Guild Wars 2

Mister Mustard.7203:

SuperHaze.4210:

Baldric.6781:

If they separate premade and solo, with this player population, queues will become an issue again… Honestly, I don’t think there is any way to save gw2 spvp, leaderboards may make come back some players, but that’s about it.
No more than 10% of gw2 gamers play spvp, it’s a failure, a bad investment. If I were some kind of Arena.net boss i will do the same, keep promising and keep some dudes working on it, so this 10% of gamers stick around, atleast for some time, and anyways, they won’t probably leave, they endured months and months, they are true believers.

I’m starting to get that feeling too where Anet and NCSoft are trying to actually get rid of sPvP and focus solely on PvE and WvWvW. It would make sense that they would want to promote W3 as their sole PvP offering so that players have to PvE and grind in order to PvP. PvE is where all the money’s at.

It’s never in any business’ interest to intentionally force the market where they don’t want to go. It’s simply insane to suggest any company would intentionally dump on any meaningful percentage of its clients (and even if it were only 10%, that is a lot of possible revenue). They want more players, period. In all aspects of the game. People enjoying the game is what brings in revenue, not specific play styles.

I know it’s mostly overreaction and hyperbole, but for any of you who read this and really think ANET is “out to get” your preferred class or method of playing, you need to get a handle on your emotions and try using your noggin’.

If pvpers were so important but generate the least amount of money, why would they dedicate the fewest resources to this segment of the game? There’s always a new event for pve players, but they are still trying to fix the problems in pvp. If I were to look at it in a business perspective, it would then make sense to follow WoW’s model of forcing players to pve in order to pvp, which is what W3 is. Actions speak louder than words and the only actions I see are geared towards the segment of players that pay more into the game.

Believe me, I wouldn’t mind having to pay a sub to pvp because I love the pvp mechanics of this game; but after 8 months of bugs, minor updates, and lack of communication from Anet, it just seems like they’re trying to either stall until the next expansion or try to get pvpers to just jump into the pve world and pvp in W3. Laurels don’t mean a thing to me, but they give them to me so that maybe I’ll level one of my 5 lvl 2 toons.

SuperHaze.4210:

There’s always a new event for pve players, but they are still trying to fix the problems in pvp.

Designing a map or fancy mario platform is something done with pre-coded, fully functioning mod tools that were made with the engine. This work, which is the majority of what PvE updates are, is not done by programmers but by designers using the already available tools made by the programmers before the game launched. There is no doubt that the staff of these projects is large, creative and love what they do, but its a poor comparison I see made far too often.

WvW’s culling issue was a game-rendering change on the client side of the connection-dance, this is a coding undertaking not a designer undertaking. This can work easily or it can take months to work out, it can take one engineer or thirty. Designing maps for WvW/PvP is not like designing maps for PvE, balance is immaterial in PvE it is not so in WvW/PvP and so it takes marketably longer to do this.

PvP’s promised features have almost all been programming related ones (aside from their resistance to game modes) and new maps fall into the above mentioned. The comparison is faulty therein. Balancing being slow is a bit of a different issue as they are trying to follow a “slow but steady” approach but I think its time they just slapped some classes around for the better of the meta.

tl;dr: Design oriented additions can be solved by throwing more people at the problem. Coding/programming additions rarely if ever work out this way and throwing more people at the problem is rarely a good idea.

The rule of coding:

• On time
• On budget
• Bug free

Pick one, maybe two if you’re really good.

Vena.8436:

SuperHaze.4210:

There’s always a new event for pve players, but they are still trying to fix the problems in pvp.

The rule of coding:

• On time
• On budget
• Bug free

Pick one, maybe two if you’re really good.

The general consensus is that pvp is incomplete. With that being said, Anet should’ve never released the game and extend the beta until most of the problems have been addressed. They were able to make changes to skills, utilities, etc. during the betas (which not very long). So if it was a programming issue that prevented them from adding pvp features, at the very least they could’ve addressed the bugs in the game. But there are still bugged skills/utilities AND there are no significant additions to pvp features. How much longer do they expect players to wait? I think most pvp players have waited long enough.

SuperHaze.4210:

The general consensus is that pvp is incomplete. With that being said, Anet should’ve never released the game and extend the beta until most of the problems have been addressed. They were able to make changes to skills, utilities, etc. during the betas (which not very long). So if it was a programming issue that prevented them from adding pvp features, at the very least they could’ve addressed the bugs in the game. But there are still bugged skills/utilities AND there are no significant additions to pvp features. How much longer do they expect players to wait? I think most pvp players have waited long enough.

In theory this sort of logic could leave a game in beta forever, but there’s also the fact that ANet has others to answer to and if they say “Release it!” they have little choice but to comply. I don’t doubt that that, if anything, had a lot to do with the release and its timing just before the holiday season… and NCSoft’s then struggling NA sector.

Ya it launched broken… that’s the story in the end. But my point was in regards to the comparisons between PvE and PvP/WvW content which many people make without realizing the err in such comparisons.

Vena.8436:

Ya it launched broken… that’s the story in the end. But my point was in regards to the comparisons between PvE and PvP/WvW content which many people make without realizing the err in such comparisons.

WvW is grouped with PVE because it requires you to level a toon and grind for gear in order to successfully play in that world. Which means that Anet wants you to level a toon and maybe spend money in their cash shop. It’s not a format for the sPvP and tourney players because of that. What Anet touted as true pvp/esports is in the sPvP side of the game where the lack of updates and features have made a portion of their customers frustrated and disappointed. At the same time, sPvP and tourney don’t generate any money for them; so they won’t dedicate time and resources to pvp development. They seem to be stalling until they can figure out a way to make money off the the pvp-only players. If they can’t, they’ll feed us just enough until the next expansion where they will implement all the features that were promised in addition to implementing a system that will try to get us to spend more in the cash shop (i.e custom arenas). As cynical as that may sound, it’s business.

Now we know that leaderboards were neither in the last patch or “almost” ready to be “switched on” within a week (lol) how does this make you feel about the last patch.

Personally it makes me mad for a few reasons:

1, This was another patch with nothing for pvp. So in “feburary/march big pvp patch” all we got was the most unbalanced map ever (spirit watch). Nothing else at all. Literally nothing. Even in the pvp themed patch we get f all.

2, They knew people would be mad about having nothing again for pvp so they made sure leaderboards was in the patch notes even though it doesnt exist and still doesnt even exist and we are almost half way to the next patch.

3, Balance again nothing changed except they nerfed strong builds in classes which werent meta defining:
- The only viable warrior build at a decent level – 100b – got deleted (you can still do well with a warrior but now it really is weak. Before it was ok)
- Thief builds besides the d/p bs build were made worse
- By far the best necro build was destroyed by nerfing the main skill used (epidemic) with no changes to its cast time or anything.
- Engi 100 nades build (gimmicky though) was nerfed although they still have one of the strongest builds in the game

And yet the things which actually define the meta (rtl/mist form) were left untouched. Bizarre. It is like the balance team has some imaginary meta where everyone is running around as minion necros or signet warriors.

People who say we should be patient and happy to wait are crazy. It has been a year since beta and no new features? Not only that but they went on a marketing drive to say feb/march would be big times for pvp. And what have we got? Literally nothing. They supposedly were working all last year on things which would be ready early this year. That was clearly a lie to the pvp community. Then these laughable leaderboards. The ones which dont exist and they just put in the patch notes to trick us all into thinking maybe pvp does get some love.

This ^

1st they said leaderboards were coming on february.

• delayed without any official information.

Then they said leaderboards would come on march

• Were delayed too.

My random thoughts:

They deceived us so many times that now, for me, it’s impossible to trust Anet anymore. Trust is something you have to earn, and when you lose it, you can only recover it working very hard. Instead, they announce invisible leaderboards that probably don’t exist at all. If they worked internally we would have seen a picture. Maybe we could have bought the game with invisible money too.

I have deffended this pvp since release and I have done my best to promote it. Not as an esport (this word makes me laugh every time I see it in the same sentence as GW2) but as an enjoyable pvp experience.

However, when you look at pve, all features are visible and every patch implements something relevant. I don’t know what happened but the management of GW2 pvp is poor.

This game could have become the biggest PvP experience in the last years, but whoever puts the money chose to make another safe money pve game. It’s too bad, because the manifesto gave the impression Anet was a brave company.

I’m not angry nor raging, I’m just sad about this situation. At this point, when my friends ask me why am I still playing this game I don’t know what to answer.

Rerroll.9083:

This ^

1st they said leaderboards on february.

• They didnt come

Then they said leaderboards on march

• They didnt come either

How can we trust them?

Many people came back to gw2 expecting the leaderboards. If they leave again there won’t be a “next time”

Yeh, in the last week or so there have been more decent teams than I have seen in months. People did come back. And it has made for some very fun games. Sometimes these teams stomp us, sometimes we stomp them, but often it is close. Of course stompings happen even between good teams because sometimes 1 team plays really bad or gets really unlucky but at least on the whole the games I have had recently have been very fun indeed. These people will quit soon without leaderboards!

That was my first thought when I’ve read about the invisibility of the leaderboards at first. :/

Not going to lie Im feeling it a bit too…i felt like all last year that feb / march would be the time we start seeing some major advancements in pvp at the very latest now I am honestly doubting all the staples needed for any pvp aspect of a game won’t even be here by october november ish….Its frustrating because if they devoted some time to it they could make it worth while to come back to….this is THE game to quit leave and come back without a sub fee all those that have left can easily return….its just annoying that ( imo ) the higher up decision makers of the company dont feel the pvp side of it would be worth it….thus making the pvp developers etc extremely short changed ( aka 2 people to balance 8 classes etc )….

Getting more and more kitten off with ncsoft and its anet corporate scum which DOESNT include the developers that we talk to…I honestly believe they are still being held back my corporate decisions.

It is ok from my point of view that they removed some builds from the game but I do not understand why they removed the builds from the weak classes and the OP classes are untouched.

Leaderboard and spec-mode would help pvp to get more and new players.

i wonder what is the reason of those delays in spvp …..i don’t believe that they are that bad ,or that it is so hard to make those important chages live………
if u don’t know what is all about ,it ’s about money……
they are playing with us like toys……

Anet is revolutionizing the mmo industry.

claim a feature is in the game but just invisible to players while they tweak it.
gives the players hope that it’s actually complete
gives devs infinte time to actually create it

To be honest, I agree with those who say that they are playing with us. They can’t be that bad at their jobs. If they were, Anet wouldn’t have employed them in the first place, and even if they had by mistake, they would have fired them as quick as possible and replace them with competent people.

This is just how MMO are designed, they are released half way done, and the goal for the devs is to make huge promesses about unreachable goals and slowly work towards them so that we can all follow like sheeps waiting for every tiny bit of progress they can give us every month. That way, instead of having a game with a life expectancy of a few dozens of hours tops like every “normal” game, you get a game with a life expectancy of a couple of years, with a decent pool of players playing it.

If they had given us what we have been asking for since the beginning, we would have played hardcore for a couple of months tops, then we would have moved on.

Now…let’s hope they activate ’em tonight.

There is not point in leader boards with all the cheese that goes on scaling of bunker stats, all stealth classes with free revives. Untill these problems are fixed there is no point in leader boards.

Thesilentflute.8761:

There is not point in leader boards with all the cheese that goes on scaling of bunker stats, all stealth classes with free revives. Untill these problems are fixed there is no point in leader boards.

I agree with you, balance if far more important but adding features like leaderboards, spectator mode, and even new things like arenas is a good way to keep people actually in PvP

I’ve been playing since beta and hoping and waiting for them to give some love to PvP. After all the talk of breaking the holy trinity I am fed up of tanks and point domination.

As soon as anything remotely playable (mmorpg) comes along I will jump ship. I also refuse to spend ANY money with them in their shop for the fact that they’ve failed to deliver.

In WoW I had bought all pets/spent loads and was happy to! (tbc/wtlk). I would be happy to pay if Anet would stop short changing me.

can somebody of the officials confirm that anet gonna use glicko 2 rating system for pvp leaderboards ?

TGSlasher.1458:

@SuperHaze, you have 5 lvl 2 toons. Why didn’t you just skip the tutorial and have 5 lvl 1 toons.

lol I just took the extra step and accepted the quest reward for the intro quest.

I hope now that all pvpers understand that since pvp has a low population and doesn’t generate much money for Anet, they won’t put any effort into major pvp development. Like I said on the main leaderboard post, it would make sense for Anet from a business standpoint to give us just enough to show that they’re doing something, but stall us until the next expansion where they’ll implement all of the features that we’re waiting on, while being able to implement a way to make money off of pvpers (i.e. custom arenas, more cash shop offerings, etc.).

i do understand why they never come out with dates. just think of this: nobody told us that leaderboards are implemented a week after patch – they just mentioned it could be about a week (read the update notes – no date at all).
and now here we are, everyone complaining why it isn’t already there and kitten and numbers.

just relax guys

@devs: i didn’t get for what to stabilize you are waiting – a short explanation?

Lol fubar failed to deliver do you remember how wow was you should head back for a week and check it out for a reminder. I am very happy with what they deliverd

Epidemic was not a nerf it was a fix…

I was happy for new invisible leaderboards, lets hope they add more invisible pvp modes as swiftly as they added everything else in pvp, since conquest is one of the most boring pvp scenarios…

“The leaderboards website won’t be visible to players until we’re sure it has stable information, which could take up to a week after the release goes live on March 26.”
This is from their releases website. So they implied a deadline.

they gave a time frame, not a deadline. have some patience and dry your eye’s people.

Was the bug invisible as well?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

You know that it sound now like a bad excuse……it was a fail to fix a deadline, but it was a bigger one to not say anything to the community.

(Sorry for my english, i know that it sux, but i think you know what i mean.)

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

You are still working on it. Ok, thats good enough for now. I’ve already critized enough stuff , im happy with little improvements. :> But still, you are a bit late with that info.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

Thank you Jon! This explanation is appreciated and will hopefully calm everyone down a little bit. I highly recommend making a sticky with this simply explanation so people stop asking about it. It’ll go a long way man in terms of PR….

I should also point out that ya’ll could have just simply come out and said all of this on Monday.

Any reasonable person would’ve accepted your explanation and moved on. Silence on these matters tends to make this community seem even more underappreciated than it already is……..

Anvi.1802:

To be honest, I agree with those who say that they are playing with us. They can’t be that bad at their jobs. If they were, Anet wouldn’t have employed them in the first place, and even if they had by mistake, they would have fired them as quick as possible and replace them with competent people.

This is just how MMO are designed, they are released half way done, and the goal for the devs is to make huge promesses about unreachable goals and slowly work towards them so that we can all follow like sheeps waiting for every tiny bit of progress they can give us every month. That way, instead of having a game with a life expectancy of a few dozens of hours tops like every “normal” game, you get a game with a life expectancy of a couple of years, with a decent pool of players playing it.

To a degree.

Anet went past that and then some.
The game’s PvP was worse and more dead, faster than any other game I’ve played. Like after a year they are struggling to have enough people SPvP’ing to get flaming 10 man instances to pop.

Anvi.1802:

If they had given us what we have been asking for since the beginning, we would have played hardcore for a couple of months tops, then we would have moved on.

Good PvP games don’t really die for over a decade. I mean die, as in where GW2 is at after like most of a year.

I played WAR, most months, for 4~ years just because it was a good game. The promises GW2 made, just the basics to the game, if decently well done, would have made it great in comparison.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

Is this the reason match making turned to kitten?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

so the bug is fixed but their still invisible? got it.

This is why they can never give us dates. They said, if we give you a timeline and run into delays, it will be worse than just saying soon. And you guys are proving em right. The reason they cant communicate more detailed timelines (even if they might be open to revision) is because of stuff like this.

DELAYS HAPPEN. ALL THE TIME.
Not to say im not frustrated, I wish they made some of this stuff in pvp a priority, but they are not lying to us.

daydream.2938:

This is why they can never give us dates. They said, if we give you a timeline and run into delays, it will be worse than just saying soon. And you guys are proving em right. The reason they cant communicate more detailed timelines (even if they might be open to revision) is because of stuff like this.

DELAYS HAPPEN. ALL THE TIME.
Not to say im not frustrated, I wish they made some of this stuff in pvp a priority, but they are not lying to us.

if they told us why things were delayed when they first knew about it they wouldnt be having this problem.

so any idea for the release date?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

See Jon! Until you guys make a “official” announcement on what the status is on leaderboards, people are going to keep asking!

Yes, it makes yall look bad when ya miss a deadline. Stuff happens. But it makes yall look worse when you guys refuse to even announce: “yes, there is a delay. Here is why. SORRY”.

ArenaNet left us guessing until yesterday when Martin finally gave us something! Leaving the community guessing for another week just wont make things go any better…….

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

Ah I understand the confusion. My name showed as #1 cuz I’m the best around, this was no bug.

JonathanSharp.7094:

produde.8092:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

This sounds like you already fixed the bug, does hat mean you just keep watching leaderboards until they seem fine or is there another issue?

Yep, we watch them, make sure stuff is fine, then we bring them out.

So.. is stuff fine, do you guys have an ETA?
Edit: We’re not asking for ETA to burn you on the stake if it doesn’t happen, it’s just something that we’re genuinely interested in and it would put us at ease to have this info. I think the reason everybody blew up the other day is because there was a clear lack of communication. You have to understand if you said “sorry we found a bug and it’s gonna be delayed a little more” people would be understanding.

Jonathan, show us the picture of leaderboard. Is it real or like invisible invisible?

This seems like a feature that could be released with a few bugs. It’s only information, and 99% correct information is better than 0%.

How bad could the bugs be? Not showing up? Showing up in the wrong place? It’s not like gameplay is at stake here.

Seems like the PR damage would be less if you just let us see what you see and tell everyone it’s a work in progress. Worst case scenario the few accounts with issues would be mad… as it is, everyone is mad.

Even if my account was affected I wouldn’t want to hold back the rest of the community. Just send me a mail saying “we removed you, sorry, bug fix coming.” I’d be getting the leaderboards at the same time either way, and I’d benefit from the community refresh a major feature release has.

I don’t think it’s a community expectation issue – the feature was officially announced with the phrase “up to a week.” Putting aside the idea of releasing an announcement instead of a feature, Anet still missed the deadline it put for itself.

JonathanSharp.7094:

produde.8092:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Basically what happened: We were watching the leader boards and saw a bug crop up with a small # of accounts. We held leader boards while we fixed the bug.

This sounds like you already fixed the bug, does hat mean you just keep watching leaderboards until they seem fine or is there another issue?

Yep, we watch them, make sure stuff is fine, then we bring them out.

Meanwhile, the community sits and waits and asks “What’s going, why haven’t we seen the leaderboards? Do they even exist? Are they feeding us a bunch of empty promises AGAIN?” And then 5 days go by and the REAL worrying starts……….

How does this style really help keep the PVP community strong? Missing a few deadlines but being a lot more forthcoming about what is going on would probably work a lot better than the current strategy of releasing practically nothing and saying even less……

Oh well, thanks for giving us what explanations ya could Jon. People are just going to have to take them and accept that ya cant say much more I guess.

Oareo.1604:

This seems like a feature that could be released with a few bugs. It’s only information, and 99% correct information is better than 0%.

How bad could the bugs be? Not showing up? Showing up in the wrong place? It’s not like gameplay is at stake here.

Seems like the PR damage would be less if you just let us see what you see and tell everyone it’s a work in progress. Worst case scenario the few accounts with issues would be mad… as it is, everyone is mad.

Even if my account was affected I wouldn’t want to hold back the rest of the community. Just send me a mail saying “we removed you, sorry, bug fix coming.” I’d be getting the leaderboards at the same time either way, and I’d benefit from the community refresh a major feature release has.

I don’t think it’s a community expectation issue – the feature was officially announced with the phrase “up to a week.” Putting aside the idea of releasing an announcement instead of a feature, Anet still missed the deadline it put for itself.

I don’t even care that they missed the deadline. Crap happens, Ive missed deadlines before. We all have.

I care that those in charge thought so little of the PVP community to even tell us why the heck they missed the deadline until now…….STILL no official word. Just a few devs who actually appreciate the community theyre trying to grow coming on and telling us what they can in their spare time.

And it takes only a few minutes to let us know. Many of us would appreciate the little time spent on communication.

Why do we not have a PvP-related Dev-Tracker ? :/

The whole mantra of “Soon” is to manage player expectations. “Soon” implies that if you tell players something specific, and change it later, it’s worse than if you hadn’t said anything at all.

They broke their own rule by telling us when to expect the feature. If their policy was one of openness, we would all be very understanding of a missed deadline because we are on the inside. We’d have information as soon as it is available, so we wouldn’t be desperate for anything to revitalize the community. Because we deal with “Soon” we expect announcements to be concrete – that’s what we’re getting for our lack of information.

As it stands, we have the worst of both worlds. Most of the time, they tell us nothing, under the guise of protecting us. When they do will tell us something concrete, we assume all the waiting meant it will actually happen. When it doesn’t, the community gets upset and they use our reaction as fuel to reinforce “Soon” in the future.

Oareo.1604:

The whole mantra of “Soon” is to manage player expectations. “Soon” implies that if you tell players something specific, and change it later, it’s worse than if you hadn’t said anything at all.

They broke their own rule by telling us when to expect the feature. If their policy was one of openness, we would all be very understanding of a missed deadline because we are on the inside. We’d have information as soon as it is available, so we wouldn’t be desperate for anything to revitalize the community. Because we deal with “Soon” we expect announcements to be concrete – that’s what we’re getting for our lack of information.

As it stands, we have the worst of both worlds. Most of the time, they tell us nothing, under the guise of protecting us. When they do will tell us something concrete, we assume all the waiting meant it will actually happen. When it doesn’t, the community gets upset and they use our reaction as fuel to reinforce “Soon” in the future.

I agree. Transparency is really needed. It takes courage but it is worth it in the long run cause the playerbase can help the game grow. And coupled with missing communication when it is neccessary…really a lot of fuel going around. :/

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
Leaderboards
We’re pleased to announce that Guild Wars 2 leaderboards begin recording data on March 26th.
Initially, the leaderboards will feature WvW rankings, PvP player rankings, and total achievement points—something for all player types in GW2.
As of March 26th, your existing scores will silently be posted to the leaderboards while we watch for the top leaders to stabilize. These scores will take into account some of your past accomplishments/rating.
Once stable, we will display the leaderboards for players. We currently don’t have an exact date for leaderboard public release.

Hmmm this would seem to contradict this spurious notion of a deadline.

Oh you gamers! Such active imaginations! (and tear ducts for that matter)

Chill guys. It’ll be here soon enough. In the meantime stop ruining what little communication we have by belittling, mocking, and criticizing the few responses we get from the devs. You’re doing more harm than good.