Guild Wars 2

Ostricheggs.3742:

The best way to get people back into the mists is making it so that your current majority playerbase has a reason important enough to them to be in the mists. Only then can you actually monetize and esportify the game.

why would they do that in a PvE game? o.O

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

Yup.
Thing is I don’t understand the pt of solo que ratings, outside of matchmaking. Your team is randomly selected and the results are basically up in the air, so your rating is practically RNG based.

Is a team leaderboard going to be guild based, or are guilds going to continue to be a relatively ‘removed’ aspect of the game.

Xeph, i nearly lost it at my computer …like into tears when you brought up how fighting mesmer/theifs is frusterating and confusing for new players coming into hotjoins and the entire room goes dead silent.

That was the most memorable moment of the whole interview. I pretty much think that summed up everything for me. Massive kick to the nuts, GJ.

kailin.4905:

Xsorus.2507:

No, they said they’re looking at shatter to see if its overpowered, which they won’t determine till after they buff Greatsword/Scepter…Then and only then will they nerf Shatter

So essentially give one of the two or three most powerful and played classes another OP ability then MAYBE nerf there other OP ability a month or five down the road. Meanwhile everyone playing rolls mesmer and loses there kitten when the nerf does come about leading to them re-buffing it the following patch.

Making Greatsword piercing can hardly be called op. After all, it’s #1 is one of the weakest in the game in terms of dps, and how often can you really consistently line up people who are not complete scrubs anyway?
If that is the compensation mesmers get for their primary source of burst, yea, that’s a pretty hard hitting nerf.

Zinwrath.2049:

Xeph, i nearly lost it at my computer …like into tears when you brought up how fighting mesmer/theifs is frusterating and confusing for new players coming into hotjoins and the entire room goes dead silent.

That was the most memorable moment of the whole interview. I pretty much think that summed up everything for me. Massive kick to the nuts, GJ.

Sorry, but we the first impression something makes on complete newbs is not something that should be that important for balancing. Any burst-heavy build can be frustrating for newbs, just look at all the screaming about bull rush + frenzy + 100b after launch. That’s something that surely was pretty frustrating when you had to learn that not doding at the right time was pretty much game over.

As long as teams and solos are in the same queue then this cannot be considered a competitive game.

If a team can build rating against PUGs or in a 4v5, then rating and leader-board ranks are completely meaningless.

It seemed to be implied there there is not enough population to support separate queues. If that is the case then sPvP is pretty much finished as a potential Esport.

I like the idea of the boon-hate talent trees. When can we expect something like this? It felt vague on expected time though I can understand this taking a while given that it would need considerable balance testing. Would be great to be able to run boon punishing builds that serve as the ever-absent counter to bunker guardians or elementalists.

If they work it in properly, I can see other builds opening up for Guards and Elems outside of the dominant bunker more naturally through meta-shifts than changes to the classes themselves since the bunker builds will have punishing counters/talents to keep them in check.

I can see a lot of thieves re-rolling after the stealth AND damage changes…

Warrior changes… grab your banners.

It seemed to be implied there there is not enough population to support separate queues. If that is the case then sPvP is pretty much finished as a potential Esport.

There is more than enough population to support a PuG-only queue. It’s the teams that there are not. ArenaNet can’t accept that all their hard work would be for naught if team queuing died.

Instead, they mix PuGs with teams so PuGs are the bait to keep teams playing.

felivear.1536:

Nero, Xeph, and Grouch did great. Thanks for the questions and also pressing for more details.

Overall, I’m still not 100% where we are as far as development toward esport because of so much ambiguity from the DEVS.

Also, nice drinking game references. I can tell when you guys talk that you are very approachable and down to earth devs, it’s a shame your “no talking” policy makes you seem otherwise.

Thoughts?

Nero did great. Xeph did good.

Would have likes to hear more about new game types and more about this new boon killer mechanic.

Id rather see the multiple target hit buff on mesmer scepter than GS

chrisk.4320:

There is more than enough population to support a PuG-only queue. It’s the teams that there are not. ArenaNet can’t accept that all their hard work would be for naught if team queuing died.

Instead, they mix PuGs with teams so PuGs are the bait to keep teams playing.

There’s also the problem that newly formed teams have no proper competition. If they queued in team queue only they’d get stomped because that po kitten o low that the only matchmaking would be against far superior, far more experience opponents. At least in this current scenario they can play against “high” rated solo/duos/etc, and have room to grow before ascending to full on team vs. team play. I can understand their reluctance in this regard.

If they want to keep solo/team combined, they need to add a scaling factor to solo-q that weighs your score based on the composition of your and your opponents team.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together. They put in the extra work/time to form the team and get good chemisty, and contrary to what solo q’ers might think a big big biiiiiiig part of being good in this game is team chemistry. IMO the skill-cap of maximizing your character’s potential as a single player is low enough that a lot of people will hit it given the repetition, but it’s that chemistry with your teammates, team strategy, team execution, etc. that separates good teams from great ones.

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Id rather see the multiple target hit buff on mesmer scepter than GS

I’d rather they fix the freaking phantasm on the GS before anything else! It misses almost all of its hits now… WITHOUT the target dodging… NOT OKAY!

chrisk.4320:

It seemed to be implied there there is not enough population to support separate queues. If that is the case then sPvP is pretty much finished as a potential Esport.

There is more than enough population to support a PuG-only queue. It’s the teams that there are not. ArenaNet can’t accept that all their hard work would be for naught if team queuing died.

Instead, they mix PuGs with teams so PuGs are the bait to keep teams playing.

Sadly I think this is true. Allowing teams to feel like they are good because they can farm PUGs most of the time and only occasionally play other good teams is the pinnacle of sPvP.

This is pretty much how month 1 and 2 went with free tournaments which is when the majority of teams that bought GW2 primarily for spvp left the game due to lack of competition.

Throwing a leader-board onto a system like this is even worse than the QP leader-board because at least those were gained by only fighting full teams.

I’d just like to say I really hope Xeph is on these often. He brought amazing discussion to it.

Overall, I liked what the devs had to say too. While it’s tiring to hear “soon” in a sense to most questions, it’s good to know it’s on the agenda. Realistically, they can’t do everything at once and I can’t fault them for not being able to do that. I really liked the balance discussion and I hope there is more of it.

I’m unsure if it is possible, but it’d be nice to hear some more discussion on where things are on their priority lists. This kinda assumes the community is mature enough to understand things can change on a dime in that list though. I know the showtime is supposed to be only an hour, but maybe it should be scheduled for 90 minutes instead? We always seem to run over as it stands.

wintermute.4096:

kailin.4905:

Xsorus.2507:

No, they said they’re looking at shatter to see if its overpowered, which they won’t determine till after they buff Greatsword/Scepter…Then and only then will they nerf Shatter

So essentially give one of the two or three most powerful and played classes another OP ability then MAYBE nerf there other OP ability a month or five down the road. Meanwhile everyone playing rolls mesmer and loses there kitten when the nerf does come about leading to them re-buffing it the following patch.

Making Greatsword piercing can hardly be called op. After all, it’s #1 is one of the weakest in the game in terms of dps, and how often can you really consistently line up people who are not complete scrubs anyway?
If that is the compensation mesmers get for their primary source of burst, yea, that’s a pretty hard hitting nerf.

Zinwrath.2049:

Xeph, i nearly lost it at my computer …like into tears when you brought up how fighting mesmer/theifs is frusterating and confusing for new players coming into hotjoins and the entire room goes dead silent.

That was the most memorable moment of the whole interview. I pretty much think that summed up everything for me. Massive kick to the nuts, GJ.

Sorry, but we the first impression something makes on complete newbs is not something that should be that important for balancing. Any burst-heavy build can be frustrating for newbs, just look at all the screaming about bull rush + frenzy + 100b after launch. That’s something that surely was pretty frustrating when you had to learn that not doding at the right time was pretty much game over.

The only newb here is you.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

You make a lot of assumptions of how the matchmaking will work. Perhaps you only play at late hours when nobody else good plays and you are consistently matched up with teammates who are worse than you. There are tons of quirks that a simple large sample size cannot account for. And I put that in quotes for a reasons. Perhaps you missed the part about me not being serious. I was basically saying there’s pros and cons to every approach.

What I was being serious about is nobody is going to care about solo q ratings ikittenv5 game mode (or rather it’ll be a joke that nobody will really take seriously). It would be a much better solution to structure the rating system to account for the skill level of who you are teamed up with than to have a separate ladder right now.

And the main point I was trying to make was playing well with your team, executing with your team, etc. IS part of the skill in playing this game. The skill ceiling of just playing your own character in this game is relatively low (say, compared to SC2) due to the very limited amount of things you can do.

I think right now the number one concern should be the health of the playerbase. Any fragmentation of the currently miniscule playerbase should be avoided for the time being. When the playerbase grows to a healthy size is when you can start to consider things like a strict solo q with its own rating if there is enough demand. I don’t believe people will care much about solo q once custom servers get implemented as I bet people will make a lot of dueling, 2v2, 3v3, etc. servers that will appease that crowd.

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

You make a lot of assumptions of how the matchmaking will work. Perhaps you only play at late hours when nobody else good plays and you are consistently matched up with teammates who are worse than you. There are tons of quirks that a simple large sample size cannot account for. And I put that in quotes for a reasons. Perhaps you missed the part about me not being serious. I was basically saying there’s pros and cons to every approach.

What I was being serious about is nobody is going to care about solo q ratings ikittenv5 game mode (or rather it’ll be a joke that nobody will really take seriously). It would be a much better solution to structure the rating system to account for the skill level of who you are teamed up with than to have a separate ladder right now.

And the main point I was trying to make was playing well with your team, executing with your team, etc. IS part of the skill in playing this game. The skill ceiling of just playing your own character in this game is relatively low (say, compared to SC2) due to the very limited amount of things you can do.

I think right now the number one concern should be the health of the playerbase. Any fragmentation of the currently miniscule playerbase should be avoided for the time being. When the playerbase grows to a healthy size is when you can start to consider things like a strict solo q with its own rating if there is enough demand. I don’t believe people will care much about solo q once custom servers get implemented as I bet people will make a lot of dueling, 2v2, 3v3, etc. servers that will appease that crowd.

Ok fair enough. I suppose you are right in some ways. If they had a system where you got MORE rewarded for solo queuing that would be cool. I think you should do tbh…irrespective of the standard of your teammates which should again give more rating.

Comments on SOTG.

I just want to say that some of the comments concern me from warrior POV.
‘We feel engi condi is not up to the level it needs to be’
I already die to condi, and now your going to make it even easier

‘Turret applying cripple’ Slows in general are such a warrior hard counter it is probably worse than damage

‘Giving wars and thieves access to boon removal’ great in concept but sounds like it may end up on some outlandish skills that aren’t used much

‘dp for ressing’ this will disproportionately affect some classes more than others.

“rezzing being harder’ You are already revived keeping all the conditions on you. Yet when damaging a body, this does not affect the revival, say if by a signet.

Every skill that is introduced with a slowing effect is a hard counter to warriors in our condition removal limitations. Our gap closers are effected by slows, so that is the problem. Teleports and other swap skills and such are not.

Lastly, Warrior damage is high but securing damage opportunity is low. War sustain is difficult because from NA meta pov you just can’t stay there too long. And the slows prevent retreat.

tldr; Revert mending to 20 sec please. Give us some burst damage back

I haven’t watched it yet, but was there any mention of sPvP getting anything new, Anything at all, in the coming March 26 patch?

Custom servers? First implementation of leader boards? A new map is in the pipeline with another unique secondary objective?

I don’t care about balance changes. I just want to know if there is any features, at all, in the march patch or is the end of April the ETA on something for sPvP?

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

You make a lot of assumptions of how the matchmaking will work. Perhaps you only play at late hours when nobody else good plays and you are consistently matched up with teammates who are worse than you. There are tons of quirks that a simple large sample size cannot account for. And I put that in quotes for a reasons. Perhaps you missed the part about me not being serious. I was basically saying there’s pros and cons to every approach.

What I was being serious about is nobody is going to care about solo q ratings ikittenv5 game mode (or rather it’ll be a joke that nobody will really take seriously). It would be a much better solution to structure the rating system to account for the skill level of who you are teamed up with than to have a separate ladder right now.

And the main point I was trying to make was playing well with your team, executing with your team, etc. IS part of the skill in playing this game. The skill ceiling of just playing your own character in this game is relatively low (say, compared to SC2) due to the very limited amount of things you can do.

I think right now the number one concern should be the health of the playerbase. Any fragmentation of the currently miniscule playerbase should be avoided for the time being. When the playerbase grows to a healthy size is when you can start to consider things like a strict solo q with its own rating if there is enough demand. I don’t believe people will care much about solo q once custom servers get implemented as I bet people will make a lot of dueling, 2v2, 3v3, etc. servers that will appease that crowd.

Ok fair enough. I suppose you are right in some ways. If they had a system where you got MORE rewarded for solo queuing that would be cool. I think you should do tbh…irrespective of the standard of your teammates which should again give more rating.

Well think of it this way. If the rating system takes into account the rating of who you are teamed up with, and if you get teamed with players who are worse than you but still win, your rating should go up MORE than if you were teamed up with better players. That in essence does reward a solo q’er as they likely pulled more weight in that particular match.

Valkyriez.6578:

I haven’t watched it yet, but was there any mention of sPvP getting anything new, Anything at all, in the coming March 26 patch?

Custom servers? First implementation of leader boards? A new map is in the pipeline with another unique secondary objective?

I don’t care about balance changes. I just want to know if there is any features, at all, in the march patch or is the end of April the ETA on something for sPvP?

The repeatedly said they were already internally testing leaderboards, custom servers, and spectator mode and they just have to make sure there are no bugs with them before shipping them out, so they sound very close to being done.

Grouch, Nero, Xeph – Great job.

What i see and think.

Players questions: I’m surprise how questions from 2 competitive players was in the majority around how to increase the population and do the game more casual friendly, even when competitive scene is 0 after paids has been removed. It was just loyalty and impresive from your part.

Devs: The answers about class balances was just a descripcion of what you think the character must be, and honnestly that’s show me how little they know about meta and competitive play, minions necro mantras used to take damage no change for time warp or portal.

Honestly now i see why the game is going imbalanced you give good points for balance , mug damage, more variety builds, but you need help you dont see the good teams playing and how they play and what they abuse or what characters they spam or repeat over and over.

After all I really think the devs need spectator mode and ladder for themselves and they can do pretty well, but now we just need these features to start a good balance and thats must improve. But competitive players are worried about population, becaue without population the ladder, the spectator, can’t save the game and I pray for a real competitive spvp.

For the last one think hurt me so hard. “we want the same skills for pve and pvp, because people who come from pve know what they do”. The skill can do the same but the stats in spvp are totally diferent than wvsw or pve pls noone can come to spvp and know how the skill works in that kind of pvp pls consider it.

Sorry for my English and I hope after ladder and spectator the actual state of the game improve

Good job to Nero and Xeph for challenging the devs a bit and asking some critical questions.

I was unimpressed by a lot of the class balance discussion though. Karl is supposed to be the supreme, specialized expert of his field (which is balance), and yet he gave the most vague answers in the world. He did reveal some big changes like Thieves getting the Revealed debuff after coming out of stealth no matter what, and the beam skills becoming massive AoE, etc. But there were a lot of hazy answers, which is unfortunate because the balance segment of the video was the longest part, and one of the most anticipated parts from the community.

I kind of wish that they wouldn’t do these sorts of interviews if they can’t actually speak freely. It’s just frustrating to have so much of it be “Well we can’t tell you about that, sorry”.

That or we need some sort of secret code. Possibly based on when people take shots…?

Edit: Overall I’m interested to see this AoE change. If I recall correctly they described it as “completely changing how Guild Wars 2 plays” so it’ll probably be more involved than tweaking damage numbers. So that could be interesting.

As well, I get the feeling that they just have other priorities before pushing sPvP. There seems to be worries that the underlying game isn’t solid enough yet, so they won’t stress about the systems to really promote PvP until then. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but that’s the vibe I’m getting.

Suzu.4193:

Lets see….

-The class balance: they just described the classes back to us…..
-They still think conquest is fun….
-It really sounds like they have no idea whats going on
-No real changes coming eta:2015
-Spec mod for hotjoin???? what
-Buffing mes???
-Nerfing thief
-Banner buff……WHAT?

Im out guys.

I like your third point. Except I would add one more point that… actually, they know what ’they’re doing’ (in terms of programing cuz some of the systems they’ve developed are amazingly complex), but they seemed confused with determining whether their changes created good or bad results (they’re like an APU which doesn’t really know whether the variables they’re adding will result in a ‘positive or negative sum’).

The positive.

-This was more organized than the sotg before it. And actually had some information that was new. On the whole it was a good and useful SOTG. Thanks to you guys and the devs.

BUT-I think major issues should come first. Whatever the relevant big talking points are. IN this case, custom arenas, visible rankings and the huge issue of incentives to brin gmore players into spvp. Then move down the ladder to more trivial things. For example there was some discussion about mesmers/ele early on. That can be saved for the class rundown.

Something id like to know more about is how they review classes for rebalancing. Given they have gone the slow and steady approach, they need to have frequent balance tweaks. Every month or 2. Im glad they want to add more utilities that are viable, i just hope they dont allow specs that are already powerful to become even more powerful.

Also, the mesmer and thief changes discussed where confusing, cant tell if buff/nerf or playstyle change. Of course -law of unintended consequences means that whatever they intend it might end up as a buff or nerf.
Also most people watching sotg know the classes, theres no need for the devs to give us the overview of the class philosophy.

But, again, thank you to the devs for doing these sotg, i saw over 1500 viewers at one point checking this one out.

I was a very dissapointed with how unprepared the devs were especially Karl who was supposed to be there to give us some insight into class balancing and where they are going with it but he was actually reciting us descriptions of classes and in the end we just got a few minor details about thief mesmer and warrior, the rest of those 30 minutes or so was a waste of time. I didnt get a sense they have a good understanding of pvp class balance and on how to improve build variety in all classes. They had alot of good players more than happy to give them feedback on what needs balancing and ideas on how to do it but they seem to just keep to their isolated bubble.
Also dissapointed to see i probably wont be coming back to gw2 anytime soona s i dont see anything being done that would bring competitive community back in the near future.
Im glad to hear they have a plan of making a marketing push after they implement the core features but common give us some sort of competitive platform to work with meanwhile. By this i can only speculate competitive scene will be dead for another year if they dont pick it up.

I think the developers did the very good job with the state of the game. For mesmers, I’d strongly suggest the try the multi target approach with the scepter.

Regarding thieves, I’d strongly suggest experimenting with segregating the revealed debuff between pvp and wvw.

I haven’t watched it yet, but was there any mention of sPvP getting anything new, Anything at all, in the coming March 26 patch?

Custom servers? First implementation of leader boards? A new map is in the pipeline with another unique secondary objective?

I don’t care about balance changes. I just want to know if there is any features, at all, in the march patch or is the end of April the ETA on something for sPvP?

“When its ready”

First of all: good job everyone. This episode was very informative.
I especially appreciate the very direct questions. When the Thief discussion came up, it already looked like people wanted to move on, but then Xeph managed to bring to the point what thousands of posts on these forums and elsewhere talk about: “WTF is going on with 16k dmg from stealth???” It still baffles me that this isn’t acknowledged more as a big problem by the devs and I can only imagine how many more players, casual and competitive alike, you would draw into PvP if it wasn’t for ridiculous burst damage. Just because we have a (not fun) Downed State and someone who has been instagibbed can be ressed right away doesn’t mean it’s fun or fair or a “L2Play issue”. Speaking of L2P, I see pro players on streams get smashed by Backstab/Mug the same as everyone else and they say the same things: “How is this still in the game?”.

Besides that I’m quite excited about some of the profession changes mentioned. Going through every profession like that was definitely a treat. Of course not every issue got tackled (like Mesmer runspeed, too long casting times of Ele Conjures or Mesmer Phantasms etc.), but that’s probably asking too much, and there will hopefully be more SOTGs with devs in the near future.

Overall a very good episode and I would like to encourage you to keep up the structure of tackling each profession one after another.

what i wan so hard:

-heart of the mists , spvp free2play

-arena 2v2 3v3 5v5

-visible rating , separated as teamqueuerating and soloqueuerating

-visible ladder (when community grows leagues a la sc: bronze silver platin gold diamond ….

-visible stats for spvp/ tourneys ( kills, damage per round, heal over time, interrupts, evades, dodges, blocks, skills used, points neutralized, points captured..)

-separate ladder: solopugger and teamqueue (if they separate it,on solopugger mode: many good players will play it and invite and help new unknown players on their ts and share some tactics, builds and roles they should play -> this will lead to a more helpful community and the community will grow and become better…)

-put money into the pvpsection for tournaments

-best players want fame; give it to them

-get ur money by selling things in pvpitemshop but only for optic: costumes, weapons, charappearance, new races ?…

-i wan 2 more maps: one should be a domination battlemode where u fight for only one node in the middle nothing else! blue starts in north and red in south . it will result in big teamfights on the node alltime

-and make a fun map in king of the hill game mode

-observermode which will lead to nice streamcasts a la guildsource , guide, more viewers…

-customizable server: so u can make them into deathmatch games or team squad deathmatch from battlefield ( 4 teams fight each other on a big map and hides behind buildings etc…)

-weekly tournaments: 2v2 3v3 5v5 hold by community or arenanet

-pvptutorial for each class

-my ele should get a 5th attunement and i wan play ele with greatsword

Mentions tornado selfrez but no asura engineer seizure cam, hugely disappointed

Not to be too negative but when the “class balancing expert” does not know the names of all the skills or whether a skill already has a blast finisher or not, it’s a bit worrying…

If it’s your job to balance, then know your kitten. He’s like a doctor who doesn’t know the names of the most common medications and their functions trying to help a patient.

Overall, I’m kind of disappointed. The community and its representatives seemed way more prepared for this than the developers. (Except for Jon, maybe. Soon.)
I don’t mean to offend, but Karl didn’t seem self-confident about giving this talk and that reflected negatively on the more interesting things he said.
Time is limited, don’t fret explaining the basics of a class for the off chance one viewer has not read the discription in Character Creation.

The balance conversation seemed very random. I don’t think banners, necro summons, turrets, traps, … should be priority. They don’t have a solid place in PvP, because they rely too much on AI and even when buffed, players will prefer not to use them, because there is no related skillcap.

I think I’ll delete my Engineer now, waste of a character slot. The RNG is not fun.

I’m excited for the leaderboards and I like how it’s being handled in a way fit for GW2 and not just a copy of how it has been done in other MMOs in the past.
Even though, the matchmaking is still vague and I expect there will be unflattering exploits if they don’t get it exactly right.

It also seemed as if they had not given much thought to the player incentive issue and only see new rewards as a long term thing. There was no further discussion about carrying over PVE players to sPVP except for sharing an option of a daily Laurel.

edit: Oh yeah, great to hear the PVP gear will be displayable in the selection screen coming next patch! ^^

I’m completely at a loss for Karl’s inability to do public speaking.

I’m watching the SOTG now and will be determining if I’m quitting the game or not in the last 45 minutes of it.

Defektive.7283:

I’m completely at a loss for Karl’s inability to do public speaking.

I’m watching the SOTG now and will be determining if I’m quitting the game or not in the last 45 minutes of it.

You are a truly valued member of our community and we’re sorry to see you go.
Maybe we can make a farewell thread for you so that you can matter more.

Obviously we’re all frustrated and obviously Karl’s note salad was a little frustrating, but if you want to leave then just leave. We’ve lost hundreds (thousands?) of players over the months and their departure hasn’t changed a thing.

Skyro.3108:

Valkyriez.6578:

I haven’t watched it yet, but was there any mention of sPvP getting anything new, Anything at all, in the coming March 26 patch?

Custom servers? First implementation of leader boards? A new map is in the pipeline with another unique secondary objective?

I don’t care about balance changes. I just want to know if there is any features, at all, in the march patch or is the end of April the ETA on something for sPvP?

The repeatedly said they were already internally testing leaderboards, custom servers, and spectator mode and they just have to make sure there are no bugs with them before shipping them out, so they sound very close to being done.

Patch drops in 2 weeks, here’s hoping.

You always want to know more, but I thought we got a lot of good info today on what to expect in the not too distant future (SOOONN™). Some people were never going to be happy.

Biggest things that stood out for me was the balance (as always) or lack thereof.
Some of their class responses seemed pretty reasonable. Some left me somewhat hopeful – IE:

Thieves getting rebalanced, it sounds like, to be more mobile, less perma-stealthy kittens, possibly less burst and more attrition capability. That to me sounds like a much more skill-based and engaging style of play than what we have currently. Of course it could go horribly wrong, but I’ll cling to hope for now.

Some made me a bit dismayed, IE -
Rangers… Greatsword love is good, Longbow love is good however they didn’t adress the biggest issue with rangers which are the dumb AI pets and how limiting they are (They die so easily if they engage in a fight, F2 skills are unresponsive, Pathing is still iffy, the damage ratio of pet vs ranger is ungodly bad – pet damage should be 10% tops, the rest on the ranger himself. The pets should be mostly about their utility and play opening capabilities, not 40% of a rangers damage. It’s AI for heavens sake)
Wonky skills like sword 1. It’s a great weapon, but no matter how long you play a ranger you will always always have to put more effort/attention into how that kitten 1 skill on sword is used or else be rooted/leap off into nowhere, etc. Good news about the look at utilities though.

Ah warrior…. Banners… really Devs? Freaking banners? Get off it and fix the real issues with warriors. Sustain, lackluster weapons (hence why kitten near every ‘competitive’ warrior is GS + X), Sustain, cripple/chill completely shutting a warrior down like a hard counter, Sustain, lack of build viability (condition builds are fine? Really? In what universe?), oh and Sustain.
Sigh

Oh, and of course the golden moment of hurrrr silence from the devs when Xeph brought up the issue with thief/mesmer power/mechanics as it relates to new players. That was priceless.

These guys don’t get it what more is there to understand? They might be the nicest guys on the planet and it might be true that they don’t have much in the way of resources but they are completely clueless about balance and what features this game has to have and much sooner then later. The pvp side of this game is doomed. The only MMORPG game that ever built its population up after early mis-steps was Eve Online. Its foolish to think they will make changes fast enough to get people to come back. This game has already blew it.

Caffynated.5713:

You always want to know more, but I thought we got a lot of good info today on what to expect in the not too distant future (SOOONN™). Some people were never going to be happy.

MMORPG companies love people like you. You are willing to be stepped on forever and be blindly loyal. Well enjoy playing with the same 100 people because that’s what its going to be in a month or two. You spent good money of this game you have every right to demand more then they have given so far. Don’t be such a pushover it’s these guys job to put out a quality product. They are failing.

wintermute.4096:

kailin.4905:

Xsorus.2507:

No, they said they’re looking at shatter to see if its overpowered, which they won’t determine till after they buff Greatsword/Scepter…Then and only then will they nerf Shatter

So essentially give one of the two or three most powerful and played classes another OP ability then MAYBE nerf there other OP ability a month or five down the road. Meanwhile everyone playing rolls mesmer and loses there kitten when the nerf does come about leading to them re-buffing it the following patch.

Making Greatsword piercing can hardly be called op. After all, it’s #1 is one of the weakest in the game in terms of dps, and how often can you really consistently line up people who are not complete scrubs anyway?
If that is the compensation mesmers get for their primary source of burst, yea, that’s a pretty hard hitting nerf.

Zinwrath.2049:

Xeph, i nearly lost it at my computer …like into tears when you brought up how fighting mesmer/theifs is frusterating and confusing for new players coming into hotjoins and the entire room goes dead silent.

That was the most memorable moment of the whole interview. I pretty much think that summed up everything for me. Massive kick to the nuts, GJ.

Sorry, but we the first impression something makes on complete newbs is not something that should be that important for balancing. Any burst-heavy build can be frustrating for newbs, just look at all the screaming about bull rush + frenzy + 100b after launch. That’s something that surely was pretty frustrating when you had to learn that not doding at the right time was pretty much game over.

Attitudes like this are part of these reason the pvp community is dieing in addition to the cluelessness of the devs. That’s right new players should just shut up and take it that’s a smart way to build your player base up leave in op mechanics because pros can deal with them. Seriously you people get what you deserve in the end which will be like the same 50 morons queuing for tournaments a few months down the line.

Kwll.1468:

wintermute.4096:

kailin.4905:

Xsorus.2507:

No, they said they’re looking at shatter to see if its overpowered, which they won’t determine till after they buff Greatsword/Scepter…Then and only then will they nerf Shatter

So essentially give one of the two or three most powerful and played classes another OP ability then MAYBE nerf there other OP ability a month or five down the road. Meanwhile everyone playing rolls mesmer and loses there kitten when the nerf does come about leading to them re-buffing it the following patch.

Making Greatsword piercing can hardly be called op. After all, it’s #1 is one of the weakest in the game in terms of dps, and how often can you really consistently line up people who are not complete scrubs anyway?
If that is the compensation mesmers get for their primary source of burst, yea, that’s a pretty hard hitting nerf.

Zinwrath.2049:

Xeph, i nearly lost it at my computer …like into tears when you brought up how fighting mesmer/theifs is frusterating and confusing for new players coming into hotjoins and the entire room goes dead silent.

That was the most memorable moment of the whole interview. I pretty much think that summed up everything for me. Massive kick to the nuts, GJ.

Sorry, but we the first impression something makes on complete newbs is not something that should be that important for balancing. Any burst-heavy build can be frustrating for newbs, just look at all the screaming about bull rush + frenzy + 100b after launch. That’s something that surely was pretty frustrating when you had to learn that not doding at the right time was pretty much game over.

Attitudes like this are part of these reason the pvp community is dieing in addition to the cluelessness of the devs. That’s right new players should just shut up and take it that’s a smart way to build your player base up leave in op mechanics because pros can deal with them. Seriously you people get what you deserve in the end which will be like the same 50 morons queuing for tournaments a few months down the line.

This pretty much sums up the core problem for me, a problem the devs won’t/can’t address because they’ve picked their method and their style and it requires too many resources to fix considering they are under constant pressure to move forward with game modes and the usual bells and whistles.

Unfortunately, while I personally think it’s the best PvP engine out there, it’s also probably the most noob unfriendly PvP I’ve ever played.

That, combined with the dev teams dedication to slow, snail-paced changes in a fast-paced gaming industry are poor marketing choices, however philosophically correct they might feel.

I would like to make a really good post on this note but I’m afraid the only Anet people reading posts are mods hunting for infractors.
When I get infractions I’m somewhat happy, like “hey, someone at Anet read actually that!”.

That aside…
I believe the flaw is inner in the fundament of the system.
WoW failed at balance due to wayyyy to many changes in a short time span.
GW2 is failing at it due to wayyy too few.
Let’s take Warriors for instance; they have basically 2 viable pvp weapons out of 9.
They have a bad support spec for PvE, they lack sustain, they have bugged skills, there are still some knee-jerk nerfs from BWEs (Brawn, Evis)…
“We will double the stats of banners”.
What.

It’s like, I bring my car to a mechanic with a broken tire, malfunctioning engine, insensible brakes, failing steer…
One day later I come back and they tell me: “We’re fixing the ash tray”.

Anet, being afraid to do anything is worse than doing too much.
You’re going toward stagnation again.

OH MY GOSH look at these QTs on webcam!

So they are gonna make gs and confusing images piercing, Weak auto attack for one, obvious animation for the other… AND they are nerfing shatters….. While the GS #4 is still bugged and they have made 0 acknowledgement of that fudge up…. Someone on my guild that never plays Mesmer went and tested the GS phantasm her quote “its buggy…. Its wayyyyy buggy….” And yet here mesmers are still called OP and can’t play and blah blah blah…

They can double banner stats if they want but if “~” still puts your weapon swap into cooldown It’s indefinitely a set-and-forget.

180 toughness and Vit surely isn’t weak, but meh.

great job xeph, nero, grouch & ty for the time, ANet.

in future sotg, i would like to see two things from ANet:

a) more preparation—their balance guys could have been much more organized, but it seemed like they were pretty nervous & no wonder why—this was like a corporation meeting with its angry investors.

b) more enthusiasm for your game! should be really excited about changes & the future & be giving that enthusiasm to the fans, especially in these comparatively dark times for the game presently.

it was really good when, despite not talking about WHEN observer mode was coming, Tyler gave great details about what Observer mode would be like.

i was also pleased to hear that they have plans to essentially replace hotjoin with custom servers. that will help tremendously.

i was actually pleased with their discussion of Ranger, because ANet understands the problem with Power specs is not in the weapons, it is in the lack of utilities to defend ourselves with when speccing for glass. i dig GS too, so those tweaks will be nice as well.

overall some cringy moments with some good info. thanks again.