Guild Wars 2

kito.1827:

Allie Murdock.8152:

… but our active numbers are much, much bigger than that.

care to share the active numbers?

very curious….

“…much, much bigger than that.” Google translate says, “A LOT”

I’ve started having better luck winning Skyhammer matches in soloQ now that I exclusively run a class/build (specifically designed for that map) that helps me take advantage of the gimicky nature of the map, namely knockbacks and pulls to make people fall to their death. In spite of increasing my winning % on this map, I hate the map, I hate the gimicks, and almost everyone I speak with about it hates it too. Please remove Skyhammer from the soloQ, or give us the option to skip such matches.

I think the Allie should have put this at the top of the thread; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9q70zCJYBc

Allie Murdock.8152:

Nope, it’s much, much higher than that. We have real metrics to observe these things.

edit: I’ve talked to a lot of people personally, and the feelings are mixed. I’d say it’s actually close to 50/50. Regardless, talking to random people is not a real metric for the consensus of the playerbase.

Look, we know how passionate some of you feel about this, which is why I’m talking to you about it and why we’re looking into options for what we can do.

OK, let’s assume the breakdown is really 50/50.

How is that an acceptable measure of quality?
You introduced some new gameplay, whether it be a new living story event, new PvP map, new WvW map – whathaveyou – and 50% of the playerbase don’t like it, and that’s considered “good”?

That cannot be the standard of quality ANet is striving for.

“Well this new feature will probably make half the players happy, and kitten off the other half?”
“Half? Wow – let’s ship it!”

That’s silliness.

Have you guys performed a root cause analysis of why people don’t care for Skyhammer? Because I can tell you right now: falling.

The falling mechanic in Skyhammer places an extremely high weight on stability and knockdown/knockback mechanics.
These mechanics were originally designed around the concept of pushing players off a capture point.

Not all professions were designed equally around access to stability and knockbacks. This makes certain builds/professions vastly more powerful than others.

But you guys know this. You know Skyhammer isn’t good for competitive play – otherwise it would already be in the tPvP rotation, which it is not.

Why not just fix the map:
– remove glass panels around nodes
– add retainer walls around nodes (prevent knocking off side)
– Move the cannon over the main map
– lower the altitude of the cannon so that knocking a player off drops them on the main map, but they receive falling damage (unless they spec into reduced falling damage – a-ha! a use for those fall damage traits!)
– give the cannon 2 firing modes:
– firing mode one: low damage, node-sized reticle with aoe knockback (dodgeable), slow charge, low cooldown
– firing mode 2: small (~240m-ish) sized reticle with insta-kill damage (undodgeable), fast charge, long cooldown

Two firing modes makes for more strategic gameplay – you can help a team clear a node, and if you coordinate stuns / roots, you can use the cannon to insta-gib a player