Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the discussion and the infos!

One questing came up on my mind: When you have a rating system in the paid tournament, are people with low rating also able to get qualifier points, for winning the tournament on their rating level?

Teutos.8620:

One questing came up on my mind: When you have a rating system in the paid tournament, are people with low rating also able to get qualifier points, for winning the tournament on their rating level?

good question, i was thinking about the same… if they want to add ratings to tournaments, wouldnt it be a bit unfair to give same rewards for winning in low rating and in high rating? or what about wait times? its sometimes a bit long even now, what if they add rating? waiting for 8x 5 players with similar rating seems to be quite scary to me…

Still feels as though the game will take a while to get back off the ground. I’m tired of the current meta to be honest. Point capping is by far the least fav even among the old GW1 and the newer crowd. Why they chose this in the 1st place is beyond me.

Anet needs to address the real issue and that is matchmaking. The system in itself is broke. For those that do not have teams and want to tourney they go and hot join TPvP. But when they got all the crappy gear from it (AND yes the gear from free tourneys is utter garbage) they get 5 together and go Paid. Only to get stomped so bad in the 1st round that they never want to do it again. The so called “pros” of GW2 need to look beyond there own little ways and look at it from a casual standpoint. I use to play everyday for at least 8hrs a day. I have over 1000 hrs logged in SPvP alone. I was and I still think I am one of the better guards I have seen. But do I want to play anymore no. Simple reason the matchmaking system is broke. Rewards are broke. No ladder system in place. I don’t give to kitten how many QP’s you have, still doesn’t mean your good. Just means you stomped pubs or you used glitches and exploits ans YES we know some of the teams did.

This game is not going to be a E sport for a long time. At least another 6-8 months. They have a crap load of balance to do and they have a lot to implement before even thinking of getting there lost PVP player base back. I will watch from the sidelines but refuse to play until said things are addressed. I have hopes fro GW2 but it fades quickly under the direction they are going.

I don’t have time to re-watch this after last night, but something just clicked this morning with one thing Jonathan said. Did he indicate they might change the HP% a player is revived at?

Syeria.4812:

Did he indicate they might change the HP% a player is revived at?

No.

Last patch, they changed the HP, a player has while he is in the down state to 75% of the HP value, they where before. Now he is talking to readjust the value to 80-85% of the HP value from before the last patch. So, that everyone might get more life while in down state, to make it more difficult to just get killed by dpsing the downed player, without the need to stomp them.

Teutos.8620:

Syeria.4812:

Did he indicate they might change the HP% a player is revived at?

No.

Last patch, they changed the HP, a player has while he is in the down state to 75% of the HP value, they where before. Now he is talking to readjust the value to 80-85% of the HP value from before the last patch. So, that everyone might get more life while in down state, to make it more difficult to just get killed by dpsing the downed player, without the need to stomp them.

That’s not what I was referencing. There was a point where they talked about “coming up at 50% HP.” They might have been talking about the Ele down state 2 skill though.

we were talking about nerfing the ele downed state, so that when they mist form they are not reset to 50% hp again, even though they mistformed at 1%, cause that is what makes it really op :<

That was a really good discussion..
Question though..

What build are S/D ele’s in tpvp running that brought on the hate?

I felt when running S/D that it was way to slow vs D/D

Edit: I also love the gentle “L2P” Jsharp issued to people complaining about everything

Solori.6025:

That was a really good discussion..
Question though..

What build are S/D ele’s in tpvp running that brought on the hate?

I felt when running S/D that it was way to slow vs D/D

Edit: I also love the gentle “L2P” Jsharp issued to people complaining about everything

I can assure you that there is no OP s/d ele build for tPvP or sPvP for what matters, it’s the same old glass cannon s/d build ( which very few people still run anyway) or at most the typical 0/10/0/30/30 “bunker” ele.

In tPvP you still see double guardian ( one offensive and other defensive) with necro, mesmer and thief, few teams run with ele and those are staff water support ( lol) or glass cannon s/d

Yeah Mr Sharp is right…the l2p message is way too good

Funny this. IF they plan on nerfing eles heals. majority of people have:
- 13.8k hp/light armour.
How is that suppose to survive?
1x backstab thief can take ele to 10% health – shatter mesmer can also do roughly the same.
make it in a 2v1 situation and…….. problem solved?

i agree with down state eles getting nerfed, but heals in general which people are complaining about is a joke lol, they already broke blast finishers so our Buffing build isn’t viable, our dps isn’t comparable to others as a “main” dps.

Arheundel.6451:

Solori.6025:

That was a really good discussion..
Question though..

What build are S/D ele’s in tpvp running that brought on the hate?

I felt when running S/D that it was way to slow vs D/D

Edit: I also love the gentle “L2P” Jsharp issued to people complaining about everything

I can assure you that there is no OP s/d ele build for tPvP or sPvP for what matters, it’s the same old glass cannon s/d build ( which very few people still run anyway) or at most the typical 0/10/0/30/30 “bunker” ele.

In tPvP you still see double guardian ( one offensive and other defensive) with necro, mesmer and thief, few teams run with ele and those are staff water support ( lol) or glass cannon s/d

Yeah Mr Sharp is right…the l2p message is way too good

Anyone who complains about 100b or kill shot is just really bad lol.

Xeph.4513:

Here it is, please feel free to discuss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByqoWsnz-I

after watching this I get a good idea of what kind of people are in charge of pvp.
not only does jonathan sharp stick to his guns in what hes been saying for the past 3 months but he talks about other games as well that require balanced competitive play and he talks about them in a sensible understanding while correlating a point about spvp balance(like not rushing things and making sweeping changes)

the impression i get is that, sharp is a gamer to the core and understands both sides of the coin of being a developer and a gamer.

I enjoyed hearing that they intend to make more viable builds for each class but I have no idea how they plan on doing so if L2P is the response to certain elements of the game.

For instance, I always run the same “most powerful” stun break/invul utility in every build as a response to massive burst combos. This, in and of itself, is a limitation to different viable build options and, therefore, a balance issue, as a game that has many viable options is more balanced than one that doesn’t.

Overall, it is good to have open communication with the devs, and hopefully they will continue to participate.

oh man so 100b , res sigs, the downstate of ellys is the reason why not many ppl q in paids or make teams … yeah is totally that .. its not the type of game (conquest) just those 3 things that make tpvp what it is right now, came here looking for guildwars and got some points to cap.

Kylex.5962:

Funny this. IF they plan on nerfing eles heals. majority of people have:
- 13.8k hp/light armour.
How is that suppose to survive?
1x backstab thief can take ele to 10% health – shatter mesmer can also do roughly the same.
make it in a 2v1 situation and…….. problem solved?

i agree with down state eles getting nerfed, but heals in general which people are complaining about is a joke lol, they already broke blast finishers so our Buffing build isn’t viable, our dps isn’t comparable to others as a “main” dps.

I agree fully. However, mesmer and thief burst will also get nerfed. If they don’t nerf eles too, they will completely dominate sPvP. They already can easily outheal 2 non mesmer and non-thieves. What will happen if Anet nerfs those?

EDIT: I mean, perma regenration with 724 bonus healing is completely over the top. And eles even have ways to directly heal themselves.

The thing that concerns me about pvp is making more one one spec per class viable for pvp. To put into SC2 context I can watch a PvP 4 gate fest for 3 rounds. If thats all there is to watch the longevity of competitive E-sport part of GW2 will never be what it should be.

They need to find a way for different groups of a non typical nature to be viable. It would be nice to watch a match without a Mesmer or a Guardian in it.

If they still insist on placing premades with pugs and are too stubborn to consider otherwise, I’m afraid there’s not much hope. I just don’t like that at all, number 1 Big No No.

What surprises me is Anet seems to take quite a bit of inspiration from LoL, yet they don’t just emulate exactly what they did to cultivate an extremely successful Esports (PvP) community.

TainoFuerte.8136:

I enjoyed hearing that they intend to make more viable builds for each class but I have no idea how they plan on doing so if L2P is the response to certain elements of the game.

For instance, I always run the same “most powerful” stun break/invul utility in every build as a response to massive burst combos. This, in and of itself, is a limitation to different viable build options and, therefore, a balance issue, as a game that has many viable options is more balanced than one that doesn’t.

Overall, it is good to have open communication with the devs, and hopefully they will continue to participate.

^ This too.

If they don’t see burst as a problem then I’m even less hopeful.

Both burst and bunkering are still too extreme on both ends.

It’s like 1-10 (Burst) versus 90-100 (Bunker), needs to be more like 25-75 range. If that makes sense.

A big balance patch is coming the 14th of December. It will probably make or break the pvp in GW2. The patch will show if Anet knows what they are doing. If it’s, again, something like the 30 sec less CD on portal we’re screwed x( PLease anet!

Teabaker.9524:

A big balance patch is coming the 14th of December. It will probably make or break the pvp in GW2. The patch will show if Anet knows what they are doing. If it’s, again, something like the 30 sec less CD on portal we’re screwed x( PLease anet!

Same thing was said about Nov 16, I’m sure you’ll just be dissapointed giving your hopes up. I’d wait til feb and see how it turns out, by then we should have a decent idea of where it’s going.

To bad they didn’t start developing matchmaker/ladder a year and then some earlier, so that it’d been ready by launch.

MaXi.3642:

good question, i was thinking about the same… if they want to add ratings to tournaments, wouldnt it be a bit unfair to give same rewards for winning in low rating and in high rating? or what about wait times? its sometimes a bit long even now, what if they add rating? waiting for 8x 5 players with similar rating seems to be quite scary to me…

This is what I worry about with the current tournament system. I don’t think a tournament system goes well with automatic matchmaking. Requiring to pull 8 teams together that are close in ranking and then distribute rewards that represent that skill bracket just feels clunky. For that goal a ladder would be a better fit. Plus ranking on a ladder is a much better representation of skill than QP.

As much as Anet thinks players want a matchmaking system I think they are misinterpreting the implementation of that system. Players want a ladder with matchmaking not a tournament system with matchmaking. Save the tournament system for daily and monthly tournaments, allow players to participate in a ladder when there isn’t any daily or monthly tournaments in progress. That is just much more casual friendly without breaking up the community across different tournament brackets. Queue times will be shorter, a solo vs premade ladder can be implemented, rewards are more controlled, ranking of players is based less on time and is more related to skill and there isn’t a need to farm tickets.

Welp. Seems like they plan on keeping the game how it currently fundamentally is. There will be no drastic changes such as completing turning the game inside out and coming up with some brand and innovative idea.

Even w/o spectate/rank/match making/custom, whether people are having fun and continously playing the game is a sign that the system is working which is obviously not the case. Obviously, there’s something more fundamentally wrong with sPvP to where everyone is getting bored of it within a month/week or even a day and that the current mists is becoming more and more of a ghost town each day. The idea of “small safe changes” isn’t going to cut it.

Phira.3970:

Welp. Seems like they plan on keeping the game how it currently fundamentally is. There will be no drastic changes such as completing turning the game inside out and coming up with some brand and innovative idea.

Even w/o spectate/rank/match making/custom, whether people are having fun and continously playing the game is a sign that the system is working which is obviously not the case. Obviously, there’s something more fundamentally wrong with sPvP to where everyone is getting bored of it within a month/week or even a day and that the current mists is becoming more and more of a ghost town each day. The idea of “small safe changes” isn’t going to cut it.

You don’t get it, just because they make some huge innovative change which completely changes the game, doesn’t mean all the problems will suddenly disappear magically. I like the cautious approach to balance, instead of having to adapt drastically to things every patch we get to tweak small things while getting used to the overall system, it allows for much more skill development.

And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)

When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.

Phira.3970:

And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)

When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.

People like you don’t help either, so you might as well leave too.

For mentioning things that are ACTUALLY happening? I see.

Phira.3970:

And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)

When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.

Well “the entire PvP community” is quite a dramatic hyperbole to say the least. Sure it might seem that way if you look at these forums, but all my friends who play gw2 do not claim it is broken or that the sky is falling and we enjoy the game quite a lot so I would thank you not to make outrageous claims.

Phira.3970:

For mentioning things that are ACTUALLY happening? I see.

You’re acting like a dramatikittentle girl. If you don’t like how anet is running things, just stop playing the game and leave lol.

Well from looking on how anet still has not fixed the GAMEBREAKING loading screen bug [15 days and counting] little hope that they can fix the 100’s of trait bugs that are still this game since beta.

Suzu.4193:

Well from looking on how anet still has not fixed the GAMEBREAKING loading screen bug [15 days and counting] little hope that they can fix the 100’s of trait bugs that are still this game since beta.

Well if you watched the video Jon did mention they were expecting a fix this Monday on the Loading Screen.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Suzu.4193:

Well from looking on how anet still has not fixed the GAMEBREAKING loading screen bug [15 days and counting] little hope that they can fix the 100’s of trait bugs that are still this game since beta.

Well if you watched the video Jon did mention they were expecting a fix this Monday on the Loading Screen.

half a month to fix a bug they fixed before does not flood me with confidence in this game lol

P.S. why do we even need to load to respawn in the same map that we loaded already….

his is wrong, this concept of meta, this “you have to have this set of roles”, this focus on node control literally being the worst thing you can do for an esport

your not supposed to choose what the esport portion of the? game is, you put in a framework for the community and they decide where it goes

what we have in GW2 is a mess of the same classes running the same builds and a pvp “trinity” system, something arenanet said would not happen

Thank you Xeph, and also others who were asking some good questions to Jonathan. Im glad that they are working on matchmaking right now. I really feel thats whats the game need right now.

Shame it will be next year , but even to know that is keeping my teammates still playing.. Well, I see a lot of WvW action comming till next big patch in our guild.. just to see also other aspect of PvP.

Top players lol what a joke.

Get rated arenas not the farming crap then real top players might come.

Another bunker ele nerf….. thats the problem with ‘top’ players they will just try to nerf the comps they dont run. Bunker ele is fine stop nerfing them, and no I dont play ele.

The rampant burst isn’t considered to be a problem?
I suppose it makes sense given how developement appears to be inspired by LoL, just pay in mind LoL champions have 4 skills to unload, here you have 2*4 for both weapon sets, 3 utilities and an elite thrown on top, with some class skills to boot (most notably on mesmer who have even more insane burst through the sheer amount of shatters to be spammed in rapid succession)
No if the extreme burst is not seen as a problem I have little hope of this game becoming an esport. It works for LoL because they have limited skills to spam, all it does it turn this game into a glorified spamfest.
Strange that all these top players have no problem with it either, but I suppose anyone who strongly disagrees with the burst/bunker or gtfo mentality has long since given up on competitive play.

A year before matchmaking to be introduced? We’re talking bare essentials here, matchmaking isnt an addition to a competitive scene, it’s the foundation! It should have been there on launch and now one is to wait a year, probably even more given how these deadlines work? Completely unreasonable!

I’m sorry but this does it for me. It doesn’t help that pve is turning into a glorified dungeon grind (with no matchmaking either, shooting yourself in the foot here), this wait is to long for me to bother with.
Peace out.

Jelle.2807:

The rampant burst isn’t considered to be a problem?
I suppose it makes sense given how developement appears to be inspired by LoL, just pay in mind LoL champions have 4 skills to unload, here you have 2*4 for both weapon sets, 3 utilities and an elite thrown on top, with some class skills to boot (most notably on mesmer who have even more insane burst through the sheer amount of shatters to be spammed in rapid succession)
No if the extreme burst is not seen as a problem I have little hope of this game becoming an esport. It works for LoL because they have limited skills to spam, all it does it turn this game into a glorified spamfest.
Strange that all these top players have no problem with it either, but I suppose anyone who strongly disagrees with the burst/bunker or gtfo mentality has long since given up on competitive play.

A year before matchmaking to be introduced? We’re talking bare essentials here, matchmaking isnt an addition to a competitive scene, it’s the foundation! It should have been there on launch and now one is to wait a year, probably even more given how these deadlines work? Completely unreasonable!

I’m sorry but this does it for me. It doesn’t help that pve is turning into a glorified dungeon grind (with no matchmaking either, shooting yourself in the foot here), this wait is to long for me to bother with.
Peace out.

Where do you get the idea that matchmaking is going to take a year? At 23 minutes he says that they’re currently implementing matchmaking in parallel with custom arenas. The only reference to a year is that at 29 minutes or so he estimates sometime next year (note that next year begins in a month) for “all of the features” necessary to make an esports ready game. At around 31 minutes, he says that one of the early patches next year will be themed around PvP and WvW and strongly implies that matchmaking and custom arenas and other as yet unannounced features will be in it. In another interview (http://gamingbolt.com/guild-wars-2-interview-we-talk-to-areanet-about-how-the-mmorpg-has-been-doing-post-launch with Colin Johanson), it’s stated that a lot of new WvW stuff is happening in the February patch so it seems a safe bet that the PvP-themed patch will be the February patch.

Kline.9561:

Xeph.4513:

Here it is, please feel free to discuss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByqoWsnz-I

after watching this I get a good idea of what kind of people are in charge of pvp.
not only does jonathan sharp stick to his guns in what hes been saying for the past 3 months but he talks about other games as well that require balanced competitive play and he talks about them in a sensible understanding while correlating a point about spvp balance(like not rushing things and making sweeping changes)

the impression i get is that, sharp is a gamer to the core and understands both sides of the coin of being a developer and a gamer.

Must be nice to have the full attention of a dev – the rest of us just don’t have a chance.

Hey guys,

We’ll probably be looking at having these discussions at least once a month, with rotating players. The NA side of things definitely needs some representation. We had some technical difficulties with the inaugural episode, but everyone was a champ and we got through it. We’ll step it up on round two.

Thanks for watching!

Nord.5360:

Hey guys,

We’ll probably be looking at having these discussions at least once a month, with rotating players. The NA side of things definitely needs some representation. We had some technical difficulties with the inaugural episode, but everyone was a champ and we got through it. We’ll step it up on round two.

Thanks for watching!

It was a good work anyway. Technical problems could happend.. we know that. And i liked the discussion.
But you right – for next also NA side should be invited. They do probably have different opinion – as they have a bit different situation (for example paid tournaments do have much higher queue time then in europe.. )

Fourth.1567:

MaXi.3642:

good question, i was thinking about the same… if they want to add ratings to tournaments, wouldnt it be a bit unfair to give same rewards for winning in low rating and in high rating? or what about wait times? its sometimes a bit long even now, what if they add rating? waiting for 8x 5 players with similar rating seems to be quite scary to me…

This is what I worry about with the current tournament system. I don’t think a tournament system goes well with automatic matchmaking. Requiring to pull 8 teams together that are close in ranking and then distribute rewards that represent that skill bracket just feels clunky. For that goal a ladder would be a better fit. Plus ranking on a ladder is a much better representation of skill than QP.

As much as Anet thinks players want a matchmaking system I think they are misinterpreting the implementation of that system. Players want a ladder with matchmaking not a tournament system with matchmaking. Save the tournament system for daily and monthly tournaments, allow players to participate in a ladder when there isn’t any daily or monthly tournaments in progress. That is just much more casual friendly without breaking up the community across different tournament brackets. Queue times will be shorter, a solo vs premade ladder can be implemented, rewards are more controlled, ranking of players is based less on time and is more related to skill and there isn’t a need to farm tickets.

Nothing more than +1 x100 on this one.

This has been stated over and over on the forums but it just seems like some people ignore the issue and Arena Net just doesn’t pick up on it.

I can not see how a rated tournament system can work at All with the current population. And even If we get back most of the players/get new players to PvP, the rank differences will need to be bigger than I’d like them to be to get 8 teams togheter.

Tournaments are a awesome system for higher intervals, but it kind of sucks for the “go to” system for PvP. Keep it for Dailies/Monthly/Yearly. And implement a ranked match system instead. There is nothing beneficial with tournaments over ranked matches. Rather the very opposite.

P.S. I know about the “Can’t really talk about it, but yes.” reply from Mr. Sharp about ranked matches, but as stated above. It should not be a “upcoming future”, it should be the very next thing coming out with ratings/Match making. D.S.

Phira.3970:

And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)

When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.

Oh the drama.. “The whole community” have not left the game. Some have quit sure, some have went over to PvE sure. But I dare say that the vast majority of the players are still there.

And I disagree, I doubt they are out there just sitting on their bums waiting for a dramatic, game changing (read game breaking) “innovative” patch. They have either moved on to other games and/or are just waiting for the problems they disliked to be fixed.

Cautious balance fixes/adding working features >>>> Rushed “innovative” changes.

7 People was too many when an actual dev was on who had big announcements.

The problem with having the host be from a fan site, and wannabe e-sport heroes as guests, is that they threw a lot of softballs to Anet and glossed over or didn’t address the most important issues for players who might be considering coming back.

As people here have pointed out, MMR won’t work with the present population since with so few teams newer people will still get matched against vets which defeats the purpose. The population issue MUST be addressed before anything else.

It also makes no sense in the present tournament system since a noob bracket tournament would be getting the same qualifier points reward that a vet bracket receives.

One of the things that might bring people back is a legitimate solo queue, but we got the answer that this isn’t going to happen.

Also people want single ranked matches, not tournaments that require 40 people and 45 mins with a lot of downtime just to take part in a basic competitive game. He said this was being considered, but was very vague when this is probably one of the most important changes that need to be made.

They didn’t even talk about the ticket entry fee barrier monetization scheme, probably because the monopoly teams that were represented don’t care, but it is hurting the population.

From an Esport’s perspective, until Anet puts up some money rather than making vague promises, there is no reason to take this game seriously and be a free-labor beta tester for some far off hope that the game will take off.

The overall message was pretty much that there is really no reason to play the game presently. We are better off letting the guys on the show test these proposed features then maybe return once a legitimate competitive system is actually implemented.

The problem is that 3-6 months down the line the game will be so far from release that it will be a major challenge to get people to come back even with the perfect system. And like it or not, its the masses that make a game successful, not the ‘pros’.

Jacobin.8509:

7 People was too many when an actual dev was on who had big announcements.

The problem with having the host be from a fan site, and wannabe e-sport heroes as guests, is that they threw a lot of softballs to Anet and glossed over or didn’t address the most important issues for players who might be considering coming back.

As people here have pointed out, MMR won’t work with the present population since with so few teams newer people will still get matched against vets which defeats the purpose. The population issue MUST be addressed before anything else.

It also makes no sense in the present tournament system since a noob bracket tournament would be getting the same qualifier points reward that a vet bracket receives.

One of the things that might bring people back is a legitimate solo queue, but we got the answer that this isn’t going to happen.

Also people want single ranked matches, not tournaments that require 40 people and 45 mins with a lot of downtime just to take part in a basic competitive game. He said this was being considered, but was very vague when this is probably one of the most important changes that need to be made.

They didn’t even talk about the ticket entry fee barrier monetization scheme, probably because the monopoly teams that were represented don’t care, but it is hurting the population.

From an Esport’s perspective, until Anet puts up some money rather than making vague promises, there is no reason to take this game seriously and be a free-labor beta tester for some far off hope that the game will take off.

The overall message was pretty much that there is really no reason to play the game presently. We are better off letting the guys on the show test these proposed features then maybe return once a legitimate competitive system is actually implemented.

The problem is that 3-6 months down the line the game will be so far from release that it will be a major challenge to get people to come back even with the perfect system. And like it or not, its the masses that make a game successful, not the ‘pros’.

but…it hasn’t been a year yet…..and can you see into the future within 3-6 months?

Just to point out something that may not be obvious: When a dev says, “Next Year” in December, they don’t mean next December. They’re not planned out that far. Based on what he said there are concrete plans in Jan and Feb. That means there are vague plans starting in march. So most likely what you’re looking at is a March-June timeframe.

JaironKalach.4938:

Just to point out something that may not be obvious: When a dev says, “Next Year” in December, they don’t mean next December. They’re not planned out that far. Based on what he said there are concrete plans in Jan and Feb. That means there are vague plans starting in march. So most likely what you’re looking at is a March-June timeframe.

When you combine Jonathan’s comments about “a major WvW and sPvP patch early next year” with Colin’s (from the WvW team) comment about WvW additions in February, it seems pretty clear that we’re talking about a February patch bringing new things in. Now I don’t think he really guaranteed anything specific would be in that patch (and don’t have time to watch the video again) but that’s really where we should be looking for any expectations of changes.

Brutalistik.6473:

but…it hasn’t been a year yet…..and can you see into the future within 3-6 months?

MMOs do not have a good track record of retaining players 6+ months after release even when major changes are made. SWTOR is an example of a game that added rated MMR 3 months in, yet it didn’t bring people back and that is much faster than the timeline Anet has indicated.

There isn’t much point in investing time into a game when there is a strong possibility that nobody will be playing once the necessary changes are implemented. The population is already bad now, its probably just going to continue getting lower while we wait for these changes.

Jacobin.8509:

MMOs do not have a good track record of retaining players 6+ months after release even when major changes are made.

Subscription MMOs don’t live off of those players who leave after the initial honeymoon period. There will always be a ton of people who only have 200 hours worth of attention to give to any game.

Guild Wars does live off of them, but they’ve got their money now and those folks have paid for us to play the rest of the year. We certainly don’t have to worry about them no longer playing.

Jacobin.8509:

Brutalistik.6473:

but…it hasn’t been a year yet…..and can you see into the future within 3-6 months?

MMOs do not have a good track record of retaining players 6+ months after release even when major changes are made. SWTOR is an example of a game that added rated MMR 3 months in, yet it didn’t bring people back and that is much faster than the timeline Anet has indicated.

There isn’t much point in investing time into a game when there is a strong possibility that nobody will be playing once the necessary changes are implemented. The population is already bad now, its probably just going to continue getting lower while we wait for these changes.

You’re trying to compare a paid MMO (yes I know they went pseudo-free to play a week or two ago) to a subscription-free MMO. I know with the original GW I’d play for a few months, then drop the game, only to come back 3 months later to play again. Things like “Huge Dervish Revamp” brought me (and quite a few of my friends) back to the game. GW2 has that same structure, and will be able to pull on that same resource. It’s not reasonable to compare that to other games that don’t have that mechanic, or had F2P shoe-horned in at a later date to try “save” the game.

Yes GW2 is slightly easier to return to than other MMOs. The point is that if there is no competitive community with a big player base, you can’t expect an esport to just magically appear once changes are added 2-4 or whatever months from now.

As has been pointed out in this thread and others, rating and MMR won’t work if there is a tiny population. Its still long queues and miss-matches which will not give people who come back a good experience.

Jacobin.8509:

Yes GW2 is slightly easier to return to than other MMOs. The point is that if there is no competitive community with a big player base, you can’t expect an esport to just magically appear once changes are added 2-4 or whatever months from now.

As has been pointed out in this thread and others, rating and MMR won’t work if there is a tiny population. Its still long queues and miss-matches which will not give people who come back a good experience.

Forget this argument: “No sub-fee MMOs are so much different and players come back sooo easy”. I don’t buy it at all. If that were the case, then pay to play MMOs that go free to play should, in theory, get the same return rate or new player rate. Guess what, they don’t.

Look at the numerous examples of failed MMOs that went to the free-to-play model with no barrier to return. Can you give me an example of one that is flourishing?

Jacobin, you are dead on with your assessment and worries. This game is hemorrhaging. In an MMO, the fun of the players requires other players. The major concern for this game should be obtaining and retaining players. All of you other people that are so quick to say “this has no sub fee, they will come back!”….I’m very sad to tell you that one day, you will find out how incorrect that statement is.