Guild Wars 2

*I feel like this is already being touched on somewhere but I dont/havent checked the forums so Ill post this thread anyway, nobody whine about that please

Who thought that would be a good idea? Making a viable build is half the battle, now we’ve got people with the ability to become cookie cutters and take a trait trees just like that. This isnt good for pvp, were gonna end up with a bunch of copies running around.

well, if you don’t want people to see your precious builds that are so good and you are the only one that had the right Idea, then don’t allow spectators.

Revealing your playstyle, builds etc. is just a part of games like that.

PowerBottom.5796:

well, if you don’t want people to see your precious builds that are so good and you are the only one that had the right Idea, then don’t allow spectators.

Revealing your playstyle, builds etc. is just a part of games like that.

Dont matter its an issue of privacy, and theres only 3 servers right now disabling spectators why should I be the one sticking to 3 servers?

Gotta put a privacy setting on that

Why do you people have to make 50 threads about the same thing? Like one wasn’t enough.

Lol, you make it sound like you can even be diverse with your build.

Why not? I could care less, if anything I want people to see my build this helps them give me a good fight, I don’t want to upper hand because this means I didn’t out play the person, It means I only won because of the class not my skill.

Am am always willing to help players fine toon there build to better give me the challenge I seek, hiding a build because you think it give you the edge is cheap and lacks honor, like exploiting a boss fight just to win.

I have nothing to hide if someone want to fight me and learn how to become better or to counter me I will gladly tell them what I think might work, this to me makes the game fun.

I can’t believe anyone is concerned about making sure their build is kept super secret in a game where character building is as simplistic as this. It’s extremely easy to tell what skills a player has equipped just by fighting them for a about a minute, and given the skills they are using you’re down to two maybe three different trait set-ups that are actually viable, not to mention you can already see a lot of the traits they are using through fighting them also. Sigils and runes are just as easy to reverse engineer. Now if you were talking about character building in Path of Exile, I might take you more seriously.

if u r really that good u would not mind if other people saw your build.

Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that we are in fact playing Guild Wars and not Build Wars.

um…isnt there an option for creating a custom server that says " disable trait inspection " or somethign similiar? thus problem is with custom arena owners not anet?

Vision.3541:

*I feel like this is already being touched on somewhere but I dont/havent checked the forums so Ill post this thread anyway, nobody whine about that please

Who thought that would be a good idea? Making a viable build is half the battle, now we’ve got people with the ability to become cookie cutters and take a trait trees just like that. This isnt good for pvp, were gonna end up with a bunch of copies running around.

Someone is afraid of some competition..

Considering that spectating builds is only available in hotjoin i dont see it being an issue. If it were tournament i can at least imagine maybe someone would enter spectator and feed the other team information but for hotjoin no way.

Id like to quote another user on these forums which sums up this ridiculous whining about not being to hide builds.

zone.1073:

Education is key to building a competitive PvP community.

Besides, true skill is displayed through excellent performance in gameplay, not through the ignorance of the opponent. There is no reason to keep secrets.

I like it, and if ppl want to try it let them. Maybe they dont know the rotation with the skills.

Vision.3541:

*I feel like this is already being touched on somewhere but I dont/havent checked the forums so Ill post this thread anyway, nobody whine about that please

Who thought that would be a good idea? Making a viable build is half the battle, now we’ve got people with the ability to become cookie cutters and take a trait trees just like that. This isnt good for pvp, were gonna end up with a bunch of copies running around.

It’s exactly this “PK/duel” player mentality from open world PvP in other games that’s holding the competitive PvP back in this game. No notion of cross-profession balance, no way to know what you’re facing before you get roftstomped by insta-gib overpowered build, no sense of evolving meta or people constantly adapting to the current FOTM and creating counter-counter builds on the fly.

If anything, what is needed to fix broken professions and builds is complete transparency of all hosted matched in the hot-join lobby and tournaments, so even a top 50 player can’t hide behind a no-rank smurf account and think he’s great because competition hasn’t caught up to a 1000th game-breaking bug winning him a game.

Currently you can spectate random hot-join noobs or watch “elite” duke it out … except for the fact you only see what they want you to see, including misleading you on purpose and doing the grunt work with smurfs in a passworded game out of the prying eyes.

In the original game competition was very strong, because people strategised whole team builds and strategies in full knowledge of what kind of many viable builds and strategies they can face in their current skill bracket (GvG) or whole meta (HA, TA), but without strict knowledge of what build and strategy they will have to beat in the very next match. This was essentially the “strategic” approach you ask for, measuring risk whether to specialise team build to it’s full efficiency under the right conditions before entering a match (gamble), or take a safer approach and switch some skills out to a more general or counter-counter mindset (reduced risk), in anticipation of what the enemy will run. Except all of that existed with near-full transparency, thousands of players spectating championships, monthly tournaments, top games and top players almost real-time (there was a time delay before game went live to prevent observers feeding information).

In fact, many nerfs and overboard profession/skill changes were prevented, because transparent and highly-competitive meta allowed people to figure out a counter, before a blanket “build-killing” or “profession-killing” nerf was produced. And while it can be argued original game had it’s own balance problems with over 1000 skills, 10 professions, dual-profession system and many PvP formats with varying team sizes, I think the game did better in general when it comes to PvP simply because better principles and design to competition were implemented, both feature- and system-wise.

If you said in GW1 that at some point no sane person would take Dervish to HA or GvG, even total PvE noobs watching observer games out of boredom would concur if it were the case. Here, people running tournaments or PvP’ing at all are in tragic minority, and the “PvE lobbying block” doesn’t even have the tools to verify if profession X needs help in PvP, because they will just go the short road, see that it’s perfectly fine or overpowered in PvE/WvW and conclude that developers waste their time over nothing, caving to baseless demands and upsetting the PvE game balance or design.

There is also one more matter. Despite all that transparency in original game, you couldn’t just hover over someone and see their skills and item upgrades. However, there was a robust PvP community that would document and guess work strategies, item setups and skillbars (along with their variations across matches) when it came to top players and guilds. That information was community-policed and approved. Many top teams, guilds and players published their builds and team compositions for all people to see.

Here, not so much. You might be able to inspect a game or player of little consequence and be under the impression you’ve seen the Holy Grail, but in all actuality, you either wasted time in a noob game, or have been misled on purpose. On top of that, the silly notion some competitive teams hold in this game, that they would lose "competitive advantage" by sharing what they run with everyone or having others watch them, basically reeks of their own incompetence and displays just how LOW the level of competition is in this game.

This kind of thinking and player mentality is all too omni-present in all the other MMORPGs I played, with overly territorial guilds, unbalanced professions, broken perks and skills, bugs unfixed for ages (sounds familiar?) and gear grind to "get ahead" your actual skill curve. Original game was nothing like that. Here, I see the same ignorant concepts creep into the game, often with the very approval of it’s audience and own developers. Props to you, sir - if you win it’s mostly because of other team’s ignorance or broken balance in the game in a lottery basis of tournament matchmaking - your skill, as a factor of winning, comes last.

Complete transparency leads to better competitive play and a less scary game to get into for new players.

At Demosthene, couldn’t have said it better myself.

That people see a build and see how you play, does not mean they can make it work.

Copying a build is easy, learning how to play it and how to make it work, that’s the important part.

So even if you discover this awesome build for a class, for instance the HGH build, it does not mean by simply taking the traits and gears, you can play it. I’ve tried making over 50 different builds for my warrior now, looking at others, some work in tPvP some don’t, our problem is most builds are situational, I am looking for a lasting build. I know how i made the build and what the idea behind it is, just looking at traits and gear and sigils will not tell the spectator what the builds IDEA is, unless you tell them.

After that step, you gotta grow into the build and learn it.

But i could be wrong.

Everyone that likes this ability in spectator mode is just lame.
No it should not be an option. Half the reward of making a great build comes with the fact that it puts you ahead,sets you apart, and you learn the class better. Obviously, once customs come out of open betas this will not be an issue but I’m surprised the devs even let this be possible.
Competitive pvp is lost on every single one of you souls that thinks this should be allowed. No, this doesn’t increase the competition. In fact, it lowers it because people just don’t LEARN TO PLAY and actually get good. This is the reason why half the nerfs have been happening to classes. I never thought the ele was OP. A good mesmer can take an ele any day. Now both nerfed. HGH engies are next without a doubt. I already know how to counter them now anyway.

Yes, I’m whining but It is so frustrating that most of you disagree with OP. Jeez go learn to play instead of just profiting off other people’s effort…if you want to learn how someone plays…ask.
You shouldn’t just be allowed to figure out what they use.

Would you like it if someone just snooped in your room in order to figure out how you study/getgirls/makemoney?
It’s just a breaching of privacy. Whether they show you how or not should be entirely at their discretion.
If you want to learn from the best, simply ask and let them teach you. Don’t just take it. Observing people’s builds and taking them reeks of plagiarism and ill-gotten gains. I hate it and you should too. No I have nothing to fear of you taking my builds and upping the competition wouldn’t you want credit for an awesome build/notoriety for being “that crazy amazing engineer”/That person that worked hard to understand a build mechanic and certain trait synergies and used them effectively.
Yes it takes time for people to use a build right after they learn it but personally I don’t see why everyone should just bypass the time and effort investment. This makes me so mad. I hate it. 8==3
-Twindragona/Twingear/illusionary Rogoe/Skobeloff

Hotjoin is actually boring now because most players run with bad builds, those players are afraid to roam and just zerg up. I hope that spectating will show the newbies how they can become better. Everyone should have a chance to learn from the best.

KooB.6503:

Everyone that likes this ability in spectator mode is just lame.
No it should not be an option. Half the reward of making a great build comes with the fact that it puts you ahead,sets you apart, and you learn the class better. Obviously, once customs come out of open betas this will not be an issue but I’m surprised the devs even let this be possible.
Competitive pvp is lost on every single one of you souls that thinks this should be allowed. No, this doesn’t increase the competition. In fact, it lowers it because people just don’t LEARN TO PLAY and actually get good. This is the reason why half the nerfs have been happening to classes. I never thought the ele was OP. A good mesmer can take an ele any day. Now both nerfed. HGH engies are next without a doubt. I already know how to counter them now anyway.

Yes, I’m whining but It is so frustrating that most of you disagree with OP. Jeez go learn to play instead of just profiting off other people’s effort…if you want to learn how someone plays…ask.
You shouldn’t just be allowed to figure out what they use.

Would you like it if someone just snooped in your room in order to figure out how you study/getgirls/makemoney?
It’s just a breaching of privacy. Whether they show you how or not should be entirely at their discretion.
If you want to learn from the best, simply ask and observe. Don’t just take it. Isn’t this exactly what plagiarism is?
-Twindragona/Twingear/illusionary Rogoe/Skobeloff

Can’t believe you are trying to compare real life snooping to some spectator mode in a game that actually is allowed…..

Farzo.8410:

KooB.6503:

Everyone that likes this ability in spectator mode is just lame.
No it should not be an option. Half the reward of making a great build comes with the fact that it puts you ahead,sets you apart, and you learn the class better. Obviously, once customs come out of open betas this will not be an issue but I’m surprised the devs even let this be possible.
Competitive pvp is lost on every single one of you souls that thinks this should be allowed. No, this doesn’t increase the competition. In fact, it lowers it because people just don’t LEARN TO PLAY and actually get good. This is the reason why half the nerfs have been happening to classes. I never thought the ele was OP. A good mesmer can take an ele any day. Now both nerfed. HGH engies are next without a doubt. I already know how to counter them now anyway.

Yes, I’m whining but It is so frustrating that most of you disagree with OP. Jeez go learn to play instead of just profiting off other people’s effort…if you want to learn how someone plays…ask.
You shouldn’t just be allowed to figure out what they use.

Would you like it if someone just snooped in your room in order to figure out how you study/getgirls/makemoney?
It’s just a breaching of privacy. Whether they show you how or not should be entirely at their discretion.
If you want to learn from the best, simply ask and observe. Don’t just take it. Isn’t this exactly what plagiarism is?
-Twindragona/Twingear/illusionary Rogoe/Skobeloff

Can’t believe you are trying to compare real life snooping to some spectator mode in a game that actually is allowed…..

lol Ikr..but still it js bolsters the point I am trying to make. Also I need sleep.

Demosthene.2195:

Vision.3541:

*I feel like this is already being touched on somewhere but I dont/havent checked the forums so Ill post this thread anyway, nobody whine about that please

Who thought that would be a good idea? Making a viable build is half the battle, now we’ve got people with the ability to become cookie cutters and take a trait trees just like that. This isnt good for pvp, were gonna end up with a bunch of copies running around.

It’s exactly this “PK/duel” player mentality from open world PvP in other games that’s holding the competitive PvP back in this game. No notion of cross-profession balance, no way to know what you’re facing before you get roftstomped by insta-gib overpowered build, no sense of evolving meta or people constantly adapting to the current FOTM and creating counter-counter builds on the fly.

If anything, what is needed to fix broken professions and builds is complete transparency of all hosted matched in the hot-join lobby and tournaments, so even a top 50 player can’t hide behind a no-rank smurf account and think he’s great because competition hasn’t caught up to a 1000th game-breaking bug winning him a game.

<snip>

Good post but not sure I agree. Builds and team set ups become common knowledge relatively quickly regardless as to whether or not you can directly observe a players build when spectating a match. Transparency is fantastic, but given we are talking about a game in which builds do make an impact (and not an FPS), then bemoaning a player or team with a “secret sauce” build seems somewhat odd.

Furthermore there is nothing inherently wrong with a player or team working out a combination which is highly effective and original. It is up to the rest of the playerbase to try and catch up, or at least to try and work out what is happening.

As far as the balance/bug point goes. Well one would hope that the dev team actually knew what they where doing and was capable of balancing out the professions given they should have an intimate knowledge of how they work. True the playerbase will always find a way to eek out things which the devs missed or never intended, but with or without a spectator mode, these things get found out and reported/moaned about (and rightly so) quickly.

The issue is often that the dev team (not ANET per say, speaking of dev teams in general) then either takes forever to do anything about it, or the solution they propose is often worse than the original issue.

Yes a good level of transparency is beneficial. But no, I don’t think the option to turn off people in spectator mode looking at your build would suddenly diminish competition, nor is it purely something indicative of some kind of open world/pkr mindset.

A balanced approach then.

Assume, at some point in time, we have: weekly tournaments, monthly tournaments, yearly championships and sponsored tournaments.

Daily "tournaments" run just as they used to and grant Qualifier Points (QPs), and are invisible to people unless specifically shoutcasted by it’s players.

Weekly and monthly tournaments appear for everyone to see, with 24-hour delay. They’re the best community source to get to know e-sport scene better, current state of the game (balance wise) and bugs. This in turn allows for more social control and player-developer pressure, to implement innovative and necessary features, balance the game properly and patch bugs.

Yearly championships and sponsored tournaments are shoutcasted by professionals, direct game feed appears later in the game (2-3 weeks delay) in a special observer "library", for the sake of nostalgia, e-sport education among general populace and entertainment value. The "library" would also denote game’s version for every match, and complete profession/item balance with a pop-up for easy comparisons.

Custom games are totally definiable by players, but give no glory for participation unless they run on standard tournament or hot-join settings. Custom arena owner can choose to allow or disallow spectators, and allow or disallow "inspecting" of traits and items separately. This allows teams to practice in total secrecy before the next weekly, monthly or yearly tournament (championships).

Spectators do not take up place of players in the game, and it’s possible to join a live game directly as a spectator, as well as browse live hot-join and custom arena games in a special tab (very much like dota2’s replay system). Everyone can spectate and inspect in hot-join games.

Thoughts?

This is ridiculous. Being able to see other players builds encourages experimentation and innovation.

Much like how open source software encourages experimentation and innovation being able to copy other’s builds does the same.

While you may see a lot of the same builds pop up in the mid skill levels the higher skill levels will be forced to tweak and modify their builds to adapt to the cookie cutter builds. Top players don’t just sit around saying “Aww this cookie cutter build is too good, my cookie cutter build can’t compete” they find ways to modify their builds to combat what they know they will be facing.

Those builds then trickle down to the more casual players through spectator mode and the builds and meta shift causing the top to try and adapt once again.

This shifting is amplified by balanced changes.

Will we see cookie cutter builds? Yes of course, players will always seek the path of least resistance to optimize their enjoyment and success in the game but being able to see builds won’t inhibit creativity from the top level it will only enhance it because more players can reach that point faster.

If the game we were playing was Starcraft you’d be saying we shouldn’t be able to watch replays because then every game would be players racing to do the exact same thing. Which is obviously not true, it’s a varied and ever changing game.

People feel sentimental about their builds because this game is indeed lacking build variety. As soon as people discover a working build, they all jump on the same train because they know it’s a build that works, and there aren’t many other options.

If this game had more variety of possible viable builds, people probably wouldn’t feel as sentimental/secretive. It would just be like a deck of cards; each build is just another card in the pile.

Ideally, each "build" would be understood as a pile of decks, a complete strategy. Something that has to be learned by experience, not only studied from the outside to fully comprehend.

Sadly some responses in this thread indicate unhealthy habits from other MMOs, and a very dominant/territorial attitude that has nothing to do with e-sport quality competition or PvP sportmanship.