Guild Wars 2

Great post Zoose, thx for that!
Now where’s your staff guide?! <3

Saeco.7196:

Great post Zoose, thx for that!
Now where’s your staff guide?! <3

Well, now that I’ve finished all my papers for this week and sotg is over I can go back to working on it XD. It should be edited and finished by Monday. ^^

Redscope.6215:

felivear.1536:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Great post, some great points in here.

We know a lot of this, but a lot of times we can’t speak to specific plans to fix things. We also know full well what’s good in the meta (or OP). We sometimes just can’t reveal what we’re thinking about balance until our lists go final.

A lot of people assume that silence = ignorance, and often times, that’s not the case.

Great read! Enjoyed it.

Case in Point

• WoW, for all its flaws, is actually pretty open about what they are planning. The perfect example: Blizzard was going to implement a feature where your real ID along with your real name would be displayed on the forums with things you posted: a terrible terrible idea. They were dead set on it and people voiced concerns about how our privacy would be at risk and how we could be attacked in real life by players that didn’t like what we posted. Bashiok kept stating that we shouldn’t have any concerns and were being paranoid and your real name can accomplish nothing from someone trying to find out who we are. Someone challenged him to say his real name if he didn’t care. He did. Next, they found his address, his salary, a picture of his front door via street view of Google maps and even facebook pages of his parents.
• That feature never saw the light of day. Had they secretly implemented it, someone could have been killed by some crazy forums stalker.

Food for thought

Blizzard’s forum fk-up is a really bad example.

How often does blizzard announce GAME-RELATED information that is changed by people complaining on the forums? Cite a few of those if your going to compare them to Anet in that realm.

The only reason they didn’t go ahead with their moronic real-name forum idea was because the forum coordinator had real harm brought to him in the form of stalking. In other words, they’re so dumb that they need to be stalked and taunted by forum/internet geeks before they realize that being anonymous on the internet is important. Man…the children that work at bliz…amazing.

Yeah, lets all NOT take a page out of the fktard (blizzard) handbook.

My post was not to state that Blizzard is exactly the company Anet should be, I just provided a tangible example of where it worked. But, to immediately counter what you’re saying about WoW not divulging game changes….you know they do a ptr and every single change is in there and tested before release, right? Not only do they do a post with every single change coming in the upcoming patch, they also let anyone that desires to test it, test it. Even players with expired accounts. Feel free to google 5.2 patch notes and you’ll see a couple thousand word post on every single change that is coming into the game. Go on…I’ll wait. Keep in mind that I don’t play that game anymore and this is not to turn this thread into a WoW vs GW debate, because that would end in disaster. I’m just providing examples and disputing yours.

For me the matchmaking has saved this game just in time. I am having so much fun having 500-450 matches all the time now that its awesome.

The combat in this game is so fun. Although yeh ele heals need nerfs. Now I always target a guardian because they are far easier to get down. Even the bunker guardians are very killable – very quickly even with another guardian and a damage class. Thats how it should be. Some eles……well they just survive too well imo and manage to do a bit of damage. Its a particular problem on legacy where they can run around mid all day and never die.

Even 2 on 1 its hard to get an ele down but a mega bunker guardian is just so easy to crush.

felivear.1536:

Redscope.6215:

felivear.1536:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Great post, some great points in here.

We know a lot of this, but a lot of times we can’t speak to specific plans to fix things. We also know full well what’s good in the meta (or OP). We sometimes just can’t reveal what we’re thinking about balance until our lists go final.

A lot of people assume that silence = ignorance, and often times, that’s not the case.

Great read! Enjoyed it.

Case in Point

• WoW, for all its flaws, is actually pretty open about what they are planning. The perfect example: Blizzard was going to implement a feature where your real ID along with your real name would be displayed on the forums with things you posted: a terrible terrible idea. They were dead set on it and people voiced concerns about how our privacy would be at risk and how we could be attacked in real life by players that didn’t like what we posted. Bashiok kept stating that we shouldn’t have any concerns and were being paranoid and your real name can accomplish nothing from someone trying to find out who we are. Someone challenged him to say his real name if he didn’t care. He did. Next, they found his address, his salary, a picture of his front door via street view of Google maps and even facebook pages of his parents.
• That feature never saw the light of day. Had they secretly implemented it, someone could have been killed by some crazy forums stalker.

Food for thought

Blizzard’s forum fk-up is a really bad example.

How often does blizzard announce GAME-RELATED information that is changed by people complaining on the forums? Cite a few of those if your going to compare them to Anet in that realm.

The only reason they didn’t go ahead with their moronic real-name forum idea was because the forum coordinator had real harm brought to him in the form of stalking. In other words, they’re so dumb that they need to be stalked and taunted by forum/internet geeks before they realize that being anonymous on the internet is important. Man…the children that work at bliz…amazing.

Yeah, lets all NOT take a page out of the fktard (blizzard) handbook.

My post was not to state that Blizzard is exactly the company Anet should be, I just provided a tangible example of where it worked. But, to immediately counter what you’re saying about WoW not divulging game changes….you know they do a ptr and every single change is in there and tested before release, right? Not only do they do a post with every single change coming in the upcoming patch, they also let anyone that desires to test it, test it. Even players with expired accounts. Feel free to google 5.2 patch notes and you’ll see a couple thousand word post on every single change that is coming into the game. Go on…I’ll wait. Keep in mind that I don’t play that game anymore and this is not to turn this thread into a WoW vs GW debate, because that would end in disaster. I’m just providing examples and disputing yours.

Totally agree with you, just because he mentioned WoW doesn’t mean you should raise the pitchforks. Don’t let your despise for WoW blind you. I will preferred if Anet had a PTS so we could test something before it is put in the normal servers. Besides with this way the bugs would be found and fixed faster.

I just don’t understand why Anet won’t listen to their playerbase. Are they trying to become another Bioware with their actions?

Hi guise, warrior LF right to tpvp. My hotjoin permit isnt enough anymore. I want to ride in the front of the bus.

Sand Beagle.9867:

Hi guise, warrior LF right to tpvp. My hotjoin permit isnt enough anymore. I want to ride in the front of the bus.

Maybe listen to good Warriors for advice instead of blaming the class if its not cutting it for you? I mean you use FGJ, Bulls Charge, and Frenzy so you CLEARLY need to improve and in dire need of help. Why are you hesitating to ask for help?

Seriously, part of the reason why a class gets bad reception is because people don’t want to listen to people who know wth they’re talking about and thinks they’re already at a full potential to be saying jack about the class.

The real problem right now as Lowell state is that Ele and Mesmers are just too good. Believe me, Thief is a million times more balanced than those two other classes compared to Warriors.

Redscope.6215:

felivear.1536:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Great post, some great points in here.

We know a lot of this, but a lot of times we can’t speak to specific plans to fix things. We also know full well what’s good in the meta (or OP). We sometimes just can’t reveal what we’re thinking about balance until our lists go final.

A lot of people assume that silence = ignorance, and often times, that’s not the case.

Great read! Enjoyed it.

Clearly it’s your company philosophy and I know it’s probably not going to change, but I think it a terrible philosophy. You don’t say anything in fear of causing a stir on the forums, but your silence (at least on the SPVP boards) causes one of the biggest stirs.

Here is the best way I can describe it:
Let’s say that you had decided to come to the forums and tell the players “We finally have our PvP system in place and it’s going to be an 8 team tournament system where you need 40 people to start and it will be 3 rounds.”

I can assure you if that was discussed during the initial implementation, it would have never made it in and then had to be changed 6 months later because it clearly was a bad idea.

My fear is, you guys are being so secretive about stuff because it may or may not be fully ready, but what if it’s a terrible idea? It doesn’t matter how good of DEVS you guys are, there are few of you and exponentially more of us. We can quickly pick out flaws and give positive constructive feedback….for free.

I am in no way saying we are better at developing a game than you guys, we most assuredly are not; however, we play the game non-stop, and we have very good ideas about what would be great for the game, and what would be terrible. Just go look at SWTOR to see examples where DEVS were completely silent on features and when they were rolled out, they sucked…bad.

Case in Point

• WoW, for all its flaws, is actually pretty open about what they are planning. The perfect example: Blizzard was going to implement a feature where your real ID along with your real name would be displayed on the forums with things you posted: a terrible terrible idea. They were dead set on it and people voiced concerns about how our privacy would be at risk and how we could be attacked in real life by players that didn’t like what we posted. Bashiok kept stating that we shouldn’t have any concerns and were being paranoid and your real name can accomplish nothing from someone trying to find out who we are. Someone challenged him to say his real name if he didn’t care. He did. Next, they found his address, his salary, a picture of his front door via street view of Google maps and even facebook pages of his parents.
• That feature never saw the light of day. Had they secretly implemented it, someone could have been killed by some crazy forums stalker.

Food for thought

Blizzard’s forum fk-up is a really bad example.

How often does blizzard announce GAME-RELATED information that is changed by people complaining on the forums? Cite a few of those if your going to compare them to Anet in that realm.

The only reason they didn’t go ahead with their moronic real-name forum idea was because the forum coordinator had real harm brought to him in the form of stalking. In other words, they’re so dumb that they need to be stalked and taunted by forum/internet geeks before they realize that being anonymous on the internet is important. Man…the children that work at bliz…amazing.

Yeah, lets all NOT take a page out of the fktard (blizzard) handbook.

I’ll give you the most recent one…counter spell says “hello”

Nier.2478:

Sand Beagle.9867:

Hi guise, warrior LF right to tpvp. My hotjoin permit isnt enough anymore. I want to ride in the front of the bus.

Maybe listen to good Warriors for advice instead of blaming the class if its not cutting it for you? I mean you use FGJ, Bulls Charge, and Frenzy so you CLEARLY need to improve and in dire need of help, why are you hesitating to ask for help?

Seriously, part of the reason why a class gets bad reception is because people don’t want to listen to people who know wth they’re talking about and thinks they’re already at a full potential to be saying jack about the class.

The real problem right now as Lowell state is that Ele and Mesmers are just too good. Believe me, Thief is a million times more balanced than those two other classes compared to Warriors.

ahahauheue who said i use only FGJ BC and frenzy? who said that i need help in the first place? who said i dont know what im talking about? who said i am ignoring other people who know what they are talking about? who said i think i have 100% understanding of the warrior?

i dont really care about the ele and mesmer. the ele is obviously annoying-tier, and as a warrior it takes a lot more effort to take them down with their high defense, but the mesmer is just a troll class.

i dont get your last statement “the thief is a million times more balanced compared to those two other classes compared to warriors,” but regardless warrior is in need of dire fixing, and thief is slightly less of a troll class than mesmer. i know you can be all cool with your scripts and do uber backstab combos or w/e but really they are just the kind of class you ignore because if you pay attention to them, you only feed their desire to be more useless/annoying.

also please provide some form of actual counter argument, such as suggesting what you believe is a more viable build for warrior, since you take so much time to criticize me and my supposed build.

Med.6150:

- Downed state being more important than anything else in terms of fighting. Why is this acceptable?

Or why it’s a good idea to suspend the flow of combat to play some 4-skill mini-game that follows a completely different set of rules than the main combat.

Not to mention how DS is the root cause of so many of the games problems and is definitely contributing to ppl not wanting to sPVP at all…

DS is such a big barrier to entry to PVP as no other games have it and I really think the impact of DS and whether it is a net positive for the game and PVP ought to be at least discussed.

Good post OP. All I will say is that I don’t understand how ArenaNet can balance a profession (Elementalist) that they basically have created to be overpowered from design.

“We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.”

How are you suppose to balance a profession who’s only restriction is skill ceiling? Other professions that has a high skill ceiling, like the Engineer, Mesmer, or Necromancer, have other restrictions to them as well. If you create a profession that is “the king of versatility”, without having any restrictions once you learn to control that versatility, then how is that not going to turn into an overpowered profession? You designed it to be overpowered..

It has been a while since I posted, but I do read the spvp forums everyday, regardless if I rarely play in the mists anymore. I come to the forums everyday to see if things are happening that will bring me back.

Well…. If there was one thing that was a sure fire way to get me back, it was a solo queue option. Sucks to see there are no plans for it.

To quote caffynated:
“I liked what the devs had to say for the most part. The problem is that they’re only talking to tPvP players who see everything through their gun fight in a hallway meta. They whine about things being OP that are weak anywhere outside of a shoe box. These SOTG talks really need to include people from WvW who have a better handle on how classes interact in a more complex environment than a 12’ radius circle.”

JonPeters.5630:

Braxxus.2904:

To quote caffynated:
“I liked what the devs had to say for the most part. The problem is that they’re only talking to tPvP players who see everything through their gun fight in a hallway meta. They whine about things being OP that are weak anywhere outside of a shoe box. These SOTG talks really need to include people from WvW who have a better handle on how classes interact in a more complex environment than a 12’ radius circle.”

To be fair, I think this SotG thing is for sPvP. If some enterprising WvW players started something similar for WvW we would come talk about WvW. Expect the balance part of these discussions to focus on sPvP because that is who we think the audience of that stream is. Same thing goes for PvE, and at one point Jonathan did mention those formats and that we are working on balance issues in all these areas.

You say it’s about PvP, but i’m still waiting to see the “famous” PvE-PvP balance splitting.

You say you want to increase build viability for pigeon holed classes when it would be so easy to fix this issue by simply REALLY splitting PvE traits-skills from PvP ones.

Spirit weapons are a clear example: Pve side -> “hey, they’re Op in fractals, let’s NERF” / PvP side -> “omg, now a thief spams shortbow 1 on me and my 45 secs CD spirit weapons are gone, WTF”.

Food for thought, or at least, that’s what i want to believe.

Mrbig.8019:

JonPeters.5630:

Braxxus.2904:

To quote caffynated:
“I liked what the devs had to say for the most part. The problem is that they’re only talking to tPvP players who see everything through their gun fight in a hallway meta. They whine about things being OP that are weak anywhere outside of a shoe box. These SOTG talks really need to include people from WvW who have a better handle on how classes interact in a more complex environment than a 12’ radius circle.”

To be fair, I think this SotG thing is for sPvP. If some enterprising WvW players started something similar for WvW we would come talk about WvW. Expect the balance part of these discussions to focus on sPvP because that is who we think the audience of that stream is. Same thing goes for PvE, and at one point Jonathan did mention those formats and that we are working on balance issues in all these areas.

You say it’s about PvP, but i’m still waiting to see the “famous” PvE-PvP balance splitting.

You say you want to increase build viability for pigeon holed classes when it would be so easy to fix this issue by simply REALLY splitting PvE traits-skills from PvP ones.

Spirit weapons are a clear example: Pve side -> “hey, they’re Op in fractals, let’s NERF” / PvP side -> “omg, now a thief spams shortbow 1 on me and my 45 secs CD spirit weapons are gone, WTF”.

Food for thought, or at least, that’s what i want to believe.

You think spirit weapons was a pve only fix? Because not being able to cc or damage them was completely balanced.

Pyrial.2917:

Mrbig.8019:

JonPeters.5630:

Braxxus.2904:

To quote caffynated:
“I liked what the devs had to say for the most part. The problem is that they’re only talking to tPvP players who see everything through their gun fight in a hallway meta. They whine about things being OP that are weak anywhere outside of a shoe box. These SOTG talks really need to include people from WvW who have a better handle on how classes interact in a more complex environment than a 12’ radius circle.”

To be fair, I think this SotG thing is for sPvP. If some enterprising WvW players started something similar for WvW we would come talk about WvW. Expect the balance part of these discussions to focus on sPvP because that is who we think the audience of that stream is. Same thing goes for PvE, and at one point Jonathan did mention those formats and that we are working on balance issues in all these areas.

You say it’s about PvP, but i’m still waiting to see the “famous” PvE-PvP balance splitting.

You say you want to increase build viability for pigeon holed classes when it would be so easy to fix this issue by simply REALLY splitting PvE traits-skills from PvP ones.

Spirit weapons are a clear example: Pve side -> “hey, they’re Op in fractals, let’s NERF” / PvP side -> “omg, now a thief spams shortbow 1 on me and my 45 secs CD spirit weapons are gone, WTF”.

Food for thought, or at least, that’s what i want to believe.

You think spirit weapons was a pve only fix? Because not being able to cc or damage them was completely balanced.

Absolutely.

Spirit weapons are one of the worst options for a guardian in PvP, i laughed ( along with the major part of the PvP community) at spirit weapons guardians even before the nerf: they were decent in high end PvP only because you were able to chain CC an ele for the spike.

If you’re not able to kite a guardian for 30 secs ( spirit weapon max time) then you really have a problem, even more since a spirit guardian is totally worthless without his SW up.

And no, don’t tell me “they have the scepter” because you can kite orbs by simply strafing right and left ( guardians still use scepter only due to immob. on n.2)

JonPeters.5630:

Braxxus.2904:

To quote caffynated:
“I liked what the devs had to say for the most part. The problem is that they’re only talking to tPvP players who see everything through their gun fight in a hallway meta. They whine about things being OP that are weak anywhere outside of a shoe box. These SOTG talks really need to include people from WvW who have a better handle on how classes interact in a more complex environment than a 12’ radius circle.”

To be fair, I think this SotG thing is for sPvP. If some enterprising WvW players started something similar for WvW we would come talk about WvW. Expect the balance part of these discussions to focus on sPvP because that is who we think the audience of that stream is. Same thing goes for PvE, and at one point Jonathan did mention those formats and that we are working on balance issues in all these areas.

Hi, Khalija from GW2Guru here. We’re actually looking for someone with experience to help us organize and host a PvE and WvW version of the SotG. If this is something you’d be interested in, please PM me over at GW2Guru.

I have to chime in as this is one of the better threads I’ve seen. Thanks so far to everyone for your great input, Zoose, Jon, and everyone else (except the minor derail by an upset warrior)

In regards to transparency, the Anet team has gone a long way towards communicating with conserns from the playerbase. Doing state of the game interviews, posting extensive blogs, update videos, etc. But I can agree with the sediment in this thread that it would save alot of development time to bring potential game changes to the community first, to gauge reaction, before releasing them.

You can bet that if they previewed fractals and how they work, people would have brought up major conserns over ascended items (which anet came back and said it was a mistake to roll out the way it did) and also issues with not being able to reconnect to your group, and the progressive nature of the levels. That way the patch may have been held back a week or two but would have launched closer to what it is today. Much more polished and enjoyable.

kostbabis.8791:

Apparently anet think esports start from the hardcore side of things when in reality its the other way around…

Definitely an interesting way of putting it.
Some of the problems of high level tPvP teams seem just laughable in comparison to gamebreaking problems that affect every other PvPer all the time, like: too much burst in the game, Downstate not fun, too much spam and not enough tactical options, bad targeting system, zoning and positional play barely possible, etc…

mjharrison.3209:

Med.6150:

- Downed state being more important than anything else in terms of fighting. Why is this acceptable?

Or why it’s a good idea to suspend the flow of combat to play some 4-skill mini-game that follows a completely different set of rules than the main combat.

Not to mention how DS is the root cause of so many of the games problems and is definitely contributing to ppl not wanting to sPVP at all…

DS is such a big barrier to entry to PVP as no other games have it and I really think the impact of DS and whether it is a net positive for the game and PVP ought to be at least discussed.

Amen. The funny thing is that the most common way to deal with DS is circumventing it: stealth/quickness/stability/invulnerability executing, damage over time fields, max range DPS… people do anything to not having to deal with their opponent’s DS skills.
Some fights last 5 seconds, then it takes three times that amount of time to finally kill the guy in DS and you lose 50% of your life if it’s a Thief. 1v2? Forget it. I’m not telling news here, these are problems that existed from day 1 on and have been voiced over and over.

The only thing I saw in the state of the game was little to no mention of a firm direction on balance changes for specific classes. As far as a large population is concerned this is the biggest issue on why pvp is dying. And yes it IS DYING. Add all the ratings, game modes and maps that you want but if half of the classes are always going to get stomped by ele, thief, guardian and mesmer those other people are simply not going to pvp. I get that they dont want to knock down classes but its been 6 months and they have done nothing to bring up necro in any build, engineer in many aspects, warrior in any guild beyond gs/axe, or ranger beyond trap build which is at best a cheese build that is only not countered in hotjoin. Its the plain and simple truth that getting whipped any time you face one the classes with 1+ viable strong builds is not fun. Nobody wants to wait months of doing so while things get tested. Everyone is basically forced to get farmed, quit or re-roll. Hopefully the balance changes are coming and were just not highlighted in the pre-release notes but somehow I really doubt it and like a lot of people out there who dont want to switch to a flovor of the month profession I am not really sure if its worth it to even enter the mists anymore.

kostbabis.8791:

Apparently anet think esports start from the hardcore side of things when in reality its the other way around…

Hmm…I partially agree with this because you’re going to need people to watch your game, and the largest part of your player base will be sitting around the mid-tier/casual side.

I was really disappointed in the reactions by the guests/devs in regards to the warrior question.

@pot
Warrior is an L2P issue, as is and as implied in SOTG. If Warrior is not cutting it for you you have 2 things that you can do:

1.) Play an easy class and just admit that you’re not a good Warrior. If the only argument that you have is “HB is hard to land” or HB is the only viable build (Learn to play issues), then sorry you are not the authority on this class and you are not good enough to say anything. So stop talking about Warriors if you’re not good with Warriors.

2.) Stop hesitating to ask players who are BETTER than you for advice. People have made Warrior work. HB isn’t the only viable build for Warriors competitive play. Need proof?

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/1910550

Learn. To. Play. Stop talking when you didn’t even put effort or work.

If you haven’t done any of these, then sorry you are stupid and deserve to be shunned

Nier.2478:

@pot
Warrior is an L2P issue, as is and as implied in SOTG. If Warrior is not cutting it for you you have 2 things that you can do:

1.) Play an easy class and just admit that you’re not a good Warrior. If the only argument that you have is “HB is hard to land” or HB is the only viable build (Learn to play issues), then sorry you are not the authority on this class and you are not good enough to say anything. So stop talking about Warriors if you’re not good with Warriors.

2.) Stop hesitating to ask players who are BETTER than you for advice. People have made Warrior work. HB isn’t the only viable build for Warriors competitive play. Need proof?

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/1910550

Learn. To. Play. Stop talking when you didn’t even put effort or work.

If you haven’t done any of these, then sorry you are stupid and deserve to be shunned

Wow, way to dish out tons of judgement on the guy when all he literally said is that he was disappointed with the discussion about warriors. Honestly I was also disappointed, I have only every played warrior, love the class but I share in his disappointment. Make no mistake, I don’t think our class is abyssmal and needs reworked, it’s more of the fact that instead of hearing what the devs may have had planned for warriors or maybe mentioning some minor tweaks they may implement, it was twisted into another segment of “the PZ show”, and how everything they do defines the meta and how just because they had trouble against your longbow team means that warriors are 100% fine the way they are.

Nier.2478:

@pot
Warrior is an L2P issue, as is and as implied in SOTG. If Warrior is not cutting it for you you have 2 things that you can do:

1.) Play an easy class and just admit that you’re not a good Warrior. If the only argument that you have is “HB is hard to land” or HB is the only viable build (Learn to play issues), then sorry you are not the authority on this class and you are not good enough to say anything. So stop talking about Warriors if you’re not good with Warriors.

2.) Stop hesitating to ask players who are BETTER than you for advice. People have made Warrior work. HB isn’t the only viable build for Warriors competitive play. Need proof?

http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/1910550

Learn. To. Play. Stop talking when you didn’t even put effort or work.

If you haven’t done any of these, then sorry you are stupid and deserve to be shunned

Ouch. Schwahrheit going hard in the paint on people about warriors. Teach me how to Longbow!

^
I would but it won’t be fun if I spoil how to get the “Omega Badge”

Long bow builds till involve Gs. Everything viable on warrior invovles great sword. I think thats part of the issue.

daydream.2938:

Long bow builds till involve Gs. Everything viable on warrior invovles great sword. I think thats part of the issue.

I just made Sword + Hammer work against decent players in paids moron. Read my other post. God be more simple-minded why don’t you.

I made a video showing potential of non-GS builds and he doesn’t check that out. Sigh.

Only problem is Ele’s need to get nerfed cause no reason to pick “Initiator” Warrior over that. Not to mention tactics minor traits is unattractive.

I really think ele weapon skills need some innate survivability put into them like mesmer weapons (think mesmer sword, scepter), and the power of the water tree brought down to par.

Removing regen from cantrips (water 3) would go a long way by removing 3 condition removals and 3 fight-resets from bunker 0/10/0/30/30 builds without utterly breaking the synergy of the build itself.

The cantrips will still be good, but they will no longer reset the fight and negate powerful setups opponents take a long time to line up.

The important thing to preserve when doing this is the group-wide utility and boon/aura sharing.

BTW, ANet devs:

If you keep catering to the whiners and nerf, and do so consistently (like you did with mesmers), nobody will bother to actually adapt or try new builds to “break” the existing meta, because they know you’ll come in and nerf what makes them lose.

I know in the old days, before the game went downhill, wow CM’s would come out to nerf threads and tell them precisely how they should L2P, and i’d like to see that here.

“Cant kill an ele? Spec boon stripping you sap! No, I won’t nerf it for your skillless posterior”

Case and point:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Hiba-s-counter-to-multi-ele

Nice read, Zoose.

Just watched SotG, and mostly I like what I hear. I appreciate every bit of info given out beyond good old ’We’re working on something, but can’t talk much about it yet.’.

There was however one moment which really kitten me off – commenting results of single-round paids test as if they were a big surprise. Community spent last 4-5 months complaining about the whole tournament system and proposing countless great alternatives. I think positive feedback in this case is hardly something to be surprised about. I mean, players have been BEGGING for something like this for past couple months!

Now, I won’t be analyzing SotG further, as I mostly agree with what OP wrote, so no point doubling it here. There was however another matter I wanted to talk about.

“A plan for bringing players back.”

This one thing ringed in my head for the whole time I spent reading ths thread.

I’m one of those ex-players myself. After my team left the game I’ve stuck around for two more months, watching our secondary team fall apart, answering countless “Hey, what happened to you, pirates? You guys were doing so good.” questions and trying to tag along with some friends for couple matches every now and then.

But enough about my sad story. I believe to bring us back, Anet needs to understand what made us quit in the first place.

- First off there’s slow PvP developement, slow response to bugs and exploits. Yes, I know both new features and fixes need to be developed and tested before being applied. I understand it all. But it’s easy to lose faith in company’s interest in PvP, when every month they can release big PvE patch, with bunch of new content and huge event, and couple minor patches within few days to fix possible bugs in said content, but game-breaking bugs and exploits in PvP roam free for weeks. I don’t mean to go necro, but this needs to be said – block bug and Svanir runes are great example here. Stuff like that needs to be hotfixed ASAP. Instead, they were in game for so long, the whole meta grew around abusing them. One could say “It’s not such a big deal, it was like three weeks, then it was fixed and everything was fine again.”
Sadly, those three weeks of facing bug-abusing teams in every single game, every single day made my team quit the game permamently. Also due to these three weeks Anet lost all credibility in their eyes. I believe [Yarr] weren’t the only ones to give up game because of this.

Bug and exploit fixes need to be faster, end of story. A simple temporary solution while dev team works on a fix would be to give players option to report exploiters ingame while oficially declaring new exploits a bannable offense as they show up. Of course there would need to be some system in place against abusing reports…

- Secondly, there’s a matter of class viability. We all know some classes are considered mandatory, and very few teams are willing to risk some unconventional class combinations. Even fewer are succesful with those. This is one of the reasons why I left the game. I love Warrior, and that’s the only class I wanna play (even though I can play 2-3 others on a decent level). Even though my burst/control build can be a beast in small fights, like 2v2, I couldn’t find a decent team. It’s better to get faster and more versatile Thief, who can turn 2v2s into 2v1s almost instantly (And survive much longer too, due to all the escape tools at his disposal).

While I support small, gradual changes rather than “Whack a mole” nerfs and buffs, it can often be seen as a lack of action when changes take too long, when stuff that’s visibly op is left as it is for a month or two.

- Third problem is lack of communication. Most of my friends who left the game are convinced Anet just doesn’t give a flying kitten about PvP community. Very few dev posts on the PvP forums and constant stream of “When it’s ready.” and “We can’t talk about it yet.” all factor into this.

I know devs use their free time to post on the forums, and I appreciate this. However better communication would surely be beneficial to both sides – that’s why I’ve always suggested there’s need for someone like PvP Community Manager, who would handle communication between devs and players.
Stuff like SotG is a step in right direction, kudos to Guru guys for making it happen and to Jon&Jon for taking time to participate in it.

Continued in next post.

Continued.

Now, how to bring ex-players back?

Obviously GW2 has an advantage when it comes to bringing back old players because of it’s B2P business model. And all ex-players already own the game anyway. Don’t count on this alone to be enough though.

I believe there are two major groups among ex-players: The Hopeful and Gone for Good.

- The Hopeful are those of us who still follow the game with the hope of some day coming back. They still read and write on the forums from time to time and follow patch notes. I believe with single-round paids and matchmaking in, and rankings not too far on the horizon, we’re getting close to the point when many of them might start coming back. I believe next 1-2 months will be critical when it comes to this group and require Anet to put much effort to not dissapoint this group. Otherwise good will of those ex-players is likely to expire and they’ll move on to the second group. (As you probably figured by now, this is the group I belong to).

- Gone for Good are those players, who lost all their faith in GW2 ever becoming a serious PvP game. They are also likely to stay away from anything else developed by Anet in the future. I believe some of those might still be brought back at some point, but earning back their trust will require huge effort. I like the attitude Jon Sharp & Jon Peters presented in SotG – “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.” If… I’m sorry, WHEN all the required features are ready and PvP commuity grows back to the size it used to be, we might see some of those guys back in game. That is, if they don’t find something else they would enjoy in the meantime (Even I’m keeping my eye on at least three upcoming MMOs).

I hope this helps to shed some light on ex-player’s views and expectations.
Have a nice day everyone and thanks for reading.

Blaze.