Guild Wars 2

• 40 new Grandmaster Traits, unlockable from PVE only
• Team Deathmatch – (map only)
• (Presumably) common skins across PVE/PVP
• (Presumably) leveling through PVP
• No changes to the current meta
• No/insufficient changes to broken PvP builds

While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.
This is causing a disconnect, resulting in the players becoming disheartened and angry.

This has happened in many MMO’s over the years. Some MMO’s degrade in customer satisfaction until they reach a knee in the curve where the dissatisfaction increases asymptotically after some perceived degradation in services provided. Naturally, something needs to be done to rectify the situation.

Typically what I see at a junction such as this is the company cracks down on negative PR, resulting in numerous players getting banned from the forums and/or the game. This is the most common course of action I have seen from MMOs. Most recently Rift did this same thing. When players get on the forums to express their dislike with the direction the game is going they get perma-banned from the forums. From the company’s perspective, this appears to make the most sense. Forums get cleaned up and all the negativity is removed. Players no longer complain on the forums for fear of being banned and everything seems fine. Of course, the end result is more people silently leave and the game continues to diminish in its player base and, consequently, its revenue stream.

…and I believe that is what will happen here.

However, I still find myself asking – where is this going? From an objective perspective, I can see that a few classes are completely dominant in PvP: decap engies (solo queue), HS warriors (Cheese Mode winning nearly every tournament with double warrior until they quit), and PW thieves/thieves in general (no zerker ele’s, zerker mesmers all rerolled thief).

Yet, I see no changes to the game to correct this situation. In fact, the most recent Ready-Up had a developer saying they believe warriors are right where they want them to be. For the moment, let’s assume the developer is not ignorant of the state of the game and not incompetent. Warriors are the most played profession in the game, and completely dominate PVE and WvW. Now they dominate PvP.

So, the developers want warriors to dominate PvP. This means they want the game to have an explicit pecking order: Warriors >> all other professions

What about thieves? Well, thieves are also a heavily played profession. I’m not sure exactly where they fall, but I’d guess either second or third-most played.

It seems the team wants to retain players by making their preferred professions the most dominant and powerful ones. This makes no sense, but it is the only conclusion I can come to, barring ignorance or incompetence.

So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced. And balance is a crucial element for interesting gameplay, and even moreso when team sizes are fixed.

If ArenaNet were to listen, perhaps they would make an all-stop and perform emergency triage to correct the problems with the game.

However, I don’t see that happening. History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.

it doesn’t go anywhere

Well, we could wait and SEE what the patch really brings since they have yet to reveal everything before we start throwing poop?

Yes this patch is very disapointing for me as a long term pvp player. I thought we would get some nice features like a new game mode. And I thought we would finally get a big balance patch. We got niether of these which really is disheartening. I don’t blame many of my friends for playing less and less as a result of this news. We thought surely a balance patch would come. What a shame.

Auudam.2971:

Well, we could wait and SEE what the patch really brings since they have yet to reveal everything before we start throwing poop?

Better have low expectations, so you don’t get badly dissapointed.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Auudam.2971:

Well, we could wait and SEE what the patch really brings since they have yet to reveal everything before we start throwing poop?

Better have low expectations, so you don’t get badly dissapointed.

And they already told us there is no balance changes because they want to “see how the meta settles”. What a joke.

It seems they do not play sPvP enough to see the problems we have every day. They write 5 times a day “thank you for the feedback” but they do not care what we say. They follow they “so called plan”.

It is like very good player (not me) gave feedback. Often something like this: Warrior substain is to good and some skills are OP, decap engi ruins the fun in soloQ and AR is OP, PW is to op because spammable, ele substain is to week against burst damage.

Anet: thank you very much for the feedback but look at the feature patch. We have turrets for the engi and bugfixes for the warrior. We ignore the PW on thief. It will be awesome and comes soon to you…..

It does not help or change the meta. The decap engi will not stop because he can take funny turrets. The warrior will still fire a 9 sec fire field and hambow you to death and the thief will pwpwpwpw every ele until he quits.

Thedenofsin.7340:

When players get on the forums to express their dislike with the direction the game is going they get perma-banned from the forums. From the company’s perspective, this appears to make the most sense. Forums get cleaned up and all the negativity is removed. Players no longer complain on the forums for fear of being banned and everything seems fine. Of course, the end result is more people silently leave and the game continues to diminish in its player base and, consequently, its revenue stream.

When you come here and say Kitten kitten kitten bullkitten rather than “I dislike this because this point is not fun/to hard to deal with/imo unbalanced and would like to see it becoming more like this”, yes you DESERVE and SHOULD get perma banned. Saying something is bad without a proper previous thinking on why is it this way, why this choice has been made, and a solution to improve it is completly stupid.

Saying something is flawed in a constructive way isn’t a bad thing, saying it’s flawed without thinking of the reasons and without giving any possible solution, AND being as agressive as a lot of people of here is won’t get you anything but hate.

Constructive and respectfull feedback >>>>> Mindless agressivity (something that this forum is full of) (And English is not my native language, apologies for the mistakes)

I lost faith in this balance team a long time ago. Every decision they make is wrong.

Why did they redo every runeset and sigil, introduce new sigil rulings and traits, etc if the main problems still remain?

They have wasted a huge amount of time and they didnt fix any of the issues: they keep adding more and more problems to the game.

If they listened to the community:
Decap engi would be nerfed
Warrior would be nerfed
Thief would be nerfed.

With the above mentioned nerfs and the removal of skyhammer the game would be so much better…

I know the balance guys work hard but their priorities are totally wrong. I highly doubt that they ever played pvp at all.

Marcos.3690:

I lost faith in this balance team a long time ago. Every decision they make is wrong.

Why did they redo every runeset and sigil, introduce new sigil rulings and traits, etc if the main problems still remain?

They have wasted a huge amount of time and they didnt fix any of the issues: they keep adding more and more problems to the game.

If they listened to the community:
Decap engi would be nerfed
Warrior would be nerfed
Thief would be nerfed.

With the above mentioned nerfs and the removal of skyhammer the game would be so much better…

I know the balance guys work hard but their priorities are totally wrong. I highly doubt that they ever played pvp at all.

You are correct, I also see not a single point where they take our feedback Into account

I will be optimistic and assume that one of the next things will be new ladder and seasons that will motivate more people to participate. Since we had that CDI thread and all that.

@Justin ODell.

All the anounced changes for the April patch are really good, and the devs have done a really good job. Redoing all the runes and sigils? That’s quite impressive.

However. The announced changes so far don’t adress the major issues the game currently has, and this worries me a lot. I understand that the devs work hard and don’t have much time to play, and this causes a secession between the direction the game goes and the direction it really needs to take. Sometimes when you work exclusively in something you forget about the real world.

I’m currently studing engineering and luckily I have studied many statistics subjects, therefore I understand that the forum population is not an objective sample. But although it’s not the best sample it’s the only one you guys have, and we do reflect the major concerns of the PvP community. People hanging around in the mists do share our thoughts, and the ones enjoying maps like skyhammer are indeed a minority.

Players want your game to succeed as much as you do. If there are 10+ forum threads about the same topic, investigate it.
- Is it really gamebreaking?
- Is it easy to fix? If not, can we apply a temporary solution?
- What mistakes did we commit that lead to this situation?

The last thing that the playerbase needs is an empty “We are reading your feedback”. We need real, tangible reactions to our concerns. Otherwise the PvP community will lose faith in the company and move to another MMO.

What I’m trying to say is that although Anet is doing a good job, the devs are not focusing on the important issues. I have the impression that the different teams working on PvP (balance, servers, pvp team, etc) are not working together and that makes me think that there isn’t anyone leading them to a common goal.

The PvP project needs someone that gathers these teams together in a room and makes them work together. The different teams have to talk: Where are we going? Is the community happy? Should we introduce new traits or fix the existing ones first? Can we work together to achieve balance?

I’ll give an example about working together on balance.

- Decap engineers are currently a broken build that is ruining GW2 for many players. I understand that the balance team might be busy and they cannot fix it any time soon, but they could get some help from the map design team. The map designer could add some walls to certain nodes that could be used to prevent the decap thus promote skillful play.

On the other hand, the balance team could help the map designer on the Skyhammer issue. They could investigate which classes are having the hardest time in that map and give them accessible stability or some kind of skyhammer invulnerability (some classes have it, others don’t). At the same time they could look at the builds that are dominating that specific map.

Working without proper planification never ends up well. However if you stop for a while and think you can come with easier and faster solutions.

Some of the major concerns are: Warriors, decap engis, pistol whip thiefs and skyhammer. None of these issues were addressed in the upcoming patch and now we have to wait another couple of months for another patch. That’s the reason that frustrates players the most.

English is not my native language, but I hope that I made my thoughts clear.

Signed,
a former PvP player that would love to come back but can’t find the proper reason.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

• 40 new Grandmaster Traits, unlockable from PVE only

The new traits can be unlock from playing PvP only because gold.

So does PvP then become pay-to-win? Gem-to-Gold conversions FTW.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.

Do not forget the nature of forums; that those that take issue with something are more likely to come forward. I think that this is one of the big disconnects that can mislead people (including us,) and cause us to misunderstand what the community actually wants/feels. Also keep in mind that no one can presume to represent everyone’s opinions.

I will agree that people coming forth and complaining may only represent ONE aspect of the community…

So do you take random email based surveys (particularly of players who have left the game) and see why they might be playing less than they used to?

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.

We are actually very open and accepting of players that wish to express their opinions, even negative ones, we just have a hard line when it comes to our forum code of conduct. Stick to that and I can guarantee your posts will not be removed.

I’ll agree, dissenting opinions seem to be less policed than they were a year ago.
But perhaps that’s just because there’s less dev traffic through the forums than previously?

Even now, “negative” topics are generally merged with “similar” topics. (whether or not the specific topic at hand is exactly the same)
But that seems to be an improvement over the old policy of just deleting them.

Justin ODell.9517:

We are actually very open and accepting of players that wish to express their opinions, even negative ones, we just have a hard line when it comes to our forum code of conduct. Stick to that and I can guarantee your posts will not be removed.

The mods can find at least one offending post in practically every single thread. They use this to trashcan entire threads when the criticism gets too much for Anet to handle.

So your guarantee is pretty empty: legit criticism posts are routinely removed at the whim of the mods.

PR and hype may get me to play an MMO, but the idea of it constantly evolving and me having a part in that is what keeps me hooked.

But never before have I partaken in an MMO community where the developers “did their own thing” the same way as has happened here for the past 2 years.

When you’re adding huge Living Story updates on a regular basis and new features every once in a while, how come the game-design, the class balancing, the ability design comes out so shorthanded?

I really don’t get it.

• I don’t get why the Devs were (until yesterday) perfectly happy to leave Decap Engineers “as is”, despite them basically ruining Conquest mode entirely.

• I don’t get why the Devs are so reluctant to nerfchange Healing Signet as skill that is entirely passive and offers no redeeming game-play qualities.

• I don’t get why frustrating traits like Last Refuge are completely ignored for years, despite killing hundreds of Thieves every day.

• I don’t get why Thief Initiative was revised in December. It didn’t change anything, nobody even asked for it and it didn’t make the game better in any way. It was completely arbitrary.

• I don’t get how we still have so many passive traits with no game-play involved in them when we’ve had over a year to sort them out.

• I don’t understand why it took so long to fix Mug, Perplexity Runes and other legitimately broken traits when the evidence was there for months on end (anyone still remember the 6000 Mug crits?)

Change is what keeps me in an MMO and yet for all the changes the world and content experiences, I have never seen a game-design team so afraid of it.

Auudam.2971:

Well, we could wait and SEE what the patch really brings since they have yet to reveal everything before we start throwing poop?

^This. We haven’t seen anything outside the new GM traits. We haven’t seen what they are doing to existing GM traits or any of the others. It’s super convenient for the people posting in here like they have some sort of omniscient overview of the future build. Wait and see what happens. If you don’t want to wait and see and you want to fill the forums with negativity, then I expect a lengthy apology to ArenaNet if the build ends up being pretty good which would stand in stark contrast to some of the abject negativity going on in here right now.

Justin ODell.9517:

The new traits can be unlock from playing PvP only because gold.

That’s good to know. I hope it’s not too much gold, because PvP earns less gold / hour than PVE.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced.

This would be an interesting topic. Perfect balance is impossible, for any game… so what exactly is required for balance to be considered good? I know many people have many opinions on what needs changed, but what are the core requirements? (Forgive me if this seems obvious, I’m not a designer and haven’t given it much thought before.)

Perfect balance is impossible, agreed. I think balance, in the context of 5v5 conquest, is probably best defined by achieving a set of tenets. I’m not a game developer, so I cannot list them all, but I think I could guess at a few:

1. Power, mobility, durability, utility – pick 2
2. Roam, bunker, group DPS, group utility – no one should be best-of-breed for more than 1 of these at a time
3. No apex predators
4. Every one should bring a strength and a weakness to their team. Build stacking should marginally increase team strength and drastically increase team weakness.

How to achieve balance is a different discussion. However, if you look at a game such as League of Legends, you’ll see many small updates every two (or so) weeks. Observation, iteration, adjustment.
To quote Eric S Raymond, “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” He was talking about open source, but I think it applies here.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.

We are actually very open and accepting of players that wish to express their opinions, even negative ones, we just have a hard line when it comes to our forum code of conduct. Stick to that and I can guarantee your posts will not be removed.

That would be refreshing. I’ve seen the crackdown in Rift, City of Heroes, FF, etc. It would be good to see that not happen here.

Justin ODell.9517:

This would be an interesting topic. Perfect balance is impossible, for any game… so what exactly is required for balance to be considered good?

This game is unbalanced is a popular phrase that people tend to use on pretty much every MMO (pvp) forum. A phrase that is incredibly vague imo. Everyone has their own idea about balance and in most cases its purely based on how their class fares in 1v1 situations.

From my experience as a player that played wow arenas at glad level on multiple classes during all season but the last one;

An even spread off classes doesnt necessarily mean that the game is good and/or enjoyable to play. In fact most pvpers in that game consider some of the seasons with the worst class balance as the best ones (think tbc with its resto druids amongst others). On the other hand you have one of the first MOP seasons, which had a relatively even spread of classes…but people hated that season.

Same applies to GW2 atm. One could argue that classbalance is in a good spot atm, with all but ele being part of the meta. I hear tons of complaints about “balance” tho. So what do they mean when they say that GW2 isnt balanced?

Id say combatbalance is far more important than classbalance. And thats where most complaints are coming from.

I think it is far more important that there is a proper depth of play. That all classes are easy to get in to but hard master. That strong classes within a meta need to have a relatively high skillceiling. The problem with GW2 in its current meta is that the direct opposite is true, which causes complaints.

Its not fun to play matches or be part of skirmishes where guys who play a strong class end up winning after pressing 2-3 poorly telegraphed attacks, while someone else needs to play his class like a true pianist to make something happen.

For my monies worth, I have a problem with Anets excruciatingly slow pace of content creation. Besides the LS, which is very take it or leave it, and not for everyone.
Arenanet really don’t produce much content….. at all. Oh there is plenty of QOL stuff and polish, but when it comes to fixing long standing problems or adding new skills/traits, or new places to go, nadda, zip, zilch.

They spend far more time talking about fixing problems and adding content, then actually doing it.
Since the year and a half since launch we’ve had:

• 1 new PvE map (that you can actual go to)
• A number of PvP maps
• EOTM
• Fractals
• 1 new dungeon path
• Several new events and a world boss meta event
• Several Minigames
• Several new weapon and armor skins/backpack skins
• A couple new hairstyles
• 9 new healing skills
• And with this next change, 40 new grandmaster traits.

(correct me if I missed anything)

After so much time, that is bugger all. It’s pathetic.
While I appreciate QOL changes, I prefer new content, esp when it gives me more options to play the game. IE, anything to do with professions.

And the thing is, we know Anet are capable of producing a lot of content, but the choose not to. And for all their time working in the background, polishing ideas and making sure that they are good and work as intended, they turn out to be just as flawed and human as anything else. And that’s ok, I don’t fault them for making mistakes, as long as they make an effort to correct them….. which they seem to take their sweet time doing.

Like the recent lot of 40 GM traits, some of them work well and is what the profession needed, many are in the middle being just so-so, and some are dead of arrival.
And that would be fine, if Anet didn’t take so bloody long to do everything.

And now every time I think spend time in the game, I can’t help think: How many years am I going to have to sit and wait before they add new skills, or weapons, or fix X/Y broken skill/trait? Etc, etc, etc.

I am tired of waiting for Anet to stop talking, and start doing.
Fail Faster.

-

Edit: To illustrate my point, I bring up the Living Story.
In the beginning, the LS sucked…. like badly, it was horrible.
Which is to be expected, it was something new to the industry and you had to figure out how to do it.
And over time, through constant updates and iteration over time, the LS has gotten really good…. mostly.

• Good bosses, with well telegraphed attacks.
• Heart felt characters the play off each other well.
• A focus on the main character being important, and made to feel important.
• All at timely and regular updates.

And the core reason the LA is now is good as it is, is iteration.
Regular, and constant update with little changes and additions over time. It’s get’s results.

I just want Anet to take the same approach, with the rest of content creation, esp Profession content.

-
For example: If Anet were to add new weapons and skills to professions, then every couple of weeks while these weapons are in a provisional stage where they are subject to change, the skills are changed, often in large ways, sometimes changing out whole skills for new ones.
And over time, through constant iterations while taking in feedback all the while, they can go from a rough state to something well balanced and functional.

All a while providing new content for the player base, even if it’s not perfect.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.

Do not forget the nature of forums; that those that take issue with something are more likely to come forward. I think that this is one of the big disconnects that can mislead people (including us,) and cause us to misunderstand what the community actually wants/feels. Also keep in mind that no one can presume to represent everyone’s opinions.

On this note, has ANet’s team considered alternate means of gathering player feedback. I mean the CDI is awesome and all, but it seems well understood across MMOs that forums represent only a portion of the population. Has there been consideration of email surveys or in game questionnaires as we saw back during beta? It often seems that MMOs development ends up being shaped by forum rabble rousing which ultimately ignores the thoughts of all those actually enjoying the game.

Justin ODell.9517:

Thedenofsin.7340:

• 40 new Grandmaster Traits, unlockable from PVE only

The new traits can be unlock from playing PvP only because gold.

Thedenofsin.7340:

While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.

Do not forget the nature of forums; that those that take issue with something are more likely to come forward. I think that this is one of the big disconnects that can mislead people (including us,) and cause us to misunderstand what the community actually wants/feels. Also keep in mind that no one can presume to represent everyone’s opinions.

Thedenofsin.7340:

So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced.

This would be an interesting topic. Perfect balance is impossible, for any game… so what exactly is required for balance to be considered good? I know many people have many opinions on what needs changed, but what are the core requirements? (Forgive me if this seems obvious, I’m not a designer and haven’t given it much thought before.)

Thedenofsin.7340:

If ArenaNet were to listen, perhaps they would make an all-stop and perform emergency triage to correct the problems with the game.

Feel free to help us improve the game by continuing to posting quality feedback on specific issues.

Thedenofsin.7340:

History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.

We are actually very open and accepting of players that wish to express their opinions, even negative ones, we just have a hard line when it comes to our forum code of conduct. Stick to that and I can guarantee your posts will not be removed.

I liked several of the new traits, and am a big fan of the work you guys are doing.

That said..

It does seem like on almost every class there’s a new GM trait that says “we didn’t want to give you a new usable trait here”. To name a few:

Discipline (warrior)
Valor (guardian)
Skirmishing (ranger)
Air (elementalist)

Etc..

Particularly if you sorted the ranger and guardian traits this player would be happy.

We’ve been kittening about OP builds since before most of you got good at this game.

Sadly, by now its too late

I just want to congratulate the devs for introducing team death match, one of the most common requested things. Does give some faith that they are listening.