Guild Wars 2

To the bads that keep whining about the thought about mesmer being buffed:

They’re buffing the useless skills/weapons for Mesmer. This means that if they nerf the 20/20/0/0/30 shatter with illu mirror and portal Mesmer will have something to fall back on. If they would nerf Mesmer as it is now the class would just be ruined.

Why on earth would you cry about them buffing scepter? More options is a good thing.

Well I didn’t read all of the posts so I don’t know if I am reiterating something that was already brought up.
But Ranger didn’t see a lot of representation or a lot of discussion, while other class balance discussions and future/possible updates approached the 15 and 20 minute marks.
It would be nice to see every class get an equal amount of discussion so that every professions community can get insight, and not 15 minutes of mesmer/ele insight versus 1 minute of ranger insight (as an example).
If there really is nothing else that could possibly be discussed about a current class, then saying so in a direct manner instead of transitioning poorly with a “moving along” demeanor is all that is needed.

Just watched the whole thing, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed. Not in the developers though, but in the way content of the discussion was pushed toward the balance side of things.

I believe balance to be the least of this games problems. You cannot market a game on “good balance” because most of the time it’s subjective. Gamers do not tell thier friends to come try out GW2 “cause its so balanced”. It’s not a selling point and never will be.

Features are what sell and grow games. Any of the top PvP games out there have features and balance is secondary and generally looks after itself.

I wanted to know more in depth info on custom servers, how will they work, are they monetized, how much will they be if they are? What are the restrictions on them? How will spectator mode work and what are some of the cool things that are unique to GW2 spec mode?

Features promote games and get new, old and disinterested players back in. I couldn’t give the proverbial flying fock Bout the overall balance discussion because balance is already relatively ok.

There isn’t a single non GW2 player out there, on the planet, that just got excited about a feature coming to the sPvP scene that would intice him to come check it out and give it a go.

Even worse is that it wouldn’t have interested a single WvW or PvE player to come try it out. Go look at the WvW forums, they call sPvP the “forgotten game mode that nobody plays”. I don’t even like WvW or its concept, but there’s more people playing WvW for the server Sea of Sorrows the. There would be in the entire EU and NA sPvP scene.

If we can’t encourage these guys to try sPvP, when they already own and like GW2, then there no point. You need to generate Interest from your in house population first, and 1 hour of balance discussions in a monthly SOTG and only 20 mins and little depth to the future features section won’t help.

Grouch, Nero and Xeph. I appreciate what you guys do and really think you guys are doing a great job. But I think the conversation was prioritized wrong.

I’ll say it again, balance discussion doesn’t bring players to the game or keep players in. The best balance in the world won’t make me feel any better if the game feels stagnated and there is t hope on the horizon.

My 2 cents.

Valkyriez.6578:

I’ll say it again, balance discussion doesn’t bring players to the game or keep players in.

Yes, yes it does. Forcing players to commit to meta builds is a tragedy to all competitive games. On the other hand, giving players the opportunity to create something for themselves in all aspects serves as a foundation for making any game great.

The one thing everyone can agree on is that customization is a major influence in what makes games enjoyable. Meta game defeats the purpose of customization by excluding play styles from the equal chance at winning; regardless of player skill.

Balance is key to the future of this game and it should be a priority.

On the subject of balance, we can look at how bunker builds seem to be current meta. In an ironic way, this justifies why Anet needs to implement new game modes other than conquest.

Blackmoon.6837:

Valkyriez.6578:

I’ll say it again, balance discussion doesn’t bring players to the game or keep players in.

Yes, yes it does. Forcing players to commit to meta builds is a tragedy to all competitive games. On the other hand, giving players the opportunity to create something for themselves in all aspects serves as a foundation for making any game great.

The one thing everyone can agree on is that customization is a major influence in what makes games enjoyable. Meta game defeats the purpose of customization by excluding play styles from the equal chance at winning; regardless of player skill.

Balance is key to the future of this game and it should be a priority.

On the subject of balance, we can look at how bunker builds seem to be current meta. In an ironic way, this justifies why Anet needs to implement new game modes other than conquest.

The meta builds…..

Theres nothing significantly wrong with the balance in this game besides a few minor tweaks. It certainly shouldn’t get 1 hour out of a 1 hour 20 min SOTG discussion.

Agree/Disagree as you like. My point still stands, no one ever sold a game on it being superbly “balanced”. Being severely unbalanced can drive players away, sure. But every competitive game, whether it be a RPG or MOBA, has more then enough balance whinges on the forums regardless of the state of the game and players generally know this.

Oh well, it falls on deaf ears anyway. I switched it off and was disappointed and so would have anyone else who was interested in where the game is headed features and gameplay wise. There just wasn’t enough discussion on it and it left a hollow feeling at the end of it.

Oh I’m sorry for being bad Oni….

Greatsword buffs merited ? :/ LOL..
I’ll wait till I see the patch notes before making qq posts, but hopefully they don’t wackamole my favorite class.

How would you even begin to know what my skill level is?..
Ah.. inflammatory posts :/
Sure I’ll teach you how to play…

Greatsword is staff’s mirror. It counters different classes..

Both are strong weapons, I prefer staff s/focus because the game mode is conquest not arena.

Banner buffs….really?

I’m really sorry to say this but I’m deeply dissappointed after listening to Karl just describing every class instead of talking about class balance at all. Can’t believe he’s so badly prepared to explain his work.

The positive: I am just happy they mentioned traitlines and weapons, making less used weapons and traitlines more appealing. Build diversity will do much. The ranking and spectator programs coming sound good too.

The negative: However the rate at which changes occur feels too slow. The amount of changes happening are often minuscule, making you feel that the road to build diversity is lightyears away.

I do think that people could be nicer towards the dev’s on the forums. Constructive criticism doesn’t translate to being rude while complaining.

Malcastus.6240:

The positive: I am just happy they mentioned traitlines and weapons, making less used weapons and traitlines more appealing. Build diversity will do much. The ranking and spectator programs coming sound good too.

The negative: However the rate at which changes occur feels too slow. The amount of changes happening are often minuscule, making you feel that the road to build diversity is lightyears away.

exactly
when i hear them talking about things they will do, i think “it would be great if all of what they say would come in the next patch, but more likely they may do some of this in a month or two.”

my impression is whatever balance changes we get, they are actually pve table scraps. the pvp devs have plans, but no resources. when they were asked how it is they balance stuff and what they mean by “looking” at something, they did not mention anything about having tools to gather data or observe player matches or statistics, etc. they’ve nothing. they are undermanned, underfunded and always at the mercy of other game modes.

in gw1, you could really feel that balance changes revolved largely around gvg and to a lesser degree ha. occasionally there were pve-centric changes as well, but by and large skill updates and explanations were talking about gvg.

anet has shifted priorities. they are more interested in other game modes that cater to casuals. i don’t say this lightly, but we’ve reached a point where it is obvious. we can even see this in how much rng there is in all the skills and traits and weapons and armor and sigils. “select all the traits and sigils that give the highest chance to proc the biggest dmg and smash all your keys”.

you know what you should do anet?
make gw1 pvp edition hd. release on steam. profit.

hasnt been mentioned yet, but i for one took mcuh time to admire the well-defined bone structure of xeph’s face. very lean and healthy looking, resembling an aboriginal human breed which is rare nowdays. as for the nero fellow, his softer boyish looks are a fine addition as well. certainly some fine qualities in the charm of his dismeanor reminds me of an english youth.

Oni.5429:

To the bads that keep whining about the thought about mesmer being buffed:

They’re buffing the useless skills/weapons for Mesmer. This means that if they nerf the 20/20/0/0/30 shatter with illu mirror and portal Mesmer will have something to fall back on. If they would nerf Mesmer as it is now the class would just be ruined.

Why on earth would you cry about them buffing scepter? More options is a good thing.

Helseth, it’s fine scepter getting buffs but what’s annoying that mesmer shatter build is a staple meta for what? 6 months? And nothing is done about that, and instead they buff other weapons. That’s what’s frustrating. Staff 2 needs to be removed or redesigned because it’s ridiculously overpowered, stun break, teleport and sometimes chaos armor on 5 sec cooldown? Is this real life?

Phase retreat, while insanely op, especially since you can port to highground and through walls at many areas is nothing compared to blurred frenzy and illusionary leap. We should hit them too, in this case.

After that, what will mesmer be left with?

Their option is correct in this case. Fix the absolutely awful kitten first, see if the meta balances out after they’ve done that. If it doesnt they need to fix the stuff that stands out too much after that.

Their approach is very sound. The speed that they do these changes, however, is frankly disgusting.

Oni.5429:

Phase retreat, while insanely op, especially since you can port to highground and through walls at many areas is nothing compared to blurred frenzy and illusionary leap. We should hit them too, in this case.

After that, what will mesmer be left with?

Their option is correct in this case. Fix the absolutely awful kitten first, see if the meta balances out after they’ve done that. If it doesnt they need to fix the stuff that stands out too much after that.

Their approach is very sound. The speed that they do these changes, however, is frankly disgusting.

Of course, if they readjusted balance every few weeks, then sure, I am fine with this approach – buff what’s weak and then nerf what’s too strong. But there’s 1 change per 6 months so it’s unacceptable.

ya, i would drop the idea of it being an e-sport. At the rate its going it couldnt happen even within a years time. But all ya can do is enjoy it for what it is, look forward to the little things they’re adding and try to have fun. Or play something else thats giving you what you want.

As much as a shame as it is, for the good things gw2 spvp has going for it, its always gonna be on a crutch for sharing the code, resources and rules with a much bigger PVE title. All ya can do is hope one day it kicks off, perhaps later this year early next, or that a more focused better developed game of similiar style gets pushed out by another company that realized fantasy battleground pvp titles have a market that needs filled. I’m sure some other companys are watching and are taking notes on what gw2 did right and what they did wrong. Look at every mmo that comes out, they all brag about how they dont have something that ticked you off in a previous mmo, and also have things you liked about previous mmos. So, keep a look out, i bet we’ll be seeing more of this kind of gameplay real soon from competition.

“NEW fantasy battleground game by company X!”
Features new stunning graphics combined with tense twitch style game play.
Dodge enemy attacks with a speacial resource system!
No RNG!
Several classes with unique play styles!
Shipping with spectator mode and voice chat!
Free to play no purchase necessary!
Progress with our highly calculated ranking system in either solo/duo or 5v5!!
Open beta keys available now!

Next time Xeph should ask Karl if he knows where the mists are, seriously i think u could get hotjoin heros who know more about pvp than this guy. At the end there he wanted to say something about what classes are popular/strong in tournamets after he repeated xeph statement about mesmers/thiefs being popular in hotjoin but he rather stoped because he had no idea and he just looked confused. The only time he seemed like he might know something is when he mentioned pve.

As many ppl mentioned, they have no clue about competitive pvp. Otherwise they wouldn’t say eles don’t need restrictions in healing or talking about minion-masters. Especially Karl: had no idea, didn’t even know if turrets are blasts or not. If they want to improve the balance issues around classes, then mabye just ask top-players about it. They have much more experience than the devs, while playing on private-test-servers with joke-builds nobody has ever played.

i don’t think it’s all karl’s fault. again, consider they’ve no data collection systems, and no resources from anet to get it. certainly, he seems to not know what’s going on, but lay the blame at the feet of the people responsible, and not just the only people we interact with.

milo.6942:

i don’t think it’s all karl’s fault. again, consider they’ve no data collection systems, and no resources from anet to get it. certainly, he seems to not know what’s going on, but lay the blame at the feet of the people responsible, and not just the only people we interact with.

I agree, it also could’ve been the fact that Karl could’ve possibly been nervous he is only human, and it could happen to anyone; I know that in my life I have had those blank out periods.
Anyways all I can say is, I was very grateful to the devs for the experience and their patients.

Oni.5429:

To the bads that keep whining about the thought about mesmer being buffed:

They’re buffing the useless skills/weapons for Mesmer. This means that if they nerf the 20/20/0/0/30 shatter with illu mirror and portal Mesmer will have something to fall back on. If they would nerf Mesmer as it is now the class would just be ruined.

Why on earth would you cry about them buffing scepter? More options is a good thing.

Im all for the confusing images buff…. Will the ridiculously long wind up be there as will still? Prolly which is just sad because it misses half the time, it almost requires your target stay perfectly still and never move not dodge just not move to land…. GS I would be more happy about if they stopped screwing up the phantasm… Right now it hits for 1k and misses its other attacks on a crit in full zerker gear in the mists… Soooo wad up wit dat? Fix the bugs then add other stuff… Because with mesmers history has shown that the number of bugs is usually double the number of buffs in any patch. This last patch is a case in point… They introduced more bugs from cosmetic to down right debilitating and one that was a bug that made one weapon set OP (torch blast finisher) then subsequently “fixed” it now it is not a blast finisher and they screwed up iLeap and the GS phantasm as well… Gs STILL is not fixed… So I would much rather they fix that god awful bug before buffing the GS in anyway.. I don’t care if it hits multiple people in a line because no one is ever in a line for it to matter long enough.

Xeph.4513:

milo.6942:

i don’t think it’s all karl’s fault. again, consider they’ve no data collection systems, and no resources from anet to get it. certainly, he seems to not know what’s going on, but lay the blame at the feet of the people responsible, and not just the only people we interact with.

I agree, it also could’ve been the fact that Karl could’ve possibly been nervous he is only human, and it could happen to anyone; I know that in my life I have had those blank out periods.
Anyways all I can say is, I was very grateful to the devs for the experience and their patients.

Ye sure, Karl is just not as talented as Jon in speaking to people. But for public interviews you need ppl who are good in talking and have not “uhmmm” as every second word.

vangedas.7358:

Oni.5429:

To the bads that keep whining about the thought about mesmer being buffed:

They’re buffing the useless skills/weapons for Mesmer. This means that if they nerf the 20/20/0/0/30 shatter with illu mirror and portal Mesmer will have something to fall back on. If they would nerf Mesmer as it is now the class would just be ruined.

Why on earth would you cry about them buffing scepter? More options is a good thing.

Helseth, it’s fine scepter getting buffs but what’s annoying that mesmer shatter build is a staple meta for what? 6 months? And nothing is done about that, and instead they buff other weapons. That’s what’s frustrating. Staff 2 needs to be removed or redesigned because it’s ridiculously overpowered, stun break, teleport and sometimes chaos armor on 5 sec cooldown? Is this real life?

Staff two just moves… And look at the evades/blocks other classes get in some of their weapons… Aside from blurred frenzy staff two is one of the best options we have for negating damage… Now I know we have two blocks…But they only block one hit and after that you are done…. So no… These are not annoyingly over powered when compared to the other in combat mobility of other classes (ele, thief, s/d ranger, Even warrior whirlwind evades) Sooooooo again? we have blink, phase retreat, and iLeap, the best reliable damage mitigation we have is blurred, and phase retreat. Thieves can shadow step to the same places we do, ele’s teleport can as well, Guardians even have teleport skills… Sooooo again… Our damage mitigation isn’t as good as every one keeps kittening about… Our most reliable source of it is confusion (not the condition) but confusing the person on the keyboard so we don’t get hit…

And as far as evades/teleports go… we get one on a MH sword, and one on staff (with weapon sets) Rangers have 3 evades in one set and thieves have teleports (multiple)

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Xeph.4513:

milo.6942:

i don’t think it’s all karl’s fault. again, consider they’ve no data collection systems, and no resources from anet to get it. certainly, he seems to not know what’s going on, but lay the blame at the feet of the people responsible, and not just the only people we interact with.

I agree, it also could’ve been the fact that Karl could’ve possibly been nervous he is only human, and it could happen to anyone; I know that in my life I have had those blank out periods.
Anyways all I can say is, I was very grateful to the devs for the experience and their patients.

Ye sure, Karl is just not as talented as Jon in speaking to people. But for public interviews you need ppl who are good in talking and have not “uhmmm” as every second word.

the way karl speaks is irrelevant. what he said demonstrated a disconnect between dev-land and player-land. to my mind, this is not his fault, it’s the consequence of other game modes being prioritized in the company.

In GW1 there was a dedicated team with devs and some top tear players who would test out balancing and try out new possibilities before they bring any patch to PvP. can we have it in gw2 please? i know there were some trsust issues from the community back then, but at least the players know what the sPvP should be and feel like.

After watching the SOTG for myself, I can definitely see why so many of the hardcore players are frustrated. I even found it a little demeaning when Karl kept summarizing the classes back to the viewers. Who do they think watches these videos? Newcomers? No? More like people who have spent hundreds and close to thousands of hours learning and playing multiple classes. It’s been 5-6 years and what we have infront of us is hard to believe is even 1 years worth of content (for spvp). Jon spoke of these other maps that they spent time working on 2 years ago, so where are they?

Although it’s nice to hear of upcoming class tweaks and improvements, personally, content and incentive is still a bigger factor as to why spvp has staggered moreover anything else (thank you Xeph). Which of course, they didn’t give us many details on. Their biggest issue was man power for making new armor which had so many variants. It’s understandable but it’s obvious how thinned out these devs are that they dont have a few people working on something like this.

Also, boon hate? This wouldn’t even be necessary if boon removal/stripping worked properly in the first place or were available to more classes. But I guess it could be a fix for classes lacking boon removal to begin with.

Personally, I will be looking forward to mesmer rework because of how boring shatter mesmer became for me. If they improved mantra builds and/or confusion builds, that would be awesome. I want to carry a big shiny sceptor that actually works.

Lol@ not providing spectator mode for the tourny playerbase first. Why would I want to watch glory heroes via hot join?

As a casual pvper, I can even feel for yah guys. Hopefully these holy leaderboards will come out this month, to give some of you a reason to stay.

Pretty decent albeit shallow all around, except that one stupid “ranger balance” comment about pets getting agony resistance.

No one cares about Agony resistance for PvP.

Valkyriez.6578:

Just watched the whole thing, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed. Not in the developers though, but in the way content of the discussion was pushed toward the balance side of things.

I believe balance to be the least of this games problems. You cannot market a game on “good balance” because most of the time it’s subjective. Gamers do not tell thier friends to come try out GW2 “cause its so balanced”. It’s not a selling point and never will be.

Features are what sell and grow games. Any of the top PvP games out there have features and balance is secondary and generally looks after itself.

I wanted to know more in depth info on custom servers, how will they work, are they monetized, how much will they be if they are? What are the restrictions on them? How will spectator mode work and what are some of the cool things that are unique to GW2 spec mode?

Features promote games and get new, old and disinterested players back in. I couldn’t give the proverbial flying fock Bout the overall balance discussion because balance is already relatively ok.

There isn’t a single non GW2 player out there, on the planet, that just got excited about a feature coming to the sPvP scene that would intice him to come check it out and give it a go.

Even worse is that it wouldn’t have interested a single WvW or PvE player to come try it out. Go look at the WvW forums, they call sPvP the “forgotten game mode that nobody plays”. I don’t even like WvW or its concept, but there’s more people playing WvW for the server Sea of Sorrows the. There would be in the entire EU and NA sPvP scene.

If we can’t encourage these guys to try sPvP, when they already own and like GW2, then there no point. You need to generate Interest from your in house population first, and 1 hour of balance discussions in a monthly SOTG and only 20 mins and little depth to the future features section won’t help.

Grouch, Nero and Xeph. I appreciate what you guys do and really think you guys are doing a great job. But I think the conversation was prioritized wrong.

I’ll say it again, balance discussion doesn’t bring players to the game or keep players in. The best balance in the world won’t make me feel any better if the game feels stagnated and there is t hope on the horizon.

My 2 cents.

Completely agree.

“Balance” of a game is a given, and something the game SHOULD be. Its not something to sell a game on. GW2 PvP from the very start has lacked structural features that are necessary to make a successful PvP game, and it is only slowly starting to get better.

I just watched the SoTG and overall i’d say it was pretty successful.
The balance part took a long time, but imo balance is the most important thing. I must admit that i sounded like there were very few changes incoming, but some good ones as well.
For instance the changes to the stealth debuff. It was something i suggested a long time ago, so its nice it is finally here.
I didnt expect a huge amount of features in this patch, but if we get leaderboards that would be great. People quitting because are not getting custom arenas, spectator mode and IG ladder are being too unrealistic.

I’ll divide my post into two sections, the second part being constructive feedback for Xeph and Nero.

Part 1:
I just wanted to clarify on something a lot of people seem angry about – The fact that spectator mode will not immediately work with tournaments.
This might sound like a bad move, but in reality i dont think it is that big of a deal.
They specifically stated that custom arenas and spectator mode would be shipped approximately at the same time. This means that teams will be able to set-up and customize their own server. This ALSO means that teams will be able to host their own tournaments and invite shoutcasters + spectators. This is exactly how things worked in CS 1.6 and it seemed to work just fine.
It sounded like the spectator mode would ship with switchable PoV’s and if we’re lucky a free-look perspective as well. This should be enough for decent shoutcasts and self-arranged tournaments.
The only problem is that these tournaments might not grant a reward as tournaments would. But imo thats not really that big of a deal.

Part 2:
Overall I think you did a good job (Xeph, Nero). It seemed like the best answers were given you very specifically asked and mentioned balance stuff. For instance when Xeph pointed out that Shatter might be too strong and most importantly why.
I’d like to see these more questions in this manner, as we all know that we cannot get any dates for new features, and it seemed like they didnt know what to specify themselves.
Let me just give a couple of examples to clarify myself a little more.
When talking about Guardian balance the developers said they were pretty happy with the overall state of the class. I am as well to some extend.
It would have been great if you could ask directly if there were any changes to traits like “Zealous Blade” which would make the Power trait-line more appealing, since we all know it’s pretty weak atm.
I believe they would be allowed to answer such questions, and opening up for a new traitline would really make the guardian even more versatile. Which imo then would be great information regarding balance.
The same could be applied for Rangers. They said they had some changed for the Greatsword and Longbow, but we all know the worst weapon is the main-hand axe. Why not confront the devs and ask directly if there were any upcoming changes to the axes?
Many of the questions were maybe too broad, and it allowed the devs to talk very freely and therefore avoid the actual core issues.

That is just my personal opinion and something to consider

In future just get rid of the dev’s and run it with players. Then they can discuss balance and we can get some good discussion. There is no point the devs being on because their policy is simply not to discuss anything.

As for balance, the SotG was exceptionally worrying in this regard. A few issues they said which meant they were out of touch:
1, They think necro has build diversity and think minion master is one of those builds.
2, They dont think the ele (and their healing) is OP anymore. They obviously think their laughable changes to ele last patch are enough. They arent. In fact they are buffing the scepter which is already used in the strongest build in the game. And giving an ele MORE AoE damage when it already has just too much.
3, The mesmer beam change worries me because I am almost certain it is going to be very powerful.

Oni.5429:

To the bads that keep whining about the thought about mesmer being buffed:

They’re buffing the useless skills/weapons for Mesmer. This means that if they nerf the 20/20/0/0/30 shatter with illu mirror and portal Mesmer will have something to fall back on. If they would nerf Mesmer as it is now the class would just be ruined.

Why on earth would you cry about them buffing scepter? More options is a good thing.

I think the logic behind the complaining is that “mesmer has a strong build” and “any buff to mesmer will directly improve all builds for mesmer” and so they think that this will make mesmers too good…which, of course, is ridiculous.

mongolianmisfit.8350:

As a casual pvper, I can even feel for yah guys. Hopefully these holy leaderboards will come out this month, to give some of you a reason to stay.

Too bad it will be a joke just like the QP leaderboard

I agree with the sentiments above about how its fairly pointless to go on and on about balance.

The reality is that GW2 has to also balance for PVE and WvW which have a completely different gearing stats system and mechanics. They also have WAY more players so sPvP is always going to take a BACKSEAT when it comes to class development.

As much as people are unhappy with the warrior in spvp, it is probably the strongest PVE class so giving it buffs will just make it even more broken in PVE.

If tens of thousands of PVE players are happy with warrior (most popular class) and only a few dozen sPvP players are unhappy, then who do you think takes priority?

This effect is the same across all spvp development. I think more of us just need to accept that a competitive game / esport can’t really happen in an environment when it has to take a backseat to PVE and WvW.

Jacobin.8509:

I agree with the sentiments above about how its fairly pointless to go on and on about balance.

The reality is that GW2 has to also balance for PVE and WvW which have a completely different gearing stats system and mechanics. They also have WAY more players so sPvP is always going to take a BACKSEAT when it comes to class development.

As much as people are unhappy with the warrior in spvp, it is probably the strongest PVE class so giving it buffs will just make it even more broken in PVE.

If tens of thousands of PVE players are happy with warrior (most popular class) and only a few dozen sPvP players are unhappy, then who do you think takes priority?

This effect is the same across all spvp development. I think more of us just need to accept that a competitive game / esport can’t really happen in an environment when it has to take a backseat to PVE and WvW.

Separate PvE from PvP.

It’s not exactly a radical idea, ArenaNet has said they would do it, ArenaNet did it in GW1, and ArenaNet has already done it in GW2.

Nor would the changes required to make warriors more viable necessarily carry over into the PvE world. Warriors are good in PvE because they’re completely damage powerhouses. Buffing mobility, buffing defensive capability, and being able to deal with boons would do nothing to change the PvE meta.

That would work, but I don’t see then going beyond specific coefficient tweaks like for confusion and retaliation and skill durations like the guardian shout save yourselves.

I doubt they would completely change the function and effects of entire skills for spvp only. They would practically be designing an entirely different game which I think is necessary, but doubt Anet has the will and resources to do that.

Lay off of Karl. Grouch specifically asked him to summarize the first couple classes, so then Karl assumed that’s what he wanted for all the classes, and Grouch nor the other interviewers ever asked him to stop doing that. It’s not Karl’s fault, it’s the interviewers’.

So he’s not a good public speaker. So what? If there wasn’t someone from the balance team there I’m sure people would complain even more. So he forgot whether or not a certain skill has a blast finisher. So what? There are hundreds of skills and effects in the game, he can be forgiven for forgetting one. So it makes him appear less capable at his job. So what? He’s a human being and human beings all make mistakes, he doesn’t deserve to be judged for that.

“They said ele healing is fine, lol” – no, they said that the amount that eles heal is fine and that they want to increase the casting times of those abilities. They want an ele getting his heal off to be a big deal, but they admitted that right now it is perhaps too easy to do so.

“same build diversity as necros? Necros have no build diversity, lol” – wrong. There’s the standard condition build, then you have 30/30/10/0/0, you have the condition build with Terror mixed in, there’s a 30/20/0/0/20 ele-killer build which is super fun with 4.2k life blast crits and incredible dagger spam damage and boon removal, you have the minion bunker-buster or bunker build, heck take a look at the two builds in my sig. The point is that the tree is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for “tweaking” builds to suit personal preference. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build, for example.

“leaderboards will probably release six months from now” – oh my lord, they said specifically that leaderboards are in testing. Meaning that all of the programming work is done unless the testers find a bug that needs to be fixed. They also said that leaderboards will be here soon, maybe even before the patch! How in the hell do you interpret that as “6 months”?

EDIT: sorry for the venom in this post. The forums have been frustrating me lately, there was a thread where someone dared to say that they were actually having fun with sPvP and everyone on here tore him a new butthole. I guess I’m frustrated over how this forum behaves, but it is the internet, so I should probably get over it…

lettucemode.3789:

Lay off of Karl. Grouch specifically asked him to summarize the first couple classes, so then Karl assumed that’s what he wanted for all the classes, and Grouch nor the other interviewers ever asked him to stop doing that. It’s not Karl’s fault, it’s the interviewers’.

So he’s not a good public speaker. So what? If there wasn’t someone from the balance team there I’m sure people would complain even more. So he forgot whether or not a certain skill has a blast finisher. So what? There are hundreds of skills and effects in the game, he can be forgiven for forgetting one. So it makes him appear less capable at his job. So what? He’s a human being and human beings all make mistakes, he doesn’t deserve to be judged for that.

“They said ele healing is fine, lol” – no, they said that the amount that eles heal is fine and that they want to increase the casting times of those abilities. They want an ele getting his heal off to be a big deal, but they admitted that right now it is perhaps too easy to do so.

“same build diversity as necros? Necros have no build diversity, lol” – wrong. There’s the standard condition build, then you have 30/30/10/0/0, you have the condition build with Terror mixed in, there’s a 30/20/0/0/20 ele-killer build which is super fun with 4.2k life blast crits and incredible dagger spam damage and boon removal, you have the minion bunker-buster or bunker build, heck take a look at the two builds in my sig. The point is that the tree is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for “tweaking” builds to suit personal preference. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build, for example.

“leaderboards will probably release six months from now” – oh my lord, they said specifically that leaderboards are in testing. Meaning that all of the programming work is done unless the testers find a bug that needs to be fixed. They also said that leaderboards will be here soon, maybe even before the patch! How in the hell do you interpret that as “6 months”?

EDIT: sorry for the venom in this post. The forums have been frustrating me lately, there was a thread where someone dared to say that they were actually having fun with sPvP and everyone on here tore him a new butthole. I guess I’m frustrated over how this forum behaves, but it is the internet, so I should probably get over it…

yep, i totally agree with everything you brought up

Xeph.4513:

Anyways all I can say is, I was very grateful to the devs for the experience and their patients.

Patients? Well, you may even be right, they are driving us all kinda crazy and I too start to feel the repercussions of that with all the desperate people asking me for advice.

PS: I am sorry, you guys did very well, but the silly jokes keep me sane, I suppose.

Do we know what the PvP landscape is supposed to be like after all the basic features are finally in?

Because by the sound of it, it just looks like a gigantic mess:

- 5v5+8v8 hot joins with obs mode and no MMR. Why you would put obs mode on hot join is beyond my understanding.

- custom arenas with obs mode but no MMR I guess ? Targeted at third party tournament ? Is that supposed to become the main competitive hub?

- 2-team and 8-team tournaments with no obs mode but 2 distinct MMR. What will become of these? why no obs mode in ranked matches? why the 2 systems ?

Although it’s nice to talk about balance, mechanics and other specifics, it’s important not to lose track of the big picture:

What will the PvP landscape be like eventually?

thanks xeph for being unbiased when it comes to mesmer even though you’re a mesmer user yourself. Totally respect you for that.

@ Hugs, they talked about all your concerns…

Obviously custom arenas will be the place to set up scrims, that’s how every competitive online game works, you can make your own games with your own settings.

Obs mode is in hot join so you can see what other players are running, how they play, and how their spec works. Hot joins will eventually be replaced by custom arenas.

8-team tournaments will not be left in their current form. They mentioned making them only available on weekends, or doing weekly or monthly 8-team tournaments.

There won’t be an obs mode in tPvP at first because they are working on a shoutcasting system. Basically, accounts tagged as shoutcasters will be able to reserve the single obs slot for a given match or series of matches so they can stream and cast the game.

“What will the PvP landscape be like eventually?” is too broad of a question IMO.

lettucemode.3789:

Lay off of Karl. Grouch specifically asked him to summarize the first couple classes, so then Karl assumed that’s what he wanted for all the classes, and Grouch nor the other interviewers ever asked him to stop doing that. It’s not Karl’s fault, it’s the interviewers’.

So he’s not a good public speaker. So what? If there wasn’t someone from the balance team there I’m sure people would complain even more. So he forgot whether or not a certain skill has a blast finisher. So what? There are hundreds of skills and effects in the game, he can be forgiven for forgetting one. So it makes him appear less capable at his job. So what? He’s a human being and human beings all make mistakes, he doesn’t deserve to be judged for that.

“They said ele healing is fine, lol” – no, they said that the amount that eles heal is fine and that they want to increase the casting times of those abilities. They want an ele getting his heal off to be a big deal, but they admitted that right now it is perhaps too easy to do so.

“same build diversity as necros? Necros have no build diversity, lol” – wrong. There’s the standard condition build, then you have 30/30/10/0/0, you have the condition build with Terror mixed in, there’s a 30/20/0/0/20 ele-killer build which is super fun with 4.2k life blast crits and incredible dagger spam damage and boon removal, you have the minion bunker-buster or bunker build, heck take a look at the two builds in my sig. The point is that the tree is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for “tweaking” builds to suit personal preference. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build, for example.

“leaderboards will probably release six months from now” – oh my lord, they said specifically that leaderboards are in testing. Meaning that all of the programming work is done unless the testers find a bug that needs to be fixed. They also said that leaderboards will be here soon, maybe even before the patch! How in the hell do you interpret that as “6 months”?

EDIT: sorry for the venom in this post. The forums have been frustrating me lately, there was a thread where someone dared to say that they were actually having fun with sPvP and everyone on here tore him a new butthole. I guess I’m frustrated over how this forum behaves, but it is the internet, so I should probably get over it…

I wrote several posts like this and decided not to post them for various reasons, but I’d like to say that I agree with pretty much everything you wrote and am glad you put it down. The venom is mostly deserved, this forum goes overboard on being negative.

lettucemode.3789:

@ Hugs, they talked about all your concerns…

Obviously custom arenas will be the place to set up scrims, that’s how every competitive online game works, you can make your own games with your own settings.

Obs mode is in hot join so you can see what other players are running, how they play, and how their spec works. Hot joins will eventually be replaced by custom arenas.

8-team tournaments will not be left in their current form. They mentioned making them only available on weekends, or doing weekly or monthly 8-team tournaments.

There won’t be an obs mode in tPvP at first because they are working on a shoutcasting system. Basically, accounts tagged as shoutcasters will be able to reserve the single obs slot for a given match or series of matches so they can stream and cast the game.

So if I got it right, in the end we’ll have:

- custom arenas with obs mode that will be used for both unranked games and 3rd party tournaments.

- 2-team tournaments for both solo and team ranked games.

- 8-team tournament for daily/weekly/monthly/yearly first party tournaments.

Is that correct?

Also, having obs mode in hotjoin but absent of tPvP is quite nonsensical I would say.
Obs mode is mainly here to learn to play/improve your gameplay, watch exciting matches or just gossip about teams/players.
That’s why it suits ranked games much more than any hotjoin.
(Plus if custom arenas are supposed to replace hotjoin why invest efforts in adding features for hotjoins?)

Also, I don’s see why the shoutcaster feature is incompatible with obs mode in tPvP. Why can you not have both at the same time? :p

Hugs.1856:

So if I got it right, in the end we’ll have:

- custom arenas with obs mode that will be used for both unranked games and 3rd party tournaments.

- 2-team tournaments for both solo and team ranked games.

- 8-team tournament for daily/weekly/monthly/yearly first party tournaments.

Is that correct?

That’s what I got from the SotG, yes.

Hugs.1856:

Also, I don’s see why the shoutcaster feature is incompatible with obs mode in tPvP. Why can you not have both at the same time? :p

Heh, not sure about that one

I don’t get why people are complaining about Karl talking about the classes when in many cases he was specifically asked what Anet’s vision was for how the class should play.

Overall I thought the sotg was just like every other sotg. A lot of really great things said that will take years to actually make it into the game. I really wish anet would stop kitten footing around with balance changes and take some big swings. Mistakes would be made, but at least the game would change from patch to patch instead of being the same thing forever.

lettucemode.3789:

Lay off of Karl. Grouch specifically asked him to summarize the first couple classes, so then Karl assumed that’s what he wanted for all the classes, and Grouch nor the other interviewers ever asked him to stop doing that. It’s not Karl’s fault, it’s the interviewers’.

So he’s not a good public speaker. So what? If there wasn’t someone from the balance team there I’m sure people would complain even more. So he forgot whether or not a certain skill has a blast finisher. So what? There are hundreds of skills and effects in the game, he can be forgiven for forgetting one. So it makes him appear less capable at his job. So what? He’s a human being and human beings all make mistakes, he doesn’t deserve to be judged for that.

“They said ele healing is fine, lol” – no, they said that the amount that eles heal is fine and that they want to increase the casting times of those abilities. They want an ele getting his heal off to be a big deal, but they admitted that right now it is perhaps too easy to do so.

“same build diversity as necros? Necros have no build diversity, lol” – wrong. There’s the standard condition build, then you have 30/30/10/0/0, you have the condition build with Terror mixed in, there’s a 30/20/0/0/20 ele-killer build which is super fun with 4.2k life blast crits and incredible dagger spam damage and boon removal, you have the minion bunker-buster or bunker build, heck take a look at the two builds in my sig. The point is that the tree is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for “tweaking” builds to suit personal preference. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build, for example.

“leaderboards will probably release six months from now” – oh my lord, they said specifically that leaderboards are in testing. Meaning that all of the programming work is done unless the testers find a bug that needs to be fixed. They also said that leaderboards will be here soon, maybe even before the patch! How in the hell do you interpret that as “6 months”?

EDIT: sorry for the venom in this post. The forums have been frustrating me lately, there was a thread where someone dared to say that they were actually having fun with sPvP and everyone on here tore him a new butthole. I guess I’m frustrated over how this forum behaves, but it is the internet, so I should probably get over it…

Im sorry but imo people have every right to show their discontent in the worst way possible because overall pvp in GW 2 is basically substandard. Even the people who fiercely defended the game in the past are starting to leave for good, if now is not the time to criticize then when? 6 months after release they dont even have features implemented that should have been in place in beta and on release, forget about the new content, and you propose that people give them some sort gentlemanly treatment, white gloves and all ? Please, raise your standards just a little bit for gods sake.

Karls overview of the classes has been done. In future sotg it need not be repeated. IT can be left at that.

daydream.2938:

Karls overview of the classes has been done. In future sotg it need not be repeated. IT can be left at that.

I agree with this. At best if they want to reiterate they can do it in patch notes detailing why they made decisions that they did. Doesn’t really need to be in sotg specifically.

SotG summary:
We are aware that warriors are weak, with a weapon that is seemingly mandatory. Our solution to this is buffing banner stats to double their current value. That is all. Yes, banners…. what?

We are aware of the issues with Rangers. We are going to give more damage to GS maul, do…… something to the longbow, and fix their utilities (maybe). Pets? What do you mean pets are an issue? What’s wrong with 40-50% of a rangers damage coming from a simple minded ai minion with skill delay, pathing issues and fragility when entering combat? Does not compute…. moving on.

Thieves. Die stealth abusers, have more attrition capability and mobility. Cause thieves don’t have enough mobility. Why are you looking at me like that?

Mesmers. Shatter builds are too potent. We think the players might have noticed. Going to nerf it and build up other spec options. applause

Engis. We kinda maybe sorta have an idea what we want to do with engis. Mostly it involves going back and buffing them in ways we’ve nerfed them before. In essence, pressing rewind. Oh and maybe some turret buffs.

Eles are fine, L2P. They just need more viable spec options than zero damage dealing bunker.

Guards are god and we cannot reach them with the balance hammer because of their 10000000 blocks, aegis and bubbles. Moving on.

Necros are awesome with loads of viable specs. Nothing to do here, just need to make more classes like necros. Why are those goth kids over there glaring at me?

daydream.2938:

Karls overview of the classes has been done. In future sotg it need not be repeated. IT can be left at that.

It was ALREADY done in their previous blog, which is why it was confusing to hear it again. I thought the purpose of what Grouch wanted was for a discussion on the vision of the profession (as in what are we doing to bring the profession in line with what your vision is for it) or was the profession where you wanted it to be.

Hey Guys,

I notice a lot of the feedback is directly aimed at a need for a PvE or WvW state of the game.

If this is something that interest you then we just released an article in regards to this on guru.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1072-simply-creating-the-next-sotg-for-pve-wvw-not-so-simple/