Guild Wars 2

This is a public letter mostly aimed for Arenanet developers. I wish both Anet and the players would comment. Please try to avoid flame wars, stick to constructive comments or just support some other person’s ideas.

I teach game design and programming at university. I am also fairly active in IGDA. I know a lot of people who play or played Guild Wars 2. Here is my summary why some of the stopped playing GW2 and went back to play other MMORPGs like WoW and SWTOR. Instead of just complaining I am actually proposing working solutions to each problem:
1. By far the most common complaint I have heard among my GW2 friends and students has been the “thief” problem. Most people do not like that enemy player, who is stealthed / invisible most of the time can kill them in just few blows. This is in fact a symptom of a larger problem, not just specific to one character class (see my solution below). People like fair fights, which last a reasonable amount of time: not too slow (many minutes to kill), not too fast (few seconds to kill). People like to see the enemy instead of fighting against invisible opponents. I know thieves can be countered, but it doesn’t make any sense to everybody in the game to prepare themselves and assign their stats and skills just to counter this problem. This is a not a kitten contest about whether you can beat thief using particular combination or not. Nor is the problem solved by giving advice like “learn to play better before complaining”. The fact is and remains: people are quitting Guild Wars 2, because of the “thief” problem.

Suggested solution: Thief traits and skills, which give invisibility should be reduced in duration and/or get a cooldown. They should be in line with Mesmer skills and traits. Mesmer is another character class, which commonly uses stealth. Let’s look at the Mesmer skills first: The prestige, Decoy, Veil and Mass Invisibility grant stealth. The last one of them is an elite skill. Their recharge times are: 30 s, 40 s, 90 s and 90 s. So Mesmer can remain stealthed less than 27% of total time, while spending big part of the skill bar to obtain those skills. Thief, on the other hand, hugely benefits from traits like hidden thief and meld into shadows, which add together 3 s to duration of stealth. Weapon skills like Cloak and Dagger don’t have any cool down, instead rely on a class-specific initiative mechanism. Initiative regenerates 1 point per 1.33 seconds. So even without using traits like quick pockets or quick recovery, kleptomaniac or hastened replenishment, you can trigger Cloak and Dagger every 8 seconds. Skills like Heartseeker have too low initiative count, making them spammable. Change the initiative count to 6 to put it more in line with warrior’s sword skill #2 (Savage leap), which does less damage than Heartseeker, yet has 8 s recharge.

Another big problem is the amount of damage per one hit. Skills like backstab can do over 7000 points of damage per hit against a medium armor opponent. That means that a 80 level character will die with just 3-4 hits. Combine this with skills like haste (quickness) and we have a huge problem. I am sure I am not the only person who is playing GW2 with less than optimal net connection. Sometimes the delay to get commands through (I am not talking about me being stunned or interrupted) is 1-2 seconds. If my dodge roll or skill activation activates 2 seconds later after I pressed the key, it won’t help anymore as my character is already dead or close to death.

Suggested solution: This would affect all character classes fairly and would not affect pve at all. Disable the use of foods and sharpening stones, potions etc. in WvWvW and pvp. Now top players can use both a superior sharpening stone and foods like plate of truffle steak/fire flank steak combined to provide a hefty bonus to power and precision or similar (for condition damage). This puts everybody to fight more on common ground. Victory based on skill, not who has the best buffs and equipment.
Put a cap to amount of damage per one hit and/or critical hit chance in pvp / WvWvW. E.g. limit the max damage per one hit/skill to about 1/5th total health of the character or around 3000-4000 points. Falling damage would be handled normally. Currently hidden killer gives 100% critical chance while under stealth, 50-60% sounds more reasonable.

The “thief” problem needs to be addressed fast. More and more people are going to quit GW2 and they will not wait until the February update.

Advice to Anet: Please do NOT fix this problem by introducing new complicated mechanisms or timers. Keep the system simple. Fix the cause, not band-aid it.

Thank you for listening! And sorry if my English wasn’t perfect. English is not my native language.

Deniara

(continues from above)

2. Failure to communicate with the customers. Communication is a two pay process. My online friend’s GW2 account was hacked. They asked her guild friends gold to get her account back. She wrote me that Anet support department is very very bad. " I can say I don’t have a good time talking to them. :’P"

These forums are full of people’s complaints, but also sometimes very wise constructive criticism and ideas to improve the game. I very rarely see Anet employers reply to even the most popular and long threads. Why can’t you hire a person who really reads the forum messages and replies to them?

Also the replies should be free of arrogance. I know you made two very popular MMORPGs, but you will remain popular only as long as your customer base is happy. Keeping the customer happy is priority number one. If hundreds of people complain about some issues and there is no reply from Anet employers, this is basically same as saying to your customers: “we don’t care about you… keep moaning”. You should be sympathetic about your customers. Have some die hard GW2 players among your staff, whose paid job is communicate back towards the customers. “I feel your pain. I am now talking with the lead designers about ways how to fix… soon”.

Make the users feel that you really care and do stuff to address their issues, which take the fun out of the game!

3. The end content is mostly repetitive and boring. There is just one level 80 dungeon which people like to play: the Fractals. While the beginning content of Guild Wars 2 in mostly superb and the game offers 5 different rich, beautiful cities and beginning areas to give it a lot of replay value, the game’s personal story begins to drag after levels 48 and it is pretty much the same for all characters. Instead of letting the player to be the hero, the lime light is stolen by a character called Trahearne. There is a separate thread about people’s complaints about Trahearne, so I won’t refer it further.

Basically length wise the latter half of the pve story is about the Risen. This may come as a big surprise to those players who thought they had bought a fantasy game and then find out “oh, I am fighting endless zombie hordes” (zombies = Risen).

The Orr maps are full of Risen, which respawn way too fast. I have 100% completion on all Orr maps for two characters. I did solo everything except for 2 specific skill points, but I understand many players will have significant trouble completing those maps without the help of other humans. It is very difficult to get into groups there. Basically you try to invite others and nobody joins your party. Or if you are trying to solo a group event to gain access to a contested skill point, some other human players appear. They just rush to commune with the place of power and leave immediately afterwards, leaving me to kill all the enemies alone. Oh, so fun and fair. :-)

Often major part of map teleport locations are contested, meaning you cannot even teleport there. Fighting the same and same Risen again and again, plus kiting away from endless hordes (without killing them) gets tedius. When the game is repetitive, it starts to feel too much like a dull work. People want to fun and variety when they play games.

Solution: reduce the respawn rate of Risen, making the Orr maps easier for solo players. On many low population servers I can imagine how painful it must be do Cathedral of Eternal Radiance alone.

Rewrite the end part of the personal story (levels 70-80). Make it progress faster, eliminate half of the redundant dialogue. Give players much better rewards after finishing Victory or Death. I can help you there. In fact I already made another post on this topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/My-version-of-Victory-or-Death-and-marriage/first#post1082123

Suggestion: After gaining 100% completion on a certain zone of the map, you could teleport there with half of the price and teleport also to the contested areas. This would not affect game economy and would encourage players to get 100% completion of map zones.

so you wrote 2 posts for just telling us that people are quitting the game cos of thieves?

Hm Great post actually,agree with most,espec the part about thieves.Also know some people that are taking a break untill things get a bit more balanced in that department.I know how to counter most thieves,some i cant kill ,some keep running away and are invis 99% of the time,so i never even see them,i honestly do not like fighting thieves aswell,simply because you said it,i dont like to fight someone i cannot see,its not fun and not fair.I refuse to go into a cat and mouse game though,if i try to kill them and they pop invis and pop out in the distance to try again,ill turn around and go do something else,ill try to actually Ignore most thieves for now,since they all play the Exact same way anyways.

There is no thief who plays different then the thief you saw 10 minutes ago,they all have the exact same build,weapons and ""style" of play,its like facing the same enemy over and over again,in all other classes i see variation,thieves,not at all.Solution maybe,reduce speed of thieves while being invis by 30 – 50 % ,reduce time they are able to go invisi,because they can be invis 99% and pop out for a sec to go back in stealth again, No class should be able to be invis 99% of the time,its a horrible idea.

@Kolly..could say the same about you,You just make a reply to say That ? Ohh now i see,you’re a thief!

Kolly.9872:

so you wrote 2 posts for just telling us that people are quitting the game cos of thieves?

My original idea was to write just one long post, but these forums don’t allow over 5000 characters per message. I had to split my message into three. The last two are NOT about thieves and in fact the 1st one is not just about thieves. That is why I put the character class thief into quotes: “thief” problem. The problem of too fast spike damage affects all character classes, combined with culling issues + lag especially in some WvWvW servers it is serious. Did you actually read my posts?

I was wishing for constructive criticism and ideas how to fix the problems, because the GW2 player base is bleeding.

Deniara

I agree with Deniara Devious.3948’s opinions and believe they would greatly benefit this game, especially concerning points 2 and 3.

On previous interviews it’s been stated that dungeons are being reworked but nothing has been said about what this rework entails. A preview or more in-depth interview on the subject to gauge player’s opinions would probably be very productive to ensure what is released pleases the player-base.

The problem with the thief class is that there is no problem with it, the thiefs that 1-3 hits kill you go pretty much for crit damage, precision and power, aka, no life, no defense, they can go down as fast too, just most people like to QQ before testing other builds or improving their gaming leading to frustration = quit game.

I have seen rangers, mesmers, necros, guardians, warriors, elementalists, engineers take down more than one thief due to the control skills they own.

Yamiino.1827:

The problem with the thief class is that there is no problem with it, the thiefs that 1-3 hits kill you go pretty much for crit damage, precision and power, aka, no life, no defense, they can go down as fast too, just most people like to QQ before testing other builds or improving their gaming leading to frustration = quit game.

I think you dont seem to understand what the problem is at all.

Caedmon.6798:

Yamiino.1827:

The problem with the thief class is that there is no problem with it, the thiefs that 1-3 hits kill you go pretty much for crit damage, precision and power, aka, no life, no defense, they can go down as fast too, just most people like to QQ before testing other builds or improving their gaming leading to frustration = quit game.

I think you dont seem to understand what the problem is at all.

I do, simply, people want to remove the hiding from the thief, which is, the core thing of this class, they have cooldowns, it costs some times a lot of initiative to remain hidden, removing this from the thief would mean destroying the class itself.

Most people think when a thief hides they can’t deal damage, which is wrong, if you keep hitting the thief will most likely die. Use aoes, use control skills.

Note that you are comparing thief with mesmer, which is the first thing you did wrong, you are just comparing the hiding habilities, what about the clones? in WvW, mesmers, are a pain to kill as well… ijs.

Yamiino.1827:

The problem with the thief class is that there is no problem with it, the thiefs that 1-3 hits kill you go pretty much for crit damage, precision and power, aka, no life, no defense, they can go down as fast too, just most people like to QQ before testing other builds or improving their gaming leading to frustration = quit game.

I have seen rangers, mesmers, necros, guardians, warriors, elementalists, engineers take down more than one thief due to the control skills they own.

I’m sorry, but there is a definitive problem with thieves, the amount of complaints and testimonies is proof enough of that.

You may argue that the proposed solutions would not fix the problem or that although they fix it they’d also irreparably break the thief, but what you can’t do is deny the existence of a problem, we’ve already moved beyond that.

Anet’s response to thieves and countering them:
AOE

Reason many are peeved about it:
Yes let us AOE and spam all CD skills, then the thief who was perma stealthed comes and 1-3 shots us. Just as if we spammed 0 AOE’s.

AOE or not, makes 0 difference unless you have multiple people AOE’ing all over at the same exact times, and even then it won’t prevent shadow stepping into a person, stabbing them and dodging away to get back out of AOE range and still be in stealth.

Heck my thief isn’t lvl 80, and I kill people with it. Then get away. It’s almost like taking candy from a 5 year old kid.

Kiriakulos.1690:

I agree with Deniara Devious.3948’s opinions and believe they would greatly benefit this game, especially concerning points 2 and 3.

On previous interviews it’s been stated that dungeons are being reworked but nothing has been said about what this rework entails. A preview or more in-depth interview on the subject to gauge player’s opinions would probably be very productive to ensure what is released pleases the player-base.

+1

Arena net tries so hard to hide anything that looks negative even if it is constructive criticism (most of the time it is and still gets locked/deleted).

Then after hiding, Arena net has Gaile Grey reassure us that nothing “shady” is going on in the forums, yet over half of the posts get deleted before anyone other than moderators and 5 people can see it. (Gaile Grey is their only reputable dev who was known for telling us about Gw1 via a frog npc in Lions Arch) (Btw why the doggy has that not been implemented again that was amazing customer interaction….).

Arena net literally laughs at the idea of how little information they give their customers because it is funny to them. Leave customers in the dark as they plan updates that we might/might not like/want added. IE Lost Shores what the doggy was that. Nobody even goes there anymore, wasted Dev time making that when we have so many things that need MINOR touch ups.

Tldr; Arena net needs to be MORE OPEN about changes/planned changes if they want to keep the customer base they have. Gw1 was KNOWN for its customer service/holidays/events. Gw2 is being known for nazi’s working customer service/buggy holidays/kitten events. This is painful for me to admit coming from Gw1 and loving that game so much, but Gw2 is not up to par with the quality that Gw1 had (aside from graphics/culling issues even)

Also coming from Gw1 to Gw2. Why the kitten did we make magic find the way it is……..grind wars 2+trading post 2

Yamiino.1827:

Caedmon.6798:

Yamiino.1827:

The problem with the thief class is that there is no problem with it, the thiefs that 1-3 hits kill you go pretty much for crit damage, precision and power, aka, no life, no defense, they can go down as fast too, just most people like to QQ before testing other builds or improving their gaming leading to frustration = quit game.

I think you dont seem to understand what the problem is at all.

I do, simply, people want to remove the hiding from the thief, which is, the core thing of this class, they have cooldowns, it costs some times a lot of initiative to remain hidden, removing this from the thief would mean destroying the class itself.

Most people think when a thief hides they can’t deal damage, which is wrong, if you keep hitting the thief will most likely die. Use aoes, use control skills.

Note that you are comparing thief with mesmer, which is the first thing you did wrong, you are just comparing the hiding habilities, what about the clones? in WvW, mesmers, are a pain to kill as well… ijs.

Many people say that will break the class and by that they mean that they will not be able to kill 300+ people per day as they got already used too. Just think that from those 300+ people there are 298+ who dislike to be killed by someone who are invisible most of the time and hit you high crits, the remain people are guardians who you can kill but still you get some time to do it. For me and several of my friends the thieve class broke the game long time ago and what is hard to understand is that anet didnt addressed this issue sooner, at the end the player just leave but who get a bad reputation is the game creator as probably in their next titles people will think twice before they buy the game. On my case me and my brother recommended this game to 18 friends and from those friends 15 are gone because of thieves issue, if this happened to me is should be happened to a lot of people.

Show me your statistics and conclusive proof showing that many people are leaving GW2. You’ll also have to define many. Until that happens, anything else is null.

Until that time comes, the only thing for an objective person to conclude is that you wanted to voice your complaints about GW2 under the guise of explaining why “many” people left GW2.

Im not gonna waste my breath to talk about thieves because Im tried of teaching people how to play their class and kill a thieve.

The reason why I and many other people quit is because of the lack of end game. There is nothing to do except grind cursed shore for legendary, which is a pointless skin. SPVP isn’t even end game any 1 can make a lvl 1 char and play.

WvWvW is the only thing I enjoyed in this game, however wvwvw is now dead to me. It has become so boring after hundreds of hours of gameplay with my guild, the only reason why I log on is because of guild. I probably spent like 1 hour in total the last weeks in wvw. I have about 800 hours of gameplay on my char and id say 90% of it is in wvw. Once you have taken every keep on every map 100 of times it gets boring. Since there isn’t a real reward in wvw its boring. At the end of the week our hard work gets reset and it doesn’t matter if you win or not. I have a thousand or so badges now and I have nothing to do with it except spend it on siege.

It must be a lie if the rank 1 WvW server says so.
People might not be leaving the game. They might (are) just be transferring up the ranks.

katniss.6735:

Culling. Wow. This is probably the main reason people don’t do WvW.

Culling is the real reason people stop playing this game. Worst design decision in the history of MMOs really. Even buggier than WARs collision detection… And collision detection was crazy broken lol.

I still play GW2 because it’s free. I no longer support the game though. I took back the copy I bought my nephew for Christmas after the grenade nerf. Bought him a WoW time card instead. Saved myself money, hehe.

The problem with thieves is mostly the culling issue. Anet chooses to let them run amuck amidst their bungling design and abuse stealth. On the other hand they nerf a class like engineers as a precaution to the damage they will do because they fixed sigils. Really makes me think these guys are out of touch with things.

Plus just a long list of things that have been busted since launch. Asura T2 weapons still sit on the vendor with Sylvari skins, Rune of the Pack still broke, glitched WvW walls, culling, ect. These guys can make the time to add all kinds of content, but can’t fix problems that have been in the game since start. Game is very much still in beta.

I really can’t support the game through word of mouth or purchases or blame anyone for walking away from it. Hopefully these guys get it together after all these holiday events pass.

So many balancing solutions could be implemented, but it would take a rework of the class. It’s just ridiculous that my gc ele can be insta killed due to my spec but cant insta kill a fly, but a theif specs the same way, not only insta kills but just ducks away invis virtually un killable at the same time.

Broken pvp mechanic Anet!

Alarox.4590:

Show me your statistics and conclusive proof showing that many people are leaving GW2. You’ll also have to define many. Until that happens, anything else is null.

Until that time comes, the only thing for an objective person to conclude is that you wanted to voice your complaints about GW2 under the guise of explaining why “many” people left GW2.

That is very easy to know.

1. Clan with 400 members with 5-30 active players (I have got invited on several clans and saw this)
2. Clan with 20 members with 2-4 active players (Own clan)
3. Clan dimissing players on daily basis to keep their clan only with active players (I have read this a lot)

Of course there are clans with long story and most of them are friends already and those dont have activity problems but 99% of the other clans does.

Also there are so many players that probably for some people there is still a lot of players (which is true) but if we go thru the current path is just matter of time. I am 100% sure that anet know about the decrease of online people.

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/400000-users-online/

I think what they need to do is close the game down for another year because it was clearly not ready for launch. The game has nothing to offer end game and wvw is broken full of glitches. Also another game breaker is how stupidly easy it is to fly hack. I seen so many people fly hack over walls of keeps, jumping puzzle and also speed hack. Anyone can fly hack if they wanted to its just a simple dowwnload, im ashamed gw2 hasn’t done anything to stop it.

Why did you post this in the WvW board? The Suggestion portion of the forum would make a lot more sense if you were actually trying to give ANET your ideas.

Alarox.4590:

Show me your statistics and conclusive proof showing that many people are leaving GW2. You’ll also have to define many. Until that happens, anything else is null.

Until that time comes, the only thing for an objective person to conclude is that you wanted to voice your complaints about GW2 under the guise of explaining why “many” people left GW2.

Play the game and see for yourself. All of the starting zones = empty. This means there is no new players coming into the game. I have made several alt chars and probably seen about 5 players in total on the 1-15 maps and even less on mid 40s. Cursed shore is also empty now, before every event was heavily farmed. WvWvW no longer has ques like it did a few months ago at least for my server. My guild has 400+ members all of them were active now only about 70 are. I know several people form a gaming community I have been in that have reached lvl 80 played for a bit and never touched the game ever since. The evidence of people leaving is everywhere. The only map that still has players is lions arch and they are mostly afk because they have nothing else to do. Face it this game is slowly but surely losing players. It might not die but I can surely see server merges in the near future to keep the servers alive unless they launch an expansion that makes me come back. At the moment I cba to even log on.

Your server is nothing like Tarnished Coast. Your issue is one of perception not facts.

Alarox.4590:

Show me your statistics and conclusive proof showing that many people are leaving GW2. You’ll also have to define many. Until that happens, anything else is null.

Until that time comes, the only thing for an objective person to conclude is that you wanted to voice your complaints about GW2 under the guise of explaining why “many” people left GW2.

Arena net, please stop what you are doing and provide this player with full mathematics (and show your work for full credit) about the amount of players leaving/staying.

This is vital and requires Arena net’s utmost attention. Also. explain to this player what offline mode for over 3 months means too please (hint: It does not start with transferring servers, also ends with left the game).

Aratoa.7398:

Why did you post this in the WvW board? The Suggestion portion of the forum would make a lot more sense if you were actually trying to give ANET your ideas.

Possibly because Anet/moderators never comment on anything in the suggestions sub forum as well as just delete/lock threads like this before they reach any significant coherence

@Anet Moderator #296838347782
Thanks for deleting my post soley because it referred to an “already deleted post” which I have no idea of any reference to a deleted post other referring to the fact that moderators delete EVERY post that challenges our great leader. /kneel before the great and omnipotent Anet! Or suffer the ban hammer/delete

Wow another thief post. We don’t have twenty of these every day on the forum. Thanks for the advice bro.

Possibly because Anet/moderators never comment on anything in the suggestions sub forum as well as just delete/lock threads like this before they reach any significant coherence

@Anet Moderator #296838347782
Thanks for deleting my post soley because it referred to an “already deleted post” which I have no idea of any reference to a deleted post other referring to the fact that moderators delete EVERY post that challenges our great leader. /kneel before the great and omnipotent Anet! Or suffer the ban hammer/delete

Eh, they do that in WvW as well and they aren’t exactly active commentators here, not to mention that this post has almost nothing to do with WvW beyond complaining about thieves. By posting it in WvW it just looks like a Thief whine post with window dressing rather than an actual appeal to ANET and will quickly devolve into the usually slinging match.

Christmas PSA!:
The first misspelled word or poorly structured sentence is cause for anyone who you might be hoping to influence to stop reading your post and disregard whatever portion of your argument they have read.

Enjoy your holiday season, and remember: colleges are processing registrations for Spring semester classes right now!

I play a thief and have not ever complained about thief in the forum. I am known for complaining about how Anet works like Schutzstaffel and deletes any topics that actually hold constructive criticism.

I also think it’s dogkatkittyfuick that they do not give WvW ideas ANY time. Arena Net Deleteators, please post in the suggestions/WvW sub forum under one of the actually beneficial threads; rather than posting about an interview that actually makes WvW team look even worse than before.

Also this is still on topic, as to why many players are leaving. Mfw Anet locks this under the guise that it is not on topic anymore :C

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Christmas PSA!:
The first misspelled word or poorly structured sentence is cause for anyone who you might be hoping to influence to stop reading your post and disregard whatever portion of your argument they have read.

Enjoy your holiday season, and remember: colleges are processing registrations for Spring semester classes right now!

Ahh, the grammar nazi! When you can’t respond to an argument you start commenting on spelling and punctuation.

Maybe take into account that english is some people’s second language.

Yamiino.1827 has it right.
I play a Thief. A Pure Glass-Canon one (~12k life). I tried the Dagger-Pistol Condition, but it’s just not my style. I am DD – Shortbow.
If you never played a Pure Glass-Canon GW2 Thief in WvW, then maybe you don’t know what you are talking about. I did for the pasts months.

Of course, if I play my part well, make no errors, and my opponent
1. Is made of Glass too
2. Has no instant ability to help him / No evasion ability on either of his weapons
3. Has no stuns
4. Doesn’t dodge CnD
5. Doesn’t AoE my kitten out when I stealth at 5% hp right in front of his eyes
6. And/Or is extremely under-geared
7. And/Or is not a real lvl 80, not familiar yet with the game, etc
8. And/Or didn’t expect my attack and was caught offguard, even if my classic opener requires me to be visible

Then yes, he is in Serious trouble. May I say he would be in serious trouble against Any Class? He would die fast, because he is glass, just like me.

Hell, am I surprised when I die fast? I am the target of choice. I play around it, I adjust my game to it, and you should do the same. You can’t go running out there without a plan, with 12-14k life, leather pants as armor and think you will have survivability and fight in long-lasting fights in plain sight. Maybe you need to play with a group? Maybe you need to find what is the part you play?

You wanna burst huge numbers and drop people fast? Then expect to be dropped fast too, end of story. You play with the extremes.

Lets see the other side of the story, where my opponent:

1. is obviously not new to the game, to WvW/Pvp or to fighting thieves
2. is not a glass-canon, lost under 25-50% of his life on my opener (Toughness&Vitality Ring a bell?)
3. reacts by either punishing me super bad on the spot, stuns me, blinds me, cripples me, dots me, etc
4. forces me to use my last energy on evasion maneuvers and (try to) leave the fight or die on the spot
5. Or is a glass canon-himself, played good or I made mistakes, and I am the victim of his burst
6. And/Or too bad for me, but he has allies in this fight (as I do of course). The problem is when his allies see me pop in the back, instead of ignoring me like 90% of the pug, they take a big 2-3 seconds to kill me collectively.

What can I say? Thief Glass-Canon, you kill a lot, but you are very close to death too, even at 100% HP. Try it, maybe you are cut for it. Maybe not.

• * *

—> The culling bug out of Stealth is a real problem

The thief is about as balanced as it will get outside of a culling fix without redesigning the entire class. Which is what they should really be working on because balancing skills on initiative seems to be difficult for them. There is no gradual increase in strength:initiative cost at all. You have strong abilities w/ low initiative cost, and weak abilities with higher initiative cost. If you nerf the low initiative cost abilities or increase their cost thief is basically left with auto attack. Terrible concept all around. That’s not even taking stealth into account which is the biggest kitten up in mmo history. The person who thought that having a class that can stealth over and over again in combat would be a welcome addition should have been fired. Every mmo has had complaints about classes with far less in combat stealth than the gw2 thief, yet they still thought it was a good idea? I’m all for innovation, but I also think you should learn the mistakes of your competition and try not to top them.

I have absolutely no issue with thieves myself. I love playing my own, and I know very well the shortcomings of the class. The issue isn’t whether it’s overpowered, it’s that people would rather move on than fight it. You can argue that people aren’t quitting because of it, but I know well over 10 who have specifically quit because of the class. Maybe it’s just the bads I was around, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are quitting and it’s bad for the game.

I am uncertain how we can tell if stealth and portal using classes are balanced as intended until more of the culling issues are fixed. Is Thief specifically a problem in sPvP for instance?

As for the rest of this, i think we often mistake micro-events for larger trends. Additional analysis might be in order.

~ Dao

Caedmon.6798:

I think you dont seem to understand what the problem is at all.

I think you like to accuse other classes/builds/etc for your own lack of skill. but what do i know, im just some nub on the internets right?

keep the thief QQ going strong guys!

Lol… When I read through the history of posts of the peeps driving the conversation I have no doubt that there is not and has not been a game that any of you would be happy with! No doubt! If it’s not the Thief it will be something else, kitten away!

Deniara,

I think it was probably a mistake to lead with the “thief” issue.

I do believe GW2 is going to have, and may even be currently having, a problem with retention. I agree that your points are likely contributing factors to this, but I don’t think they’re the only ones. They may not even be the biggest ones.

In the coming 4 to 6 months, I’m hoping to see ANet make some comprehensive adjustments, particularly in the area of combat design and balance, as well as with their monetization model.

All of my own issues with the game can be traced back to these two fundamental points, and the criticisms I see from others usually lead back to these same basics. I think you’d be better served to frame your assessments in those terms.

As for customer service, if I’m not mistaken, that’s handled by NCSoft. And yes, if previous experience with them is any indication, it’s not so great.

So to sum it up

Nerf Thieves

Remove Food/and other Consumables from World vs World because i’m a cheap person and don’t want to spend a few silver on these things.

Farm , mega grind is a pve no lifer style game actualy.

Other case on pvp , wvw they keep nerfing the classes other thing are the boring events, and the unfair thing that happend to a lot of players, that never get response.

I can think of another contributing factor. GW2 has no fees, so players don’t feel obligated to play to get their money’s worth. For better or worse, sub MMOs maintain thier populations on a balance of the player’s love for their character and desire not to waste the money they spent on the game.
Gw2 on the other hand doesn’t have this factor, with a few exceptions mostly players specifically play because they want to, most players don’t play because they don’t want to, uninfluenced by the tug of thier pocket book.

Not sure how big of a change this makes, but it is a factor for some.

People are no longer playing the game because it hasn’t evolved, all the time spent on events that are only up for a certain time, not to mention there is only 2 balance people and balance is the most important aspect of an MMO. No subscription you don’t feel like you’re compelled to play, the story line is bland, no other factions. If anything thieves are just proof that balancing is an issue and rendering issues aren’t going anywhere. There are a lot of reasons, but this just screams another nerf thieves thread in disguise.

I don’t think the thief skills need changes if it’s just a problem in WvW. I don’t see many people complaining about thieves in sPvP or PvE. If it’s a WvW specific problem then we should have a WvW only solution for it: stealth-revealer siege weaponry.

I also think shutting down consumables completely is not a good idea. We need more operating costs in WvW, and consumable is one avenue for such. If people are somehow not motivated to use it right now (and hence creating an imbalance), it is because the current consumable system is inconvenient to use (food tray system is troublesome), and there’s not enough returns to justify the cost.

Mikitten058:

Anet’s response to thieves and countering them:
AOE

Reason many are peeved about it:
Yes let us AOE and spam all CD skills, then the thief who was perma stealthed comes and 1-3 shots us. Just as if we spammed 0 AOE’s.

AOE or not, makes 0 difference unless you have multiple people AOE’ing all over at the same exact times, and even then it won’t prevent shadow stepping into a person, stabbing them and dodging away to get back out of AOE range and still be in stealth.

Anet gave bad advice when they said to use AE attacks to counter stealth, it is not (and has never been) an effective counter and they’ve led the community astray. They can now either:

A) Make AEs an effective counter to stealth to bring the game in line with their vision.
B) Issue a statement to the effect that they were mistaken about this issue.

As the saying goes. Those that can. Do. Those that can’t. Teach.

Out of all the issues that plague the game these really aren’t that high on the list of not keeping people playing. I’d actually say that the biggest problem with keeping players is that they went in with the wrong mindset. Those that had done research knew what to expect and knew how to keep themselves busy. Those that didn’t burned through stuff and started complaining.

Sure thieves need to be balanced, but they are far from the only class that needs that.
Communication has been bad, but that only angers people. Most of the time they do not stop playing because of that.
The storyline is optional, how is an optional thing that when it is done can’t be repeated except on a new character make people quit?
Also being able to port to contested areas can and will affect the economy. If a player can always go by the fastest route to get a resource they will, if the benefit offsets the cost.
Orr is fine for the most part and I have soloed the Orr maps to 100% on 3 chars and will do again once my fourth reaches that level. Also, Risen = Undead, which is very much Fantasy.

The game needs more optional, but rewarding, horizontal progress.
It needs more meaningful big DEs.
Anything to get people out in the world as that is where the most benefit comes from in keeping a healthy server community. Lock people up in dungeons and you might as well make a lobby game from the start.

Dual.8953:

I can think of another contributing factor. GW2 has no fees, so players don’t feel obligated to play to get their money’s worth.

It is mostly this and the fact that the vast majority of all MMOs released in the last 10 years start with a huge population spike on release and then a huge population decline after a few months. MMOs don’t make it or break it long-term based on release numbers, they make it or break it long-term based on how well they can create a dedicated fanbase that will continue to play and support the game even when initial release content runs out (which it always does, quickly).

Thief will never be balanced due to initiative. We all said this in beta and it hasn’t and will not change until our main mechanic is.

The problem also lies in the fact that WvW encourages zergs and makes it way too easy to move large amounts of people anywhere on the map rather quickly. This should never be possible as zergs are zero fun.

WvW was a lot for fun in beta when the caps were smaller and we could run around in smaller groups without running into zergs every 2min.

Also, what is this obsession with every MMO and making their high level zones about undead? I’ve heard countless times from players that have quit that these zones just depresses them and makes them not want to play.

Holy kitten, people in EVERY MMO complain about “NO END GAME WAAAAAAAHH” a whopping FOUR months after launch. I see this on EVERY MMO forum. My response is this:

1) No subscription!! WOW! You can just, I dunno, leave the game for a few weeks/months/years and come back whenever you feel like it. Stop making these huge histrionic displays on the forums and just stop logging in. Seriously, spare us the drama.

2) Every time someone complains about no end game they always say they are going back to WOW because it has oodles of content. Did any of you “gamers” actually play WOW or any other popular game at launch? Do you remember how little end game content was there? Remember how buggy the dang thing was? Point is, stick with the game for a bit (or, you know, DON’T since there is no sub fee), support it if you like it and give the devs time to work out the kinks and develop more content. Especially WvW content! They can’t just whip together a map and release it, not with an RvR type system like this. If you can’t understand why, then you shouldn’t be posting on this thread.

I watched WAR die because of bandwagon, instant-gratification gamers jumping ship barely 5 months post-launch. For Pete’s sake, let ANet try a few things and work this out. After a year if it’s still not up to your standards then just uninstall!

I know I’m going to be called a fanboy, and I AM. I’m a fanboy of freakin’ gaming. So go ahead, I could give a kitten less.

P.S. I play a support guardian who does very little damage and I roflstomp most thieves I come across. Maybe learn the different classes, how they work, and how to counter them. Don’t get all pissy with people who know their class mechanics well.

Thieves are gamebreaking. Its mind boggling that 1000s of posts of complaints exist about thieves (nothing anywhere close about any other class) and yet ANET are making a critically bad mistake in not properly addressing it.

I agree, I should have written my post in a bit different way and posted it to suggestions. I will do that later.

If somebody complains about thieves, few things seem to happen and one of them is a lot of posts which are basically just useless flaming back, in the style of “learn to play”, “you cannot play well enough, learn how classes work”. And sadly nobody proposed any working solutions besides me. Sighs.

Yes, I have beaten thieves in 1-vs-1 both in spvp and WvWvW. But but: *the point was: many people really really hate that invisible opponents can down them in couple of seconds. And yes, some people quit playing the game because of it. * This topic pops in most interesting surroundings. One starts to talk about GW2 in gym, pub, messenger chat. Yes, many people complain about the problem. Clearly it is an issue.

By the way my character can kittener food for my main character and alts. YET I think food upgrades etc. do NOT belong in WvWvW. In fact if I would have designed WvWvW it would be more like spvp when it comes to equipment, skill + trait allocation. Yes, even level 1 characters could then have level 80 gear + traits + skills if they enter WvWvW. Make the game so that skill is rewarded, not numbers and grinding. Now WvWvW is a big number game. The more resources you pour in (siege etc), the more active players you have, the better your server ranking is.

The world with the highest amount of active players at all times of the day wins. This is very obvious in Tier #1, where my guild is. Visunah Square and Seafarer’s Rest currently greatly outnumber Blacktide and thus lead in points. It doesn’t make me angry. I just stated this as a fact. I cannot speak about what is the situation in other tiers, because I don’t server hop.

Suggested solution:
The points awarded in WvWvW should be reversely proportional to the proportion of the active players that world has in its tier at the moment.

So e.g. let’s say world A has 100 active players, B has 200 and C has 300 players at certain time. That is 600 players in total.
A completes a goal worth 100 goal points. They get 100/(100/600) = 600 actual points
B completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(200/600) = 600 actual points
C completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(300/600) = 400 actual points

So B will need twice as many goal points to get as many actual points compared to A, as they have twice as many players. C got less points because it has huge amount of players (50% of entire player base of that tier)

This elegant simple solution would also solve partially the night capping problem. If almost the people on world A and B would be sleeping and only C would be online and doing the night capping, C would get very little points from it compared to those few not-sleeping guys on servers A and B could get tons of points by just doing simple and easy goals.

I feel that 1-vs-1 fights should last more than just couple of seconds. Too much burst damage means that the person with the fast net, fast computer and and computer has an unfair advantage. If any character class, be it mesmer or guardian or whatever, can inflict 7000+ dmg/hit, that is a big big problem and should be fixed for spvp and WvWvW. I know that mesmers can right now dish out tons of dmg shattering their illusions, but at least one can usually see the mesmer approaching.

Please stop flaming. Think about how to solve the problems.

And I really hope Arenanet would comment / communicate!

[quote=1084058;Deniara Devious.3948:
Suggested solution:
The points awarded in WvWvW should be reversely proportional to the proportion of the active players that world has in its tier at the moment.

So e.g. let’s say world A has 100 active players, B has 200 and C has 300 players at certain time. That is 600 players in total.
A completes a goal worth 100 goal points. They get 100/(100/600) = 600 actual points
B completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(200/600) = 600 actual points
C completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(300/600) = 400 actual points

So B will need twice as many goal points to get as many actual points compared to A, as they have twice as many players. C got less points because it has huge amount of players (50% of entire player base of that tier)

This elegant simple solution would also solve partially the night capping problem. If almost the people on world A and B would be sleeping and only C would be online and doing the night capping, C would get very little points from it compared to those few not-sleeping guys on servers A and B could get tons of points by just doing simple and easy goals.
[/quote]

I don’t see this as a problem that needs to be solved. The server bringing more people to the fight should get the full advantage of bringing more people to the fight. If a server is losing because they can’t drum up the interest in WvW, they should lose until they fall a tier and find an equilibrium.