Guild Wars 2

Question: With the introduction of ladders and rankings there also needs to be ladder resets and/or “seasons”.
How are you planning on resetting the ladder?
How often will the ladders be reset?
How will your efforts and success in previous season show in the next? (Rewards? A unique logo next to your name would be cool… something like the world completion star maybe).
Looking at the statistics and collected data from each season is a great way to balance the game. How will ArenaNet avoid “revolving door” balancing, where the least used professions and/or specs get buffed and the most utilized get nerfed? How will you make the difference between well used/popular and overpowered or rarely played and undertuned?

Spelling B Champ.3264:

Can you ask them why so little resources are being put into PvP when this is a sequel to the best PvP mmo in which 50% of the players if not more were dedicated PvP players?

This really should be asked (in a nice way) as i feel this is really what it comes down to at the end and they shouldnt get away with a bullkitten anwser, ask them a follow up qestion if they try to get out easy They deserve to sweat a little bit at this point

if they say
1)“soon”
2)“we can’t talk about it”
3)“we’re listening”

then ask

1)“give us a timeframe because people would rather know how soon and hear it’s being pushed back AS LONG AS YOU’RE VOCAL ABOUT IT then not know and speculate, since us speculating creates pipedreams that you cannot possibly fulfill and explodes in your face”

2) Why not? The community feels you need to more vocal and our lack of knowledge about where the game is headed just makes people more frustrated. especially when the problems still exist from 6 months ago. We feel like we aren’t being listened to."

3) But the community doesn’t feel like you are listening because the PvP section doesn’t ever see responses on REAL questions and instead just sees haphazard answers on things that don’t actually mean anything. When do you see yourselves being more vocal about sPvP? When are we getting a PTR? Why aren’t you more transparent about problems that the community has literally been raging about for months now? (thief spike damage, the lack of build diversity, the insane unfunness of fighting perma stealth, the complete lack of description many traits have, have a visible MMR or ranking, the lost goes on)

mbh.8301:

BlueCheez.4873:

Over six months and we haven’t seen a single “team-strategy” dominate the meta. In GW1, nobody would complain “the warrior is OP” or “the profession I play isn’t strong enough,” but things like “IWAY is OP” or “Balanced builds are underpowered.”

First:
There were single bars / professions which were too strong (you may recall assassins being a profession), so that part of your post is wrong. If that wasn’t enough, there were also entire trait lines of professions which were unusable for a long time, about which there was complaining.

Secondly:
Many skills in gw1 were nerfed because they were too effective for how easy they were to use.

Balance discussion was dominated by strength of team composition.
Yes, there are examples of particular professions making a build too strong. But it’s the team build that’s too strong as a result. Shadow Strike being resistant to prot. makes bloodspike uncounterable. Issues like this are TEAM issues. It has nothing like the stupid, casual nonsense you hear now: “My profession is way too underpowered. The devs need to get off their butts and make my profession playable. I’m tired seeing too many people play mesmers and assassins.”

Assuming all the new features they have talked about (leaderboards, spectator mode, playerbase/incentive, etc.) will be implemented sooner or later, I’d like to ask:

How will rankings work: player, class, character or build based?
Since tournaments now feature character swapping, how will matchmaking take this into account? Locking class swapping may be required, but it might change how tpvp works. So a high ranked player is able to practice his fewer played classes without losing ranking and a low ranked player does not have to face high ranked who queue low and then class swap. Countering smurfing and rating exploits, etc: different rating points for beating higher teams / lesser rating points for beating lower teams?

With competitive play in place will you be more active in balancing the game, fixing bugs and punishing exploits? Will the passive, slow and minor changes we’ve seen in the past be sufficient when people actually get involved and competitive?
In other words: will there be more resources made available for the pvp developers, if more players enter spvp?

What are your plans in general for the tpvp (system rewards)? Because now we are seeing more players join no ticket 2 team play, but 8 team play seems abandoned and gives ‘lesser’ rewards. So will the rewards for the old Paid tournaments be switched to Free and vice versa?
Is this an opportunity to implement the day / week based larger tournaments with new tournament rewards? Since you gave paid chests away in such a large quantity everyone is fully tournament geared at this point.

Will measures be installed to counter leavers and afkers in tpvp now tickets have been removed? So as to avoid a mentality that there is no drawback for leaving a game you “cannot win”.

Thanks, Grouch, really enjoyed the last SotG. I trust the developers to continue to be involved in Spvp if they wish it to be succesful and competitive for the future.

Hey guys,

Just a reminder. The show is at 12pm PDT. Daylight savings and all.

Nord.5360:

Hey guys,

Just a reminder. The show is at 12pm PDT. Daylight savings and all.

Are there going to be cat ears this time.

Jacobin.8509:

Valkyriez.6578:

Well done Grouch. Ignore the naysayers, what you do for this community alongside high level players is far and above what anyone else is doing.

To Arena-net, thankyou for taking the time out of your busy schedules to do these SOTG discussions, this is also far and above what you are required to do as game developers and in my experience over many MMO’s, you are the only dev team to consistently interact with the community in this way outside of forum posts and should be commended for it.

To players wanting to put the developers under siege or over the coals so to speak, remember this, they don’t have to do a SOTG at all and Xeph has it right, it’s a nicety and a way to build a relationship with the players, not a medium to rage or put the hard word on them.

Sorry but devs appearing on a show like this is not some form of charity that players should be thankful for.

We want to know where the game is going in order to determine whether or not we should bother to continue to playing it.

Its the DEVS who should be thankful that anyone is even willing to listen to them at all at this point when none of the features that people want work correctly or are even in the game after 8 months and millions of box sales.

Taking people’s money and then stringing them along with a copy and pasted promise list month after month is not exactly a great way to build consumer confidence.

People just want to know if / when key features will be in the game. If Anet just dodges those questions, talks about unrelated topics, or just flat out deny that issues like low population exist then there is no point in having them talk about the ‘state of the game’.

Wrong. There’s plenty of games out there that the devs don’t do sitdowns once a month for, and they are worse for it.

Anet might be lacking in some areas, but being willing to talk on the SOTG isn’t one of them. I wish thier forum communication was just as strong though.

Well this is coming up today.

Remember guys:

- Keep the answers short, no speeches, no marketing crap

- No “soon, we’re thinking about it, when it’s ready, our plan is to…” – stick to facts, and actual dates of deliverables, the time for optimistic promises is past

- Class balance, e-sports features and competitive mists PVP – no talk about PVE, WvW or anything else apart from mists PVP

- Again, short answers, no speeches, no marketing crap

xiv.7136:

- Again, short answers, no speeches, no marketing crap

like saying to a politician no bullkitten and false promises, might aswell not talk then:)

It’s today whoooo.. gonna try to tune in..
I’m still surprised the devs actually do these…

Darnis.4056:

It’s today whoooo.. gonna try to tune in..
I’m still surprised the devs actually do these…

Im glad they do. If i didnt get feedback from devs directly id assume spvp wasnt on there radar and shop for another product.

xiv.7136:

Well this is coming up today.

Remember guys:

- Keep the answers short, no speeches, no marketing crap

- No “soon, we’re thinking about it, when it’s ready, our plan is to…” – stick to facts, and actual dates of deliverables, the time for optimistic promises is past

- Class balance, e-sports features and competitive mists PVP – no talk about PVE, WvW or anything else apart from mists PVP

- Again, short answers, no speeches, no marketing crap

They cant give hard dates man, they just cant. things can get delayed, be buggy, take longer than expected and this happens ALL the time in game development. I wish they could give fuzzy dates with the caveat that its a current best estimation.

And i wish the community would be realistic if they annouce something isnt ready, if its not ready , its not ready.
But approximate timelines would be better than ‘soon’.

daydream.2938:

But approximate timelines would be better than ‘soon’.

This is a gross understatement.
It was more than 5 months ago that some kind of pvp blog by a Jon was announced to be “soon”.
sooon
soooooooooon
sooooooooooooooooooooooon

Spelling B Champ.3264:

Can you ask them why so little resources are being put into PvP when this is a sequel to the best PvP mmo in which 50% of the players if not more were dedicated PvP players?

World of Warcraft. That’s why. It was a game of brinksmanship that was played, and WoW won…again.

ArenaNet announced a ship date very late in the development cycle so that WoW could not drop their expansion on top of it and negatively impact sales. Unfortunately they had to ship before it was really ready. As it was, Blizzard was able to kick it into high gear and ship MoP 1 month after GW2.

The problem there is that GW2 only makes money off of game sales and the gem store. Game sales will continue to grow only if the internet opinion is that people should buy it. This means it was paramount for GW2 to ship fully featured and polished. However, it was not, and they were a good 3 months behind where they needed to be when they actually shipped. Retention suffered and the game’s reputation suffered. This meant lower-than-predicted income and, subsequently, fewer-than-desired developers allocated to enhancements and bug fixes.

As a player you may wonder why it seems no one can make an MMO as good or as successful as WoW. Blizzard is very good at strategically timing their development cycle to negatively interfere with competitor’s products. Additionally, they are very good at establishing subversive, negative internet campaigns to mailgn competitor’s products. They’ll hire people to play their competition’s games, pose as regular players, and bash the games online. And they can do this because they have a lot of money from that ~10^6 subscription base they can throw around.

In part, WoW players themselves are one of the reasons why the MMO competition has never really panned out so well.

I still have hopes for this game, but I think the developer team needs to have a ‘Coming to Jesus’ meeting and realize they need to change things, immediately.
First thing: they need to realize they need more money for developers to get tPvP fully featured, and get it done in about 90 days.
Second thing: they need to realize that a LOT of their playerbase is doing WvW, and right now they probably outnumber their tPvP playerbase: perhaps greatly.

So, plan out something that will leverage the WvW playerbase into a revenue stream to pay for additional developer time to get tPvP where it needs to be. I can think of lots of little things that would quickly generate the revenue ArenaNet would need to justify the extra developer funding.

that feel when I got banned from the stream chat the second I stepped in there.

SUCH IS LIFE…

can someone refresh me on what they said about immobilizing and evade?

Yea. They don’t want to change dodge rolling while immobilized. Their argument was immobilize can be chained to shut someone down.

I lost the part about thieves.

Will we see any changes in this profession?

brunohstein.9038:

I lost the part about thieves.

Will we see any changes in this profession?

Reveal automatically activates on stealth ending, not just on attack. May or may not apply to Mesmer Stealth.
High damage was there because of a lack of boon removal. May see greater increase in boon removal to tone their damage down. They feel Mug is far too strong.
Looking to increase mobility for sets other than the shortbow. Feel Ele competes too well with Thief’s mobility.
Something about getting burning on thematically.

ensoriki.5789:

brunohstein.9038:

I lost the part about thieves.

Will we see any changes in this profession?

Reveal automatically activates on stealth ending, not just on attack. May or may not apply to Mesmer Stealth.
High damage was there because of a lack of boon removal. May see greater increase in boon removal to tone their damage down. They feel Mug is far too strong.
Looking to increase mobility for sets other than the shortbow. Feel Ele competes too well with Thief’s mobility.
Something about getting burning on thematically.

Thank you. Interesting changes.

Thanks again to the devs for staying in touch w the community.

Todays SOTG was the best SOTG ever.
Thanks for coming back and talking to the players…

Seems like I missed it. Will the SOTG be uploaded anytime soon? I would appreciate that, thanks.

Darnis.4056:

Todays SOTG was the best SOTG ever.
Thanks for coming back and talking to the players…

Seconded but Karl should be more clear and concise.

SOTG Link:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/377719641

So that link keeps crashing my computer. Is there anywhere else we can go to watch it??

It will be on Youtube as soon as it’s done processing.

Nord.5360:

It will be on Youtube as soon as it’s done processing.

ok thank you much

Today’s SotG has been uploaded to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUvIrH2BlU

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

Thanks to Grouch and GW2Guru, Jon, Tyler, Karl, Nero and Xeph. Everyone did a great job and it was a good talk.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1070-gurus-spvp-state-of-the-game-w-tyler-bearce-jonathan-sharp-and-karl-mclain/

"Summarised" SoTG transcript for those that missed it. It’s a mixed bag of PvP and PvE stuff.

-------------

Here is my feedback on spectator mode.

Making it available only for hot-join and custom games is a mistake, because:

- it disconnects the general game audience from top-dog PvP game (unless they’re that lucky 0,1% at the top of the food chain, they don’t understand half the balance changes and how the profession is best played in current balance)
- it does a poor marketing job for both new and long-standing members, which either wish to dive into the PvP, give it another go or assess more carefully their profession choice for a mixed PvP/WvW/PvE venture

Reasoning for these limitations was alleged match manipulation. I ask, what match manipulation?

MOBA games either impose a delay on when a game goes live and can be spectated, or only allow own people / certified shoutcasters to show important tournament games. Combination of these and other techniques will deal with potential match manipulation, while not assassinating the fledgling spectator mode and it’s main purpose.

Last time I checked Guild Wars 1 had a robust spectator mode accessible in the game’s UI from every game outpost, and it helped breed better understanding for current balance issues & how the game is played, on top of luring new players to the pvp game and generating interest, not to mention the sheer entertainment of a little downtime watching matches either for fun or to learn & analyse.

The way I understand it, GW2 spectator mode won’t even have it’s own UI accessible from anywhere, but you’ll simply right-click a match in hot-join/custom game lobby to watch it. If anything, the whole purpose of spectator mode is to allow people to browse from a list of most-serious, top pvp matches - get to know the PvP elite, learn from the best and understand how game is fundamentally played.

Bleed-over from PvP to WvW & PvE is also a nice bonus in terms of the "balance game" and game design problems, not apparent without hard data and access to high-end games & players. Inferior quality of extremely biased feedback you get from your average players is a direct result of poor feedback loop you get from playing the game itself.

Sidenotes:

Update skill, trait, consumable and rune descriptions, so that they truly reflect what a skill, trait, consumable or rune does. For instance, if interrupting the skill makes it go on a full cooldown, the said fact must be reflected in the skill’s tooltips.

It should be also stated in food item’s description, that it’s one of two distinct types of food items, and that effectively two food items of different categories can be combined without overwriting their effects.

Create a public list of malfunctioning runes, consumables, traits and skills. State what the bugs are, how the skills/traits/consumables/runes currently function and estimated date of fix.

There are some shameful examples of traits and runes bugged since game’s release, with absolutely no communication from you as a company. Not acknowledging a bug doesn’t make it go away, and I’m calling you on that.

There should be a tab in Hero’s Panel for WvW and sPvP statistics separately, starting with introductory page on the mechanical differences between PvE and these two game modes, examples:

- "XX consumables cannot be used in YY mode"
- "XX boosters cannot be used in YY mode"
- "XX skills and YY traits and ZZ runes have the following different effects in ABC mode: blah blah blah"
- "confusion has halved damage in XX mode"
- "maximum number of stacks/total duration of XX boon in YY mode"

Similarly, if you’re in sPvP or WvW, your trait, skill and rune descriptions should fully reflect all the differences when you hover over them, on top of the list itself.

I’m glad that the acknowledge that while warrior is good in PvE (which imo isn’t that big of deal), they get destroyed by conditions in PvP even with a full set of Lyssa runes and a signet of stamina. What I’d like to see is the perk that increases movement speed while in combat also reduce the effectiveness of cripple or perhaps have the one that removes immobilize on movement skills also remove cripple. You could also have the passive of signet of stamina changed to something that reduces the duration of conditions by a certain % (which would probably depend on the condition).

Demosthene.2195:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1070-gurus-spvp-state-of-the-game-w-tyler-bearce-jonathan-sharp-and-karl-mclain/

“Summarised” SoTG transcript for those that missed it. It’s a mixed bag of PvP and PvE stuff.

---

Here is my feedback on spectator mode.

Making it available only for hot-join and custom games is a mistake, because:

- it disconnects the general game audience from top-dog PvP game (unless they’re that lucky 0,1% at the top of the food chain, they don’t understand half the balance changes and how the profession is best played in current balance)
- it does a poor marketing job for both new and long-standing members, which either wish to dive into the PvP, give it another go or assess more carefully their profession choice for a mixed PvP/WvW/PvE venture

Reasoning for these limitations was alleged match manipulation. I ask, what match manipulation?

MOBA games either impose a delay on when a game goes live and can be spectated, or only allow own people / certified shoutcasters to show important tournament games. Combination of these and other techniques will deal with potential match manipulation, while not assassinating the fledgling spectator mode and it’s main purpose.

Last time I checked Guild Wars 1 had a robust spectator mode accessible in the game’s UI from every game outpost, and it helped breed better understanding for current balance issues & how the game is played, on top of luring new players to the pvp game and generating interest, not to mention the sheer entertainment of a little downtime watching matches either for fun or to learn & analyse.

The way I understand it, GW2 spectator mode won’t even have it’s own UI accessible from anywhere, but you’ll simply right-click a match in hot-join/custom game lobby to watch it. If anything, the whole purpose of spectator mode is to allow people to browse from a list of most-serious, top pvp matches – get to know the PvP elite, learn from the best and understand how game is fundamentally played.

Bleed-over from PvP to WvW & PvE is also a nice bonus in terms of the “balance game” and game design problems, not apparent without hard data and access to high-end games & players. Inferior quality of extremely biased feedback you get from your average players is a direct result of poor feedback loop you get from playing the game itself.

Sidenotes:

Update skill, trait, consumable and rune descriptions, so that they truly reflect what a skill, trait, consumable or rune does. For instance, if interrupting the skill makes it go on a full cooldown, the said fact must be reflected in the skill’s tooltips.

It should be also stated in food item’s description, that it’s one of two distinct types of food items, and that effectively two food items of different categories can be combined without overwriting their effects.

Create a public list of malfunctioning runes, consumables, traits and skills. State what the bugs are, how the skills/traits/consumables/runes currently function and estimated date of fix.

There are some shameful examples of traits and runes bugged since game’s release, with absolutely no communication from you as a company. Not acknowledging a bug doesn’t make it go away, and I’m calling you on that.

There should be a tab in Hero’s Panel for WvW and sPvP statistics separately, starting with introductory page on the mechanical differences between PvE and these two game modes, examples:

- “XX consumables cannot be used in YY mode”
- “XX boosters cannot be used in YY mode”
- “XX skills and YY traits and ZZ runes have the following different effects in ABC mode: blah blah blah”
- “confusion has halved damage in XX mode”
- “maximum number of stacks/total duration of XX boon in YY mode”

Similarly, if you’re in sPvP or WvW, your trait, skill and rune descriptions should fully reflect all the differences when you hover over them, on top of the list itself.

Considering the plan is for custom arenas to replace hotjoin to an extent, spectator mode for CA is the best option. Third party tournaments and organised scrimmages between high level players will have the spectator mode with shout casting.

Much better then tournaments in their current state.

I’m pretty sure it will eventually roll out to all modes of pvp though but at first implementation this is a really good way if instantly boosting he competitive scene.