why – well, he doesn’t really – I hardly skimmed it. But even though he makes the excuses, it’s clear it speaks of a lack of resources.
Imagine if they had a balance team specifically only for PvP that could chug out balance patches all the time for PvP. If there’s something broken, bam! It would be fixed. Of course, this is what we would expect, but this isn’t what we got. Everybody expects so much. But this is why the veterans are quitting. Because we’re done expecting.
We’re done playing a game that we’re waiting to become good. This is what we did all the time. We saw so much potential. We still see so much potential in Guild Wars. But we recognise that this potential isn’t being unleashed.

And I blame, I mean whatever toilethead who decided to not give any of the resources to PvP. Because it’s clear that PvP nowadays is a superb source of revenue. Both in popularity, I mean, in selling more copies. I mean, while PvE tends to fade out eventually in many games, the PvP scene stands forever, as long as you have the forum to compete in, there’s going to be people competing. As the examples could be from Quake, DOTA, Starcraft 1 and 2, Counterstrike, all sorts of things. But whoever it is, he’s not putting priority on it.

And that’s the core issue of Guild Wars 2 PvP. Like, this is the issue: The development team has nothing.

And until then, I say this. I mentioned these rants for the ideal of PvP for Guild Wars and what I’m expecting from Guild Wars, but I’ve dropped that dream. Personally, I think, I still think that the game is good. But not right now, of course. The meta.
But I still think is passable. I can play it. But I can’t imagine that it’ll ever be an esport. I can’t imagine anything [of] those heights. And I implore everyone to give up all of those thoughts.
Like, everybody knows how much I wanted from PvP. But if you drop all those expectations, this game is still decent game to play.
And I believe that that’s what we should be going for. Until we see something else in PvP. Just, if you find the game fun, continue playing. I mean, obviously go for it. And that’s what I’d go for.

Once the metagame becomes something that I can bear, I will come back. My team will come back. And we will play a lot – I mean, if the game is fun for us, of course.
We’ll compete, of course, I mean, why not? But until the metagame is done, we’re disappearing. And until the game’s potential is actually being tapped? All these players that left aren’t going to come back.
And they don’t think that this [potential] is going to be tapped until you get an increased – what they know is not going to be better – until you get an increased staff as Arenanet.
I mean it’s very unfortunate, because this game has so much potential. It’s very, very unfortunate. Anyway, that’s about it.

And I know that this isn’t what any of you [the viewers] expected, but yeah. I mean, I could rant about PAX.
I could do a rant about all sorts of things, like this was the free week, with all the posts?
I’m sure I could quote mine and be an kitten and such.
But I want to genuinely present my concern – what I mean – I wanted to present what the potential can be and how it’s being squandered. And it’s being squandered because of this. Like, the developers are getting so much fire for this. But in the end we can’t really put it all on the developers.

And yeah, this is going to be the final Rant of the Week. I know that it’s popular and that the people are enjoying it, but this is it: this is the problem of Guild Wars.
I don’t see a point in further continuing the series when I’m just going to point out things that are all going to be answered from one thing.
The developers are like, “We know, it’s on the list” but in reality it’s a very very long list which has the slowest work process ever.

By the way, for future events, if you ever hold another LAN Tournament, please, PLEASE put some booths up! They were right next to each other. They heard each other.
They literally were typing in chat because they didn’t want to tell the other guy like “I’m going far” and the other guy going “Oh! He’s going far. Gonna defend”.
I mean, what on Earth was that PAX Event? Whatever. Bye.

As I said, these are not my words. Grammatical errors and syntax is broken due to transcribing natural speech.

Core themes:

• Helseth seems to be disappointed at the pace of development.

• He believes that the lack of development resources causes PvP content releases like the map Randomisation and the Leaderboards to be half-baked.

• Followups to the releases are slow to come, again because of lack of resources.

• He believes that this state of development is contributing to competitive teams leaving and a dearth of competition because the “veterans are done waiting for the game to get good”

• He believes that the development team for PvP must be split from WvW and PvE and given resources consummate with their task such that they can execute on their promises.

• He believes that the game has immense potential that is being squandered by a lack of commitment by Arenanet to the furthering of the PvP scene, either by profligacy of releases, or by slow and steady quality releases that are well executed.

• He believes that the disappointment stems from player comparisons of the quality, profligacy and timeliness of PvP releases to PvE releases, which have typically been timely (now every 2 weeks) and generally of high quality.

• He believes that if this state of development is to continue, that players should lower their expectations of this great game to one that is merely a good game. Players should play the game if they find it fun, but wait for it to “get good” if they want to maintain their high expectations.

Discuss.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Number 1: is that the updates are insanely slow for PvP, while for PvE they’re obviously very very frequent, quick, of very high quality.

Funny, some PvEers will disagree with the “high quality” part of that statement.

I feel part of the issue must be bureaucracy, its hard to simply do things, even if the thing that needs doing is simple. Its hard to get things tested, its hard to get things approved.

They REALLY need to cut through the red tap. I took a 4 month break from this game so that I would be able to notice changes when I got back. Slow balance changes I get , slow major bug fixes I don’t. Spvp does feel like an oversight, which is a pity because most of us though that would be the focus of the game.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

• Number 1: is that the updates are insanely slow for PvP, while for PvE they’re obviously very very frequent, quick, of very high quality.

Funny, some PvEers will disagree with the “high quality” part of that statement.

As I said, I’m just transcribing.

I personally believe that the PvE updates are putting essential PvE QoL changes on hold – whilst changes to Dungeons to make them more than a simple DPS check are passed over in lieu of temporary content. It’s taken 12 months to implement a LFG tool, whilst CoFP1 farm has caused steady inflation across the board and blown the high end fine material market price far further up than necessary.

However this is off topic.

I’d say ANet lacks programmer resources in general. They might be able to throw out new content every two weeks. But most likely because they have tools for content creators.

But if we look at the core it becomes obvious that there are yet many, many problems to solve. Problems which cannot be solved by content creators. For those problems ANet needs real software developers or engineers.

And it seems that PvP suffers the most from these issues, because PvP not only has issues with class balancing (which also exists in PvE) but SPvP also lacks several much needed features and tools. Same could be said for WvW, too.

We don’t know about ANet’s internals. But it seems that they rather invest money in content creation in order to keep the PvE crowd happy than invest money in software development to address core issues of the game or even add new features.

Maybe content creators are more cheaper and maybe the gem store doesn’t create enough income in order to pay enough software developers.

What we see are the results, though. And what we see is what has happend very, very slowly or not at all.

So, yeah, we can expect lots of new content. But don’t expect changes to the core soon (if ever). And don’t expect new features. Because it would cost too much money.

But PvP is a very simple format. Make a solid infrastructure and you’re ‘done’. It just needs that one time heavy investment.

Dirame.8521:

MonMalthias.4763:

• Number 1: is that the updates are insanely slow for PvP, while for PvE they’re obviously very very frequent, quick, of very high quality.

Funny, some PvEers will disagree with the “high quality” part of that statement.

There’s no quality. It’s the same crap over and over and the casuals still keep flocking to it and dropping their $$$ in the cash shop. I can’t even be angry with NCsoft anymore, I’m angry with the customers for buying into it repeatedly.

I agree with you, butch. But is a an investment nevertheless. And quite frankly, decision makers refuse to invest into something where the ROI (return of investment) is not ensured.

Because, to be honest, we all don’t know if GW2 would suddenly become very popular. What if it is too late already? Many have left and many are leaving. It would be very hard to get those players back.

For ANet it sure is a safer course to simply focus on PvE and their living story.

When I was playing spvp and tpvp in beta, I know PvP wasn’t close to being ready so I haven’t gotten myself involved in it much. I found WvW and PvE to be more rewarding and that spvp was going to take some time to develop so I decided not to waste my time grinding ranks that meant little or nothing. Now its a year later and I still wouldn’t do tpvp because the meta is just awful with the AoE spamming on the control nodes and just the spamming of all skills in general.

So during my first year of playing GW2, I have many been doing WvW because open world combat>spvp IMHO. But now with the introduction of WvW leagues and the 5 control nodes around the lake, I think WvW is going to have serious profession balancing issues.

For example:
Most groups that are 15 to 50+ have to stack Shout Guardians so they can keep stability on everyone in the zerg. Also, they massive condition remove with Shouts and passsive traits and Superior Runes of the Soldier. After a group has 50 to 60% of their frontline as Guardians, the group will need Staff Elementalists for water and Static fields rotations. Necro & Warriors tend to be more on the DPS side of the zerg but always have some useful utilities and finally a few (1-3) Mesmers for, Veil, Portal and Timewarp or Moa form depending on the groups meta. After that, there is not reason to include Thieves, Engineers or Rangers into the main groups because these profession provide little to nothing the 5 profession I state can do if not better.

If WvW becomes hyper competitive because of the WvW league, I think Anet will have more problems on their hands trying to fix and balance the medium armor profession to synergy better in larger group play. As a Ranger (I don’t play spirits) this can kill the game for me as well.

He is repeating himself at a point which becomes boring and disturbing.

We know the issues he talks about, we know that SPvP has low resources and it should have more, we know that the updates are slow and bugs come with them every time but what about solutions?

How come this guy knows every possible problem and can judge it but has no solution – EVER – ?

No, this is just wrong, stop bashing everything, stop bashing developers, the company and the game if you have nothing to say about solving the problems, this is not the attitude we need right now.

I start to believe that Helseth doesn’ even care about the game anymore, he just wants to bakitten for the fame of controversy.

I’m glad he acknowledged that there is no reason to think about gw2 as an esport, not now not in 2 years.
Spvp is just a sometimes fun and decent game to play, there are a lot of steam games way more fun, atleast for me, but spvp it’s decent and can be funny, and that’s something.

Wow dude you typed up all that? that’s some pro transcribing skill

natsos.3692:

He is repeating himself at a point which becomes boring and disturbing.

We know the issues he talks about, we know that SPvP has low resources and it should have more, we know that the updates are slow and bugs come with them every time but what about solutions?

How come this guy knows every possible problem and can judge it but has no solution – EVER – ?

No, this is just wrong, stop bashing everything, stop bashing developers, the company and the game if you have nothing to say about solving the problems, this is not the attitude we need right now.

I start to believe that Helseth doesn’ even care about the game anymore, he just wants to bakitten for the fame of controversy.

The things Helseth states in his “Rant of the Week” shows are things players have been discussing for like I guess 10 months or even more. There were problems and there were pathetic kitten solutions to those problems. I cant even think of really really good things they patched into the game after release. Class changes, most of them so bad we got to the “meta” we have now, which is like the worst and most boring “meta” since Svanirrunes. Every new feature they implemented is a disaster. Starting from Paid Tournaments over the miserable Spectator mode to meaningless Leaderboards. Well I guess Custom Arenas are not too shabby.

We players stood with the game, tried giving our input to the Devs through various channels to make a better game. Its good for them (moar money) and good for us (a good game yay). And we have been neglected ignored, Devs try to stall us (WAIT FOR THE NEXT PATCH ITS GONNA BE AWESOME) bullkitten us and hide behind smokescreens like, yeah we are humans plz forgive us I am a nice guy.
Well who cares anymore, on my part I don’t. Fun thing is, Helseth still seems to care, why else would he make those vids? Why wouldn’t he care for a game he invested something like 2,5k hours into? He kittening cares probably more than you ever will care my dear friend. The thing he says on this stream are very nice compared to the things people say in a more private environment about the game, the Devs yadayada.
Helseth vocalizes problems in a very proper manner and he uses his little E-fame to spread the word, prolly more people watch his vids than read the very good forum posts other people made. Btw if you consider this bashing you haven´t seen his other, more controversial vids.

guys i think at this point they know very well what’s “wrong” with their development. maybe the people at the top of anet/ncsoft is fine and dandy with the current state. in that case, we are all just wasting our breathe. instead of hanging on the forums being negative, just go and find other games to play. other things to do. move on in life, and let the remaining players enjoy spvp

lol aaaand thread is moved. just post the quotes without referencing helseth or any links. looks like they are cherry-picking negative criticism posts again.

produde.8092:

The things Helseth states in his “Rant of the Week” shows are things players have been discussing for like I guess 10 months or even more. There were problems and there were pathetic kitten solutions to those problems. I cant even think of really really good things they patched into the game after release. Class changes, most of them so bad we got to the “meta” we have now, which is like the worst and most boring “meta” since Svanirrunes. Every new feature they implemented is a disaster. Starting from Paid Tournaments over the miserable Spectator mode to meaningless Leaderboards. Well I guess Custom Arenas are not too shabby.

We players stood with the game, tried giving our input to the Devs through various channels to make a better game. Its good for them (moar money) and good for us (a good game yay). And we have been neglected ignored, Devs try to stall us (WAIT FOR THE NEXT PATCH ITS GONNA BE AWESOME) bullkitten us and hide behind smokescreens like, yeah we are humans plz forgive us I am a nice guy.
Well who cares anymore, on my part I don’t. Fun thing is, Helseth still seems to care, why else would he make those vids? Why wouldn’t he care for a game he invested something like 2,5k hours into? He kittening cares probably more than you ever will care my dear friend. The thing he says on this stream are very nice compared to the things people say in a more private environment about the game, the Devs yadayada.
Helseth vocalizes problems in a very proper manner and he uses his little E-fame to spread the word, prolly more people watch his vids than read the very good forum posts other people made. Btw if you consider this bashing you haven´t seen his other, more controversial vids.

You don’t really get it.. do you ? Everything you say, everything HE says is know well . I am a player, I have the player’s point of view and it is pretty much like yours, it has been one year and SPvP is in very bad shape. I HATE that. But what do I do ? What do WE do?

We keep stating the same problems over and over and we keep talking about how bad are the mistakes SPvP developers made or do we analyze them AND suggest things to fix the current situation?

You can see that the meta is a mess, saying “FIX THE META” or “Tune down the condtions” is not a suggestion, it is logic the problem is HOW. Go ahead make a big post and say “Lower that, boost the other one , maybe add this” and stuff, this might help.

What Helseth is trying to do right now is pretty simple actually. He leaves a game and tries to take people with him, to support him on his next adventure and he is going to do that by stating the obvious problems without offering sollutions, it is like politics.

If you really thing I care less about this game than this dude, try checking my posts and you might understand what supporting a game means.

Also if you think that Developers don’t care, you need to make up your mind because this game is their job(and not only). Their job is judged by me and you, if we don’t like what they do they might get fired. Ask yourself which developer wants to lose his job and see his all work tossed to trash.

Your move, anet:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/04/pax-prime-2013-guild-wars-2s-jon-peters-on-the-state-of-pvp/

“No plans for leagues. Focussing on esport. Very good community response on the attempt to be an esport.”

o.O

One dev who has his doubts. No kidding….

@butch, its different to express the own thoughts in peace, or being shot from all sides with different views of the problem from different people.
In a forum there are 100 pro pvp’ers posting their own personal solution for the things they belive that are a problem.
Thats why, in the most forums imho, you will not see devs discussing game problems with the gamers.

sorry my bad english

@natsos:
Whilst your stance is technically correct – after all, Helseth does make more than a few claims without offering a solution – you’d be incorrect in that Helseth doesn’t make his point without offering an out.

His proposed solution is simple – to get Arenanet to give the PvP staff more resources. That was his entire argument from halfway through the rant onwards. It’d be facetious of you to say that he didn’t present a solution when he did so.

The problem here is that the solution is entirely out of our hands. We as the community do not drive HR or whatever department makes the decisions regarding allocating staff to particular problems – Arenanet does. However I believe that this is the first time in the forum that Helseth has coalesced this sentiment. Too often the SPvP forum is filled with threads regarding the current metagame without discussions on what has led to this point and how to fix it. You’ll see things like “Spirit ranger OP, Healing Signet warrior OP, S/D thief OP” – and in the next few weeks you can bet that similar threads will emerge regarding every other class and every other “cheese” build.

It is the nature of people to blame noticeable outliers for the state of certain things; rather than analyse more deeply and highlight an underlying problem. It happens all the time, and I’ve done so myself.

With regard to the two “major” releases for PvP that Helseth chose to highlight – Leaderboards and Map Randomisation – they have stayed in their current form for months. There’s been no followup fixes nor news of fixes.

But here’s the thing: if the PvP team at Arenanet had been allocated sufficient resources to tackle the problem in the first place, the releases would likely have been well managed from the get go. This is what Helseth is disappointed in. There has been all this hue and cry – yet the issues remain. This is the source of Helseth’s frustration, and a lot of other players’ frustration. And the frustration is driving veterans of this game away – this hope turned to despair that these half-baked SPvP releases would ever be followed up upon.

Now, it would be remiss of me to post this without offering a solution.

Helseth mentioned 3 key things that should be considered for releases of which at most 2 can be unmet. If all 3 key things are unmet then frustration for a release develops. I’ll continue in my next post.

I’ll lead off with the transcript part in question I’m talking about:

• You can forgive that they’re slow, if they’re open about how they’re slow.
• You can forgive that they screw up every now and then, if they’re really fast with the changes.
• And you can forgive that they’re slow and don’t talk to us if they make great patches

So to elaborate on these talking points:

• Transparency: With every patch – especially those that offer class and balance changes, there is little to no preamble or fanfare. Yet with PvE and Living Story changes – especially those that can potentially affect the economy in drastic ways, there have been such previews.
  It is in fact notable that the so-called Dhuumfire patch that introduced the Tainted Shackles patch preview included no news whatsoever of upcoming balance changes. PvE’ers would know it as the “Sky Pirates of Tyria patch”.
  This needs to change. If Guild Wars 2’s PR department is to continue to promote GW2’s potential as an “esport” then there must be advance warning and dialogue of upcoming changes – along with explanations as to why. The elephant in the room – League of Legends – has done this with aplomb. Their LoL patch previews garner millions of views each regarding changes that could affect champions and their lane matchups, always with an explanation as to why. As if the video is not enough – there are preview patch notes with detailed explanations on each and every change.

This is the first step Arenanet needs to take if they are to shake off their perceptions of lack of transparency.

• Hints dropped on SOTG are not enough. Concrete changes and discussion must take place or else the perception will persist.
• With each patch release there needs to be a patch feedback thread. . Ideally the feedback is right at the bottom of the patch notes.
• Dialogue should be opened – if not on the forums – then on the Mists in Anvil Rock or Desolation – the two “de facto Official PvP” servers – regarding patch changes, with the developer responsible officiating. “Owning” a change allows the community to put a face to the people driving balance – and introduces a sense of responsibility that should come with balancing any game as large and as complex as GW2.

It’s notable that with the last point that there seems to have been a sea change in the developer’s stance recently – and multiple threads with suggestions and ongoing grievances have been addressed by the developers . This stance should, and must persist if the developers hope to have a healthy relationship with the community. Silence breeds uncertainty. Uncertainty breeds fear, which leads to anger. Don’t fall to the dark side.

You can forgive that they screw up every now and then, if they’re really fast with the changes.

It’s been a point of considerable angst recently that Arenanet chose to “freeze” the state of balance for nigh on 2 months in the lead up to the PAX Tournament final. You can imagine even more angst then, when the changes announced after the Tournament and implemented on September 3 – just over 2 months post-Aetherblade (or Dhuumfire) patch – “shaved” dominant specs such as Spirit Ranger and Necromancer.

I believe that this issue could have been sidestepped – if bug fixes and tooltip error fixes had occurred in the interim.

It’s no secret that several Runes and Sigils have been bugged for a long time. Fixing items ancillary to class balance yet integral to PvP could have made a difference in community perception that the PvP team were “doing nothing” in the interim.
Just as an example –
Rune of Vampirism still has bugged 2, 4, 6 bonuses
Rune of Lyssa still suffers from the 6th bonus not applying on certain Elites such as Engineer Supply Crate
Rune of Strength the 6th bonus is not applied when under effects of Might.
Rune of Rage The 6th bonus does not apply bonus damage while under the effects of Fury.
Sigil of Paralysation It appears as though this sigil increases Stun and Daze duration by 33% instead of the 15% as advertised on the tooltip.

I believe that the perception that the PVP balance team were doing little in the lead up to the PAX tournament could have been changed if changes like this – completely agnostic of class changes – were addressed. Even if you merely fixed tooltips and did not alter skills in any way, the perception will change.

With respect to the speed of changes – it is notable that the SPvP scene has grated under the current leaderboards for months. An acknowledgement of the issues, if nothing else, along with a road map to changes – could go a long way to addressing this long standing grievance.

MonMalthias.4763:

I’ll lead off with the transcript part in question I’m talking about:

The elephant in the room – League of Legends – has done this with aplomb. Their LoL patch previews garner millions of views each regarding changes that could affect champions and their lane matchups, always with an explanation as to why. As if the video is not enough – there are preview patch notes with detailed explanations on each and every change.

Wow, Just…WOW.

Remind me why am i playing Guild Wars 2 Again….
“Oh yeh Dragons. I like Slaying them so much omg. Dragons are gonna burn us all” [/sarcasm]

This is what They(Anet) do for PVE. Where as League of Legends. A Dominant E-SPort Game, Does the for their patch notes. For PvP.

It is all becoming too obvious now. Where half a year ago, we did not know what was in store for us and we only had the core game mechanics to drive our expectations, now we have seen how Guild Wars 2 is being developed and it simply is subpar. That is why previously dedicated players are leaving.

If you purchased the game a year ago and you are still playing, then you have gotten your money’s worth… but only if you played all aspects of the game!

(Sidenote: I can’t deny this might be the exact reason development is so slow! Compared to Blizzard’s annual revenue on subscriptions, ArenaNet is solely reliant on Gem Store purchases as a way to draw income from the active playerbase. In the end, it is their responsibility to realistic goals within their business plan and I think that is what they’ve been doing, but it doesn’t allow for the kind of growth we want.)

From the outside – prerelease promotion included – Guild Wars 2 looked like a promising MMO that would outlast competitors. Offering unique and rich features for a diverse playerbase: PVE, SPVP and WvW. In reality, it simply cannot compete with contemporaries and is lacking in both new content and patching for balance, etc.

To me, it seems like one group of people developed the core game mechanics and upon release only a handful of people were left to maintain and shape the world the others had created.

tl;dr – Consider the following: not only the SPvP department is understaffed and therefore incapable of producing content that meets expectations, PVE and WvW playerbase feels exactly the same way. ArenaNet simply has no finances or no vision to develop the great videogame they released one year ago. Their aim is mediocrity, the lowest common denominator, the casual player, …

@MonMalthias , proposing that ANet needs to throw more resources into SPvP is not a suggestion and it’s not even half the solution.
One problem is that the devs have mistaked priorities in order to make this game an “e-sport”.

If you want to go e-sport you don’t host tournaments without fixing basic bugs first(like the runes,traits and skills) ,that have been out for a year, and achieving a primary balance.

If the base is not stable you can’t build on it.
Fix the base and build afterwards, pretty simple.

We as the community do not drive HR or whatever department.
That is wrong in so many ways, you have to acknowledge the power of the community and the power of the people like Helseth.

We had a public outcry yesterday about the forum moderators deleting posts , because they deleted a single -pro player- post and that forced developers to come out of their shells and start answering on the forum.

Now take that and imagine:
What would happen if a few big teams and streamers made an announcement together saying that if the president of ANet, -or NCSoft-, or whoever is handling the resources, doesn’t give MORE to the SPvP then we quit.
Really, WHAT would happen then?

I hope what I’m saying is clear ‘cause I’m very tired and I can hardly type, keep on discussing.

@natsos:
I’m not sure what the reaction would be if there was a big enough protest by the community to be honest, given this reaction by Jonathan Sharp in the context of Xeph announcing his intention to quit:

JonathanSharp.7094:

See you Xeph! It’s always been a pleasure watching you play and listening to your ideas!

Good luck in whatever you decide to do next in life!

The response sounds relatively neutral and good-willed – whilst developers – Jonathan Sharp included – have gone on record claiming that PvP population is growing and that it is significant.

There is thread after thread and post after post on this forum bringing up the same issues over and over -

• broken matchmaking that puts top players against unranked players ,
• broken leaderboards ,
• broken map randomisation that favours Temple of the Silent Storm , (acknowledged 3 weeks ago, no word)
• matches starting despite not having a full roster.
• PvP rank not indicative of anything except the length of time farming hotjoins; whilst the rank up curve forces grind
• rank points and reward system being, well, unrewarding

And whilst developers have acknowledged these issues, there have been no:

• roadmaps of changes moving forward
• patch previews regarding balance changes (most egregious)

I will say one thing that has been heartening, and that is the recent change in developer participation in the PvP forums. I can only hope that Xeph’s leaving catalysed a change in attitude strong enough to ensure that this continues such that other top players are less inclined to follow his path.

Take home talking points:

• Whilst engagement with the PvP community has increased as of late, developers remain relatively tightlipped and vague regarding upcoming balance changes.
• This does not help the community perception that the PvP team is opaque, slow, and pushes out half-baked changes and scene releases
• I believe that if nothing else is done and considered ; that as a bare minimum there should be bi-weekly fixes to Sigils and Runes and tooltip fixes to avoid the perception that the team is sitting on their hands

Lastly,

• The style of engagement the developers have with the community on the PvP side needs to change. If PvE is to receive patch previews , so should the PvP scene regarding balance changes . Roadmaps to PvP scene releases should be considered so that the community can discuss ETAs.

I agree wholeheartedly with Helseth.

I’m still playing because the combat system is fun, nothing more.

So I’ve been reading a few concerning posts of late, one theme that really concerns me due to the plausibility is the following:

They (Anet) would rather dangle a carrot to entice newer players to the game, than fix the massive and glaring issues to retain older players.

Personally I’m of the opinion that if they do care about veteran players, many of us having been involved since beta, they would put a hold on pumping out temporary content and make a serious 6 – 12 month long effort to address and improve upon the core of the game. Fix as many bugs as possible, hire enough developers to balance every profession, add features, depth and quality of life improvements and once the game is at a good place, then start adding more content.

I honestly don’t give a kitten about carebears complaining if they don’t get new content to consume, those of us who spend the majority of our time pvp’ing in either sPVP or WvW have dealt with the lack of content and improvements since release.

Truthfully players just need to give up on PvP getting any major revamps. Every patch from launch to now was progressively smaller and minor. Yea they added a bunch of passive skills and heals that tried to draw you into PvE, but they advertised sPvP to be separate from all that so the contradiction itself shows that Anet just wants people to abandon PvP for PvE and WvW.

I’ve played from launch and I’ve basically quit, aside from a couple of matches every few days just to pass an hour. Just like everyone else, I had high hopes for this game, but when you see the hardcore players leave and there’s nothing Anet is doing to try to retain its most loyal players, you get the feeling that they don’t care. They do just enough to shut everyone up, but the game itself is broken so patches aren’t gonna cut it. NCSoft probably thought that sPvP was a one time investment with minor tweaks after launch, but they launched a bad game and they didn’t want to throw anymore at it to fix it because it’s B2P. So the devs probably got shortchanged too because they lack resources to do anything other than redesign the same maps to make us think we’re getting something new.

I feel that the PvP development threads are just for them to take notes for an expansion. I honestly don’t think they’ll put any more effort in PvP development. There won’t be new maps, no new game modes, nothing. Because if there was something in the pipeline, they would announce it to get the players excited, but all you see is stalling and things being ignored or swept under a rug. Would I pay for an expansion? That depends on whether the next team of devs are open, honest, and transparent about what they’re planning and working on. And I would definitely wait at least 3-6 months after launch to see if the game is worth buying.

i love pvping but the majority of ppl are pve er.
it’s a good move for them to feed pve er…

Maps are all full a lot of over flow ….. i’m guessing there are around thousand of ppl doing it all day all night unlike spvp i face the same face over over half of time ….

maybe stop ur elitism and trash talk to make the community looking nicer a little bit. so there may be more ppl.

too long didn’t bother to read, if you’re quitting, bai.

Necro threads OP, please nerf

Although transcribed, I’ve also been around since closed beta, mainly focused on sPvP, the changes that have been made and optimizations that have passed since launch lets say, are absolute minimal.

From a business perspective I understand the playerbase is simply to small in this game’s PvP for the funding company to be a priority, but PvP does not work like PvE, the player base is more demanding and moves to something else faster.

I took a 6 month hiatus, when I came back I see a Solo-Q split from Team-Q, something that was LONG overdue.

So I jumped in, 2 days of playing and you find yourself in the top 150….seriously? Leaderboards still that poor? Its clear it still does not have a proper rating system attached and its still to volatile to be recognized as a leaderboard.

Balance wise it got slightly better, in 10 months, SLIGHTLY. I was glad to run into a few names I recognized in the 6v6 GvG on my 1st day back…

But it saddens me to see the stream was excited with a meager 600 people watching… come on people, Path of Exile, an extremely repetitive game has streams of 2k players watching someone do the same mindless buttonmash 3000000x and still watch.

Clearly the meta is unappealing in GW2 to watch and the playerbase much to low to become a priority, but the player will not increase, actually it will only decrease, untill the dev’s have the fundamental basics right, which since open beta have been discussed with the teams back then, like team curse (paradigm) and others, still some things from those suggestions that where recognized have not yet been implemented.

Has the gameplay improved in the last 10 months…not really, the meta shifted slightly, the skills are still NOT 100% split form PvE/WvW, which is an absolute must if they wanna get serious about their PvP.

All in All, improvement was made, but it took way WAY to long, and maybe in 1 year from now it will start to be close to the point it should have been at launch!

Anyways, just my 2 cents

EDIT: Why the hell is a map like Skyhammer even in the map rotation btw? Who was the genius behind that broken map? Fun map yes, Tourney map…not in a million years