Guild Wars 2

With the introduction of the new 60 second grace period for unranked and ranked tPvP, that essentially means that character swapping is back on the table.

I think profession locking is a good thing overall, provided that the matchmaking prevented a high frequency of duplicate professions per side.

That matchmaking feature was not functioning to the satisfaction of the playerbase. The matchmaking needed to be working as advertised to prevent being locked in to running 3 Thieves, for example. It’s good that it’s disabled for the time being.

Looking to the future:

• Potential abuse in unranked queue via voting Skyhammer and swapping to a Skyhammer build.

• Counter comping. Due to seeing the enemy professions & names on the scoreboard.

Suggestion

• Add feature to Custom Arenas called: Pre-Game Privacy

• Feature would hide the enemy team names & professions on the scoreboard with a key & lock icon, still revealing if they’d hit ‘ready’ though.

• Pre-Game Privacy would be forced in unranked/ranked tPvP, and of course optional in Custom Arenas so scrims and in-house competitions could function organically.

Quite simply, allowing character swapping, but not providing the tPvPers with information on their enemies – this will promote building a well balanced, functional comp, without the Build Wars 2.0 feel. All will be revealed after the 10 second game-start warning takes place.

aye this sounds good.
i support this.

This would just promote people running uncounterable celestial eles and engis, (because only unbalanced builds can deal with them).

But yeah go ahead a call it build wars 2, after all we can’t be in a true rock paper scissors meta until nobody knows if their oppont is going cut their paper or get wrapped 500-0…

Let me add some perspective Chaith.

Lets say, hypotheticaly, that in the next patch they nerf celestial amulet, rifle engi and dagger/staff ele.

They then over buff necro, and it becomes ‘meta’.

Suddenly you find if they have 2 of these meta necro builds in 50% of matches, and your engi becomes unplayable.

So you decide, being as active as you are, to learn an s/f valks ele, another ‘balanced’ build that can deal with necro. However, with your suggestion there would be no way of predicting if matchmaking will shaft your engi with double necro. Furthermore, if one of them happens to run mesmer (with their deflated mmr from getting countered by every thief), suddenly even your ‘safe’ option has risk.

Only solution: run the meta necro; no one will risk attempting to predict and (soft!) counter this.

Or under the current system they see that you switched from engi to ele and suddenly they’re no longer double nerco. Lets face it, every system has flaws.

Chaith.8256:

With the introduction of the new 60 second grace period for unranked and ranked tPvP, that essentially means that character swapping is back on the table.

I think profession locking is a good thing overall, provided that the matchmaking prevented a high frequency of duplicate professions per side.

That matchmaking feature was not functioning to the satisfaction of the playerbase. The matchmaking needed to be working as advertised to prevent being locked in to running 3 Thieves, for example. It’s good that it’s disabled for the time being.

Looking to the future:

• Potential abuse in unranked queue via voting Skyhammer and swapping to a Skyhammer build.

• Counter comping. Due to seeing the enemy professions & names on the scoreboard.

Suggestion

• Add feature to Custom Arenas called: Pre-Game Privacy

• Feature would hide the enemy team names & professions on the scoreboard with a key & lock icon, still revealing if they’d hit ‘ready’ though.

• Pre-Game Privacy would be forced in unranked/ranked tPvP, and of course optional in Custom Arenas so scrims and in-house competitions could function organically.

Quite simply, allowing character swapping, but not providing the tPvPers with information on their enemies – this will promote building a well balanced, functional comp, without the Build Wars 2.0 feel. All will be revealed after the 10 second game-start warning takes place.

I would do this, if tournaments ran the same way. At the end of the day, I want Ranked to be the same training as tournaments.

If we knew who the people were on the other team, but couldn’t see their class – that would be ideal in my opinion.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Or under the current system they see that you switched from engi to ele and suddenly they’re no longer double nerco. Lets face it, every system has flaws.

True, but it’s the guy that knows the fewest classes/builds that suffers, not the guy that chooses not to run un-hard-counterable meta and gets locked in to a hard counter.

Wintersnight.3061:

Chaith.8256:

With the introduction of the new 60 second grace period for unranked and ranked tPvP, that essentially means that character swapping is back on the table.

I think profession locking is a good thing overall, provided that the matchmaking prevented a high frequency of duplicate professions per side.

That matchmaking feature was not functioning to the satisfaction of the playerbase. The matchmaking needed to be working as advertised to prevent being locked in to running 3 Thieves, for example. It’s good that it’s disabled for the time being.

Looking to the future:

• Potential abuse in unranked queue via voting Skyhammer and swapping to a Skyhammer build.

• Counter comping. Due to seeing the enemy professions & names on the scoreboard.

Suggestion

• Add feature to Custom Arenas called: Pre-Game Privacy

• Feature would hide the enemy team names & professions on the scoreboard with a key & lock icon, still revealing if they’d hit ‘ready’ though.

• Pre-Game Privacy would be forced in unranked/ranked tPvP, and of course optional in Custom Arenas so scrims and in-house competitions could function organically.

Quite simply, allowing character swapping, but not providing the tPvPers with information on their enemies – this will promote building a well balanced, functional comp, without the Build Wars 2.0 feel. All will be revealed after the 10 second game-start warning takes place.

I would do this, if tournaments ran the same way. At the end of the day, I want Ranked to be the same training as tournaments.

If we knew who the people were on the other team, but couldn’t see their class – that would be ideal in my opinion.

Yes, John in earlier post said he will suggest that to the team. I hope it grabs traction and gets developed for next patch.
If players want to waste 30-40s to switch classes and risk losing points, let them.

Phaeton.9582:

Let me add some perspective Chaith.

Lets say, hypotheticaly, that in the next patch they nerf celestial amulet, rifle engi and dagger/staff ele.

They then over buff necro, and it becomes ‘meta’.

Suddenly you find if they have 2 of these meta necro builds in 50% of matches, and your engi becomes unplayable.

So you decide, being as active as you are, to learn an s/f valks ele, another ‘balanced’ build that can deal with necro. However, with your suggestion there would be no way of predicting if matchmaking will shaft your engi with double necro. Furthermore, if one of them happens to run mesmer (with their deflated mmr from getting countered by every thief), suddenly even your ‘safe’ option has risk.

Only solution: run the meta necro; no one will risk attempting to predict and (soft!) counter this.

So many assumptions and moving parts to come to that outcome that players will flock to ‘uncounterable’ professions.

There’s a loophole preventing what you’re talking about from happening, and that’s the fact you can switch after the game starts for the time penalty of whatever it takes you, of course.

The idea is to herd the sheep away from counter-comping, but there’s only a few second time out for switching characters if the enemy team has 5 hard counters to your profession.

Aye, the OP has a great idea! +1 to this!

Chaith.8256:

Looking to the future:

• Potential abuse in unranked queue via voting Skyhammer and swapping to a Skyhammer build.

• Counter comping. Due to seeing the enemy professions & names on the scoreboard.

Build templates will have the same effect and also be a positive thing to swap builds to a maps objectives.

Hiding enemy information until the lock in phase is a good idea. The only thing is character swapping deviates from making a balanced team because of profession mmr unless a system could identify and allow profession mmr within an acceptable range from each other.

Chaith.8256:

Phaeton.9582:

Let me add some perspective Chaith.

Lets say, hypotheticaly, that in the next patch they nerf celestial amulet, rifle engi and dagger/staff ele.

They then over buff necro, and it becomes ‘meta’.

Suddenly you find if they have 2 of these meta necro builds in 50% of matches, and your engi becomes unplayable.

So you decide, being as active as you are, to learn an s/f valks ele, another ‘balanced’ build that can deal with necro. However, with your suggestion there would be no way of predicting if matchmaking will shaft your engi with double necro. Furthermore, if one of them happens to run mesmer (with their deflated mmr from getting countered by every thief), suddenly even your ‘safe’ option has risk.

Only solution: run the meta necro; no one will risk attempting to predict and (soft!) counter this.

So many assumptions and moving parts to come to that outcome that players will flock to ‘uncounterable’ professions.

There’s a loophole preventing what you’re talking about from happening, and that’s the fact you can switch after the game starts for the time penalty of whatever it takes you, of course.

The idea is to herd the sheep away from counter-comping, but there’s only a few second time out for switching characters if the enemy team has 5 hard counters to your profession.

Not really, what I did was effectively parallel the interaction of engi-necro with that of, say, medi guard/ele in this meta, so you could see it from a different perspective. And it was done in realistic example of a balance patch.

The other thing to note is that you don’t counter comp with ‘the’ 1v1 meta build, which is what the sheep you so warmly refer to would be running.

But yes if you were able to swap mid match it would just put a handicap on them, which would be more of a strange compromise for dealing with a meta game.

Like a year ago, for a short period of time, I believe we had profession locking. I logged out from warrior, changed to nec, map loaded in and I was on my warrior again. They should bring this back while keeping the DC grace period.

Another thing, if these suggestions happen they have to lock players to their base until the game starts so people can’t spy on the enemy comp by goin to their base.

I’m a little confused about the whole “Build Wars 2” stuff, tbh. I mean… this IS a team oriented game, and a team’s composition plays a huge part in their success. For instance, if Phanta decided to play thief along side Toker’s thief, your teams comp would be compromised and your team wouldn’t perform as well… right?

I just don’t see the issue with a team making informed decisions about their team composition. Just because they technically counter you doesn’t mean they have the player skill to win.

I think the players who are proficient at multiple classes and wise enough to quickly look at comps and know if they should swap…. that is an advantage that the player has earned through experience. If you find enemy teams all swapping to hard counter you, there is nothing stopping you from loading in as something different than you’re going to play, then swapping to your real toon, to throw them off. Swapping goes both ways.

Solstice.1097:

I think the players who are proficient at multiple classes and wise enough to quickly look at comps and know if they should swap…. that is an advantage that the player has earned through experience. If you find enemy teams all swapping to hard counter you, there is nothing stopping you from loading in as something different than you’re going to play, then swapping to your real toon, to throw them off. Swapping goes both ways.

Unless the person swapping memorises their loading times and gets back in during the final countdown.

Wow a genuine idea for a pretty hard to solve problem, +1 my friend.

Awesome idea, gives advantages of both char locking and not locking, +1

Personally I hate counter x builds/classes, feel like some of them are way too powerful against the builds they’re meant to counter… That’s why I think swapping should only be allowed to happen based on your OWN team, like OP suggests.

For example, rly dislike swapping from mesmer to some profession I am way less skilled with and don’t enjoy playing because my team has another mesmer and the enemy team swaps to thieves because of this.

Other things would have to change if enemy classes were hidden at start.

like… the spawn area would have to be revamped so you cannot leave it and enemy cannot see inside.

Yeah, and then they can add the Keys to the BLTC so you can buy them and unlock those locks so you can see who your oppenent is. this way ArenaNet can make money from pvp.

If we are allowed now to change character before match starts, does this mean MMR per proffesion is turned off?

Fistandanthilus.6824:

If we are allowed now to change character before match starts, does this mean MMR per proffesion is turned off?

I am not sure they ever turned that on

There are many pros and cons to this suggestion I do not think limiting multi classers and experienced players is necessarily a good idea but can understand it