Guild Wars 2

For the pvp community: A time to gather stones and a time to scatter them.
for build variety: a time to destroy and a time to build up.
who ever wants to hear that can understand that. Keep doing w/e you’re going to do because no one is out here to force you to stay or leave. Thanks for the post Jon.

Power of manifestation, i’ll say, we deserve and we’ve won this thread.

gwawer.9805:

yo so what if like the forum mods delete this thread lol better save a backup

and

how bout a Warsong Gulch capture the flag map?

Just TRY IT omg. i dont care about esports. just try and make the game funner

Quoted for emphasis.

edit: I had a post about how negative some of the community are. But there is a lot of positive here as well and a lot of appreciation for the communication. I’d rather focus on that.

Thanks for the communication. Many of us understand you are busy. But a post like this once a month, or even once in a while goes a long way. It lets us know you continue to care, and that you do hear us.

Thanks for your time and good luck with your Legacy tournament.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Shaving vs Whack a mole.* We want to “shave” as much as possible, and not do massive improvements/reductions to classes. This means making slight tweaks to classes, rather than massive changes which can upset the balance of the game. A lot of times we use spreadsheets, generate the baselines for a given type of skill, and then bring the outliers up or down, depending on where they hit. Sometimes very slight tweaks can have massive implications.

Ok, I get this is the SPvP forum and your shaving vs whack-a-mole may be more appropriate here, but the shaving changes you make here turn into major changes in other areas. If Ranger short bow nerfs over the last year have been shaving, I shudder to think what you call major (double digit reductions in damage to our auto-attack and range reduced by 1/3rd). And those are just the tip of the ice berg.

This thread is nothing more than pathetic excuses.
Also, you selected nice time for vacation. Right after you made this game crappy. So, you are well rested now? Good for you. Now do something, we dont need your excuses.

Fine, I’ll go watch The Wire. Message received.

Jon,

The majority of the arguments I see regarding game development, refining and skill splitting share the same root cause: lack of staffing/funding to execute in a timely fashion.

What I struggle with is understanding why ArenaNet appears to be so inadequately staffed/funded.

I don’t really know what the operating/development costs are for a game, but if GW2 did sell over 3.5 million copies, that’s approximately 210,000,000 in earnings. Even if 90% of those earnings were spent to cover the publisher, salaries, distribution costs, hardware, overhead expenses, taxes and a year of post-launch salaries and overhead, it would seem to me there would be enough money to easily keep another 20+ developers/engineers/artists/testers to handle the additional throughput required to support more frequent changes and the like; at the very least, keep another 20+ on through the first year post-launch.

Again, I don’t know the numbers, but it seems like there was a management decision to immediately curtail the staffing post-launch to levels that were simply inadequate, given the game was effectively pressured to release early (thank you, WoW: MoP). As a result, the number of post-launch bugs/issues was far higher than anticipated, requiring more maintenance than projected.
It seems as though you guys have been struggling to recover from that ever since.

So we get it, it’s hard to do anything about spvp. I understand it completely, you don’t have the money or the time, and there is not a lot of reason to do anything at all about spvp (for what 20000 that play it).
What i will ask is easy, come clean to the balance team, guys, there is no point in trying to balance the game for spvp, it’s a failure, but we still have wvw and pve, they are still played, we should balance for them.
I mean, overall, is a good game, sure spvp will never be fun to play to a lot of people and calling it esport just makes everyone laugh, but u still have wvw and pve, and both of them could use some help to make anything other than warriors and guardians more usefull.

Hell, maybe wvw and pve could use ur manpower so u won’t lose ur job, just think about it, come clean to the middle boss and gw2 will be what is meant to be, a good casual pve game with wvw to spice things up. And spvp to have an unfun time and dream about esports… .

Hey John… it says that this post was started 8 hours ago… does that mean you were up at midnight on Labor Day messing with that super doom long post?:

No matter: A very long and effective post nonetheless… a good starting point for discussing SPvP.

Now… if we can only address the REAL problem: WvW!

Indeed it is so…

While I know we won’t see any of this come to fruition anytime soon, I do have some input.

Gamemodes
1. Please for the love of everything Holy and sacred, do not implement a watered down, simplistic shadow of a former game mode a lot of us loved and still play to this day from this game’s predecessor. Call it whatever else you want, but do not allow it to share the same name. A lot of people want it as a Deathmatch. It never was nor should be.

Split Skills
2. We need the skills split for sPvP. I understand what you’re saying about it, but after working for 14 days straight and 12 of those being 12 hour shifts, I really don’t want to hear about how much time it takes and how much people work. I’ve been waiting since 2009 for this. Don’t tell me after all these years it was in vain.

Make it Happen
3. I think you guys do a great job at creating concepts and trying to implement them! I love this game and you’re right, it can be so much more, but it’s still not an excuse for half-kittened execution.

Mesmers are not just DPS, fix them
4. GIVE MESMERS THEIR ROLE AS MASTERS OF CONTROL BACK

And last but not least,

Thank you for taking the time to let us know you’re still here, regardless of what anyone says we all wanted to hear something back from you guys

Chap, Thanks for putting in the time. Sorry there are so many people on these forums that felt this was a good opportunity to place you before a firing squad.

While the new “game modes” are needed your concerns about fragmenting the PvP community are well warranted. I’m sure this is something that you and the team have discussed at some point, but there is a simple way to mitigate the risk of over-fragmentation.

The new “game modes” should just be launched as maps with different objectives/style in the same tPvP que that currently exists. It handcuffs you to the 5v5 format, but it would shake up the meta considerably, make the game more fun, produce more variability in team comps and keep the serious PvP players all in the same que (which is absolutely necessary).

In addition… Hot Join must die. Its current incarnation is an impediment to the maturation of the PvP community in this game. I’m not saying remove it, but putting 8 or 10 players per side on maps designed and balanced around 5v5 was a rather striking lapse in judgment that needs to be rectified. Custom Arenas should be allowed to play with team size variables and that kind of stuff, but that is paid-for feature. The current Hot Join servers should convert to something more like unrated tPvP play where glory is only rewarded to the winning team and the maximum possible rewards are trivial by comparison to real competitive play. The reward seeker types need to be pushed into competitive play, because right now the path of least resistance (Hot Join Servers) is keeping the competitive scene population too low and causing the very fragmentation issue that you wish to avoid.

Very nice post @Jonathan, enjoyed reading all of it. It’s nice that finally we got a greater response of what is happening inside ArenaNet and it’s nice as well to see what you are thinking.

But to be honest, I’m still missing a lot from your side. I do know that developing a game is a lot of work. I do know that it takes a lot of time. I do know that you are just human beings. That’s not the point why I’m getting so kitten frustrated about Gw2.

I do wanna know from you, in what direction you wanna push this game. How you want to balance each class, I wanna know more about your goals and how you planned to achieve them. Currently you do a lot of balance changes and most of them seem to be completly senseless, unneeded or in the wrong place. Give us a statement, why you balance like this and where you wanna get every class – not just make strange, unexplained and sometimes even stupid changes without naming a reason.

I can wait months as long as I do know and see that you are going in the right direction. That you keep your promises you made, like that you don’t want grinding, that you wanna enable new builds for every class, that progression and discovering shall be the main parts of the game. With every new patch I see you doing exactly the opposite. With every new patch you get farther away from how the game was intended to be. And it’s getting kitten frustrating that you just refuse to max out the potential Gw2 has without making actually major changes. Just little things could already improve the game a lot and I just don’t see you doing anything like this.

I do understand as well that you have to prioritize things. But just as an example, there are still a lot of major bugs existing since beta. That just mustn’t be. These bugs definitly have priority.

Beside that, congratulations about PAX. You managed to make GW2 an e-sport. I do not know, why you wanted to do this. I do not understand, that you stopped balancing just for a tournament with only a few players. I don’t get at all how you could focus your resources on something like that allthough there are so many things that are a lot more important. That’s not just annoying, that’s not just frustrating, that’s making me sad. Still, congratulations.

Well I personnaly appreciate the communication effort.
Nevertheless, the facts are stubborn.
-2 months of horrid metta with no change due to PAX
-Now 1 month hollidays
…
-Then of course we will need an additional month to get the patch (at least)

Don’t you feel something is too long here ?

It is not my role to give solution but maybe Anet just should put back the patch before Warrior / Necro / Condi up for us to wait as they have neither time nor energy to do something else.
That is what people do in big entreprises when a Go-Live fails: ROLL-BACK.

Quoting dev own words:
“It may suck to have YOUR build and YOUR class slightly brought down in power, but, here’s the thing, it’s good for the game at large. So don’t think that we hate X class. We love all the classes. But sometimes we need to adjust a few things in order to protect the health of the overall game.”

Slightly ???? Could someone please tell me… what happened slightly in the last changes ?
-Ele and Mesmer are heavily out of the game.
-Rangers / Warriors / Necro / have became heavily powerfull

When I saw this thread I was hopeful. Sadly, while it contains some nice things, it does not address the 5v4 issue in PvP. Again. So, again, I will ask ANet to do at very minimum the following:

You absolutely must:

-Move the ready check to before map/match entry
-Add an audible alert to the map/match entry window
-Do not allow undermanned matches to start

You say you understand our frustration. That if we are too frustrated, that we should take a break from the game. Which implies a coming back at some point. That implies doing so when things are addressed. So…please address it? TY.

JonathanSharp.7094:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I prefer Calvin’s version:
“The strength to change what I can, the ignorance to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference”
—Bill Watterson

Kicast: Who said anything about a 1 month holiday?
Cutepicshunter: Be more constructive. You come off as an angry 12 year old. I am not sure you wanted to represent yourself that way.
Baldric:

“Hell, maybe wvw and pve could use ur manpower so u won’t lose ur job, just think about it, come clean to the middle boss and gw2 will be what is meant to be, a good casual pve game with wvw to spice things up. And spvp to have an unfun time and dream about esports…”

Really? You needed to get that dig in about losing his job huh?

KOPPER.1458:

Kicast: Who said anything about a 1 month holiday?

JonathanSharp.7094:

We get tired. Emotional. Fatigued. Excited. You name it. Ask any dev from any game, and they’ll tell you – they’ve been through it all in order to ship a game. And just like you (who are also not robots), we take vacations. We hit caps where we’re just so tired that we need to back off, recharge, take a vacation, and then come back to the project.

Nice posts, but I’ll wait until I see results before changing my opinions. Words are the easy part.

dreztina.4820:

Nice posts, but I’ll wait until I see results before changing my opinions. Words are the easy part.

I agree.

Thedenofsin.7340:

What I struggle with is understanding why ArenaNet appears to be so inadequately staffed/funded.

Considering the fast pace of PvE updates with the Living Story, minigames and reworks, let’s correct the statement to:

What I struggle with is understanding why ArenaNet’s PvP division appears to be so inadequately staffed/funded.

It’s easy to understand. Compared with PvE, PvP has a low population. Moreover, PvP players leave little money in the gem store. From a business perspective it makes sense to direct resources to PvE and desert PvP.

As rousing as this read was, words mean little to me from Anet anymore and its nothing against the Devs. Professionally I am a software engineer. I understand the rigors you go through and the pain of getting releases done.

That being said, this is the first time I have heard fancy words promising the world for an Anet representative on these forums. The time for words passed months ago and the time for action has slipped away for many. Its not just that content hasnt come, we certainly have seen spectator mode and we have received custom arenas, but its that the content we receive either doesnt match what the community needs nor what it really wants.

For example, Custom Arenas. Fantastic a place to create our own battles the way we want them just like we asked, right? Well… not really. We are still vastly limited in our options and we are even more greatly limited by administrative controls. Lets look at spectator mode, so the world can watch our battles. Again… not exactly. Instead if we arent one of the lucky few to get to watch matches in game like we wanted we are forced to flock to a 3rd party streamer who may or may not be watching the action we want to see. Another feature requested and delivered, but massively underwhelming compared to what was requested, promoted and hoped for.

At this point we are waiting for content that, based on recent history, very likely wont match up to the hype nor fill the need to the extent it needs to be filled. And further more we are still left far to deep in the dark on any time of time lines for when these kind of things will be released. Why should we as players expect to see this game fully featured and fully balanced when never in the history of GW2 has either of those two points been true?

When the patch its comming out?

Thank you Jon.

This is what we all waited for. You didn’t gave much information, but at least you gave a little detail, what you are planing.

In the past you (plural) mostly said that “we are working on it”, but then we didn’t saw something happening.. So people get frustrated and feel left alone.

You did it right this time and you really should continue this amount of communication.

Thank you, Jon.

People unfamiliar with the past year of PVP development all of a sudden get starry eyed and think John is some sort of Angel for making that post. I commend him for his thoughtful response, but it’s only an explanation of the problem at arena net. It doesn’t solve the problem that the PVP department is understaffed and underfinanced.

About deathmatch. I don’t think we want individual deathmatch. Although that could be fun, it would be way more fun to have team deathmatch. 5v5 or 8v8 would be a lot of fun. If you don’t believe it, look at those people who keep asking about GvG. There is a big interest there.

Its a little bit too little too late. A lot of words that I’ve heard for a long time. So not really moved by any of this.

As for your comment about deathmatch. Have you played smite?

It has a deathmatch arena mode that puts in a PVE flavor where there is still a unit push…you respawn and fight each other in this small arena with walls to hide behind etc. But at the same time theres another objective….there are the units that if push too far will start taking down your tickets (first to 0 loses)

Honestly you could have taken ANY game mode from that game and it would have been a success here. They pretty much solved all your problems for you.

So its when I see things like that, and then hear how confused your team is…and I get confused. I hear about how you support RNG because it “levels the playing field for skilled and unskilled players” but yet you want it to be an E-sport that is competitive and supposed to separate skill levels.

You keep trucking along with your capture the point mode despite it not being very popular….never experimenting with a mode outside of it beyond your internal testing.

Simply put you make a lot of bad decisions that other games don’t make. You don’t seem to be taking in ANY information from other devs as you put it, or you would not be in this situation today. Honestly it feels like non of the devs play other similar titles or they’d see how other games are being successful and doing this.

The only thing I can agree is that you have too few of resources, and the attempt at this spvp was a failure from the start because of how it was designed separate from the PVE with no dedicated team set to it entirely that could ignore PVE/WVW.

I’ve done thrown in the towel on caring about this SPVP after your devs last few remarks. Because i’m having so much fun with other games, and I’ve seen games coming out on the horizon that I’ve tried and don’t seem to have the same problem you have with getting things done. I hear a lot of excuses about how hard your job is, but other game companies are making it work.

This isn’t an ignorant child screaming about how he cant get everything he wants. Its an intelligent consumer recognizing how other companies make it work, and yours does not. It is frusterating and I am bitter because like many I see the potential AND I invested in getting a lot of people over to this game putting my reputation on the line only to see them all be disappointed and quit.

Anyway, hope this feedback is helpful to you.

You devs care about GW2, and want it to succeed, you have a great amount of passion, and well, that’s GREAT!!
I love that about you.
Passion is one of the most important things a dev team could have, without it a game can be left to whither as the devs are playing WoW. Caring about the game is essential, well, next to the ability to actually be an effective dev team… BUT the one great thing a large amount of care and care alone can give, the one gift you guys seem to be holding back from GW2… is in yourselves. Let it go.

You think you’re doing everything to help the game, but it’s still going downhill, you know of GW2’s potential, you know it can be great if tweaked right… but it hasn’t gotten any better… there comes a point in time where, to truly help something, if you truly care for it… you let it go, give it away, sell it off to someone else… It sucks to say it, but the game might just need a new dev team to have a shot at making it…

dreztina.4820:

Nice posts, but I’ll wait until I see results before changing my opinions. Words are the easy part.

And have been… since way back before release.
They made a hell of allot of promises, like, the game wasn’t going to be burst based, like it was going to be latancy friendly, like it was going to be the first MMO esport…
Everyone loved hearing those things BUT the game ended up being the furthest thing in the world from their very core intentions…

That, along with ever tweak since, speaks louder than any post or interview the devs have done, it screams out how much they actually know about what they are doing and where GW2 is going…

KOPPER.1458:

Cutepicshunter: Be more constructive. You come off as an angry 12 year old. I am not sure you wanted to represent yourself that way.

Im a bit tired of being constructive. Like devs, i need a vacation. So i will just say some right things without evidence. I will repeat: this thread is nothing more than pathetic excuses. Keep that in mind. Gw2 devs never started useful discussions about changes and never asked community to help them. When i say “asked” and “started” i, of course, dont mean some rare posts saying something like “we are working on it blah blah blah” or “we didnt read tons of posts on forums about this problem at all but we need constructive feedback” or “spvp, balance, a little philosophy, this work is hard so we did crappy changes and gone for vacation, also watch wire guys awesome movie”.
I really really didnt expect such a pathetic excuses from devs after a month of NOTHING. Oh, im sorry, i forget about pax with 3 viewers.

“I dont think Deathmatch is any fun, so everyone else must feel the same way” -Dev

Jon, thanks so much for the post. This was the kind of thing the community needed to hear – open and honest thoughts from anet staff. I love this game and I want to see it succeed just as much as the next person. Here’s to hoping GW2 pvp continues to grow!

P.S. I want to come over for game night.
P.S.S. I love playing against anet in-game. I once 1v2’d Jon Peters/Evan Lesh… so if any devs want to avenge them, my acct name is just to the left <3

aaron.7850:

“I dont think Deathmatch is any fun, so everyone else must feel the same way” -Dev

“And i agree with him” -gamer

aaron.7850:

“I dont think Deathmatch is any fun, so everyone else must feel the same way” -Dev

It’s not competitive. It is however, repetitive. We know this because deathmatches weren’t really that exciting in GW1, and that was with dedicated healers keeping the combat going for it to become interesting. Objective based is the way to go, even if the objective is small.

Achilles.2197:

It’s not competitive.

In gw2, for now – yes. Overall – no.

jobah.7241:

aaron.7850:

“I dont think Deathmatch is any fun, so everyone else must feel the same way” -Dev

“And i agree with him” -gamer

“And i do not agree with him” – gamer

@ Jonathan Sharp

So, I need you to understand how important your post, and posts like it are to the community. I had a post on these forums yesterday that (without me knowing it) went somewhat viral on these boards. It was basically outlining the fact that our relationship feels like a one-way street. It “feels” as though our ideas, our criticisms, and our passion falls on deaf ears. Now, clearly, in your post you make it well known that this isn’t the case, but like you say about balance, “perception is reality”.

I equate it to this: we are in a marriage. We were engaged the day you announced the game and we became wed in August of last year. Now, just like most marriages, it’s not perfect. We are going to go through peaks and valleys, it’s inevitable; however, just like every good marriage counselor will tell you: communication is key.

I’ve seen videos online where 90 year old couples talk about how they stayed happy over 50 years, and they will tell you they weren’t always happy, but they always talked. Communication was key.

I say that to say this: in our marriage, we “feel” unappreciated. Do you appreciate us? I would say based on this post, yes, very much. This post you created goes along way to help us understand how much. The problem with this: our emotions are fickle. We need to be reminded. In my opinion, the answer to many of the problems on these boards could be found in posts like this. Do posts like this solve everything? No. But they sure go along way.

I would beg, implore you to consider doing more of these posts (specifically the part about spirit rangers, warriors, etc) where you show that A- you understand the core issue and B- you let us into your psyche about this issue. That’s all. We don’t have to agree on every change, but we have to at least be aware of why you came to your conclusion. It is also preferable that we are kept in the loop during your brainstorming so that (just like you said, you aren’t infallible) we could potentially catch some major flaw that maybe you or the QA team didn’t foresee.

I’ll close with this: I love this game and I’m sure many people around these forums also love it. Judging by the way posts have gone, I can also say there is a major amount of frustration from lack of features, but more-so than the lack of features, it’s the ABUNDANCE of features coming to “the other side” of the game. I don’t pretend to know how long it took you to write that post, but if we already know there is a large amount of bias toward features being released, and a simple post like this could at least quell some of the venom, then why not post these more often?

Anyway, thanks for the post. I’m glad you are listening, I just hope you continue to realize that communication involves 2 channels: listening AND responding.

I personally don’t think many players actually believe the pvp devs don’t have the game’s best interest at heart but it really doesn’t matter if they are not given the resources to make the changes and additions the game needs in a timely manner. Its ludicrous for some of the fan boys here to tell people to have patience when there are tons of other games to play. You would think we were talking about weeks for some of these things instead of the months we have been waiting. In the end all the good intentions in the world don’t add up to a hill of beans in the real world. People want results eventually and sooner rather then late. I still mostly enjoy this game’s pvp but I am way more stubborn then most.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

In gw2, for now – yes. Overall – no.

wut

that’s all very nice but what i wanted to read was “these are the features we will be implementing soon to address the players concerns and revitalize the pvp community”.

Posting on how you love the game and “understand our frustrations” doesn’t really change anything.

I just feel like we keep living on generic promises about things that will “eventually” happen that never actually see the light of day.

I’m not even sure you guys are even discussing this issues internally. And your level of abstractness just kind of proves it. But yeah, designing the next 300 zerg living story missions must take away all the devs time. #bitter

And so pvp-ers are left salvaging pvp rewards they already unlocked one year ago and watching our irrelevant rank bar barely move. that’s gw2 pvp life, folks!

plus, “deathmatch is not fun so kitten that” I DON’T EVEN…!!…

JonathanSharp.7094:

We’re being very mindful to carefully shave it so that:

1. We don’t hurt other areas of the game where the build may not be a problem, as it is in PvP, and
2. We’ve already seen counters to this build showing up (there’s a thread talking about the Warrior countering this build, and to what degree) in the meta.

So, we will be “shaving” the build a little (we don’t want to over-correct the issue) and seeing how the meta adapts.

Shaving vs Whack a mole. We want to “shave” as much as possible, and not do massive improvements/reductions to classes. This means making slight tweaks to classes, rather than massive changes which can upset the balance of the game. A lot of times we use spreadsheets, generate the baselines for a given type of skill, and then bring the outliers up or down, depending on where they hit. Sometimes very slight tweaks can have massive implications.

Just like the ele got “shaved” with a double CD in all game formats? After which all professions got buffs and trait polish… when the ele got nothing. But I guess eles are “OK” to quote…

If you don’t want to balance three games, you should not be developing three games. As the way you combine them now, which is just for your sake as a developer, it hurts and frustrates everyone else.

There is:
– balance through equal satisfaction
– balance through equal frustration (everyone is equally annoyed with every one of the three areas of the game)

Why do I get the feeling you’re going for the second just because you’re stubborn to see the obvious?

As things are now, I just wished ANet dropped PvP completely so I get rid of that random annoyance of unneeded and frustrating nerfs in PvE – which is treated as irrelevant in terms of balance but is obviously the focus for updates otherwise.

As long as you’ll build a PvE community that will hate the PvP community because of random nerfs, and the vice-verse… you’re not going to have this harmonious “don’t need to party, GW2 is all about players cooperating” as you fracture your player base to the core.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

This thread is nothing more than pathetic excuses.
Also, you selected nice time for vacation. Right after you made this game crappy. So, you are well rested now? Good for you. Now do something, we dont need your excuses.

I can’t believe you just posted that, dude. That was REALLY NOT NECESSARY. He is basically opening himself to us and you had the guts to say something like that!? I…I…I need to reply now before saying stupid stuff and getting infracted. I never post on the forum, just lurk it, but I had to quote you. I just need to say this ; hope you dont have kids someday, because you will be terrible at it.

Have a nice day

I think you guys need to make build templates before anything else.

Sure, balance is important but when has any game achieved balance? It’s a never ending process. The game is super fun and I for one have never doubted anet dedication to it.

Anet has done an excellent job with this game. I quit and sold my old accounts of my previous game because I knew I would be playing this one from now on. I played that game for 10+ years. That says a lot about how much fun gw2 is for me.

JSharp, I’ve personally spent real cash on your game just to show my support. Please don’t think these boards are indicative of how your player base feels. A lot of the people who are perfectly content with the game don’t post. It’s mostly whiners here. Your game is awesome and I wish you had the capital to hire more developers.

Writing a couple of paragraphs about how much you love your game is easy. What counts is what is actually done about it. I went into GW2 with my DAoC guild, full of hope. Why? Because we absolutely love DAoC’s open world 8vs8 and have long longed for a more up to date remake of RvR, which is what WvW was hyped up to be. All of us quit the game after almost one month of trying our best to make WvW work. It does not. PvP in this game is broken akittens very core, and I believe it is because ANet has a lot of great artists, but very little talent in game design. In GW2 everything looks great, but nothing works quite right. But let me explain why WvW was a stillbirth (and partly why sPvP does not work either, though none of my guild mates were interested in instanced PvP anyway):

• Downed state. This mechanic alone makes the game almost unplayable in any serious manner, but the worst part are its implications on other parts of the game. It gives ANet an excuse to let people die for bullkitten reasons and also not to have dedicated healing, because after all, you don’t really die right away, you just get downed. It also creates an insanely toxic mini-game of trying to get around all the nonsense involved with actually finishing people. Stomping with Stability, Stomping while stealthed, Stomping with Quickness, countless ways to interrupt Stomps, high downed HP pools, Rallying on stupid targets etc.

• Very little open space. WvW is cluttered with mobs, nodes, cliffs, camps, towers, lakes, narrow corridors, bridges and most of all nigh-instant respawn, which turns everything into a casual zergfest.

• No dedicated healers. It’s MMORPG PvP design 101: if your game does not have spammable direct heals, it will fail.

• No real grouping and especially no speed classes. This means that instead of actual groups forming, the players are encouraged to just mindlessly follow the blue taco.

• No CC immunity timers.

• Bad itemization. Power classes could just farm a day or two and craft their Exotic set. Condition classes were kittened.

• Horrible class balance. While my Bleeds were tick(l)ing for a hundred something damage each, our Warriors and Rangers were busy blowing up 5 people in 2 seconds.

• Tagging. Why on earth does everyone in the group have to tag every single mob, let alone player? This alone makes WvW a chore.

• Loot bags. Similar issue, you needed a loot macro to not go crazy with those stupid loot bags. Unfortunately the loot key also makes you rez, stomp, pick up kitten, and enter siege equipment…

• Inventory clutter. Why does my inventory have to get filled with random nonsense while I’m trying to do PvP? So that I spend cash on more bag slots?

• Bad ability/class/weapon design. About half of my traits were bugged, only one weapon loadout was viable and even today the traits layout for at least two classes still makes absolutely no sense in practice.

• Bad controls. Why is camera panning so sluggish? Why is strafing slow? Why do knockbacks make me rubberband?

• Low FoV and camera distance. Casting stuff at people on keep walls is an aggravating task. Keeping any spacial awareness requires you to constantly flick your drunken camera around. Your character takes up most of your screen most of the time, and all of it when you are trying to look up.

• Skillshots. In MMORPGs you use your mouse to pick targets, to turn your character, to place GTAoE, and to pan your camera. You do not use it to aim kitten as if you were shooting a gun in first person.

I could go on for a while longer. There are also a large number of issues not directly related to PvP, mostly mechanics meant to inconvenience you. Why? Because you can get your Quality of Life back by spending cash on gems. Then there are mind-boggingly inane issues like using the login server for ingame mail (any first semester IT student should know that login servers are bottlenecks), Trading Post, guild features etc., which resulted in our guild losing out on tons of gold and Influence because the login server couldn’t handle the load and we were effectively guildless for the first month and couldn’t sell things efficiently.

And what do we get now? Rushed PvE farming grind content every two to four weeks. Why? Because it makes people play a lot (which results in more gem sales because they buy bag/bank slots (inventory clutter), transmute stones, new Minis, skins etc.). Not because it’s good content. It’s the game design equivalent of making junk food.

Chap youre a great guy, and youre hella dedicated to the game like the rest of the team. no one is denying this. people are crying because most of the players are disagreeing with the direction of the game. most if not all. i will tell you straight up, like everyone else has been: conquest sucks. everything in gw2 is balanced much much better around DM. and you guys just cant seem to deliver or convince us to play conquest.

when are you going to give up on conquest? how long can you keep beating this dead horse?

secondly, when are you guys actually gonna start with the spvp/WvW skill splits? you’ve been talking about it for 6 months but we’ve yet to see something. look at the ranger. the ranger is the worst profession of all times in WvW, bottom of the barrel. we’re tired of being ignored because of the unpopular spvp mode. when are you guys gonna give a lil sumthin sumthin to the WvW ranger community? we need more utility, we need bug fixes (a lot of our aoe’s only affect 3 targets instead of 5), and half of our utilities need to get buffed.

and what about the pet? the pet in this game is just such an annoying mechanic. pets bring no utility, and theyre just a liability. decrease their damage, make their f2’s instant at all times, clean up their animations, buff their aoe resistance in WvW, and make them a powerful utility, something that makes a difference in battle.

Not sure Feranor what your complaining about. WvW is doing just fine and getting regular updates and has probably the highest population of any game mode. This is the spvp forums. SPVP is whats suffering the most which is why this forum is overflowing with angry rants and hate.

in short, your in the wrong forum

Sorry but Im not touched.

When speaking about business,there is only effectiveness and efficiency and not Im trying hard and bla bla bla.After one whole year,the result does not please me at all and thats due to lack of experience or resources.
I loved the game,I feel that it has the best combat out there,I still recommend it but not for its PvP.
Steady and slow didn’t work.

Quickhit.3620:

Sorry but Im not touched.

When speaking about business,there is only effectiveness and efficiency and not Im trying hard and bla bla bla.After one whole year,the result does not please me at all and thats due to lack of experience or resources.
I loved the game,I feel that it has the best combat out there,I still recommend it but not for its PvP.
Steady and slow didn’t work.

exactly…it cant work when the people making decisions keep making the wrong ones over and over again. everyone in charge of pvp over at ANet either needs to experience a profound ideological shift, or we need new who can start actualizing the potential of this game.

I want to give some feedback on the first 4 posts, Jon. We have talked a bit on stream before but I think that hasn’t been all too substantial.
So let me go over the points you mentioned in your posts. Sorry if I break any rules with mentioning your first name to address you.

@ Pax
It has been an event quite a lot of us sPvP’ers have eagerly awaited for new information about changes regarding PvP. I understand you had a schedule which did not really had any PvP aside the tourney. The introduction didn’t look so professional though and I know at least a few of my friends and I had to cringe. In the future, try to introduce the players properly. A famous LoL-caster has a video on Youtube and a document explaining shout-casting. If you introduce a team and its players, mention their career so far. What has their time spent in GW2 been like so far ? With whom have they played ? How was the performance at separate teams with which people and how has it been overall ? There is a lot that can be done to improve.
In addition to this, the shoutc-asting needs to change a bit cause for all competitive players, we know what is going on more or less, but newer or non-competitive players may not understand certain actions, so explain the reasoning behind it. Explain how it changes a possible outcome too and how it affects the process.

@ Passion
Okay, I understand you are very passionate about the game, even though things are not in the bad state. Much respect on that. You are not the only one who is passionate about his career though. And what I see lacking very much is showing humility. I think most sPvP-players have by now seen that your statements are usually generic. I do not understand where it comes from though.
Instead, it want you to talk to us more, immerse more into the discussion. It is known from other games, that developers may lack certain experience or knowledge long-time players have due to them having embraced things much more. There is nothing ashamed of.
Instead, please work on your communication with us. We try to give constructive criticism, but so far it looks like we try to hit something in the dark. We get no accurate questions where developers see issues and for what reasons.
You can talk to us more in-game as well as on the forums. (Though I recommend a public test server or actions towards something like it)

@ Data
No one of us is a machine, I understand your frustration as much as the one from the competitive players, myself included. There has been a lot of time and effort spent on the game from both sides. That is why you have to work on communication so we can improve the game together without blaming each other.

@ Balance
I understand that certain things come up when they are tested for a while, so a meta can evolve due to a different perception.
However, one thing many of us see, is that for example the insta-casts from elementalists are not something even top players like Karsai and Denshee are fond of.
You have to look into what the mechanic is like too. Something like Skull Crack or Chain-Fear from Mark and Spectral Wall is no fun to play against, especially used right. There is not much skill involved in stunning a target for few seconds and 100b it. Especially when played on asura with less obvious animations.
Currently, the condition meta overshadows the old power meta, where I favor the old old one over the new. Both have broken parts, I recommend looking in them. I think players others than me, having mained other classes than Guardian, can help you with these. Listen to them please. Minimize the amount of broken mechanics and skill.

@ Analogy from MTG
Every game has it, yes. My class has been in a darn good position so far and I would not really mind being in a worse position with it than it has been so far.
However, the current amount of builds viable due to the strength of a few is just no fun after such a long time. Especially with having had an unenjoyable meta for 2 months.
I think though we agree that is is best to do something good for the game, but the question is, what is good ?

@ Shaving vs Whack a Mole
My question is if it is possible to have a bigger patch at the end of each month while we have a small balance patch every 2 weeks, changes based on better feedback than now.

@ Splitting
I have played all 3, not as much as most players in their own fields, but to some extent. Friends of mine have started in PvE/WvW and came to PvP. Some of them have jumped in PvE/WvW quite a while ago. I think it is fun to do all 3 simultaneously and it probably won’t limit the fun as there as things to do then.
However, the current balance limits the amount of builds in all 3 types. I do not want to see any compromises between all 3 types. Instead, let the potential be expressed through a split balance so numbers and effects can be adjusted. I really doubt, things will flourish without it.
I know it is more work, but the reward for everyone is higher, developers included, I think. It also keeps things fresh, which is good. There is something new to learn.
Why limit oneself to only one culture or language, when more can be learned ?
I also think, if it should happen, many of us players will gladly help newer ones. The now-inactive mentor-program has shown it.

@ Gametypes
I agree on what has been said there. I think Conquest holds some builds back and allows a different balance than TDM would have. It also forces activity due to the capture point mechanic.
Having TDM as fun mode in Custom Arenas would not hurt though. Give us more options in CA.

@ Rewards & Leaderboards
I told Karl about it on stream yesterday. Set all current armor to glory so it gets very similar to the PvE equivalent in form of progression.
Give seasons to the leader-boards, but fix them first. The decay is too slow for inactive players which rewards not playing instead of playing. It should be the other way around.
At the end of the season, you could also give out titles or certain things similar to the world map completion star. (I recommend titles here)
Someone whom I have talked with on stream and who has posted a thread here on forums, recommended a league system in it. Having it in the future would help a lot too, each league with its own boards. But focus on others things first and make the TeamQ leader-boards only show teams and fix the decay on SoloQ leader-boards.

@ Tutorials
Have them explain all the stats, effects, etc., so newer players aren’t left in the dark at first. Have each tutorial be separated. Explain certain details too. (Like how Push cannot move downed players)
Reward them for finishing tutorial once, let the tutorial be repeatable though. A reward can be something like a 5k-Glory-Item, so new players can purchase some Rabbit Rank stuff.

This is it for now. If I find more things to mention, I will edit them into this post.

P.S.: Since PvE and WvW get more ascended items, numbers will be even more off.

Edit:

@ Ranks & Hotjoin
Currently we have that Skyhammer Farm. That should not be.
Ranks mean nothing like in GW1.
So limit the amounts of points gained in Hotjoin, increase the rank points from a tournament like it has been mentioned in other threads. The order is: Hotjoin → Unrated SoloQ → Unrated TeamQ → Rated SoloQ → Rated TeamQ. Reward points for winning and losing only.

@ Tournaments
Bring in unrated tournaments so we have rated tournaments as completely for competitive things.